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“Agent Scully? Can I have a word?” A known voice called for her in the distance and Scully stopped on her way out of the bullpen.
“Yes, Sir.” Talking to her superior was the last thing she wanted to do right now, she had been dying for her second coffee and her patience was wearing thin.
Scully pulled her loveliest smile and turned to face AD Kersh.
“Do you know about the whereabouts of Agent Mulder?”
“I know nothing about that, Sir. I’m sorry.”
“Tell him to come to my office as soon as he arrives. I won’t allow for these repeated absences. Either he follows the rules of conduct or he will be permanently dismissed. This is my last warning,” the man yelled for everybody in the hall to hear and Scully tried her best not to punch him in the face. She was not Mulder’s babysitter —though most times she felt like she was— and she didn’t need to be receiving his reprimands.
When she hadn't found Mulder at his desk that Monday morning she had been slightly worried. She had hoped that he was not, again, hitching a ride on a phantom ship without telling her. But now she was more pissed than worried. She’d be the first to tell him off as soon as he sat his sorry ass on the chair in front of her.
Half an hour later she was back at her desk, and her personal phone rang. Unknown ID.
“Dana Scully?” a female voice asked on the other side of the line.
“Yes, this is she. Who am I talking to?”
“This is Astrid, from Memory Walks . I’m calling on behalf of Fox Mulder.”
Scully sighed and massaged her temple. What mess would he have put them into now?
“Yes. Tell me.”
“Your name was noted down as the Emergency Contact in case the procedure went… wrong.”
Procedure? Had Mulder undergone any surgery without telling her? They had been through a lot lately, but she was still his friend, and his doctor. He’d been doing a lot of things behind her back since they had been removed from the X-Files, since… since he had other people to turn to. Scully sighed. Mulder not telling her things was not totally unexpected. But he’d still chosen her as his emergency contact.
“What happened?”
“I’ll give you our address, we think you’d better come up here.”
Relive your happiest memories, one poster said. Want to try and fix that mistake? another claimed. While sitting in Memory Walks’ waiting room, Scully picked up a brochure. What mumbo jumbo have you tried now, Mulder? Apparently, using some new and highly controversial technology, this company had managed to let people walk through their own memories. You can relive whatever memory you want, and maybe even change it, the brochure read. Scully sighed. That would be impossible.
Changing the past? That was beyond the realm of science. Maybe they could shed light on details about a past event if they managed to immerse a person in a deep enough trance. That was as far as she would accept. Scully would never admit so to anybody, but having actually tried hypnosis herself a couple of times, she came to believe that it helped recall details about the past, details that otherwise she had not been able to. But changing them? Affecting them? That was complete nonsense.
“Miss Scully? Doctor Berwits is ready for you,” the woman at the front desk called for her.
Doctor Berwits was sitting in her office, dark shadows under her eyes and a somber face. She seemed really worried.
“Thank you for coming so quickly, Miss Scully. I understand you have a background in medicine,” she started, pointing at a chair for her to sit down. “First of all, let me assure you that this has never happened before and everybody here at Memory Walks is working 24/7 to fix this problem. We don’t know how this happened, nobody has ever been trapped in a Memory before,” the doctor continued. “He should have come out of it days ago, but he’s refusing to wake up. These Walks take about half an hour. An hour tops. Then, when the Ketamine that induces the trance state wears out, patients wake up naturally without any effect. But, somehow, your friend is staying in his memory and refusing to come back.”
Scully knew how willful Mulder could be, and she had a pretty good idea which memory he must have come here relive, what he might be trying to fix. And why he might be refusing to leave that place. Mulder’s mind was still stuck on that fateful November 27th night. How could he be so stupid? If he had told her he was thinking about doing this she wouldn’t have let him. Surely that was why he had kept it from her.
“We’ve tried Epinephrine and electric shock,” the doctor continued explaining herself. “We’ve even tried contacting him inside his memory, but he won’t listen.”
That seemed perfectly like her Mulder.
“We think that maybe he’ll listen to a familiar voice. All of the doctor’s staff have tried talking to him, ordering him to come back. Normally patients listen to us, they go in and out without a problem. But he keeps yelling ‘ I won’t come out without her ’ and breaks contact. It’s been three days. We’ve been administering saline IV in the meantime, but he needs to come out. He cannot live in this state forever. This is not what Memory Walks was created for.”
“Take me to him,” Scully finally said, getting up.
They led her through several dim-lit corridors and into a small grey room. At its center, there was a large beeping machine and two big tanks attached to each side of it. Approaching the closest tank, Scully looked into a little window at the top. She found it was almost full of slightly bluish water, and Mulder was floating inside it, his eyes closed.
A thick wire connected the base of his skull to a huge machine in the middle of the room, and half a dozen electrodes were stuck at his brain and chest, checking for his vital signs. As Dr. Berwits had said, an IV bag was hanging from a pole, injected into his left arm, almost empty now.
“You can talk to him through this.” The doctor offered Scully a microphone headband attached to the machine.
“What’s that other tank for?” She asked instead.
The other tank was empty, the cables resting tangled on its bed.
“It’s a second pod, for couple’s Walks . Usually, people go in alone, but we’ve had some cases of Double Walking ,” the doctor started explaining.
“Fill it, I’ll join him,” Scully commanded as she took off her blazer.
“No, no. You can’t do that. Double Walking has to be started at the same time, otherwise, memories may not be shared. You don’t know where he might be.”
“What if I know exactly where he is?”
“Well… then… it might work. But this has never been done before. We don't know how it would work. You still may not be able to find him.”
May was not a can’t . This was the last thing Scully wanted to be doing, but she knew Mulder wouldn’t just listen to her. She needed to join his memory, find him, and bring him back. He had been able to find her frozen body in underground Antarctica. She was going to find him in his mind, wherever he was. She had a pretty idea where to start.
“I’m going in,” she insisted while she unbuttoned her shirt.
“Once you’re floating in the pod, you’ll feel released from sensory distractions and your brain will be allowed to travel into your memories. Ketamine will help you relax and calm down. There’s a speaker in the tank, we’ll be able to hear whatever you say. We’ll also be monitoring you through these electrodes,” the doctor said in a voice that sounded repetitive, after the hundreds of times she must have given that speech.
“I’ll plug this electromagnetic probe at the base of your skull, it will synchronize your brain patterns with Mr. Mulder, allowing you to communicate subconsciously,” the doctor continued explaining while her assistant finished filling the tank and helping Scully into it.
The water was warm, and highly salted, which made her limbs float. The ketamine they had just shot into her arm was starting to work and she felt dizzy, finally lying on the water, only her head on the surface.
“See you in about twenty minutes,” were Dr. Berwit’s final words before the upper lid of the pod closed.
Scully fell unconscious rapidly after and into her drug-induced trip.
She had only been in Mulder’s Chilmark house once, a couple of years before, but she tried fiercely to remember everything she could about it. She knew Mulder would be there.
After a little while, she found herself in the street as she remembered it, only it was nighttime now, and the weather was cold. She was wearing the clothes she had put on that morning and was not exactly prepared for the Massachusetts November weather. Scully hurried down the street trying to remember the number… Was it eighty-two? Sixty-two?
“Mulder!” she started calling, hoping he would come out at the sound of her voice. “Mulder, are you here?”
For half an hour she walked around the street, alone, not a soul to be found, calling for Mulder. Maybe she was wrong and he was not here. Where else could Mulder be?
There was a glitch on the horizon and she finally got a glimpse of him, at the entrance of a house.
Mulder had a worried semblance, and his youthful clothes —a white t-shirt with a basketball NY Knicks jersey on top—were full of dirt. He was holding a girl in a nightgown by his side. The girl in the ever-present portrait.
Samantha looked exactly the same as in the portrait that had been accompanying them for the past six years. Scully first saw it in the basement, so, so long ago. Mulder brought it out with him when the X-Files were temporarily closed, and back down again when they were reopened. The picture miraculously survived the fire last spring —though not the frame— and it had been sitting beside his computer in the bullpen since, never away from him.
“Scully?” He yelled in the distance. “Is that really you? Is this a trick?”
“Of course it’s me, Mulder. I’ve come to take you back.”
“No!” He cried, pulling the girl behind him, protecting her. “I have finally found her, Scully. I’m not letting her go, ever again.”
Scully started walking towards him, slowly, pulling her hands up, showing she came in peace.
“Mulder, this is not real, you are trapped in your memory.”
He still wouldn’t let Samantha loose, but at least he wasn’t running from her, so Scully kept walking.
“I promised you, we’re going to find her. Together. You and me. But this is not the way.”
Scully finally reached him and grabbed his free hand, trying to calm him down. But Mulder refused her touch, still not trusting her.
“Please, listen to me. This is not your sister. It’s just a figment of your imagination. You cannot take her from here.”
Scully held his face, as delicately as she could, rubbing his cheeks and the crease of his lips with her thumbs.
“Staying here is only keeping you away from the real world, from actually finding her out there. We will find her, I promise. But not like this. You’ve got to let her go!” She pleaded, looking in his eyes.
After a couple of minutes, Mulder started loosening his grip on the girl, which made her image fade a little.
“Fox!” The girl yelled at him. “Fox! Help!”
Immediately, Mulder held her tight again, trying to step away from Scully’s hands. But she stood strong.
“Mulder, please,” Scully whispered, grounding him, her thumbs now on his lips, pulling his head forward to rest on her forehead.
That seemed to convince him, as Mulder finally released Samantha’s hand. The young girl's voice kept yelling his name, piercing Scully's eardrums, but little by little it faded with her as he let the girl go. Mulder closed his eyes, tears starting to run down his face, eventually crossing spaces and running down Scully’s cheek.
“Everything’s gonna be okay,” she reassured him, her own tears mixing with his. “I’ve got you. I’ve got you.”
Mulder grabbed onto her in the fiercest embrace she’d never felt. He needed to hold to something, she would be his rock whenever he needed her.
Soon, Scully was feeling wet and, though slightly disoriented, she woke up in the water pod.
“Help me out!” She started yelling as she tried to get up and pulled out the electrodes attached to her skin.
An assistant removed the probe at her neck and offered her a robe as she helped her out of the pod. Scully ignored it and rushed to the pod beside her, looking for Mulder. She felt a little dizzy and almost stumbled on some wires on the floor, but soon she was pulling Mulder’s body out of the water.
“Mulder, can you hear me?” She called for him, opening his eyes and checking his pupils.
He seemed disoriented but responsive, and after a couple of seconds, his sight focused on her.
“I had her, I almost had her back,” Mulder kept crying onto her shoulder and Scully let him calm down for a while.
“We’ll leave you alone,” the doctor and the assistant left the room as soon as they checked Mulder’s vitals were okay.
Her reprimand would need to wait for a while. He had done something so incredibly stupid, but she could understand his need to see his sister once more, to try and save her. She knew he could not do so, but Mulder would try and break any physical law to prove her wrong.
After a couple of minutes, she sensed his body shivering, herself getting cold too, and Scully pulled away from his embrace momentarily to get the bathrobes. Putting hers on and throwing his over his shoulders, she forced Mulder to sit down on the doctor’s chair, standing by his side. Him sitting on a high chair, her not wearing heels, they were almost the same height, her being now one head taller. Mulder kept staring into the nothingness, his mind still focused on what had happened.
“Mulder—.”
“I know, I know. What I did was incredibly stupid… but I had to try, Scully. I need to find her, so badly.”
He looked up to her, and Scully could see the pain filling his eyes. With the X-Files taken from him, his resources for finding Samantha were drastically reduced. She had found him sneaking into the basement, trying to steal cases in an attempt to keep looking for his sister. He wouldn’t rest until he found her. Scully had known that for years, she should have seen something like this coming.
“Seeing her again, hugging her again… It was the happiest I’ve been in years. I couldn’t physically let her go. She kept calling for me… I can still feel her holding my hand, Scully,” he said, clenching his right fist as if trying to hold the feeling.
“I can’t promise…” you’ll be able to do that again . She wouldn’t say it, but they both knew the odds were not in their favor, so she reworded her thoughts. “We will find out what happened to her, one way or another. I truly believe we will.”
Mulder blinked and she could instantly see the gratitude in his eyes.
“Thank you,” he whispered, almost breaking again. She wouldn’t let him.
Scully pulled him close, resting his head over her shoulder, his arms instantly wrapping her tiny waist. She sometimes felt she couldn’t do much for him, she didn’t want to be too involved, needed to keep some distance between them. But feeling him calm down over her chest made her happy. She had saved him, once more. That she could do.
“Just… next time… let me know before you’re going to do some crazy shit like this. I don’t mind saving your ass every now and then, but a little heads-up is always welcome.”
Joking was always their favorite way of getting out of heavy moments.
“Let’s get out of here, okay?” she gently pulled his wet hair out of his face. “You still owe me the twelve o’clock coffee. I’m not gonna let you off the hook so easily.” She started walking to the locker room where the staff had stored her clothes. "And tomorrow I'll have to save you from a reprimand from the boss. So you're buying lunch, too."