Title: Bare Bones (6/?)
Category: MSR, Angst, Case-file (sort of) Rating: 
PG for adult situations and general nastiness, 
some bad language too kiddies. Archive: Anywhere, 
just let me know so I can visit Disclaimer: Not 
mine. If they were I'd be wearing better shoes. 
Spoilers: Its been ended for years - hasn't 
everyone seen them all? 

"I should just shoot myself." Scully dropped the 
phone onto the table as the door opened behind 
her. Brian Stevens sidled in through the half-
opened door, laden down with a tray of coffee and 
pastries. Scully sighed as he set them down in 
front of her. 

"Not exactly nutritional, but there's not much 
open around here at this time of night." 

"Thank you, Dr. Stevens. This is perfect." 
Stevens pulled out a chair at the large 
conference table and took his own coffee. He took 
his time adding sugar and creamer and raised thin 
white eyebrows as Scully removed the lid on her 
own and sipped at it black. She smiled and 
declined a pastry. "Is there any news?" 

"I'm afraid we have nothing terribly helpful so 
far. Aside from general observations such as 
height, age, gender, race and so on - there is 
little more at this stage." Scully sighed and 
nodded. Things were moving far too slowly for her 
liking and there was not a damned thing she could 
do about it. Energy rose up inside her and she 
wanted to jump out of her chair and shake Dr 
Stevens, tell him to get on with his work and 
stop bringing her coffee. She wanted to run out 
into the night, screaming Mulder's name and 
banging on doors until she found him. But she 
couldn't. She had to be rational and restrained 
and act exactly as she had been trained. She 
wasn't even allowed to think of the fact that it 
was Mulder they were looking for. Don't think it, 
just don't think it. Scully breathed deeply to 
silence the adrenalin that roared through her 
body and gulped her hot black coffee. She felt 
the acrid liquid burn in her empty stomach and 
choked back the bile that rose. 

"The team are out with those details, asking 
around, talking to people on the streets, trying 
to find out if there have been any unusual 
happenings, disappearances...we're clutching at 
straws really." 

"I'm so sorry that things have come to this, 
Dana. I know you and your partner are very 
close." Stevens smile was warm as he covered her 
hand with his own. Scully gave her own tight-
lipped smile and slowly withdrew her hand. 

xxx 

"SCULLY!" 

"SCULLY!" 

Mulder sat up, gasping and sweating. The room 
around him was black and it took a second of 
floundering for the bedside lamp to remember 
where he was. Horribly, the realisation dawned on 
him and he retched sideways. Sickness rushed up 
and sprayed his bare leg as his stomach 
convulsed. Mulder coughed and felt the sting in 
his throat, raw from shouting. Already he was 
thirsty. 

"I'm gonna fucking die in here." He spoke 
miserably to the blackness and his words fell 
without echo in the tiny box-room. "Aliens, 
conspiracies and the black cancer, and I'm gonna 
die in a freaking cellar." Mulder wanted to laugh 
at the irony, but fear brought tears instead. He 
scrabbled to his knees; hearing the gravel scrape 
beneath him and he pounded his fists against the 
brick wall; angry and terrified and sorry that he 
had ever gotten involved. Mulder knew with 
certainty that the killer they had hunted just 
hours ago was behind his incarceration. 

"You better hope I never get out of here, you 
fuck-ass!" Mulder screamed, his throat aching and 
dry. "I'm gonna kill you!" His hands were split 
and bleeding from pounding the brick. Yet the 
wall was utterly unyielding and a shower of brick 
dust rained to the floor with a dry patter sound. 
The grit stuck in the grazes on his hands and 
Mulder wished he hadn't bothered. He dropped back 
to the damp earth floor, the sound of the loose 
grit beneath his training shoes reminding him of 
playground asphalt from his childhood. The cold, 
mouldering smell of soil filled his nostrils and 
he thought of mushrooms and fungus growing in the 
dankness. Mulder shivered, wondering what would 
grow up out of the soil to cover his corpse. If 
Scully were there, he thought, she would know. 
She would be able to describe the stages of 
decomposition to him in minute detail. 

Jesus. 

Scully. 

Did she even know that he was missing yet? Was 
she panicking? Angry? Indifferent? Mulder had no 
clue as to how many hours had passed since his 
jog along the railway path that ran behind the K-
Mart. The sun had barely risen then. 

But he knew her too well. She had let him do to 
her what he needed to do. She had barely flinched 
when his hands gripped her throat, just swallowed 
hard. His palms throbbed with the memory of her 
pulse running under his fingers and her windpipe 
rising. In the blackness, he couldn't avoid the 
images of her face as he slid his hand into her 
hair. His heart raced when he thought of how her 
confusion had been laced with desire and how she 
had fought and gasped and writhed beneath him. 
She had cried and begged him to stop. The erotic 
images stopped and Mulder dry-heaved. A little 
acid burned but stayed down. 

She had drawn him to the bed and calmed him. She 
had given him what he had tried to take and her 
eyes were liquid and huge as she eased it from 
him. A thin sheen of sweat prickled all over his 
body despite the chill of his basement cell. 
Mulder shivered. He had been a coward and he had 
left her. And now he couldn't even make it right. 

He had to get out. 

It was just a case of how. 

To Be Continued... 

Authors Note: Sorry this is only a short one. 
Please, please let me know what you think! x