A Broken Fox

13) Prison Break

When Scully left, Mulder decided to listen to her first suggestion and watch TV. For several hours. Currently, he's watching Looney Tunes, bored out of his mind as he watches the coyote create another trap that will inevitably fail.
"Maybe you're supposed to be a metaphor," he says quietly to the mischievous cartoon character. "No matter how many times you try, you fail. Every time. Is that what I am, now? A coyote chasing roadrunners, his career nothing but a series of embarrassing failures? Am I just going to be a dumb legend for people to laugh at decades from now?"
BOOOIIIIIIIING!!! Wile's spring trap backfires, sending him flying miles away in the desert.
"I'm making metaphors out of a TV show for children," he sighs to himself. "I really am crazy."
Riiii-
"Mulder," he answers immediately.
"That was fast," Scully comments. "Are you really that bored?"
"Actually, I just got off the phone," Mulder says. "So what's up?"
"Does the name 'Emily Locker' ring a bell?" she asks.
Mulder sits up. "Yeah, that was the woman who-" you left me with, "-kidnapped me."
"Yep. And, turns out, she's not in prison anymore," Scully states.
"She's escaped?" Mulder practically shouts into the phone. A panic begins to rise in his chest, and his face turns into a blank slate.
"Not according to the guards," Scully says, apparently oblivious to Mulder's reaction. "They said that they opened her cell to find that she was gone."
"How long has she been gone for?" Mulder asks, his voice greatly calmed compared to before.
"I don't know, Mulder."
'I don't know.' The scariest (and most unusual) thing Scully has ever told him. He prefers it when she's spewing out facts that contradict him, not admitting uncertainty that scares him.
I'm not scared.
Liar.
"Are you still there, Mulder?" Scully asks.
Mulder blinks, snapping back to reality. "Uh, yeah. I'm still here."
"I'm going to come over right away, Mulder," she says. "Call me if you even suspect that she's there."
"Right," he says.
Scully hangs up, and the phone slowly lowers from Mulder's ear, dropping onto the table.
She's escaped. She's coming back for him. She's going to kill him. She's going to reopen every scar that she's made, she's going to make him scream again, she's going to humiliate him, she's-
Scully's coming.
He immediately closes the blinds, then he goes to the door, locking it.
Scully's coming.
He returns to his couch and sits sideways on it, his knees drawn close to his chest, eyes on the door. There's no way she could get in through the window, and with him watching the door, she couldn't sneak in.
As Mulder stares at the door, his paranoia increases, and every small noise makes him twitch. He knows that Scully's coming for him, but that doesn't force down the sudden flashbacks that randomly pop up in his mind. He distantly hears himself saying (or was he screaming?), "Why?" over and over again. The white square of moonlight on the cement floor crosses his mind. The taste of his own blood from biting his lip mixes in with his spit. He faintly remembers breaking down from pure hopelessness.
He's never going back to that. He's never feeling that pain again. Never. He won't allow it. Scully won't allow it, either.
Knock, knock, knock.
He jumps at the noise, then he gets up and goes to the door. A glance through his peephole shows him Scully, impatiently waiting outside. He unlocks the door and opens it up, then closes it behind her when she enters.
"I've got good news, Mulder," she says. "I got a call on my way here saying that they caught her. They found her a couple of miles from the prison trying to steal a car at a gas station."
Mulder gives her a blank stare as he registers her words. All that worrying was for nothing. Of course it was. When have his worries ever been worth anything?
"Mulder? Mulder, did you hear me?" Scully asks.
Mulder blinks. "Uh, yeah, I did," he says. "That's great. Why'd you come, though? I mean, you could've just called me, instead."
She shrugs. "I guess I wanted to come and check up on you. See how you're doing. Make sure you didn't die of boredom."
"Oh? Are you sure you didn't just come to see me?" Mulder jokes.
"Well, maybe," Scully says, looking up innocently.
She takes a few steps forward, looking around his apartment as though checking for something.
"Don't worry, she's not hiding on the ceiling," Mulder laughs.
Scully turns around and smiles at his little joke, then goes in and sits on his couch, where Mulder joins her.
"You know, Mulder, it's just occurred to me that we don't ever really talk," she says. "I mean, really talk."
"Since when have you ever wanted to get to know me better?" Mulder asks.
She shrugs. "I don't know. I mean, after these past few weeks, Mulder, I just thought it'd be nice to, you know, sit down and talk."
Mulder stretches an arm out across the back of the couch, while Scully's comparatively small frame simply leans back.
"Well, what do you want to know?" he asks.
She shrugs. "Anything," she answers. "Like... Do you believe in Bigfoot?"
He laughs at her. "Really?"
"Of course!" she replies. "Come on, you believe in everything else."
He smiles. Maybe Scully isn't as unfun as she seems.