From: ephemeral@ephemeralfic.org Date: Fri, 8 Jan 2010 18:01:12 -0600 (CST) Subject: The Labouring Waves (1/1) by Namarie Source: direct Reply To: pomme_noire@hotmail.com Title: The Labouring Waves Spoilers: Memento Mori Rating: PG Category: SRA Keywords: Missing scene Summary: Almost every shred of rational thought has been chased from his mind ever since the call from Scully about a half hour ago. Disclaimer: I do not own this show or its characters. Author's Note: This was originally written for the 2009 XF Santa exchange over on LiveJournal. Many thanks to Agent for taking time during the beginning of the term to beta for me. ~ Holy Cross Memorial Hospital Mulder has to stop before coming in through the doors of the hospital. In fact, he already had to stop to attempt to regain his control after he parked his car, but now he pauses again, near the bench outside the front doors, to take another series of deep breaths. *Flowers,* he thinks, running a shaking hand over his face. *I left them in the car. I just bought them - how could I have already forgotten about them?* He knows the answer, though. Almost every shred of rational thought has been chased from his mind ever since the call from Scully about a half hour ago. "Hey, Scully," he'd answered, his focus split between the phone and a newspaper article about some bizarre event that seemed like it might be worth further investigation. "Hi." She had paused. "Um, are you busy right now?" Suddenly, the article he was looking at seemed much less interesting. "Not really, no. Why, what's up?" She cleared her throat. "Can you come to Holy Cross Memorial Hospital? I, uh, just had some tests done here, and--" His sudden surge of worry wasn't making him imagine the tremor in her voice, was it? "And there's something I want to tell you." Mulder had swallowed hard, and thought he'd managed a fairly normal tone in his reply. "Sure, I'll leave right now. Scully, are you all right?" There was the briefest of silences. "I'll tell you when you get here, okay, Mulder?" "All right. Where should I meet you?" ~ Mulder sighs and runs back to his car. Replaying that conversation has not exactly helped him maintain any composure. He forces himself to try to recall the details of the article he had been reading while he picks up the bouquet of cheerfully colored blooms he'd bought impulsively at the nearest convenience store - a hit and run that had also almost seen him asking for twenty Morleys. He asks a passing nurse to be sure he's going to be able to get to Oncology from here. Following Scully's directions, he stops at the door to a specific room. There she is, facing away from him toward several back lit x-rays. Mulder takes one more deep breath, and pushes open the door. "Scully?" he says, and she turns to face him, looking with mild surprise at the bouquet in his hands. He holds it out with a sheepish smile. "I, uh, stole these from some guy with a broken leg down the hall. He won't be able to catch me." Scully smiles and looks down, and Mulder decides to go for it. "How are you doing?" "I guess that's the question," Scully replies. "Actually, I feel fine." There is a pause, and while he waits with trepidation for Scully to fill in the blanks, Mulder turns to the x-rays on the wall. They aren't self-explanatory to him, that's for sure, and he asks for clarification. "It's what's called a nasopharyngeal mass," she says, her voice clinical and detached. "It's a small growth between the superior conchea and the sinoidal sinus." He knows he hasn't grasped all the details - but one word in particular stands out. "A growth?" He can see it now on the x-ray. "A tumor." For the first time, she is not so detached. She meets his eyes and says quietly, "You're the only one I've called." *Oh, Scully.* Mulder wants to try to process the implications of that last revelation, but he is stuck on the the first one. "Is it operable?" "No." "But it's treatable," he presses, hoping there is no edge of desperation in his voice. Scully hesitates for a moment, and then seems to stand straighter and taller. "The truth is that the type and placement of the tumor make it difficult to the extreme." *She is not telling me that there's nothing that can be done. Not Scully.* "I refuse to believe that," Mulder stammers, "I--" "For all the times I've said that to you," Scully interrupts gently, with a small smile, "I am as certain of this as you have ever been. I have cancer. It is a mass on the wall between my sinus and cerebrum. If it pushes into my brain, statistically there is about zero chance of survival." Mulder isn't sure he's still breathing. "I don't accept that," he says, dizzy and sick. "There must be some people who have received treatment for this, we can--" "Yes, there are," Scully tells him, and he nods and takes a breath. "But before we track them down, I think we should talk to Skinner. Remember that case in Allentown last year, Mulder, with the women who were all part of the same MUFON group? One of those women was undergoing treatment for this exact type of cancer." "All right, that makes sense. So we can start there - after we update Skinner on the situation," he says, mustering a professional facade. Finally, she reaches for the flowers. "These are beautiful, Mulder. Thank you." He hands them to her wordlessly, holding back the urge to tear them petal from petal, to shake Scully until she gives up her tears to him. Instead, he tries not to stare at the x-rays - *her* x-rays - as she hands him the folder to gather them up. ~~ Hours later, when Mulder sees Scully's nose bleed for the first time, the precarious fantasy he'd been beginning to construct that they could keep working together just as they always had shatters into a million pieces. He feels the exact same weight of fear as he felt this morning settling over him, except it has a focus and a name now. Cancer. Inoperable. Brain. Blood. He doesn't realize he's staring at her until she snaps at him to stop. Her anger and fear become more evident as they talk to Kurt Crawford, and Mulder shakes himself out of his own. Someone has to try to look at this objectively, to see all their options and sources of information. Right now, his rationally-minded partner isn't doing so well at it. Still, for all his attempts to keep working this as a case, to be the strong one this time, Scully's call from the hospital some time later shakes him to the core. He has known intellectually since this morning that Scully will have to be admitted to a hospital for treatment at some point, but to have it happen so soon... Scully needs him to help her. And the sooner she starts treatment, the better. "I will be right there," he tells her with resolve. Scully is both businesslike and on the edge of showing her fear when Mulder arrives at Allentown Bethlehem Medical Center. She has already talked by phone to the doctor Penny Northern has been seeing, she tells him, and she'll see him in person tomorrow morning. "So this Dr. Scanlon has some treatment ideas?" he asks her, doing his best to stay focused on her reply rather than the fact that she is filling out the paperwork to be admitted as a patient here. "Yes," she says. She looks up briefly at him, and then resumes the paperwork. "I just spoke to him on the phone. Like he said to Penny Northern, he's fairly certain he's isolated the cause of this particular kind of cancer, and he's optimistic about being able to treat mine, since there's good reason to believe it hasn't progressed very far yet." "That's good to hear." He allows his genuine relief to color his tone, and Scully smiles at him for a moment. She puts down the pen and looks at him again. "Did you call my mother?" "Yeah," he says. "I, um, I didn't tell her what was wrong, though. So she said she'd come tomorrow, and that she'd like for you to call. I wasn't sure whether you'd want her to hear the news from-- from someone else." Scully sighs - but not in irritation. He had figured she wasn't asking him to deliver the news to Mrs. Scully, and he is relieved to be right. Of course Scully would want to be the one to tell her mother. "I'll call her after I deal with this," she says, her gaze unfocused as she stares across the waiting room. Mulder waits for a second before he nods and clears his throat. She blinks, coming back to him, and stands up to give the admitting nurse her forms. ~~ Mulder can barely hold back his rage when the fertility clinic's files that he and Kurt Crawford have hacked reveal Scully's name on a list of other women. For just a second, it doesn't make any sense. Then all of his research and all of the stories of female abduction victims he has compiled so carefully over the years floods back into his mind, and he grips the edge of the table painfully hard. "Agent Mulder?" Kurt asks, looking at him in concern or even fear. "What is it?" He points to her name on the screen. "That's my partner," he says. "There's no good reason for her name to be on that list. She isn't a patient here." The man's expression darkens. "What are you going to do?" Mulder is still staring at the screen. "Can you print this out?" A plan is already forming in his mind. It's been a few years, but he hopes Skinner can still get him the meeting he needs. Mulder needs information, and this time he's willing to go to the man who surely knows all the details of this whole thing - no matter what it takes in return. When he explains the situation to Skinner, he is both surprised and not surprised by the man's reaction to his request. Mulder hasn't given up on the option of meeting with Cancer Man, he reflects as he leaves the Hoover building, but for now he will take Skinner's advice and follow other leads first. To be honest, he knows that if Scully ever found out that he took a deal from that black-lunged son of a bitch who seems to enjoy toying with them both, she would probably never forgive him. Mulder turns his attention back to the matter at hand: breaking into the Lombard Research Facility. The Gunmen have just gotten him around the first obstacles of the building's security system - he has entered the facility without setting off any alarms and is waiting at the next locked door - when his eye is drawn to a sign on the wall listing the names of the doctors on staff. The name "Scanlon" stands out from the rest of the list. *Scanlon is treating her right now,* Mulder thinks, trying not to panic. He barely hears Langly's update on the security system hack as he turns to Byers. "I need someone to get to Scully to get her to stop treatment," he tells him. "Right now, you're the only one who can do that." Byers nods, his face grave. "I'm on it, Mulder." Mulder watches him for a moment as he departs. Then he swallows and continues on into the darkened hallways of the facility. He still needs to find out what they want with Scully - or what they've already done to her. He can't afford to dwell on the fact that he's already unmasked the deceit of the only doctor who seemed to have a means of treating her cancer. ~ His shock and dismay increase exponentially further inside the facility when Kurt Crawford - who is apparently a hybrid, bred by the Project - ushers him into the lab that is full of men who look exactly the same... not to mention the rows of glass tanks, each one containing a familiar, identical figure in its clouded depths. Mulder's mind whirls as he struggles to absorb everything Kurt (is that his real name? or does he even have a name?) is telling him. These men, they stole all of Scully's ova, left her barren and vulnerable to this cancer, and then abandoned her to die, along with countless other women... Clearly, they hadn't even considered the possibility that the results of their genetic experiments would be human enough to have compassion for their mothers. He stares down at the vial in his hand. He is reluctant to leave the facility without more information, but time is running short before he's discovered, he knows. He's been out of radio contact with the Gunmen for too long already. Maybe if he's lucky, he'll be able to return at some point, or at least stay in contact with these hybrids to see if they are successful in their attempts to save their mothers. When he finally manages to flee out of the building, just a few yards ahead of a trigger-happy Project hired gun, Mulder spares a brief, regretful thought that his security breach will probably lead to the Crawford hybrids being relocated. He hopes they will contact him, or Scully herself, if they discover a cure. But his anxiety over what Scanlon might be doing to Scully quickly drives other worries out of his thoughts. "We've gotta get back to the hospital now!" he calls out to Frohike and Langly, who are waiting by his car. "Did Byers already--" "Yeah, he left already," Frohike cuts in. "And that guy with the gun is still around as far as we know, so I suggest we follow him as soon as possible." He's glad that the Gunmen are mostly silent on the way to the hospital. His panic is continuing to build, to such an extent that he's sure he would not have heard any question or comment addressed to him. As soon as the car is parked, he runs into the hospital, through the darkened hallways toward her room. Mulder pushes open the door - and feels his heart sink at the sight of an empty bed, its sheets pushed back. *No.* He steps inside the room, his searching gaze stopping at the journal that lies open on the bedside table. Scully's journal? The lamp is still on, illuminating its pages, and Mulder can't resist taking a glance at what she wrote while she was lying here during her 'treatments.' The words are addressed to him. Mulder feels like he's been punched in the gut as he takes in her words. Scully had been writing this to him, while he was off running around, letting her suffer through the treatments alone? And what had happened to her, while he was gone? Mulder sets the journal down with care, and then turns to dash out into the hallway again. He spies a nurse entering the hall and stops her with a plea. "Dana Scully is supposed to be in her room - where is she?" "She's not there?" the nurse says, looking concerned. *Oh, God, no. I shouldn't have left her here.* "No, what happened to her?" The nurse has no idea, and Mulder is about to start taking out his fear and frustration on the poor woman when Byers' quiet voice behind him allows him to start calming down. Still, his heartrate doesn't really begin to slow until Byers takes him to Scully, in Penny Northern's room. He starts into the room in some desperation. Scully, wearing a white robe and looking sick but definitely alive, turns to him with barely contained grief. He nods at her, inexpressibly relieved that he has found her. Only then does he notice the reason for Scully's distress: the woman in the hospital bed is clearly fighting for her life. Mulder quietly closes the door again, as Scully turns back to Penny's almost-still form. Byers is waiting a few feet away in the hall. He watches as Mulder takes a deep breath and lets it out slowly. "Scanlon?" Mulder asks. He shakes his head. "When I got here, he was already gone. None of the doctors or nurses know where he went." *Of course.* Mulder rubs a hand across his face. "Well, thanks anyway." Exhaustion is beginning to crash down on him, and he closes his eyes as he experiences a brief moment of unsteadiness on his feet. "Mulder," Byers says in concern, steadying him with a grip on his arm, "you should sit down." He nods. "Yeah." How long has it been since this whole thing started? However long it's been, he figures, that's how long it's been since he's slept. "There's a chair over here." Mulder opens his eyes and follows Byers' direction to the uncomfortable-looking chair a few yards down the hall. "Thanks," he says again. "You guys can take my car back to your office, if you want. You don't need to hang around." Byers smiles. "We'll get a cab. And we'll see if we can dig up anything more about Dr. Scanlon, too. Let us know if you or Agent Scully need anything, all right?" "I will." Mulder watches him leave, and then slumps down in the chair, his head resting against the wall. He will leave Scully to spend the time she needs with Penny, uninterrupted. Now that he knows where his partner is, he can let himself relax somewhat. Despite the many worries that linger in his mind, and the fact that the chair seems to have been designed to provide as little comfort as possible, Mulder realizes he must have drifted off for a while at least when a door shuts loudly at the opposite end of the hallway. He jerks awake. Wincing at the crick in his neck, he looks at his watch: 4:52 in the morning. He's been here since before 10 pm - and has probably gotten more sleep in this metal chair than he does frequently at home. Smiling wryly at the irony, Mulder stands up, stretching his stiff muscles and joints. He walks a few paces down the hall and back. Then he takes a glance toward Penny's room. He wonders if the fact that Scully has been in there so long is a good or a bad thing. Eventually, Mulder sits back down, in the chair that somehow has become even less comfortable in the intervening minutes. He rests his head on his hand. A few hours' sleep has not done much to settle his thoughts. The only doctor who seemed to offer the hope of a cure has been exposed as a liar, and complicit in the murder of the other MUFON women members. There is a vial of Scully's ova in his jacket pocket, given to him by clones who were created by the same men who subjected Scully to invasive and damaging procedures during her abduction. And Scully... Scully is facing her future with the strength he has come to rely on, even as she relies on him - as her journal entry revealed. He is startled out of his musings by the sound of running footsteps. When he looks up, he sees with a sinking heart that a nurse is rushing into Penny's room. He stands, and does not have long to wait before Scully comes out, head bowed, closing the door carefully behind her. She has not seen him yet. Mulder takes a step toward her. "Is she gone?" Scully turns to face him, then nods as she struggles to hold back tears. Even now, he can see the strength in her: even in her hospital robe and slippers, and after the day's treatments and griefs have left their mark. "I'm sorry," he says quietly. "I know what she meant to you." She nods again, and sniffs. Thinking of her journal, Mulder admits, "When I came to find you, you weren't in your room. I got scared that something had happened... and I read some of what you wrote." Sighing, Scully comes a step closer to him. "I didn't want you to read that," she says, without anger. "I had decided to throw it out." She meets his eyes squarely. "I decided tonight that, um... that I'm not going to let this thing beat me. I came into this hospital able to work, and that's how I'm leaving." Mulder nods, and smiles slightly. That's his Scully. She will keep fighting - and so will he. And when they find the truth, it will save them both. He holds her tightly, closing his eyes for a moment to savor the feel of her in his arms. The kiss he presses to her forehead after they break apart is something he cannot hold back, a sign of his commitment to her and this fight. Her expression as she looks up at him tells him that she understands and accepts it. Watching her walk away, Mulder reaches into his pocket for the vial, still cold to the touch after all these hours. He knows that he needs to tell her, that to keep this secret from her will only cause her pain later. But he quashes the thought of running after her now. She's in enough pain, he rationalizes, and she doesn't need anything distracting her from getting better. He'll keep it safe. He'll keep her safe, too. He swears it with everything he has. ~ Author's Note 2: The title comes from a Dannie Abse poem entitled "Elegy for Dylan Thomas." Once again, I would not have found this very fitting title and poem without the suggestion of my wonderful beta, Agent.