First ever fic! Post ep for 'Kitsunegari’ for @txf-fic-chicks post ep writing challenge. Thanks!
He looks down, behind him, and sees Linda Bowman sprawled on the cement. Her blonde hair haloes around her head. Blood saturates her shirt, oozing darkly from the wound in her shoulder and spilling onto the ground.
Scully lowers her weapon. “Mulder?” she asks. Her voice trembles.
He wants to collapse. The stress and grief don’t leave him, exactly – they’re replaced by a different kind of anxiety, one that renders him motionless, even while his heart races in his chest and bile rises in his throat.
She walks towards him, gently clasps his arm, and kneels down over Linda, taking her pulse.
“You think you can hold me,” the woman whispers, unblinking.
He hears Scully rise and phone for an ambulance as he turns towards the wall.
The image of Scully blasting her brains out and crumpling to the ground replays again and again in his memory.
He has to remind himself she is alive. He closes his eyes. One minute longer, he would have pulled the trigger. Less than that. It was a matter of seconds. Scully was right, he wouldn’t have forgiven himself. Ever. He can’t even live with the thought, let alone the reality. His ability to process - thought, feeling, action - starts to break down. He starts to feel numb.
He senses her behind him, even though she doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t want to turn around. He knows what he’ll see when he looks at her – compassion. Fortitude. Strength. Concern for him. Unyielding support. Not forgiveness – she’ll say there’s nothing to forgive. But he doesn’t want to see those things in her, because it reminds him how good she is. Her integrity is a gift he doesn’t want to accept, in the face of what he almost did to her.
He’d aimed a 40 calibre Glock at her precious, beautiful heart, the one that had almost stopped beating in a cancer ward only months ago, and his finger had been itching to pull the trigger. He hadn’t stopped himself, hadn’t been in a position to listen to reason, to understand the wider scope of what was happening, outside his own anger and anguish and grief. Which was what Bowman banked on.
He hadn’t listened to her. He would have pulled the trigger. He would have blasted a hole in her chest. He probably would have squeezed again and again and again until the clip was empty.
It was only luck that he didn’t. She stands behind him right now thanks only to chance.
She reaches for his hand. Her fingers are warm. They remind him of the way she gripped his hand as they stared at Modell’s hospital bed, two years ago. He’d nearly killed her that day, too.
“I’m sorry,” he says. He wants to drag her to him and never let go. He stands motionless.
The paramedics burst through the outer doors of the warehouse, the thump of their boots echoing off the metal and concrete as they jog inside.
“Falls Church medical unit!” a woman cries. “Hello?”
Scully pulls away from him and walks towards the voice.
When the team comes into view, she quickly fills them in.
“We’ve got a 45 year old female, gunshot wound to the shoulder, round went clean through. Breathing and vitals are good, but I’m guessing at least half a litre of blood loss. I’ve compressed the wound and stabalized her, but she needs to get to a hospital right away.”
The paramedics buzz to work behind them, and Mulder finds the ability to move his feet.
He walks out of the building.
A cool breeze flows through the parking lot, and he spots his car on the far side. He walks towards it.
He hears Scully jogging behind him, trying to catch up.
“Hey,” she says, falling into step beside him. “We need to call Skinner, and we’ll both have to give a statement.”
He nods, not really looking at her.
“Mulder, I want someone to take a look at you. I think you’re in shock.”
He shakes his head. “I’m okay, Scully.”
He’s far from ok. He can’t stop seeing her lying the floor, half her skull blown off, blood and brain matter splashed across the warehouse.
He just needs to go home, run until his lungs stop working, take an ice cold shower, crawl into a hole, sleep for a million years - something.
She steps in front of him, blocking his path.
He stops, annoyed. How she can even look at him right now is beyond him.
She reaches up to feel his forehead. He flinches away.
“I almost killed you, and you’re checking that I’m ok?”
“Yes,” she says. “Of course I am.”
He doesn’t want medical attention. He doesn’t deserve to feel better about this.
“Mulder, please,” she says, pulling his arm towards the car. “Just sit down and let me take a look at you.”
He doesn’t have the energy to fight her. She pulls him to the car, takes the keys from his coat pocket and unlocks the door, and pushes him into the passenger seat.
His sits sideways out of the car, with the door still open, and she kneels in front of him.
“Track my finger,” she says, moving it from side to side in front of his face.
He does as she asks, then snatches her hand out of the air, and holds it in his.
“I’m okay, Scully, really,” he says. He looks into her eyes. “I just…” he stops, takes a breath. “That back there..” he waves to the building with his free hand.. “I just lived my worst nightmare.”
She swallows, still holding his hand.
“I did too,” she says. “But, we’re still here. We got through it.”
He feels nauseous. She has to know that that’s just a happy accident. She has to know how close he came to ending her life.
‘Shut up!’ he’d screamed at Bowman. “Shut up!’ He’d been unprepared for the anger. It was instantaneous and all-consuming. He’d felt something like it before, when he crushed Duane Barry’s windpipe, squeezing and squeezing until the startled man began to turn blue – he’d felt it when he’d slugged John Lee Roach across the mouth – he’d felt it a handful of other times in his life, but this - this was indescribable. The anger was mixed with the fresh trauma of watching a bullet slam through his partner’s head. The anger gave way to grief, and gave way to guilt, and gave way to his own failure to stop her from dying.
Mulder slumps back into the car. He wants to cry or throw up or die. He doesn’t care how melodramatic that sounds. In this moment, he hates himself without reserve.
“Call Skinner,” he manages. “I want to get out of here.”
She runs her eyes across his face, and stays crouched by the car for a moment longer.
Then she closes her eyes, stands, and walks away to dial.
