TITLE: Signs and Lamentations
NAME: Mik
E-MAIL: ccmcdoc@hotmail.com
CATEGORY: M/Sk
RATING: implied R for implied torture. M/Sk. Not
suitable for children, Baptists or Republicans.
SUMMARY: In the latter days there will be signs...
ARCHIVE: This story belongs to Valerie
FEEDBACK: Feedback? Well, yes, if you insist.
KEYWORDS: story slash angst Mulder Skinner NC-17
DISCLAIMER: Fox Mulder, Walter Skinner, and all other
X-Files characters belong to Chris Carter, Ten-Thirteen Productions and 20th
Century Fox Broadcasting. No copyright infringement is intended and no profit
is being made from their use. I personally think Chris Carter, et al, should
just give them to me, since they're not using them anymore, and anyway, I treat
them much, much better, but there you are.
Author's notes: This story was commissioned by Valerie, who made a donation to the Red Cross Katrina Disaster Relief Fund. Thank you.
Signs and Lamentations, Part One-Wars
I know I have a reputation as a real hard-ass. I know I sometimes use that reputation to my advantage, pushing through the tangles of red tinged bureaucracy, getting my point across to the higher echelon, terrifying direct reports (but only when absolutely necessary), occasionally bringing a wayward agent to heel. But despite this reputation, I really am not such a difficult person. I'm reasonable, rational, tolerant and I've even had fleeting moments of generosity and kindness.
However, I was feeling neither generous nor kind toward the man in the chair in front of me. On most occasions when called into my office for some misstep or a report which beggared credulity, he would at least make an attempt to look as if he appreciated the gravity of The Situation. He wasn't even trying this time. He was sitting, hunched forward, forearms on knees which bounced and jerked like two dancers on methamphetamines, and while his face was turned toward mine and composed into an expression of awareness if not interest, his eyes were glazed over and his mind had already departed.
"Are we keeping you from something, Agent Mulder?" I asked, at length.
His eyes came into focus. "As it happens, yes." He sat up and one hand dipped into his jacket. He produced one of the smaller Interoffice envelopes and unwound the red thread. His mouth was pulled up in what was either disapproval or a struggle not to look too smug. He slipped several folded sheets from the envelope, unfolded them, set them on the corner of my desk, turned them so that I could read them, and gave them just enough of a shove with his fingertips that I could either scramble to catch them or let them flutter around me and fall to the floor.
I stopped them with a heavy fist as they skittered toward me. "CIA?" I blurted, recognizing the letterhead before I actually read the document.
He shrugged in reply.
Beside him, his partner shifted, trying to get a look at the papers without actually looking as if she wanted to see.
I scanned them. I scowled. "Who authorized this?" It spoke to how powerfully I was struck by the information. I was angry, surprised and angry.
He could see it. He might have looked smug then but he let a little of his own anger flicker over his mouth. "As you can see," he answered, through tight lips.
"So, you're going to become a terrorist hunter, are you?" My
fingers itched to reach for the phone and bark out instructions to have the
head of whomever decided they could loan out one of my agents without even
mentioning it to me, much less asking permission, delivered to me on a spike,
preferably in flames. On the other hand, I reasoned, my fingers tapping in
agitation, it would mean a few days without his subcutaneous irritation. "
"It's an inter-Agency team which has-"
"Scully, he doesn't need to hear about it," Mulder cut his partner off impatiently. He turned back to me and this time his eyes were focused and colored dark. "It wasn't my idea. I don't know why they want me. The CIA has profilers." His shoulders went up and down a fraction. "To hear them tell, theirs are better than ours."
"I doubt it." As much as he irritated me, there was no denying that there were some things at which his skills, his...gifts were uncanny. "You're to report this afternoon?"
Another shrug. A belated, "Yes, Sir."
"I see." I had no choice, not with them there, so I picked up a pen and signed off on his temporary transfer. "Well, Agent Mulder," I paused to fold the instructions and send them back to him with a flick of my own fingertip, "Godspeed."
He didn't fumble. He was enough of a profiler to expect my reaction and he was prepared for it. He crushed the papers back into his breast pocket without benefit of the envelope, which remained at the corner of my desk, the detritus of his petulance. He stood. He did not offer a hand. "Thank you, Sir." He made half a turn and added, "Let's go, Scully."
"Oh?" I pinned her to her chair with an arched brow. "Was she requisitioned as well?"
That he didn't expect. He paused. "No, Sir." He dropped a hand on her shoulder, just a moment of contact, but it was to be their goodbye, and the expression on her face was hardly impassive. Those large, see everything eyes lifted to him, and her mouth quivered with words she couldn't say in front of me. Yet, save a jerky twisting of the fingers of one hand, she managed not to betray anything inappropriate between them.
We both watched him leave the office. There was a long moment of awkward silence. Then I remembered I wasn't really a hard-ass. "That will be all, Agent."
She didn't linger.
My anger did, however. It wasn't the actual fact that I was rid of Agent Bucktherulesfucktherulemakers Mulder that had me dripping poison instead of sweat from my armpits. That was actually good news. Seven years of supervising him was six years eleven months too long. The notion of supervision in his case was laughable. The man did what he pleased, when he pleased and if it pissed people off...it pleased him. He took his lumps, he ranted, he raved, he promised, he swore, but he never, ever changed. I pitied the CIA.
No, what galled me was the idea that he was theirs to take without so much as a by-your-leave to me. Inter-Agency relations were thready at best, and all the patriotic rhetoric and photo-op bonhomie brought on by planes crashing into buildings was putting a dangerous strain on that thread. It wasn't nice to take someone else's toys home without asking, and they'd stolen my best agent out of the sandbox. My only consolation was that Mulder was going to make them as crazy as he made me. Oh, and that he would undoubtedly catch some bad guys and probably save some lives.
Signs and Lamentations, Part Two-Waves
I was halfway to my car before I heard the dull clack-clack of her heels on the concrete floor. "What took you so long?" I drawled without looking back to acknowledge her. "Had to stay after and clap erasers? Or maybe take an oath of loyalty?"
"Mulder." She was making her face at me. That stern moue that said 'Now you listen to me...' I could hear it in her voice. "You know very well... "
"Not that one." I sighed. I'd worked her six years and she still had not learned to recognize my biting wit. "The oath of loyalty to Skinner." I raised my hands like a Pentecostal penitent. "All hail the mighty meter of truth, justice and the Skinnerican way, and woe betide all those who anger him."
For once she didn't cut me off with a scolding 'hush' or an irritated 'Muldrrrr.' "Mulder, he wasn't angry at you," she protested, her voice trying to be gentle, "just the way you were-"
"-were taken away from him like a toy he no longer uses?" I suggested grimly. "Contrary to popular contention, this was not my idea."
"Honestly, Mulder!" It wasn't full on irritation, but in a pinch, exasperation will do just as good. She pulled around in front of me as we reached my car. "If you want to accuse someone of being childish, look in the mirror. The way you behaved in his office..." she paused, hoping the flick of her fingers would express the words she was too much a lady to use, "as if you were eager to be switching agencies."
"Eager?" The mere idea made me gag slightly. "Were you listening to me? Eager? Not even close."
"Well, you wouldn't be able to tell by that performance," she shot back.
I pushed my hand between her hip and her handbag to work my key in the lock. "You think I'm looking forward to cyber-frisking citizens on this patriotic witch hunt? That performance, as you called it, was my way of keeping my reluctance from becoming a cudgel he could use on whoever authorized the transfer. You know what he's like, Scully. He loves a fight, and he'll use any weapon he's got at hand."
She was ignoring me. "'Cyber-frisking'? 'Witch hunt'?" She leaned back against the door, trying to force my words into her wooden block frame of thought. "You don't believe you have a duty and...and obligation to protect the citizens of this country?"
"Who will be protecting them from their protectors, Scully?" I curled my fingers under the door handle and gave it a tug, bumping the door against her. "Ever hear of a little concept called civil liberties?"
She stood firm though I saw her suck in her lip a fraction before she frowned. "Mulder, there are times when we must sacrifice some liberties to remain free."
"The loss of any liberty eliminates freedom," I countered. "Have we learned nothing from concentration camps? From segregation?"
Scully looked up at me, refusing to budge. "There is a big difference between concentration camps and monitoring certain...behavioral patterns."
I released the door handle and pressed a fingertip to my cheek, affecting a pose that I knew annoyed her. "Really? Let's see...refusing to eat pork, and going to temple versus...refusing to eat pork and going to mosque?" I shook my head, and reached for the car door again. "Still sounds like racial profiling to me."
I could see it in her then...the place where policy was conflicting with personal belief. The lip suck action started again, only this time it was to hold in words. She moved away from the car. "How long do you think this will last?"
"I don't know. Right now the public is foursquare behind Finding the
Enemy At All Costs, but this is
"Well, I..." she paused, tossing her head slightly like an out of practice ingénue. "Good luck." She held out a hand and gave me a firm, no-nonsense Scully shake before twisting away. She got five steps from the car before turning back and making a few short signals with one hand. I'll miss you, she said without saying it.
I nodded and slid down behind the wheel. She's a funny thing, I mused, watching her disappear up the steps. She wants to be all business, she wants to hide any stripe of femininity beneath neutral colors and conservative styles. She wants to stand shoulder to shoulder with any man, but to do it, she needs her very feminine, very high heels. She wants to be coldly analytical but her heart is too big to be overruled by her brain. Take this ASL thing, for example...we had a case a year ago where if we had been able to better communicate with a hearing impaired witness we would have stopped a serial killer two victims sooner. She tried to be pragmatic about it, but it ate her up inside. It was her personal failure that she couldn't understand. So, we decided to learn it together. Actually, it's proved kind of fun. It's more time spent together, which means less time I spend alone, and besides we can make fun of people during conferences and meetings and nobody knows. Even today, in Ol' Hard Ass' office, she was able to communicate something to me without him having a clue. She worried. For the steel in her spine and regulations in her heart, she cared.
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Sometimes it's nice to have someone worrying about you. When you're sick, or
sad, it's nice to have a cool hand on your cheek, or a sympathetic frown across
the table. Other times it becomes a burden, a painful obligation. For example,
when you're shackled to a cot in a dark, dank room, having been beaten, spat
on and forced to videotape a demand for the release of all political prisoners
on pain of losing your own life, knowing that someone is out there worrying
for you doesn't bring much comfort. It's just one more thing to regret.
Signs and Lamentations, Part Three-Shaking
The headlines were full of it the next day; the devastation, the death toll, the terror and shock. An entire town wiped away in eight point seven seconds of shuddering and a mountain that melted into mud. The news was so horrifying that it overflowed the newspapers, from front page to the sports section, and every channel in every town was talking about it, bringing in experts and eyewitnesses, showing file photos and amateur video. The world was so full of grief that there was no room for even a mention of two American citizens who had been taken hostage by sympathizers of Al Qaeda's cause.
The only reason I knew about it was because of the videotape which had been delivered to my office in a plain brown wrapper, with no return address and no explanation, as if someone wanted me to know about it and know I couldn't do anything about it.
Not that it needed explanation. I recognized the man in the video, despite the dirty rag around his eyes, and despite the bruises and dried blood visible beneath it. I recognized the tattered Knicks tee shirt, the long, busy fingers, and the lean, slouching frame. What I didn't recognize was the slow, halting speech, the sharp anti American rhetoric and the dull, affectless manner in which it was delivered.
"Do you think he was drugged?" I asked the woman at my side. It was against my better judgment to allow her to view it, being as close to him as she was, but she was a doctor, and the only living expert on the subject of Fox William Mulder.
Agent Scully stood next to me, eschewing the chair she'd been offered at least five times. The fingers of one hand were splayed out on the back of that same chair, seemingly the only thing holding her upright. The other hand was clenched and pressed against her chin in a visible effort to keep it from wobbling. She was quiet a moment, even when the video ended. "Let me see it again, please," she said, for the third time.
With an aggrieved sigh, I pressed the button on the remote and the video flickered backward. Once again the battered face raised up, the shoulders slumped, the hands fidgeted. Once again the slurred oratory.
Agent Scully watched the scene again, holding her breath. As it ended, and the screen went to a fuzzy grey, she released her breath on a shaky sigh and shook her head. "He's not drugged," she decided. "What are we going to do? Who is heading the task force to get him back?"
I ignored her questions only because she wouldn't like the answer. Hell, I didn't like the answer, but with such devastation abroad and such devastating evidence at home there wasn't a lot I could do to change it. "How can you be sure he's not? Do you think he means those things he said?"
She tipped her face up to me, and for the first time in all the years she had worked for me, I saw an honest and unschooled expression. It was cold with horror and hot with contempt. "This is Mu-Agent Mulder we're talking about."
"Yes," I agreed. "Agent Mulder who makes no secret of his contempt for government agencies."
"Certain aspects of certain agencies," she countered. "And with good cause. Otherwise, he's as loyal an agent as can be found anywhere."
I wanted to agree with her. There was no empirical evidence to support her statements; if one were to review his jacket, he had been teetering on the edge of formal reprimand for years. There were pages of innuendo laden complaints, but none quite meeting the burden of proof. And besides, my gut said he wasn't a traitor.
I reached for my jacket, still slung carelessly over the back of a chair. "Then the answer to your question is we're it." I pulled my service piece from the drawer and tucked it into place, feeling her eyes and her protest rake over me. "Get me requisitions for body armor and tactical reconnaissance and weapons, and I'll sign them."
"Yes, Sir." She was already moving for the door. "Anything else?"
"Yeah, an idea where to look for him."
"That's easy." She pulled the door open. "He's in
"Wait a minute, wait a minute." I caught her arm before she disappeared. "How the he-what makes you say that?"
It was there, that small smug smile, for less than a second, but it was there long enough for me to see it. She stepped back inside, eased the door shut and reached for the remote, yet again. "Easy." She started the tape. "Watch his hands."
"Yeah?" I watched. "He looks very agitated."
"He's signing."
"Signing?"
She nodded, her eyes never leaving the screen. "ASL."
"Like deaf people use?"
"The appropriate term is hearing impaired, but yes," she nodded again. "You see that? That little gesture?" She froze the tape. "The way he wiggles one finger next to an open palm...he's saying bells...he can hear bells."
"How do you know that?"
She ignored me. "And that? The way he moves his fingers under his other arm...stops there and...there." She traced her finger across the screen. "He went over a bridge." She watched a moment longer. "He was driven two hours. And here...he can hear airplanes."
I thought I recognized the way his fingers moved. "That means I Love You, doesn't it?"
She smiled faintly. "Well, ordinarily, yes, but that little jerk in his fingers means airplane. He's not saying he flew, he's saying he hears airplanes. Now..." She turned off the tape. "Where could he be within approximately two hours drive, where he could hear bells, have gone over a bridge and can hear airplanes?"
I thought about it a moment longer. I wasn't entirely sold on her reasoning,
but I didn't have the price of a better one. "
Signs and Lamentations, Part Four-Shouting
They had taken my watch, and the windows were blacked out so I didn't have a good grasp on passage of time. They were even smart enough to vary the delivery of food and water so I couldn't mark time that way. I didn't think I'd been there more than a couple of days, but I'd been fed ten times. Not much and not well, but there had been a delivery of edible substances frequently enough that my belly never felt empty.
The cot where I slept, when they allowed me sleep, was comfortable enough, and warm, so I wasn't in some dank cell (why do the words dank and cell just go together?), in fact, aside from the randomly spaced smacking around, and not being allowed to go home, it wasn't too miserable an existence. I almost felt guilty. What kind of decent hostage doesn't suffer?
And what kind of decent hostage taking was this? My captors knew what they
were doing, they understood how to apply enough pain to ensure compliance with
a minimum of effort. They knew how to keep me slightly disoriented. They kept
their contact with me limited so I couldn't create identities for them or establish
relationships with any of them. I wasn't even sure how many there were. At
least three, I'd seen that many at one time, but were there more? They spoke
carefully so as not to betray their origins with accents or colloquialisms. The
only thing they'd conveyed to me was their hatred for
I wonder if anyone knew that? I know they had gone through the motions of taping me doing a lot of silly hate-speak and I didn't know if my hands had been captured on the video, and I didn't know if, even if they had, if Scully would ever see the clues I'd attempted to give. I had no idea if or when the video would be sent to media.
Time passes...another meal, another beating, another monologue on the evils of Jews, Americans, American Jews, money, sex, drugs and rock and roll. I hurt. I'm tired. I'm so tired I hurt. Starting to wonder if I've been here three days or three weeks. Starting to wonder if anyone will ever find me, if anyone is even looking for me. Starting to wonder if anyone cares.
Did I sleep? I'm not sure. I'm trying to remember where I think I am and the
logistics of being found. How the hell can someone be lost in the biggest city
in
The food is making me sick. It seems lately I spend more time on my knees in front of that filthy bucket than anything else. My head feels thick and overstuffed like the chairs in my grandmother's front room. When I'm strong enough, I drag myself up on the dirty bed and listen to the sounds, straining to hear the church bells again, but only hearing rats scratching in the walls. Rats. Rat bastard. Ratratrat.
Did we move? The room feels different. Smaller. Colder. Cleaner but only just. The bed is as hard as the floor. And the floor is like stone. There are no more bells, not even any more rats. There are fleas, though, and my only exercise is to scratch, endlessly. I can hear pacing above me. Concrete floors and wooden ceilings. Basement. I'm in a basement now. I'm as good as buried.
I got a whiff of smoke this morning. Real wood smoke. For a panicky moment I suspected they were burning the house down over me. I don't know why I thought it was a house, nor why I thought they would do that, but that's what I thought. But it wasn't that. It was just a wood fire somewhere...maybe someone's hearth, maybe a backyard incinerator, maybe a fire in the woods. There are woods nearby. I'm not sure when I learned that, or how, but it's part of my knowledge base now.
I've been spending my time, when not puking or scratching, trying to catalogue the faces that have passed before my eyes. Childhood friends seem somehow clearer and better defined than those of coworkers. Scully's face isn't a blur, but it's how I think of her, my mental image of the doubtful Madonna rather than the clear, distinct lines of her nose, the flaws in the blue of her eyes, the lack of symmetry to her lips. Other faces are more caricatures...Skinner's, for example, is red and blustery, the Gunmen look as if they were drawn by Gilbert Shelton. My ex-wife's face is little more than a frown and a shrill sound.
Shrill sounds have been around me for hours, days. Ravens cawing, boards squeaking, shouting. Mostly shouting. Shouts of rage, of triumph, of protest. The cack-cack-cack of automatic gunfire. Cries for Allah, for God, for help.
Then silence. Silence more shrill than any sound ever made by any mammal. Silence more shrill than fingernails on chalkboard. Silence so painful that I put my hands over my ears, rocking forward, wishing for a sound, any sound, but nothing comes, not even my own voice.
The smoke is stronger, thicker. Now there are sounds. Creaking, groaning lumber. Cackling of flames. Popping of unspent ammunition going up in flames. Now I pray for silence. But I can't stop screaming.
"Mulder?"
A name I used to know. The voice is alien to me...almost. Somewhere in the husky, smoke filled plea is a sound I used to know. I lift my head. "Who are you?" I don't recognize that voice, either. It must be mine, but it's hoarse and terrified. "Where are you?"
"Here. Over here."
I turn my head slightly. My cell is filled with smoke, and there are strange lights shooting in and out, orange and silver flickers that taunt me with flashes of illumination. Just enough to suggest that there is a hand reaching out to me from under a pile of something that used to be a wall.
I remember that hand.
Signs and Lamentations, Part Five-Pains
The building was still burning. How can a building on
He pushed the metal frame of the cot in front of us, and pulled the board thin mattress to the floor for me. He held my gun, leaning over me, his eyes fixed on the place where he had pulled me from burning planks. There was a wild gleam in his eyes that worried me. Except to locate me, he hadn't spoken. He didn't seem inclined to shoot me, rather he seemed somewhat protective. He reminded me of an animal, sensing pain and choosing to comfort rather than consume and I didn't want to change his mind.
My leg was broken, I knew that. I felt it snap when I fell through the floor. I had a lot of miscellaneous aches and pains, cuts and bruises but I didn't take time to assess them. It was more important to stay alive at the moment. While I believed I had managed to kill or incapacitate all of Mulder's captors, I wasn't absolutely certain, so, until officials arrived to take control of the situation, I believed that silent vigilance was the appropriate action.
Mulder seemed to agree.
I don't know what they did to him, but whatever it was, it had a profound effect on him. I only got one look at him, as he crawled toward me. Even in the Delta, I'd never seen anyone so haggard and eaten away by anxiety. Despite having enough humanity left to pull me out of the pyre, he didn't seem completely convinced I was who I claimed to be. He stayed hunched over me, as if to protect me from falling debris or further assault by the occupants of that house, but he didn't want to touch me, or connect with me in any way.
I wanted to connect with him, however. I wanted to know he hadn't been
damaged beyond redemption by the week he'd spent in their hands. I alternately
wished Agent Scully were here and thanked God she was not. No one expected the
resistance that we encountered, the violence, the fiery devotion to our
destruction. The handful of green boys we'd recruited from
Good young men wasted for a battle that solved nothing. On either side.
I opened my eyes, startled by a touch. Mulder had pressed his palm to the side of my face and looked at me in both anxiety and concern. As he lifted his hand away, I felt the coolness brought by moisture. I had wept and not even realized it. "I'm all right," I whispered.
He looked down, doubtfully, as if he could see my tears in the palm of his dirty hand.
I lifted my own hand and covered his. "I'm all right," I insisted.
He jerked back from my touch, and turned his face, as if expecting someone to appear at what was left of the door.
I persisted, putting my hand back on his wrist. "We'll be all right. Agent Scully knows where we are. She'll send help."
He inhaled with a jerk, his head tipping back. "Scully," he repeated, with no more sound than a ragged breath. "She's not...she wasn't..."
I squeezed his wrist. "No. She was at the Bureau in
Something about my words disturbed him. His face collapsed into a frown but he said nothing, again turning his face toward the black hole of an opening. After a moment or two of tense silence, he spoke huskily, "I expected to die."
"Did they tor-"
"Don't!" He didn't raise his voice at all. The exclamation point was in the fire of his eyes. He shifted his position, still hunched over me, my gun still in his hand. I felt both threatened and comforted. He rocked a little, slowly, and I noticed he cradled the wrist of his gun hand in the palm of the other. Sensing my consideration, he spared me a look, and said, with equal fierceness, "I didn't betray anyone. Never."
"It wasn't you, Mulder," I grunted as pain shot through my broken leg. "It was politics. I know you'd rather die than betray anyone."
"Yes." And that simple word, conveying so many complex concepts, was the last thing he said for hours.
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The air was cool and clear, leaving only that acrid aftereffect of smoke. It still burned the lungs to breathe it in, but it cooled the burn after. Now I could look up through the pile of charred beams and see night sky. No moonlight, but the stars were visible.
Mulder had shifted around to lean against the concrete wall. His head was tilted toward that same sky, but he saw a different night.
I watched him, wondering where he was, for he was no longer with me. I doubt he even knew I was there. There was something almost serene about him, and yet there was a longing so large he could not contain it, and it permeated the place. "The fire's out." I didn't recognize my own voice, it was so harsh and pain roughened. "You can get out, now."
He flinched at the sound of my voice and turned as if he'd heard someone calling from another dimension. "What about you?"
I finally had to address the fact I'd been dodging since I woke and found myself under the burning timber. "I can't...I'm not going anywhere like this. You'll have to bring help."
"I'm not going anywhere without you."
"Don't be stupid, Agent. How long has it been since you've had food? Water?" When he didn't answer, I saw I needed to take a different tact. "You have to get out of here and bring help."
"I won't leave you. It's not safe." He stood up and moved toward the smoldering beams, kicking at them restlessly. He bent, pushed things around gingerly and came back with a charred but solid plank. "Here. You can lean on this. You're coming with me."
"Agent Muld-"
"They're out there." He cut me off coldly. "They've come back twice to see if the fire was out and if they could get to the bodies. I'm not leaving you here for them to find if they come again." He caught my wrist and tugged.
When the pain raced from my arm to my brain, I started to scream, but his hand
was there, over my mouth, and his mouth was against my ear. "Scream again
and I might shoot you myself."
Signs and Lamentations, Part Six-Plagues
It was cold; that bitter cold that invades to the bones. It was dark; that dark that makes sharp definitions in shadows, outlining things you can't see but know are there. The stars above were brighter than they ever were in DC, but they shed none of their light on us as we crept out into the open, hurrying away from the wreckage of the house, praying to stars and gods that we were unobserved.
How is it possible, I wondered for about the thousandth time since this
interminable terror began, that a man could be running for his life from holy
warriors twenty miles from the most densely populated city in the
It was hard going, trying to run across the open yard to the woods beyond, hard enough in darkness, with icy air burning my lungs, made nearly impossible by the weight of the man in my arms.
I don't know where he came from. I don't know how he found me, or why he even bothered. Frankly, if I even ever contemplated rescue he was the very last person I would have expected. How ironic that he'd be the very last person who would even try.
We must have made a comical pair, if anyone were to observe us hobbling with haste across that grass, hunched down, stumbling, grunting, shushing each other with harsh hisses. My arms had been twisted, turned, elevated, weighted down and beaten to the point where I had practically no strength, and his leg was broken so badly it hung at a sickening angle. Yet, between us, we were moving. Of course, if anyone had been observing us, we would have been dead.
We ran until we didn't have the strength between us to take one more step. As one, we just dropped at the root of a white oak. I was almost sobbing in pain, relief, fear and who knows what other emotions coursing through me that I hadn't been able to examine and identify. He was shaking silently, his teeth clenched so hard that even in the near blackness I could see veins on his brow. "Shh," I whispered even though he wasn't the one making noise. "Shh, they might hear us."
His grip on my upper arm, which had been almost bone crushing, eased in reply, and fell away from me.
"Oh, shhhhit." I shifted around, rolled into a position where I could look at him. He was lying still, save for a ragged yet only marginally reassuring breath that lifted and dropped his chest mere fragments of an inch. His head tipped forward awkwardly, as his neck rested against a root, his glasses, broken and bent, hung at a rakish angle across his face. His eyes were closed, his skin was pale. He had passed out. "Shhhhhhhit," I said again softly.
I lifted his glasses from his face and, gingerly, I patted down his pockets. I had a vague memory of searching him once before, taking his gun from him. I'm not sure why anymore. Perhaps I recognized the level of his pain and didn't trust his ability to defend us should they return, or perhaps I just didn't trust him. At any rate, I was hoping now that I'd overlooked something that might help me assess his current condition. Nothing. Shit again. Did only field agents get flashlights as part of their gear? I found a packet of matches, but given my recent experience with burning buildings, I was hesitant to use those.
Finding nothing else illuminating, I slid my hands down his leg. I felt no blood, nothing pointy poking out of places that oughtn't be pointy, so I felt safe in assuming that, while the leg was definitely broken, the flesh was not. Not yet, at least.
For possibly the thousandth time I wished Scully was there, just to reduce the guy's fracture and find some way to ease his pain. But since she wasn't, and I was not qualified to attempt it, I rocked back on my heels, staring down at him, biting my lip and wishing I knew what to do.
I'd only known comfort three times in my life; Scully's touch when I was cold and in pain, Skinner's touch when my life was empty and in pain, and a person whose name I no longer allowed myself to even whisper, who left my life empty, cold and painful. But in all three cases the comfort was physical, a touch, gentle and meaningful.
I didn't even think about it all that much. I slid up beside him, easing his head into my lap, and with the gun in one hand, I brushed sweat and grime away from his face with light strokes of my free palm. I petted the place where his neck met his shoulder with my fingertips. I whispered soundless promises of rescue. It didn't change anything and I'm certain if he were awake he would have fought every gesture. But it was all I had to give him.
At one point he jerked into awareness, his hand flying up to mine, his fingers wrapping my wrist so tightly they could have snapped it in two. He opened his eyes, and glared into mine. I froze for a moment, certain he was going to misunderstand, certain he was going to roar in protest and give us away.
He looked at me, and then he groaned so low it might have registered seismically. "Hurts," he said, releasing my arm, and closing his eyes. "Hurts."
I let my hand fall away from him, thinking I'd caused him some additional pain, but he groped for my hand and pulled it to his cheek. "Better."
So, I sat there in the dark, stroking the cap of his skull, the cords of
his neck, the crease of his lips, and promised him better things.
Signs and Lamentations, Part Seven-Fires
My blood mixed with the clay like soil made a gory mud, and the scent attracted everything from bugs to snakes and every carnivorous creature in between. Sometimes it was hard to distinguish between the hiss of a snake near my head and the sound of tracer rounds five or six klicks away. The only thing I could be certain of was the pain, and the fear and the sense of inevitability. This was how I was meant to die. Alone in the dark. I'd always known it.
The ground under me shifted, and pain soared up my leg, but before it could burst out of me in a scream a hand clamped over my mouth, effectively silencing me. I tried to struggle, to tear the hand away, but I couldn't force it to release me.
"Shh, easy," he whispered in my ear. "Easy."
I don't know how Mulder came to find me in the middle of a steamy jungle night, but he was there, holding me tighter than the enemy, rocking me, whispering promises about being found, about being saved, about being safe, about the pain going away. But I know he doesn't know. We're not safe, and the pain is never going away.
When I opened my eyes it was black and cold, but the pain was still there. Mulder was still there. "Wh-what's happening?"
"Shh...nothing," he insisted, still rocking. "What happened to your phone?"
The question made no sense. Why would I have a phone out here? Did he mean my radio? "My-my..."
"I tried your pockets. Didn't you come with a radio or a phone?" He sounded panicked...no, not panicked...angry...no...exasperated. No one can sound exasperated like Mulder. "It was in my pocket." I tried to reach for it but my pockets had vanished. "It was in my pocket," I repeated, trying to sit up.
"Stay still," he whispered harshly. "Your leg's badly broken. And I checked your pockets. It wasn't there. It must have fallen out when you fell through the floor. Damn it."
I looked toward his face, hovering over me like a pale moon. He looked angry now, staring back in the direction from which we'd come. "I'm sorry," I whispered.
"Shh..." He wasn't really paying attention to me anymore. "I wonder if it survived the fall. If I could get to it..."
"No." My fingers curled around his wrist and froze. Don't leave me. "You said yourself it's not safe out there."
"It's not all that safe in here, either. Stop talking." He bit his lip. "We need that phone," he muttered, probably unaware he was talking aloud. "When's Scully going to get here?"
"She wasn't-"
He put his hand over my mouth again. I might have tried to protest that he had asked me a question, but I felt more than heard the service weapon being lifted between us. He looked down at me and mouthed, "Be still."
That snake/tracer fire hissing was nearby. Might have been a small animal, but feeling every nerve in Mulder's body vibrating, I knew it wasn't. I nodded under his hand.
He eased me away from him. Again, he gave me the 'be still' look. I tried to catch his hand, clutch at his leg, but he shook me off, disappearing into the brush around us. I couldn't believe he had abandoned me. I wanted to yell after him, order him to come back but common sense overtook me, and I realized and accepted that he had a better chance of surviving on his own. I tried to be generous and give him credit for wanting to get out and alert our people to unfriendlies in our territory. Didn't stop me being scared. I think, given the things I've seen in my life, the things I've been through, I had a right to be.
The footsteps approaching weren't exactly stealthy. Someone was walking toward me curiously, as if spotting an interesting rock while on a casual stroll. I shammed death...or at least lack of consciousness. Whoever he was he wasn't on speaking terms with water or soap, which made it just a fraction easier not to breathe. Not that Mulder was exactly fresh as a spring day after his time in captivity, but I guess I could overlook his...aroma in my relief to find him alive.
This whiffy wraith took one more step toward me, breaking into the open space under the trees, and as he leaned forward to look more closely, there was a dull thud, he made a shrill sound and dropped. When I opened my eyes, Mulder was there, hand still upraised, where he had used the butt of my gun as a club
I nodded, and felt an irrational desire to weep. He hadn't left me. He had saved me. Saved us. "Thank you."
"Any time," he drawled, tucking the gun into his waistband, and hitching down to pick up the intruder by his ankles. He pulled back into the brush far enough that I could neither see, smell nor hear him. When he reappeared, he was scuffing at the ground to conceal the drag marks.
"Thank you, again," I said weakly, as he returned to my side.
He nodded in acknowledgement, sliding back against me. The warmth was welcome, the nearness appreciated, the company needed desperately. "They're still out there," he said, once he was in place.
I would have twisted around to look at him, but it was beyond my capacity to withstand pain. "How do you know?"
"They're like rats," he said grimly, "there's never just one."
"That sounds a bit racist," I said. Political correctness had become so much a part of me that it was twisted into the nerves of my spine and became reflex. I couldn't help it, even at a moment when both of us could be excused for a little racial profiling.
"That wasn't..." He looked down at me, startled to find out that there was something I didn't know that he considered common knowledge. "I was talking about cowards like this. These guys aren't Arabs. Well...one might be...but the rest are all Caucasian, probably West Coast American or Canadian. They're sympathizers, yes, but these guys are about as Al Qaeda as I am Al Gore."
"How do you know? Did you-"
"Shhh...don't talk for a while." I didn't realize I was shaking again, 'til he put a hand on my cheek and stroked softly. "It will be all right...just be quiet for a while."
Signs and Lamentations, Part Eight-Fears
I had blood on my hands and I was smearing it on his face as I tried to keep him quiet. I hadn't wanted to kill that guy, but it was him or us. If I let him live he might have cried out and alerted others that we were still alive. I had no choice.
Skinner wouldn't have had any problem killing him. I could feel his blood pressure rising when I told him that these people were American sympathizers. Skinner's blood is red, white and blue. I respect his loyalty, I respect his faith in the American way, even if I don't always agree with it. He's by the book in all things, including how you treat the flag and the citizens over which it waves.
Me, I'm more personal. If you aren't hurting me, I'm not going to hurt you. It's not worth my time. I might extend that to include people who matter to me; my mother, my sister, Scully...even this guy shaking and moaning in my arms. I know it sounds hypocritical, I took an oath to uphold the law, and I do. That doesn't mean I want to go to war, it doesn't mean I think it gives me the right to invade your privacy just because I don't like how you spell your name, or where you go to worship, or the color of your skin. Give me a reason to bust into your life, though and I'm all over you.
The problem is that even though the threats have become so intimate that they come into our bedroom every night, or into our pockets every day, we don't know who the bad guys are anymore. They look like me, sometimes they look like you. The bad guys don't just blow up buildings, they steal our future. Is it any less a crime to drain a company of its promises to investors and employees than it is to blow it up?
And where does it end? How do we quantify evil? The guy who murders prostitutes might think he's doing something good, cleaning up the streets, restoring good values to a neighborhood. The woman who drowns her children might think she's sending them to a better place. And the people who fly jets into buildings clearly believe they're acting in the will of God to rid the world of infidels.
The problem is, in this country as a whole, we've got some rules of conduct. As individuals we might not agree with all of them, we might actively oppose some of them, but there they are. And I swore an oath to uphold those laws, even when I disagree with them. Skinner, on the other hand, swore that same oath, and believes that includes not disagreeing with them. And whether I believe in his beliefs or not, I have to admire his conviction. It can't be easy to be that steadfast. Not anymore.
And what has it gotten him? Promotions? Power? Money? None of that. He's just far enough up the Bureau ladder to be easy to shoot down with blame, but not far enough up to make things right. And where did that put him? In the dark, with a broken leg and who knows how many other injuries, in danger of capture, of torture, of execution on American soil, just because he believed the rules of conduct included me, and he set out to prove it. And if we survive this? I have a feeling his career will be over for going against policy to rescue me.
Even if he isn't demoted or summarily dismissed, he'll be packing the bodies of young men he brought into this mess with him, young men who died...for me.
"Mulder?"
When I opened my eyes, he was looking up at me, his face pinched with pain or worry or both. "What's...wrong?"
I realized he must have seen or heard some of my grief, and I scrubbed at my face with my free hand. It would have been so easy at that moment to let him assume the burden of my tears as well. I couldn't let him. Just this once I would be the strong one, just this once I'd be the comforter. "Nothing. Just tired, I guess." I looked up, peering through the bare, ashy branches of the tree under which we lay. There was an edge of grey to the blackness. Morning was coming. Then we would have no cover at all. But neither would they. "Do you have an auxiliary weapon?"
He shook his head. "That is...my auxiliary weapon," he managed to gasp. "This was an...unauthorized action. I couldn't...bring my...service-"
"Shh." I put my fingers against his lips again. They were cold and stiff against my hand. "Don't talk any more. Let me think." I couldn't leave him alone and try to get back to what was left of the house, even if there was a chance that they had not already scavenged the guns from our team. If they came upon him in the growing light, he'd be defenseless. But that shouldn't stop me from taking weapons off the body I'd left lying at the edge of the clearing. "Be still." I eased his head off my thigh.
He clutched at my hand again. "No, don't-"
"I'll be right back," I promised him. I had to make a decision. If they did find us, if there was no chance of us overtaking them, was I prepared to do the unthinkable? I knew what they were capable of. Skinner couldn't take it with his injuries. I'm not sure I was capable of facing it again. It's not that either of us would break and spill state secrets, but if we were going to die anyway, why suffer like that first? Was it cowardly to think that way? Maybe. But it was also rational.
I had a better look at the interloper this time. He was young. Too young to
really understand what he'd been embracing, and that these people play for
keeps. That wasn't profiling, that was fact. Fanatics are what they are, regardless
of what they're fanatical about. Keeping my eyes away from his pale, acne
scarred face, I patted down his body, and took his gun, clip and flashlight.
I wished I had it in me to say a prayer for him.
Signs and Lamentations, Part Nine-Apocalypse
I don't know how long he was gone. Long enough for me to feel the cold and isolation. Long enough for me to wonder if I could hear movement in the undergrowth around me. Long enough for me to wonder what was going to happen to us.
I tried to sit up, to prop myself into a less defenseless position, but something in my body protested. It wasn't a specific pain. I knew my leg was broken, that wasn't it. This was an overall unwillingness in the whole of my body to move in any direction. I'd felt this before. And it made me fear whatever came next.
How could I defend Mulder? I was his superior, he was my responsibility. I was supposed to protect him, rescue him, and yet if we were overtaken by the people who had originally taken him hostage, I would be useless in preventing any further harm coming to him.
Could Mulder defend himself? I had neither illusions nor expectations of him protecting me. I knew that, should we be discovered and overtaken, my outcome was inevitable. But I couldn't predict Mulder's fate. I didn't know, after all he'd been subjected to, if he was even capable of protecting himself.
Back in '
But this wasn't half a world away from home. This was American soil. I should be able to get up and be home in time for breakfast at my favorite coffee shop instead of contemplating a quick death versus torture and execution.
Hearing a twig break somewhere to my left, I stiffened, waiting, but it was Mulder who came through the morning mist. I'm not sure how he'd managed but he came back better prepared to defend our position. Kneeling beside me, he displayed the newly acquired weapon. "I'm going to keep yours. You're probably better qualified to handle this one." He held out the automatic rifle and clip.
It wasn't one I'd ever handled, but I'd seen them. I knew where they came from. "Did you...kill him?" I asked around the pain.
Mulder's hand stilled. "Yes." Just in that word I heard the pain, the grief, the regret and the conviction he felt.
Biting down hard, I pulled myself upward to lean against the knotted roots of the tree. "Sorry," I grunted.
He settled beside me. "Had to be done."
I never wanted Mulder to understand that 'him or me' mentality. Once you've tasted that bitterness, there is no honey in life sweet enough to take the flavor away. "Sorry," I repeated.
He surprised me, putting his arm around my neck and easing my back against his body. "I know," he repeated.
The warmth of his body was unexpectedly heartening. For the first time in hours, possibly days, I felt the situation was survivable. I cradled the rifle in my arms and let my head fall back against his chest. "Are we...go-"
"Yes," he interrupted curtly. "We're going to get out of this."
"How?"
"I don't know," he admitted, "but I know we will." He was still for a moment. "Do you believe in prayer?"
I didn't have to think about it. "Yes."
He didn't respond. In some way, a way only someone expert on the Vulpine Mulderus could know, I knew it was a tacit suggestion to pray. I did so. It was hardly regulation. A handful of fractured Our Fathers, Glory Be, and that old standby, Hail Mary, and a few disjointed phrases of desperation. It was a moment of comfort almost as tangible as the warmth of his body against my aching back. When I sighed 'Amen', he surprised me by pressing his cheek against the top of my head. "Feel better?" he whispered.
"Some."
Again he didn't speak. It shouldn't have surprised me, but it did, to find that he was afraid. When I had fallen through that burning floor, and he had just remained on his cot, responding neither to the noise, the danger or my calls, I was certain they had broken him completely, but from the moment we'd emerged from the smoldering wreckage, he seemed to have regained his senses, his...I hesitate to use the word normalcy because nothing about him had ever been normal in the accepted use of the word, but he was reacting the way I expected him to, and fear was not a part of his normalcy. At least not that I was accustomed to seeing. But I could feel his body tremble just slightly under mine. I regret that I wasn't able to respond to his fear, to offer him comfort, but I was too wound up in the bondage of my pain, my fear, my expectation of inescapable doom.
The sky grew lighter. I felt like a condemned man watching the black silhouette of a gallows growing ever sharper in my last sunrise. There was more rustling activity around us but it was probably just the passing shift of nocturnal to diurnal animals.
When it was about six am by my reckoning, I lifted the rifle with effort and grunted, "Mulder, if we're...outnumbered I want...you-"
"Fuck you. Sir."
"That's...no way to..." it was so hard to speak through effort of drawing breath, "speak to...your..."
"And that's no way for my superior to think," he retorted in a harsh whisper.
"But you..." I felt as if I was drowning, "you have a chance to...to survive with...out me."
"Do you really think I'd want to with a thing like that on my conscience? No thank you." He shifted under me. "I have enough guilt in my life."
I didn't have the strength to argue with him. "Shhh," I mumbled. "Shh."
The light grew, and soon there was a small pool of sunlight near our feet.
He shifted restlessly. "I never thought I'd see sunlight again."
There was a sound, a hiss sharp and unmistakable, to our left. He lifted his
gun. "And I may never again."
Signs and Lamentations, Part Ten-Ameliorate
I really thought it was over then...the sound of a bullet coming toward you is something most people rarely contemplate. Usually, it turns out your lights, metaphorically speaking, before you even realize what it is. But this wasn't aimed at us. Or if it was, it missed. It hissed and sang as it passed us and hit a tree about six meters to my right before ricocheting into the bush.
I dropped Skinner, and rolled onto my knees, gun raised in both hands. I intended to go out fighting. I wasn't going alone, I knew that. Before I could even contemplate squeezing a round off another bullet came, this time behind me, as if in reply. I dropped flat to my belly, and yelled at Skinner to do the same. We were in the middle of a firefight.
There was a lot of yelling, a lot of weapons, and I just had to believe some of it was from our side. If I'd known which side that was, I'd have added my bullets to the cause, which was, in my opinion, saving my skinny ass. Since that small clearing, surrounded by white ash was a soup bowl for sound, I couldn't be sure who was yelling what and from where.
Just an arm reach away, Skinner was on his back, his broken leg making it impossible for him to roll over. He looked like a turtle, knowing he was defenseless, but there was something more. He wasn't there. He was in another time, another place, another hail of bullets, another war, another hate. His hand was clenching around the rifle in his hand, his fingers stroking, shifting, maneuvering. I couldn't see his face clearly, but I could see enough to see the battle in his head was more dangerous than the one outside mine.
When he pushed the rifle again, so that it lay cradled against his mangled thigh, I stopped thinking about my battle, my ass and shoved myself forward. I might have screamed, I'm not sure, but I fell on him, pushing the rifle out of his hands. "Son of a bitch," I hissed.
His face looked so naked without his glasses. He looked vulnerable, he looked frightened, he looked...human. "Muh...Muh...Mulder," he groaned. "Get off."
I rolled away from him. "Bastard." How dare he be human? How dare he be frightened? He was supposed to be the one that was going to save me.
"Can't...do this...again," he gasped.
"Do it?" I was yelling over the war around us. "Do what?"
All right, I'm not the most empathetic person in the world, but even I
understood after a moment. He was reliving the horrors of
He was fighting. I'm not sure if he was fighting pain, memories, circumstances or me, but he was fighting something. He twisted, shoved and pushed until he had dislodged me, and was fighting to sit up.
"Are you-"
He cut me off with one beefy paw over half my face. "Listen."
I did. I tried. There wasn't a lot to listen to. The gunfire, the shouting, it had stopped. The silence was eerie. Surely someone should be appearing from the brush to claim us; to kill us or rescue us. Did I just hallucinate a firefight?
He shook his head and pressed his hand tighter against my mouth. As tempting as it was to let myself fall into his dementia, I teetered at the brink and backed away. I had survived this much with only a slight loosening of my grip on reality, now I had to hang on tight, as much for his sake as for mine. He had come, guns blazing, to rescue me, and I had a moral, ethical...hell, even a romantic obligation – in the purest sense of that word-to get him out alive.
I had been in an earthquake in
The bushes parted and black clad figures clutching still hot weaponry appeared. Perimeters were checked, casualties accounted for. I might have lost what little hold I had on sanity but for the white letters emblazoned on their backs: EFFF BEEE EYE. I pressed my face into his chest, holding him tight, barely holding back a sob of something a thousand times greater than relief. We were home.
End