From: jesse bee Date: 24 Mar 1999 07:44:06 -0800 Subject: [XFcreative] NEW "Convince Me" 1/1 Title: CONVINCE ME Author: jesse (jesse.bee@mailcity.com) Rating: R (language) Category: V, A, MSR? Spoilers: Monday Summary: What if it happened again *next* Monday? Post-Monday vignette (serious Scully-angst). Disclaimer: 20th Century Fox, Chris Carter, and 1013 Productions own the rights to THE X-FILES, more's the pity. No copyright infringement is intended. Archive: If you like the thing that much--sure! Go for it. Just let me know where and when. Feedback: PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE! Assault, flattery, I'll take it all! AND I will write you back! ;) ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ CONVINCE ME jesse030499 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ His head rests heavily on my lap as I unknot his tie, get his collar button and the one below it undone. Too slow, too slow. I grab his shirt in frantic hands and rip it open. Blood. Bright red arterial life spurts from the gunshot wound in his left breast, further soaking the sides of his shirt and puddling on the marble. His face draws in agony and he makes just a little thread of sound as I push the heel of my hand against the tear; he can't get enough air to scream, even if he would. Which he wouldn't. I want violently, maniacally to do it for him, but I choke the sound back down my throat. I won't either. I can't. Not if we're to hold on to whatever faint chance there is of getting out of this alive. I can't let the bastard know that it's my soul, my life that's bleeding out of the unnatural hole in Mulder's chest. The scumsucker smirks at me and then backs away, dialing my cell phone with one hand and the other resting on the butts of our guns stuffed in his waistband. He's starting to pace slowly now, across the more open area of the foyer, starting in on his fifteen minutes of fame as he gibbers at the police. Tells them the plan: he's got the guns, he's got the power. He's got the bomb. He's shot one guy already and he won't hesitate to kill another if they don't LISTEN UP RIGHT NOW...!! He's pretty much ignoring me, all of us, here on the floor. He's sure they won't move, that I won't move. He's right. There is nothing I can do. Nothing but sit here and cradle my best friend on the unforgiving floor of this bank where neither he nor I had any real reason to be today; we only ducked in because Mulder is thinking of changing banks and he's collecting literature. Last Monday at Cradock Marine and now today--this... I bite back the completely useless tears as I look down again at my partner's head pillowed on my thighs, at his upturned face which I know perhaps better than my own. My left hand cups his cheek, thumb stroking his skin almost unconsciously as his mouth works a little, eyes closing and then slowly coming open again. How many times have I touched his face in these years together, to clean, to bandage, to heal? How many times for no reason other to connect, to caress, to feel his surprising softness and the faint rasp of evening beard? Oh please, God, PLEASE, it wasn't supposed to be like this...! The prick is still rattling on in the background and I can hear the sirens, and I don't care. Mulder's green-gray-gold eyes are open all the way and he's looking up at me, and his lips form my name before another spasm of pain twists them. I lean down and whisper to him; it's all the voice I can use right now. "Lie still, try to relax, you're gonna be all right..." I can barely hear his faint response. "...don't think so..." My heart jerks as though it's me who's taken the bullet. "You're going to be *fine,* Mulder, once we get you out of here." His lashes drop and come up again, and a faint ghost of his smile appears. "...pope says...go to hell...for lying..." "We've done this...before...Scully..." Merciful *Jesus* I want to laugh, I want to shriek hysterically and never stop. "I think I'd remember if we had, Mulder." "No...you wouldn't...I didn't either...last Monday...bank...bomb..." His lashes drop again as though those last few words have taken all the strength he had, and I stare at the smooth dark arcs they make on his skin. Images from that surreal attempted robbery one week ago race through my mind: Mulder's low, desperate voice on the phone; the flare of wild hope on that young woman's streaked face as she surged from the car; my partner's odd words as he tried to convince Bernard Oates to just walk away. The arc of the gun as the would-be robber trained it directly on Mulder. The flash of motion that was poor Pam as she took the bullet. Mulder's slow, reluctant explanation late that Tuesday night of what he thought had happened. My recent, half-remembered-and-suddenly-clear nightmares of sitting on the unforgiving marble floor of *that* bank with my beloved dying in my arms and a human bomb slowing tripping the switch... "Mulder." His eyes do not open. The pulse in his neck is faint to my shaking fingers, and he shivers abruptly as though he is cold... "*Mulder!* Come on, DAMMIT, work with me here...!" I am trembling and it is not from cold. Lashes lift, finally, too slowly, and his forest gaze is glassy and not-there. "Can't refuse...when...you put it...like that..." I don't know if I actually hear it or if my mind provides his whisper with the wry twist that I know is there, and a couple of the hot tears I can no longer surpress fall to mingle with the lifeblood staining his skin. His eyes seem to focus now and he sees me, and says my name soundlessly... Gunfire and the crack of shattering glass split the air as the front window explodes. I curl instinctively down around Mulder as shards rain the entire length of the room. When I quickly look up again I see the scumsucker flat motionless on the floor and the angelic black-clad forms of the SWAT team pouring in. Impressions are intermittent now. The flood of EMTs surrounding Mulder and me, removing my hands and replacing them with theirs. My own voice shaking as I hit them rapid-fire with all the information I can. Skinner's deep tones and his hands helping me to my feet, my shaking them off as I will not be denied access to the ambulance into which Mulder is being loaded. Bracing mindlessly against the motion of the vehicle. The electronic alarm of cardiac arrest. The smell of blood and panic and medical stuffs as the medics work frantically over my partner. The returning beep signifying death pushed back again, and the metallic taste in my mouth as I dimly realize I have bitten through some portion of my lip. Tumbling pell-mell into the ER with my badge out like a weapon, on the heels of those who hold my soul's life in their hands. In the surgery, holding up the wall in the corner I have found where I can stay out of the way and yet see his face. The flash of the knife... When my eyes open again, I slowly realize that I am flat on my back on something relatively soft, I am limp as a wet rag, and the persons leaning over me are a nurse and A.D. Skinner. For a minute I just stare bemusedly up at them, and then jagged-edged memory floods back. "Mulder!" "Easy, Scully!" Skinner catches my shoulders as I sit up and stops me from jumping immediately off the gurney, and a moment later I am grateful as the world commences to spin off-axis. I close my eyes and breathe deep, concentrating on pushing back the dizziness and nausea. Thirty seconds or so later, I open my eyes again. "Scully?" Skinner's voice holds weariness and genuine concern. "I'm fine, sir, just a little dizzy--" "Dr. Scully?" I cut my eyes to the other person in the room and realize my first impression was wrong, she is not a nurse. She's the doctor who was working on my partner..."How is he? What's happened?" I've been unconscious for quite a while. She gives me the rundown in tight clinical terms, one professional to another, but with an expression in her eyes that tells me she has some vague idea of what Mulder is to me. It is close, terrifyingly close. The bullet nicked his heart, and the other damage is severe--he is passing for stable at the moment but it is still very much touch and go. "Dr. Scully?" I realize that I've closed my eyes and snap them open again to the touch of the doctor's fingers on my wrist. "You were first on the scene, is that right? You administered first aid, applied pressure to the entry wound?" I nod. "Without your actions he wouldn't have had a ghost of a chance. You saved his life." I clamp ruthlessly down on the resurgence of vertigo and queasiness and nod again slightly, thanking her as best I can with my eyes because my throat has closed and my voice momentarily deserted me. But only momentarily. By sheer will I force it back. "Where is he?" ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ He is truly stable now, *finally,* and they've got him in CCU. And me as well because right now where he goes, I go. Being a medical professional does have its advantages--they've even moved an extra bed in here for me. Mulder is only just recognizable under the profusion of tubing and bandage and wire, and I sit in this chair, holding his hand and thinking too much. We've done that before, have we, Mulder? Sat on a stone floor together with your life bleeding out beneath my hands, slipping away from me in the wake of a random madman's bullet? Deja vu all over again? I don't believe it. Do you hear me, Mulder? I DON'T BELIEVE IT. And I'll be right here not believing it until you wake up. That's the deal, Mulder. You *must* wake up in order to get the chance to convince me that I'm wrong... Do you hear me, partner? Wake up and convince me. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ fini