Small
by Leyla Harrison

Disclaimer: Drat.  After all this time, Mulder and Scully STILL aren't mine.
Timeline: Um, I'm not sure.  Use your imagination.  Reasonably, it would be just about anywhere.
Spoilers: None that I'm aware of.
Rating: A strong PG for language
Classification: Vignette, MSR (sorta), ANGST!!!
Summary: A look inside Mulder's head after a traumatic incident.

Note: Who would have thought that I would have popped back into the fanfic world after an absence of over a year?  I have to admit, I have lost a lot of my passion for XF and for fanfic, but this idea just came to me, and, well...you know how it goes.  This is the result.

***

Scully.  Please hold me, Scully.  I feel small.

That's what I said to her after it happened.

I could go back over the events of this horrible evening - I could retread each step I took, each moment that passed in the darkness.  I won't, though.  I won't go back over any of it, not for a second.  All of it is going to get filed, very neatly, in that section of my brain marked "to be buried".

Not a safe thing to do for a guy who had to undergo regression hypnosis, I know, but there are things that really don't serve any purpose to be dragged back up for future viewing.  And this is one of them.

All I do know is that even after the filing is done, even after I've taken a shower and washed the dirt and blood from my skin, I still feel incredibly small.  And in the dark.

The darkness can be explained.  I'm lying down on my couch, in the dark, the only light that filters in coming from the streetlight outside the window.  I can see little particles of dust as the light from outside illuminates them.  They look like little objects from outer space, little miniscule filaments that float of their own accord, moving at their own speed - 

Oh, fuck, I need to stop thinking like this.

I've been trying for hours not to think about extraterrestrials, conspiracies, all of the stuff I've been chasing for years and years.  I've been trying not to think of Scully, of how her arms felt around me, her blood soaking through my shirt, her hands squeezing my shoulders, making me feel less small and scared.

Scully.  I can't stop thinking about Scully.

I left her in an ICU bed at Georgetown Hospital, where it took three doctors and two nurses to convince me that she would be fine, that she would be transferred to a regular room in the morning, that the ICU bed was just so they could keep her under observation for the night.  Her injuries were not life threatening, as I had thought as the blood had seeped from her body and warmed mine as she held me down in that basement.

She had held me.  God.

She was the one who was stabbed.  She was the one that had taken the knife in the stomach for me, and she was the one who held me.  

The knife had just missed any of her major organs, the emergency room doctors had told me.  I had finally slipped her arms off my body with little resistance from her - she was getting weak - and felt horribly, wrenchingly guilty for spending those precious moments allowing her to comfort me while her life could very well be ebbing out of her body.  I picked her up in my arms and carried her to the car, and she didn't protest.  She didn't even make any smart-ass remarks about how she could walk on her own, or how she didn't need my help.  She just lay quietly in my arms, her head pressed against my chest.

I had placed her in the passenger seat and drove like a madman to the hospital, my eyes darting from the road to her face, which was occasionally lit up by headlights from oncoming cars, showing just how pale she was, how her skin looked like chalk, how the blood that had come from her body and wound up on my shirt ended up on her face when I had carried her to the car.  Smudges of it shone bright red against the stark whiteness of her skin.

I carried her into the emergency room, where she was taken from my arms and placed on a gurney, her eyes still open, still watching me, her lips moving.  I bent close to hear what she had to say - but I heard nothing.

"Sir?" one of the nurses had said with urgency.  "We need to check you out, sir."

I shook my head.  "I'm not hurt," I told her.  "It's her blood."

Her blood.  Her blood all over me.

And she had held me.

They wouldn't let me in while they examined her, and so I paced the waiting room until finally a security guard approached me.

"Sir, you can't leave your car there in the ambulance bay," he informed me.

"Not now," I muttered, low.

"Sir, you'll have to move your car - "

"I'm a federal agent," I flashed my badge, "and I'm trying to find out how my partner is doing."

"I understand that, but you'll still have to move your car or it will be towed - "

"Then tow the fucking thing!" I exploded.

The guard backed away from me, his hands up in defense.  "All right, all right."

"Mr. Mulder?" a doctor had called, and I left the security guard there, and followed the doctor back to Scully.  He filled me in quickly as we walked.  "The wound missed any major organs, so she's very lucky.  Another inch or so and her liver would have been lacerated.  She's lost a good amount of blood, so we're transfusing her now.  She'll have to be admitted, of course - "

I pulled back the curtain we had come to a stop in front of.  "Scully?"

Her eyes were closed, but when I said her name they fluttered open.  She looked groggy.  "Mulder?" 

She lost a good amount of blood, the doctor said.  She lost a good amount of blood while she held me, as I cried.  I would have gladly taken the knife and plunged it into my own heart at that moment.

"We've given her something for the pain, so she's a little out of it," the doctor explained.  Two nurses were attending to Scully, adjusting tubes and wires and equipment I didn't know anything about.

She was in pain.  She held me and lost blood and never said a word.  Never cried out in pain.  Never even moaned softly.

I stepped over to the side of the bed and took her hand.  Her fingers felt cool and she tightened them slightly around mine.

"Hey," I murmured to her, my throat tight.  "You're going to be fine."

She nodded, then released my hand and reached up to touch the blood on my shirt, her eyes questioning.  She licked her lips, blinked slowly, tried to form a sentence.  I saved her the trouble.

"I'll have to get cleaned up.  No big deal."

It's your blood, Scully, I might as well have said.  You bled all over me, and because I was a stupid chicken shit, the stupidest chicken shit, you could have died.  Don't worry, Scully, it's just your blood.

She reached up and touched my face, gently.  I felt like crying.

"Mulder," she whispered.

"We need to transport Ms. Scully up to the ICU now," the doctor told me, touching my arm.

"I'm coming with," I said.  It was not a question.  It was a statement.  I never took my eyes off Scully's face.  "I'm staying with you, Scully."

"Who?" she asked quietly, her voice dry and scratchy.

"Who what?" I asked her.

"Who will stay with you?" she asked, reaching for my hand again, and closed her eyes weakly.

Oh, God, Scully.

I can't stay here.  I can't stay in this quiet, dark apartment, alone.  

I'm in my car and on my way to the hospital before I know what I'm doing.  I slip through the quiet corridors and up to the ICU.  One of the nurses recognizes me from earlier as I come in.

"Mr. Mulder, she's sleeping - " she starts, but I cut her off, quietly, but insistently.

"I just want to see her.  I just want to sit there.  I won't disturb her," I promise.

She sighs.  "All right."

I creep into Scully's room and sit down on the chair beside her bed.  The various machines are doing their jobs, softly whirring and beeping.  An IV bag of clear fluid hangs above Scully's bed and another bag holds her transfusion, a bag with deep red fluid in it.

Scully seems to be resting peacefully.  I lean back in my chair and watch her.  Her face is relaxed, from the painkillers, no doubt.  The white hospital gown with little blue dots on it does nothing for her fair skin.  I can see why she wears black most of the time -white washes her out.

I sit for about thirty minutes, and decide to get some coffee.  As I move to get up, Scully opens her eyes.  "Mulder," she says quietly.

"I didn't mean to wake you," I apologize.

"You didn't.  I just - I was going to ask the nurse for some more pain medication."

She's in pain.  I can tell only by the slight tightness in the muscles of her face.  

"I'll get the nurse," I tell her, and step out of the room.  I lean against the wall for a moment, my eyes closed.  I know I need to talk to her, to tell her something, but I'm not sure what it is and my fear is lodged like a rock in my chest.  The nurse passes and I signal to her.  "She's in pain," I tell her, and the nurse nods.

I go back into the room and sit quietly as the nurse comes in and injects something into Scully's IV.  "Just let me know if you need anything else," she tells Scully, and leaves us alone.

"You can sit back down," Scully says, and I do.  "Did you get some sleep?"

Stupid question, even for Scully.  Of course I didn't.  But I nod my head at her anyway.

"Mulder - "

"Look, Scully," I interject.  "It was stupid - incredibly stupid, what happened out there tonight.  I shouldn't have - I mean, I should have - "

"Mulder, you didn't do anything wrong," she tells me. 

"Just let me finish?" 

"All right."

"I don't know what happened, actually," I tell her, and I get up, walking over to the window and looking out.  I can't bear to look at her right now.  "When I saw you, bleeding like that, I think I just panicked.  I just - "

"You thought you were going to lose me," Scully interjects from behind me.

"Yes," I breathe.

"Mulder, it's all right."

I turn around to face her.  "No, Scully, it's not.  I was so upset that I needed you to come and take care of me like a mother would?  While you were possibly bleeding to death?  It's not all right, Scully."

"Mulder, you needed to know that I was all right.  And I was.  I am.  I'm going to be fine."

"I didn't - I didn't take care of you.  I let you take care of me, when I should have been taking care of you.  For God's sakes, Scully."

We're both silent for a moment.  Finally, Scully speaks.  "You're not going to lose me, Mulder."

I shake my head, feeling tears prick at my eyes.  "I almost have, Scully.  Too many times to count."

She reaches her hand out through the chrome rails on the bed.  "You're not going to lose me," she repeats.  I step closer and take her hand.  She squeezes it tightly.  "Do you understand me, Mulder?"

"I don't know if I can believe you, Scully," I whisper, the tears spilling onto my cheeks.  

"Try," she begs me.  Her own eyes are filled with tears.  "I need you to try."  She's the one who looks small now, her little frame occupying just a small portion of the hospital bed.

I want to put my arms around her, to tell her that I love her, that having her in my life is paramount to everything else - that I can't search for answers without her, that I can't find the truth alone, but I think she already knows these things, and I know that this isn't the right place or time to tell her.  Later.  I'll have time later.

I suddenly realize that I want to hold her.  That for the moment, I don't need her to hold me.

"I'll try," I tell her, and I mean it.  

The pain medication is kicking in.  Her grip is not as tight, and her eyes are drifting closed.  

"Just go to sleep, Scully.  I'm not going anywhere," I whisper to her, brushing her hair back from her face and with my finger, wiping a stray tear from the corner of her eye.  She sighs and her eyes are completely closed now, and I sit back down in my chair, keeping watch, standing guard.

I love you, Scully, I think, and a few minutes later, after watching her face, I fall asleep too, in the uncomfortable hospital chair next to her bed, thinking that there's nowhere in the world that I would rather be.

END