Disclaimer: Don't worry, I'm most certainly not making any money off of this. Much as I would like to, I don't own Fox Mulder, Dana Scully, or Diana Fowley. If I did own Diana Fowley she would be no more. But I digress…all glory, laud, and honor goes to Chris Carter et al, 1013 Productions, and Fox Network.

Spoilers: Biogenesis is, of course, the major one. The Unnatural, and Pilot are good too. Mostly Fowley related stuff and basic understanding of the cancer, abduction, and Samantha arcs. But would you be reading this stuff if you didn't basically understand those?

Summary/Rating: Fill in the blank during the events of Biogenesis. Mulder is in his little padded room and Scully comes to visit him. PG.

Archiving: Pretty please with sugar on top? Just as long as my name remains on it, and no one gets any money.

She would not let the tears out. Not in front of them - they could use her weakness against her. They were already trying to use Mulder's weaknesses to destroy him. But Goddamn her if she would let them succeed.

High heels pummeled the tile of the institutional white halls as Scully's march toward her partner continued. She caught an unsuspecting orderly by the scrubs and dragged him bodily towards the admitting desk. "I'm going to see Agent Fox Mulder. Now," she said as she rushed by the desk. She turned to the orderly, "Take me to him."

The doctor pouring over charts at the desk turned at this commotion, "Ma'am, Agent Mulder is in a restricted area. Are you family?"

How to answer that? Of course she was, she was the only family he had, really. But there was no way to explain that to a detached medical professional, who probably looked on Mulder much as she regarded most of her own cases: another set of facts to be analyzed. There was no time to make him see, at any rate, and no time to waste concerning herself with who or what she really was to Mulder. "Yes, I'm - I'm his wife," she said haltingly, for the words were too thick and heavy with implications and unspoken hopes to get past her throat in tact.

The doctor eyed her questioningly, as if trying to unnerve her enough to reveal her lie, but she met his gaze with unwavering, uncompromising resolve. She was going to see him, even if she had to disembowel this doctor and leave him in a bloody pool on the floor in her quest to do so. No such extreme measures were needed, however, as the doctor concluded the staring contest with a shrug and an "Alright Mrs. Mulder, but I need to advise you: he's unusually violent."

"So I've heard - I don't care, just let me see Mul….my husband," she interjected.

He lead her to an elevator. He pushed the button. They waited. She pushed it again. They waited.

The door finally opened. After an interminable ride downward into the Special Psychiatric Supervision Ward, the creaking elevator dropped them in a glaring white hallway. The fluorescent lights cast an eerie yellow-green fuzz over everything they illuminated. Scully dove out of the car and the doctor followed and pointed her down a hallway to her left.

As she rushed down past room after room, a screaming became more distinct. Her heart stayed its movement, but her feet pressed onward. The doctor stopped at the door of the room from which the sound emanated. She could still not distinguish individual words of the screams, but she knew the voice. "Here he is. I'm going to keep an orderly right outside this door, and if you need anything, just call," then he turned from Scully to the door and rapped lightly on it "Agent Mulder? Agent Mulder, your wife is here to see you. I'm going to let her in now."

Silence. She thought that she heard his voice, as it always sounded, say "My wife?" but could not trust her own warped senses to lend any credence to the sound.

Then the scream resumed, this time in words: "Get the hell away from me! I'm not gonna fall for their tricks! Scully! Scully, help me!" She very nearly knocked the doctor down to get into the room. Those words brought the tears back to her eyes: she hadn't helped him, and couldn't. She would comfort him, though, if he would let her - if he would trust her.

The doctor, unfazed by the shrieks, opened the door and allowed his companion to pass him and move inside. Seeing the doctor, Mulder rushed toward the door; his expression of hatred and his outstretched arms clearly showed his malicious intentions. Perhaps it was her red hair, or the glimpse of her blue eyes, or the sound of her breath catching between her precious lips at the sight of him so frantic that arrested him in his stride. His eyes locked with hers, and she watched as the fog of savagery lifted. Beneath it was Mulder, her Mulder, more hopeless and helpless than she had ever seen him.

He continued, more slowly, towards her, still gazing into her eyes with a delirious distance induced by pain, fear, and over-medication. He stopped, just inches from her face; she looked up into his eyes, but she could not see him as the tears clouded her vision. She felt him collapse at her side, and felt his arms wrap in a steel grip around her waist. She looked down at his head, buried against her stomach, and gently stoked his hair.

She sank down beside him, entwining him in her arms. He curled into a ball, and she laid his head gently in her lap. The tears came faster now: she soaked his temple in hers as he soaked her skirt in his. Scully could feel herself shaking, or was it the force of his own rocking body that shook her?

Seeing him, crying with him, holding him all were of tremendous help in allowing her to release everything she had been holding in since - well, since she met him, in fact. The tremors and chills within her began to subside, replaced by a warmth at such close physical and emotional proximity to him.

She no longer sobbed, but a few errant tears still welled up in her eyes nonetheless. He, however, cried passionately, gasping for breath as he rocked in her lap. Soothed herself, she longed to soothe him. She raised him up, drew him to lean his head on her shoulder, and shushed him maternally. "Shhh….it's ok…it's all gonna be ok…Shhh".

To her great surprise, his breath actually became more composed, his rocking more slow and smooth. He spoke, seemingly to no one, "Sorry…so sorry...s-sorry"

Scully stared at him, and hushed him again. She did not want to aggravate his condition by encouraging him to dwell on whatever grizzly visions appeared to his mind's eye when the fog lifted from it. While her sole purpose was to comfort him, she shied away from sharing the horrors that plagued him.

He had to speak though, and she increasingly got the feeling that there was no continuity to his words: they were just glimpses into a train of thought which passed through his mind invisible to her. "Sam…baseball…baseballhomerun" he whispered, inflection and speed changing with his thoughts "hips then hands…" she smiled, thinking she had caught an idea. That hope was instantly dispelled: "Sam…no…no not out…safe…safe…safe…back - come back…lost…I lost…lost" he cried harder, "don't leave…Phoebe…miss Sam…don't leave….Diana don't go…don't go...your ring - bought it for you…alone…FBI!" his scream startled her, though she had heard it so often as they chased phantoms or criminals down allies, badges drawn, "alone…unwanted…most unwanted…most unwanted…wonderfully rigid…she's not like that, Diana, notlikethatatall!…lost her…love her…miss Sam…miss her…find her find her!" his voice wavered for a moment. Scully knew he was not speaking to her, or to anyone but his own demons, but she questioned whether he even knew her or felt her clutched within his vice-like grip. Was she there with him in the midst of his darkness? She feared the answer was no, but if whatever glimmer of her that reached him could help, she was content to listen to him storm forever. "Find her…" he resumed, more softly, increasing his grip on her. "Never can…Diana, I lost her…lost her…always looking…alone…still alone…make him listen…Skinner…no help…SHE'S DEAD!…she's dead…she's dead…she's" he became more panicked, as his voice trailed into a frantic whisper.

"Shhh, Mulder, you don't know that. She's not dead," Scully said, only conjecturing as to who he was talking about.

Mulder paused, then resumed: "Love her…not dead…can't lose her…lost Sam…almost lost…almost died…love her…my fault…my fault I hurt her…savehernomatterwhat… almost died…lost her…thought I'd lost her…almost died…my fault…I lost…" he choked for a moment on his own tears.

This anguish was too much: she had to recall him to reality. "It wasn't your fault. Samantha was not your fault. You haven't lost her yet."

He interrupted her, "yesyesyes…Lost her…doesn't trust me…gave her cancer…took her baby…all our babies…love her…lost her…lost them…lost her…Diana made me lose her…miss her…I love her…" he whimpered.

She was too stunned to say anything. She merely stroked his cheek and let him cry. His words had left her in shock. "Gave her cancer"! There was only one person who he could mean. How long had he been talking about her? Had he said he loved her? Was he even coherent enough to know who he was talking about?

When he was a bit more calm, she turned his face to hers and looked into his suffering eyes. She had to know if he was too far gone to know what he was saying. "Mulder, do you know who I am?" she asked.

"My Scully."

Whatever the drugs had confused to his mind, whatever Diana Fowley had done to warp his perception, whatever alleged madness seized him, he still knew her. He still called her his. He touched her face and brushed a tear away from her face and stroked her hair. "Scully, don't cry," he said, and for a moment sounded like himself.

Tears of rage now sprang hot in her eyes. Diana Fowley's life was too small a price for the ruin of this man who loved her so much as to forget his own pain at the sight of hers. Scully longed to kill her and everyone who had ever wronged Mulder. If she could not make him well, she could at least attempt to gain a meager bit of justice for the irreparable loss of her Mulder.

In the midst of her temperature rising to fever-pitch, she noticed how cold he was. Fierce as her anger was, her tenderness to Mulder was unwavering. She got up to go ask the orderly for a blanket, and suddenly he was in a panic. "DON'T LEAVE ME! DON'T GO, SCULLY! PLEASE!" he screamed, clutching at her tightly.

"I won't leave you, Mulder," she said. She vowed she never would.

She extricated herself from his arms, walked to the door, and knocked. The orderly opened the door, and she made her request, and had it granted. When she turned back to the room, Mulder was not where she had left him. He was coiled, pitifully, in a corner. Scully heard him whispering, but it was not until she knelt beside him, wrapping the blanket, and thus her arms, around him that she heard that it was her name he repeated endlessly. "Dana, Dana, Dana….".

It could not end like this - he could not end like this. Her mind began to form concrete, realistic plans as to how she would get him out of here, how she would have him remanded to her custody, how she would destroy the ones who had done this to him, how she would use her science to save him, as he had used his beliefs to save her. But before she sprang into action, she knew there were words that could not be left unsaid if they were ever to heal.

"I love you, Mulder."

So many years building to those words, and they had been that simple all along.

He looked up to see her face. She knew he was inside this sickness, and prayed her words could draw him out. "I love you too, Scully." That was no swirling chaos of insanity; it was her Mulder, in whose eyes she saw herself reflected. Nothing could alter that.

She held him there, feeling - at least for that night - as shielded by him as he was by her. Doctors came to them throughout the night, trying to persuade her to leave. Each time she said "no" to them in so harsh and determined a way as to necessitate their complete submission to her, she saw a little more of the fog lift from Mulder's eyes. By dawn, he even ventured to reply to them himself, with a simple, shaky, "No, my wife is going to stay."

They cried together softly throughout they night: she would let him see her tears for as long as they needed to flow. She knew that in showing her weakness to Mulder, she could only become stronger, and even through his delirium she saw that he understood the same.

It would not end like this. He would not lose her as he felt he had lost so much of his life. Not while she lived. Not while she loved him.