Title:  Lost and Found
Author:  Vickie Moseley
Summary:  Mulder is in a very bad place.  Continuation of the New
Millennium series.
Category:  A MT more A
Rating:  R for some adult content not gone into detail, the 
MulderTorture and language
Disclaimer:  are we still doing these?  OK, well, I'm not
infringing, so there.
Archive:  yes, but let me know
Comments:  Ten and I have been talking about this for, well,
almost a year now.  I take full responsibility for the lateness,
but I hope it's all worth it.  This is an arc within NM, so if you
don't like the way this is going, relax.  It's not the end of the
story.

New Millennium:  Lost and Found
By Vickie Moseley

I can't move.  The light holds me solid to the ground, as solid as
if I were anchored by lead weights.  The light.  It's so bright
that I can barely make out the faces of the people standing right
next to me.  Is that Theresa Hosea?  Is that her husband, Ray?  My
god, if I squint I can just make out Skinner still searching
around the ground, placing stakes for the infrareds.  Then I look
back to the circle of light and my heart freezes in my chest.

It's him.  It's the Bounty Hunter.  And his intentions are clear.
Oh god, I'm going to die.

And now, I'm here, in this place of darkness.  Time has passed, I
know it has even though I have no way of telling exactly how much.
My skin feels scrubbed with a brush, sensitive to even the flow of
air over it.  I can't feel a beard on my chin, but I can feel the
hair on the back of my neck.  I just got a haircut the other day.
Or was that weeks ago?

All I know now is pain.  But when I can, I picture Scully, Dana,
in my mind.  It keeps the pain at bay.  I can see her, standing in
our new home.  I see her naked and glistening with sweat from our
lovemaking, perched on the window seat, inviting me to come to her
again, to pick up where we left off.  It's amazing how much
stamina I have in my dreams.  If only I could hold on to that when
I'm awake.

If only I can hold on.

At times, I think I'm dying.  The pain, the tests are so
horrifying that I'm sure my heart will crack in two and the blood
will pour into the empty spaces of my chest and I'll sputter and
stop breathing all together.  At times, I hope for that.  And then
I feel the guilt.  How could I wish to die when I still have
Scully waiting for me?  How could I possibly give up when there's
even the slightest chance that I'll come home to her?  Come home
to our little house that I just started to get comfortable in.
Come home to our life.

When they aren't doing the tests, I'm alone, in this cell.  The
walls are black and the opening just appears in any one of the
walls at random.  I can move, but there isn't much room.  Five
steps one direction, 8 the other.  I can lie down.  It's not too
hot or cold.  No pillow, but Scully has been my pillow for so long
that even one made of goose down would seem lacking now.

I don't know where the others are, but there are moments when I
hear voices.  I thought they were from the others, the humans, but
more and more I think the voices are the thoughts of the beings
who continue to torture me.  They argue, repeatedly.  They throw
taunts and insults at each other.  I'm waiting for one of them to
bring up the outlandish expense of abducting humans and using them
for test subjects.  This is obviously a bureaucracy, just like all
bureaucracies.  Funny that I would have to live through this
horror just to find out that the great universal invariant is not
time, but hierarchy.  There's always some bastard above you just
waiting to kick your ass.

One voice, one thought has come to me on a couple of occasions.
He/she/it seems to want to understand more than why I bleed when
they stick hooks in my cheeks or slice open my chest with a
circular saw.  He/she/it seems to want to probe my mind as well as
my body.

I have resisted as much as I can, but this one alien is very
insistent.  He/she/it picked up on my thoughts of Scully and
started asking me about her.  I shut down my thoughts of Scully
and refused to think about her, started thinking of snow plains
and desert landscapes.  But He/she/it put my brain in a vice and
squeezed so hard that the only way I could keep breathing was to
think of Scully.  And then it stopped.

I was asked if she was my mate.  I tried to reply in the negative,
tried to think back to the way my mind worked when we were just
partners and I thought I could never have her.  Of course, that
time seems like a lifetime ago now and I couldn't hold that
thought.  I felt horrible for endangering her, I would die if they
ever brought her to this place.  But so far that hasn't happened.
And after that encounter, whenever I think of Scully my pain is
lessened and the tests don't last nearly as long.  The alien must
have done that.  I think it has a soft spot for me.  At least I
hope so.

Sometimes it's dark and sometimes the light is so bright that I
have to close my eyes and even then there's a pink light where my
eyelids should be.  I can see the veins in my eyelids.  At least
that gives me some comfort.  I still have eyelids.  I still can
feel.

Oh god, Scully, I miss you so much.  I just want to go home.  I
want to climb the steps to our front door, unlock the deadbolt the
guys insisted on installing and disengage the real security system
they installed because everybody knows how to get past a deadbolt.
I want to pull my jacket off just inside the door, toss it in the
general direction of the coat tree you so generously let me keep
and keep pulling off clothing all the way up the stairs to our
bedroom.

Once there, I want crawl naked onto our very big king sized bed
and wait for you to follow me up those stairs.

Please, Scully, wait for me.  Please be there when I get home,
whenever that is.  Just be there, for me.  I can't live if you're
not waiting for me, looking for me, trying to get me home.

I jump a foot when I feel the touch across my skin.  Their skin
looks smooth but it's like a cat's tongue--rough and scratchy.  It
feels horrible when they touch me, but I don't flinch as much any
more.  They get so mean when I flinch.

It's the nice one.  Well, maybe not 'nice' per se, but not as bad
as the rest.  I crack open an eye and see it standing next to me,
the same blank expression on it's face as all the rest of them.
Then I feel the thought.  It feels like an ice pick in my ear, but
I hear it clearly.

*You miss your mate.*

I've learned that they don't ask questions, or at least as we
think of them.  They make statements that are either answered yes
or no.  Well, not even answered--more like invoke a positive or
negative response in your brain.  I've been thinking of Scully so
much lately, my mind responds automatically.  I feel the tears on
my face.

*communicate*

I'd love to, you eel-skinned son of a bitch, but you've got me
strapped here, sticking every painful instrument in the universe
in my skin and I just can't get to a phone right now!

*communicate*

This time, images come to my mind and it's like I'm viewing one of
those really jerky old movies that they used to show in driver's
ed.  The picture jumps and it's grainy and I'm almost afraid that
there's going to be a big hole burned in the film but I can't stop
watching.

It's our house.  I recognize the bedroom.  The bed is unmade, the
covers tossed back on just one side--her side.  There are clothes
on the chair in the corner and on the floor.  I've never seen our
bedroom look that untidy, even in our old apartments. At least not
when Scully wasn't sick with the flu.

The camera shifts and I see Scully walk out of the bathroom.
She's wrapped in a towel and she's got another towel around her
head.  She stops in front of the dresser and pulls both towels
off, dropping one to the floor and keeping the other to rub her
hair and get out the excess water.  God, how many times have I
laid in bed, pretending to sleep, just so I could watch her get
ready in the morning?  She's always hated me for it, because I get
some extra sleep.  And I always reminded her that even on my bad
days it takes me half as long to get ready as it does her.  But
just watching her do the little things, dry her hair, put on
eyeliner, God how much I've missed that.

She's looking at herself in the mirror.  She does something I
don't remember her ever doing.  She drops the last towel and
stands there, looking in the mirror.  Scully is not a prude, not
by any stretch of the imagination, but I've never known her to
stare at her body.  She's doing it now.  I can feel myself grow
hard and I don't give a damn if that's what the bastards were
after all along, I just want this movie in my head to go on and on
and on.

I'm entranced and enticed by her movements.  Her hand strokes her
sides and comes around to stroke her stomach.  I think I'm going
to lose it right here in this cell.  Oh, God, Scully, if you touch
yourself--

But no, that's not what she's doing.  I chance a look up at her
face and there are tears in her eyes.  Her lip is trembling and
she's stroking her stomach, cupping it.

Ohmigod!  It's not flat anymore!!  I know Scully's stomach like
the back of my hand and I know how hard her abs are--they are abs
of steel, Suzanne Sommers would be proud to own them.  But in the
mirror I see a reflection that is rounder, softer, not as angular.

Oh god, there is bulge.  It's gentle, just a little rounder right
about her navel.  Her navel is peeking out a little more.

Why?  I mean, I know what it could mean, but is that what it
really means?

She's pregnant!

*she is gestating*

Gestating, pregnant, same thing, asshole!  She's carrying a child!

I can't breathe so good.  She's pregnant.  Oh God, Scully is
pregnant and she's carrying our child.  My child.  My child is
growing inside her.  Our child.  Our love created a child.

As quickly as the awe washes over me, I feel the anger surge
underneath it.

Let me go, you bastards!!  Let me go to her!!  I have to protect
her, I have to protect our child.  Let me go you sick fucks!!

*quiet*

I don't listen, but I feel the appendage that should be a hand
close over my eyes and suddenly the images of Scully are gone.  I
sob in frustration, but there is a thought placed in my mind.

*later*

I still immediately.  Something within me breaks.  I sense so many
emotions that it almost makes me dizzy.  Anger, but not at me.  A
sense of injustice.  Fear of being discovered.  Resolution and
determination to do what is right.  All from the eel-skin at my
side.

Help me, I think with every thing I have in me.  Help me get back
to her, to them.  You understand, I can tell you do.  You have to
help me.

*quiet*

The single thought echoes off my mind and I realize what he is
telling me.  Quiet, before we're found out.

*later*

I grab onto that promise and hide it deep in my heart.  I will get
home to Scully.  I know I will.

The seconds, hours, minutes, years seem to pass without my
interference.  I have no idea how long I've been here, but it's
been long enough for me to remember all the plays of Shakespeare
and two Tom Clancy books.  I've slept 7 times, but that doesn't
tell me much because I'm not sure I sleep one period every 24
hours.  All I know is that my favorite eel skin has not been back
and I'm starting to get worried.  And the tests seem to have
slowed down as well.  Which means either they are planning on
letting me go, or they plan on terminating the test subject.

The nourishment they've been giving me has been reduced.  I think
I'm only receiving about half the calories they had been giving
me.  I can feel the lining of my stomach rubbing together.  I've
gone without food before, usually from my own stupidity, but I
know the feeling of hunger, real hunger.  I'm getting there.
Maybe they've decided to starve me to death, just to watch.

I keep replaying the images of Scully in my mind.  All of them, of
course.  From the first look on her face as I proposed to her in
Uncle Jacob and Aunt Deb's front parlor to the look on her face
when she reaches climax beneath me, I remember every moment, every
expression I've seen on her face in the last six months, hell the
last nine years.  If those are the last images I see, I'll have to
be content.  But the one that keeps making its way to the front of
my mental picture show is my Scully standing in front of the
mirror, naked and glorious as the day she was born, cradling our
unborn child in her hands.

I need to stay alive, for no other reason than to be able to
cradle that child in my own hands.

I sleep, but the hunger wakes me up.  I haven't had any of the
slop they consider nourishment in a couple sleep cycles.  I'm
getting so weak I can barely stand, so I spend my waking time
curled in a corner of this little cell that has become my home.
They don't come to get me for tests anymore.  I can only assume
this is my death sentence.  I'm forgotten like a lab rat with
cancerous tumors all through its body.  I wonder if they'll even
bother to autopsy what's left of me, just to see what effect this
final test had on the frail form that is humanity.

And Scully will never know.

I want to cry but no tears come.  It occurs to me that the
nourishment is also my only form of water.  I'll die of thirst
before I die of starvation.  Well, that gives me so much relief.
If I can't even cry, haven't had to relieve myself in a long time,
I'm pretty much bone dry by now.

With that comforting thought, I curl back into my fetal position
and dream of Scully and our baby.

The eel skin is scratching me.  At first I think it's just the
shakes, which have been wracking my body for the last several
hours, but then as I blink and clear my eyes, I see my old buddy
rubbing my bare arm.

*leave*

If I had any strength at all I would laugh in its face.  I can't
move, you intergalactic idiot!  I'm dying here!

*leave now*

I feel something warm starting in my heart and I think for a
moment that it's going to flutter to a stop, but instead it starts
beating stronger, faster.  I have feeling in my legs and hands for
the first time in days.  I push myself up and realize that more
than likely this newfound energy is artificial and fleeting and I
better make the most of it.

Eel skin moves to the part of the wall.  One gray hand is pressed
against the wall and suddenly the opening appears.  I'm usually
held in place by forces I don't understand when the door is open,
if I'm not being dragged off for another round of tests.  This
time I walk through, crouched and waiting for the inevitable net
that is going to come down and catch me.

I have no idea where we're going but I'm amazed at how familiar
this ship appears.  It's an almost exact replica of the ship I
found Scully in at the bottom of the world.  I can see those pods
chambers several levels below me.  I ache to see if I recognize
anyone in those icy crypts, but I have no time to dawdle.

Scratchy hands push and pull at me when I stumble over something
on the uneven floor.  I skin my hand and almost fall to my knees,
whatever strength I'd received earlier is quickly leaving me.

*up*

Its skin scratches my upper arms as it pulls me upright.  I glance
down the narrow passage we're following and see the indentations
along the walls.

I have to save the others.  The thought forms in my mind as my
body reacts and pulls to a stop.  I won't go forward without the
others.

*not now*

Yes, now.  There is no other time.  I know I may be signing my own
death warrant, but I couldn't live with myself if I left another
human being behind on this ship, subjected to this torture.  I'm
not leaving without them.

My new friend seems to find this very disturbing.  It spends
several valuable seconds holding my mind in a vice while it
considers all the alternatives.  If the pain I'm experiencing
weren't so horrible, I'd be laughing at the argument it is having
with itself.  Finally, surprisingly, it agrees with me.  The alien
moves from my side and starts touching the wall at regular
intervals.

As the first humans move tentatively through the doorways, they
see me and seem to understand what is happening.  That's a relief
because I'm sure we don't have much time.  We start moving down
the passageway again, hurrying to a destination that is only known
to my buddy 'Scratch'.  My exhaustion is returning with a
vengeance but I know I can't give up.

*here*

I gasp out my relief.  I don't think I can go much farther.  I'm
shoved against the wall and find that instead of hard surface it
feels like foam.  I'm falling through it, being absorbed by it and
then I'm just falling . . .


THE END