When She Wakes Up - Chapter Ten - Chained To Her. ✦ ݁˖
Rating: E | Wordcount: . | C. 10/?
Read on AO3! Pleease. Tagging @today-in-fic <3
cw: very heavy emotions, discussions of comas & life-threatening conditions.
His eyes were wide and frantic and he turned in circles until he felt dizzy, searching, scanning and wishing for any glimpse of her.
Suddenly his heart beat was in his ears and he blinked back the fierce wave of tears that swirled and grew behind his eyes.
‘Scully,’ he said loudly, sharply, a demand rather than a question. ‘Scullyyy!’
There was a ringing sound in his ears and it was only growing louder as terror took over his entire body, a bolt through him that nearly brought him to his knees.
He turned in place again and forced his gaze settle on Scully in her bed, still and pale and an amalgamation of all of his biggest fears.
He was alone. Scully was hurt. He couldn’t help her.
He felt like he was in hell, the one he’d always deserved but she had kept him out of. Shame crept down his spine. Weeks, years of it playing on a loop in his head until he wanted to fall at her side and beg.
He had married her, taken her away from her family, dropped her into every dangerous situation a person could ever find themselves, and what the fuck did she have to show for it?
‘Scully,’ he said, voice trembling. He could feel that his face was damp, and he rubbed at it angrily.
He tripped on the useless pile of books he’d dropped at his feet and felt himself lunge towards her bed, his hands gripping at the scratchy sheets she was wrapped in.
‘Scully,’ he begged again, waiting for her to return to him. He couldn’t go on without her and they had both known that.
Where had she gone? Why had she disappeared? Why, at that moment, the moment where he felt close to fixing this?
His chest heaved and he slid until his palms touched the cold floor, reaching for the books.
’S-soul retrieval, Scully, I’ll do it. I told you.’ He was muttering, whispering like a fool on the floor by his wife’s hospital bed.
His hands shook and tore at some of the delicate pages while he searched for the passage he needed, the cold tile biting into his knees.
‘Scully,’ he said again around a sniff as his eyes dragged over the page, as though the word itself could bring her back if he said it right. ‘The soul detached so it could survive the trauma, Scully, that’s what you did and it was right, Scully, but I’m here to bring you back. It-It’s safe to come back now, Scully. Your soul..’
His hands were shaking, too fiercely now to hold anything and the book clattered to the ground. His vision blurred and everything went numb. He wanted nothing more in this life or the next, than to have her back.
So he would wait, standing guard over her like a man who would chain himself to a tree, so convinced of its right to exist, of its precious place in this world.
That’s what he would do now, for the rest of time, he would be here at her bed, holding her hand so that they could never take her away from him. And if her hand never filled with her own warmth again…
If the machines stopped, if their silence shattered his world, then…
He wondered shamefully what people would think, what would the reports say, what combination of words would make their way to Skinner, or to his mother.
Would they know the truth, that he had lost his wife and could no longer stumble forward? A widower, a man unmoored after the light of his life left him. His stomach ached as it rippled with the decision he’d unconsciously made years ago.
He would want the world to know that he hadn’t just lost his work partner, or his colleague, that this wasn’t about guilt or madness.
He had the rings they’d never worn, the ones he’d bought that night before they even did this whole thing. The store he’d stumbled into with a buzzing in his chest and a credit card in his lucky, trembling hand.
‘Gold, or silver?’ the helpful salesman had asked.
‘Gold,’ Mulder had said suddenly, flashes of her crucifix in his mind, a naive hope that she’d actually have cause or inclination to wear it.
He’d never had the guts to give it to her, not when he’d seen the serious set of her shoulders on that day, the way her body language had warned him off from even touching her. He’d shoved the little velvet box back into his suit pocket and smiled tightly as they rushed out the standard vows, a sinking feeling in his chest as she refused to look him in the eye.
He had those rings still, buried beneath boxer shorts in a an old wooden drawer and he resolved to slip the gold onto his finger and display it proudly for the rest of their days together on this earth.
He quickly scrubbed away the tear that had broken free and stained his bruised cheek, pulling his chair closer to her bed until the blankets bunched up between his knees.
He felt breathless, adrenaline in his veins and desperate bargaining tugging at his soul.
It would not end this way.
Something fierce and defiant bloomed in him and he tightened his jaw as his fingers clung to her, pressing into her skin. He ached to hear her at his shoulder again, guiding him, reassuring him. He felt less real in a room where she wasn’t conscious, like most of him had disappeared along with her. She’d taken the good parts, the useful ones.
His wife. Scully. His love and his compass and his star.
‘It’s… it’s love. It’s all love, Scully, right? That’s what worked every time, in every damn story since the beginning of time, it’s been love. Love of a wife or-or a sister or a father or even of a god. Or- or a husband. Love’s the strongest, right? Stronger than anger or fear, right?’ He sniffed fiercely, trying in vain to keep his voice even. ‘It’s good, ‘cause, if its love then you’ll have to come back to me, ‘cause I’ve got that Scully. I’ve got so much of it that sometimes I can’t even look at it, Scully, it’s… it’s enough, I know it. It will be enough and you’ll have to.’
His chest shuddered and he screwed his eyes shut, gripping even tighter around her hand.
‘I’m begging you, I’m here and I am begging you, Scully, to claw your way back if you can hear me, to come back to me, please.’ The last words were painful pulls from desperate lungs as he clutched at her like a dying man.
The machines beeped steadily all around, impassive and unimpressed with his ritual, but he couldn’t be stopped. The room could burst into flames, nothing would pull him away from her side now because he knew, he felt it raw and growing in him. He was chained to her.
If love was the answer, then she would come back to him, she simply had to, because no one had ever loved someone the way he loved Scully.
Beep. Beep.
The last thing he’d thought to allow himself was sleep, but his body betrayed him and he was jostled upright as a nurse entered the room. He shot a look over his shoulder defensively, suddenly alert and furious.
‘I’m sorry, Mr Mulder, I have to check on some of Dana’s vitals.’ She wheeled in a trolley, displaying needles and cuffs and vials.
He should be used to such a sight by now after years of fighting together against what seemed like the whole world, but it still rolled his stomach.
’S’ok,’ he muttered, running a hand through his hair and sighing heavily back against the chair.
His neck ached, and he realised that he had been hunched over her body for some time.
‘Would you like to step outside? Get some air, I’ll be a little while here.’
‘No,’ he said.
She sighed and nodded, turning from him and lifting up a chart.
He stared at Scully, watching the slow press of air fill her lungs through a network of tubes and listening to the eerie rattle of a machine pretending to be her.
The bag of fluid hanging underneath her bed swayed as the nurse jostled against the arm rail and Mulder grimaced, turning away. How many things could be stripped from her? How many basic choices and dignities would she lose because of him?
She quickly unscrewed a tiny plastic cap from the wound inside Scully’s elbow and began to draw things from her body. There were so many wounds now and it seemed she got new ones each day. There was one wrapped in a sticky clear square at the top of her chest, where the borders of the dressing had rubbed grey, and one tangled in wires on top of her hand where the skin was so thin he wanted to cry. Her veins were darker now, brought to the surface by something awful, and he wanted to gather her into his arms and push the nurse away, to beg her to leave her alone.
‘Mr Mulder, if you are going to take that, you have to step outside. I am trying to work.’
It was then that he realised his cell phone was ringing, buzzing insistently in his pocket and he shook his head. He pulled it out quickly and shut it off, staring back at Scully and letting himself drift back into her orbit.
The nurse exhaled with frustration and got back to drawing Scully’s blood. Taking, taking and taking from her, labelling each little vial and tucking it down into the styrofoam holder, an uneasy creaking sound filling the room each time she did. The blood was so dark, such a rich red and it made him want to demand that she put it back, to not steal anything else from her, but he bit his tongue and continued to watch.
He watched every movement, studying each pass of skin or touch of tool to her precious, defenceless body.
‘I’m all done here, another nurse will be in in a few hours to check on her as the shifts change. Visiting hours are over at nine,’ she reminded tightly with a glance at the clock.
Mulder nodded and waited for the door to click shut behind her before he shuffled forward again and laid his head by Scully’s hip, exhaling heavily.
‘I won’t go anywhere, Scully,’ he promised softly. ‘I have no idea if my being here will help you, but I’m here. Until the end.’
