#xffanfiction

[ms31x129]

An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works

I felt we and my favorite character, Mulder was cheated out of any real discussion or depth about what he experienced. This DJ is special to me in that @cultureisdarkbeer allowed me to pull those images, the brief glimpses we did receive to see a man lost, hurt and trying desperately to act like everything is okay. I am so thankful to be part of this in some small way.

Tagging: @season4mulder @muldermakesmehorny

[ms31x129]

New Chapter! Rooted in Friendship: Book 6

All of My Love

Summary:

Scully and Mulder attend more Lamaze. Maggie holds her niece for the first time. Mulder takes Maggie to the Aquarium.

Chapter 14 - Just posted of All of My Love written by @cultureisdarkbeer with an assist and Artwork by your’s truly. ;) Snippet below and Link to AO3: Here!

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Maggie waited for her mother, incessantly kicking at the bottom of the chair as her legs swung impatiently. She kneaded at the upholstery in a nervous cadence. When Scully finally entered the living room with her grandchild, after a quick diaper change, Maggie clapped with joy.

Carefully, Scully positioned Maggie on the chair and demonstrated to her how to hold the new baby. “I be gentle, Mommy,” Maggie reassured her.

Mulder, following behind Scully, wanted to drink this moment in, taking some pics of his little girl holding his first grandchild. Maggie’s eyes were wide and more brilliant than usual watching the baby in her arms. A proud  smile across her face, with her strawberry locks falling in her eyes, filled him with a sunshine Mulder only felt with her. Maggie was delicate, meticulous and attentive, doing exactly as her mother instructed. She lifted her eyes to meet her father’s and her smile somehow widened. There was  a communication between them that had no need for words. Mulder thought his heart might burst. For as long as he lived, he’d never known a love like what he had with his little girl.

His newborn grandchild’s tiny toes peeked from the blanket and she kicked in a jagged motion, her head a crazy mass of brown curls with cowlicks that resembled his own when he was young. She wobbled against Maggie’s supporting hand, starting to fret and cry. Mulder gently took her from Maggie, bringing her to his shoulder where she rested her head with a thumb in her mouth.  Another girl to melt my heart and ruin me, but I wouldn’t have it any other way, he thought as he took a big whiff of new baby smell.

Tagging: @season4mulder @babygirlmulder1018 @improlificinsarcasm @muldermakesmehorny @borogirl @baronessblixen

[laurenclare88]

Elegy AU cont/ 3/3

She jerks upright, staring sightlessly for a second until her eyes focus and recognise him. ‘I saw the fourth girl in the bathroom before you came to get me,’ she blurts out. She ducks her head and fists her blankets, her natural instinct to hide and deny rearing its head but he cups her chin and tilts it upward. Her tired blue eyes are brightened with fear, only this time the monster is in her, not her closet. A single tear trickles down her cheek until, stroking her jaw softly, he catches it mid-descent. That is her final undoing, and with a stifled wail that makes him want to scream at her God to save her, please just save her, she breaks down in his arms. Pulling her tightly to him as if it’s the only way to tether her to this earth, he prays into her parting, ‘S’all right. S’all right.’ Maybe if he says it enough, it will be true. I do believe in Scully. I do believe in Scully. I do believe in Scully.

The shrill beeping of the IV breaks them apart as the blood transfusion announces its completion. He half-fancies he can see revival, redness in her cheeks, but really it’s just exhaustion.

Departing, the nurse nudges his shoulder. ‘Visiting hours are over,’ she murmurs, but he ignores her, stroking Scully’s hand, and she doesn’t push further and makes her exit quietly.

‘I’m so tired,’ Scully murmurs, but her eyes move restlessly beneath her closed lids.

‘Tell me what you need,’ he implores. She opens her eyes, back to piercing sapphires, but there’s hesitancy in them now too, and he hates that.

‘Can you,’ she bites her lip but holds his gaze, ‘can you just hold me?’

He exhales with relief at the simple ease of it, even as his heart hurts at how reluctant she was to ask, as if his answer would be any other than ‘Yeah. I can do that.’

Once again, he slides in beside her on the mattress he’s come to see as their marital bed, and he honestly wouldn’t mind if it were, if only he could get to see the ‘In health’ part of his vows. She curls into him, and whispers, ‘Thank you.’ He almost laughs. It is he who should be thanking her. His saviour, his touchstone. His constant. Instead, he is silent, savouring the feeling of her breath, hitched but warm on his neck. Where there is breath, there is life. ‘Sleep, Scully,’ he thinks, and he’s reminded of something Albert Hosteen said during his coma, ‘Sleep is healing.’

He had been healed, and so would she be. She has to be. Please God. Please.

@stupideffinbee @baronessblixen @kateyes224 @scully-loves-ruthie @minuete-blog

[laurenclare88]

Elegy AU continued 2/3

‘I’ll get her temp in a few minutes, and she can have Tylenol when her cultures come back,’ the nurse whispers, touching Mulder’s arm sympathetically.

The news that an Absolute Neutrophil Count of zero, a fever of 102 and a haemoglobin of 4 will keep her in the hospital at least 2 days devastates her, but ever the professional, she holds on until Dr Zuckerman has left the room.

‘I want to go home,’ she breathes tearfully, the tiny crack in her voice carving out a crater of guilt in his soul. He captures her face in his hands and kisses her forehead, rubbing her arms softly.

Her suffering has yet to subside, though, as the blood transfusion gives her hives and makes her sweat through her gown.

‘I wish I could take a bath,’ she murmurs, mournfully fingering the Tegaderm covering the central venous catheter that condemns her to only the most careful of showers.

Or, on days like today when she doesn’t even have the strength to sit upright on a shower chair, bed baths.

‘Will you help me?’ He’s surprised when the request comes, not that he should be, yes, she’s proud and stubbornly independent, but since the Benadryl she can barely keep her eyes open. Running the washcloth reverentially along the the curve of her jaw to wipe off the dried blood, he’s reminded of tending to her in the hotel bathroom after Pfaster. Only this time, the wraith who’s wreaked havoc on her attempts at rehabilitation lives within her, not without.

Or so he thinks, until she stiffens and starts mumbling

@baronessblixen @scullyphile @scully-eats-sushi @piecesofscully @kateyes224 @scully-loves-ruthie @minuete-blog

[laurenclare88]

Elegy AU 1/3

This time, they are reviewing Harold Spueller’s file when it starts.

‘Oh Scully,’ Mulder whips the dripping papers away from her and thrusts a tissue underneath her nose, which has suddenly started to stream scarlet liquid.

‘I’m-fine’ she starts to say, and then coughs, trying not to choke on the cascade of blood.

Although all her previous nosebleeds (well, those she’s been unable to prevent him from seeing) have been self-limiting, this one seems to go on forever and he sees her eyes roll with a wave of dizziness at the effort to hold her head up. Physician, heal thyself, he thinks bitterly. If only.

‘Scully, let me help you,’ he begs, and as she opens her mouth he braces himself for her usual stubborn retort but she jack-knifes and vomits on the floor instead.

There is more blood in the emesis and this spurs him to action, whipping out his phone and dialling 911, holding it between his shoulder and ear, freeing up his hands to rub her back soothingly.

‘Ambulance please, J Edgar Hoover building. My partner is being treated for cancer and her nose has been bleeding for 20 minutes and we can’t get it to stop.’

The ride to the hospital passes in a blur of blue lights and screeching sirens, but soon they are there and he is trying to coax her out of her cocoon of blankets so they can examine her.

‘Come on, Scully. They need to check your blood counts to see if you need a transfusion. Then you can rest.’

‘I’m fine, Mulder, see? The bleeding’s stopped.’ She locks eyes with him, capturing his fingers to brush her upper lip, which comes up dry. Her grip is strong and defiant but behind the mask they’ve placed on her, her eyes are pleading.

The nurse enters, also masked which Mulder can’t understand, it isn’t as if cancer is contagious. She’s wheeling a cart of supplies, uppermost of which is a cartoonishly giant needle.

‘Dana, you know we need to access your port to check your blood counts and give you medication,’ she says patiently.

Scully shrinks back on the pillows as the nurse lifts the sterile, sharp kit and reaches for her gown.

‘No! Get off me! Get that thing out of here!’ All lethargy has left her and panic gives her strength as she struggles to climb off the bed.

Mulder reaches for her hands. ‘It’s okay, Scully, it’s okay. It’ll be over in a few minutes. Breathe with me and we’ll get through this.’

As her struggles abate he tilts her chin upwards to lock eyes with her and distract her from the nurse bringing the needle towards her chest. ‘In, and out,’ he coaches calmly until her breathing slows, ‘In and out. Attagirl. Keep going. In, and out. That’s it.’

‘In, and OUCH!’ Scully cries out as the needle pierces her chest. Mulder grips her hand tighter, his fingers stroking slow circles on the back of her palm.

When the nurse is finished, Scully slumps back against the pillow, exhausted, her eyes closed. Recognising her withdrawal as a coping mechanism, Mulder is also silent, simply dropping a kiss on her damp forehead. He eyes the beads of sweat covering her face with concern, and glances at the nurse enquiringly as she packs up her supplies.

@baronessblixen @minuete-blog @scully-loves-ruthie

[laurenclare88]

Memento Mori Missing Scenes

As they fit the perfectly-moulded radiation mask to her head and neck, she closes her eyes and tries to breathe. In and out. Slow and deep. Her eyelids fly open but the image she sees is on the back of them. A strange craft, lowering, dropping, threatening to crush her. Her fingers flap in frantic futility against the straps that restrain her, like the condemned in the execution chamber. Fear flows like vecuronium bromide through her veins, her own psyche paralysing her. She wants to scream, but the drugs gag her like the cloth Pfaster wrapped round her when he shoved her in his closet. But she has no weapon now, is trapped, defenceless, just as she was in Duane Barry’s trunk. Silently suffocating in this white, alien, sterile sarcophagus like a Locked-In Syndrome victim, limbs and lungs frozen. She only breathes again, hyperventilates, sobbing, trembling all over, when she’s in his arms, her nose pressed up against his leather jacketed shoulder, burrowing into him desperately as she tries to meld her body with his. He rocks her in his arms on the scan table, whispering into the part of her hair: ‘S’all right Scully, it’s all right. You’re safe, Scully, I’ve got you. Breathe, Scully, I’ve got you.’

She’s tense in the bed, waiting for the sickness she knows is coming like a labouring woman for the next contraction. Her Academy combat tutors once praised her small but strong hands as iron, but now as she holds the emesis basin not weights, they shake, because the chalk she would once have used to strengthen them, has now taken up residence in her mouth.

She licks her parched lips and leans forward, breathing shallowly. ‘Ohh,’ she moans. ‘I feel so si-urrp!’ The belch heralds the arrival of a rush of vomit and she clutches the basin to her chin, swiftly expelling the half slice of toast and cupful of water he’d exhorted her to eat that morning in a two hour stand-off of mouse-sized bites and tiny sips. He holds her hair and rubs her sweaty back as she burps up wave after seemingly endless wave of bitter, burning bile.

‘Alright, Scully, just get it up,’ he murmurs as she heaves. ‘Get it all up, Scully, I’ve got you. It’s alright, Scully, I’ve got you.’

The relentless empty retching rubs her throat raw, and the only sound that comes out is a cross between a moan and a sob. A quick-thinking nurse whips the basin away and she falls back against her pillow, closing her eyes as if she can close off her mind and no longer be part of this perverse parallel universe in which she is not physician, powerful, polished and professional, but patient, prostrate, paralysed and pathetic. Hot, humiliated tears leak from behind her closed eyelids. She feels the bed move and thinks Mulder has gone, not that she can blame him, this is disgusting, she’s disgusting, but she still feels a lump rise to her throat that she bites back like a child forgotten at elementary school, yet just as another sob escapes her lips she feels his breath tickle her ear and his lips brush her temple before he places a cool washcloth on it and wipes her face tenderly. He folds it and lets it rest on her forehead when he’s done and she’s choked with gratitude at the gesture, because beneath it she can hide from him, herself, from this whole reality. There’s no hiding from the all-encompassing exhaustion that is enveloping her though, pulling at her body and brain like quicksand, but she digs hard enough to find a wellspring of strength from somewhere to mumble: ‘Don’t go. Please’.

Like a father caught fleeing his toddler’s bedroom when she is not yet asleep, he sits again, heavily. Noticing the nervous tremor in her shaking hands, he lifts them, clasped, to his lips. As the shudders spread through her body, he makes a decision. He lifts the comforter and slides underneath, drawing her to him and replaces the washcloth with his lips, pressing them to the centre of her forehead in soft sincerity. He doesn’t know if it’s a benediction or an exorcism he wants to do but it seems to calm her as he strokes her hair, stilling her body and soothing her stricken soul. ‘It’s all right, Baby, I’ve got you,’ he whispers with a tenderness he knows she’ll resist in the morning, but which is the perfect salve in this moment.

‘I’ve got you, Baby it’s alright. It’s all right.’