Author: spookycc

Rating: Possibly PG, nothing more than the ep.

Classification: Fill-in-the-blanks for "Medusa", Doggett POV.
                                DF -- *Doggett Friendly*

Summary: Doggett's take on "Medusa".

Spoilers: Um, yes. :) For "Medusa". To be safe, for S8 so far.

Disclaimer: No characters, human or canine, are mine.
And no dogs were harmed in the making of this fanfic. :)

Feedback welcomed at spookycc@earthlink.net

Dedication: As ever, to Doggett's Bitch (f/k/a "Vixen" :). My soulmate,
always.

And for girlassassin, you know why. :)

No beta-reader was used. All typos are my own.
 

****

Tunnel Vision

****

Boston Transit Subway System

Sparks fly from more than the welder's torch as we meet with Deputy Chief
Karras of the Boston Transit Police. He is instantly hostile, and I'm sure
I'm not hiding my disbelief that he'd wanna run the trains again before we
find out what killed the transit cop last night.

We meet the people who will be going down in the tunnels with us. Dr.
Lyle, from the CDC, Bianco, the transit cop, and Melnick, the engineer
who oversaw the tunnel's construction some four years ago. They understand
the need for Scully's expertise here - Karras explains she has experience with
what he terms "equivocal death".

Melnick pipes up. "Equivocal? I mean, either you're dead or you're not, right?"

I hope no one notices my discomfort at *that* topic of discussion.
I can't even explain what happened to me on my last case, and here
we are on another X-File.

They're puzzled at *my* presence. Like I'd let her go down there alone.
I tell them I'm just "a good shot" and leave it at that.

The heat and humidity hit me first. It's February, but the tunnels are
stifling, and the humid air works its way up to the platform where we
change. I'm more than happy to shed the suit, even if it means putting
on Kevlar.  I notice that Scully hasn't changed yet. Karras made it clear
that the time pressure is on us.

"You need some help with that?" God, that sounded bad.

Scully doesn't catch it. She looks very serious. "No. You're going in without me."

"What?" This is not like Agent Scully, not at all.

She lowers her voice. "I don't know what kind of games are being
played, but I'm gonna be much more effective analyzing the situation
from up here."

"Yeah, but I'm just a tag-along here." That pretty much describes my
X-Files experiences thus far. "This is *your* thing. You've got all the
experience."

"You've got capable people with you, Agent Doggett," she returns.
"What I need down there are eyes and ears."

There's something more. I feel it. But I don't push the issue. If she
wants to stay up top, then she has her reasons. That's good enough
for me. I nod slowly in acceptance. "OK." I take the Eyes & Ears
unit from her. "I'll be your eyes and ears. I wish someone
would tell me what the hell it is I'm supposed to be lookin' for."

As we enter the tunnels, I tell her that I hope I'm sending her a good picture.

"We've got you every step of the way," is her response.

As we make our way further down, everyone is commenting
on the climate. Hard to believe it's mid-winter up above, and
hotter than hell down here.

Dr. Lyle dryly comments that it's great we're enduring all this so
that the good people of Boston can get home in time to watch
Survivor 2. I smile to myself just a bit at that.

Scully's voice comes through the earpiece, asking if I'm still reading her.

"Like a songbird, Agent Scully." There's something very - personal - in
this type of communication. It's like she's right here, *with* me, even
though she's many feet above. She's never been more able to see things
through my eyes.

My thoughts are interrupted by shouts from Melnick. I rush back to
where the rest are gathered around him. Shining the flashlight on the
back of his neck, I describe his injury to Scully, in case the wound isn't
clear on her screen. It looks like a burn. About silver dollar
size. Wonder what she'll make of it?

It looks to me like we're looking for a toxic leak, not a man, down here.
Though the CDC robotic units didn't register anything.

We saw a puddle back a ways. Dr. Lyle pulls a sample and sends the
analysis to Scully above. It turns out to be seawater. Well there's a
breakthrough. I hear Karras' voice through Scully's mike. "Four hours,
Agent Scully." I wish he'd stop riding her ass on this. Like we're gonna
take any longer down here than we *have* to.

Bianco sees a shadow ahead, and we follow its path to a fork in
the line. This other tunnel is old, decommissioned. Should we spend
time here or go on? It's a mile yet to where the train lost power.

I opt to go in, just for a minute. Not surprisingly, I hear Scully voice my name. Twice.

"Just takin' a look," I assure her. I'd hate like hell to walk right
past the damn thing on our way to the location of the power loss.

I ask Melnick whether we should investigate this tunnel or not. He
should know whether it's worth the time.

"Lotsa places to hide in here," he nods.

I ask Dr. Lyle for her opinion. Instead she shouts at me to look out.

I whirl around, hearing a yell in front of me. At the same time,
something - something *big* - hits me square in the chest. It knocks
the wind out of me, and I fall backward, hitting the dirt floor
soundly.

I hear Scully's voice in my earpiece, but I can't tell what she's
saying right away. My mind is kinda fuzzy. Then it clears a little.
"Can you hear me?"

I struggle to get a full breath of air. I'm sure my answer is not
encouraging, since I can only croak out a hoarse little "Yeah."

Melnick offers me a hand up, but I'm still dizzy, so I ask him to give
me a minute. Scully knows I'm "ok" now - I can afford a moment to get
rid of the cobwebs in my head. No one knows what hit me when I ask -
Dr. Lyle said it came at me like a "phantom".

I roll over slowly, and come face to half-eaten face with what was
probably once the assailant we're looking for. I hear my name in the
earpiece again.

"You call that equivocal?" Melnick muses.

"Agent Scully?" I've gotta hear her take on this. She tells me she
needs some data. Dr. Lyle is already transmitting the pictures.

Out of the corner of my eye, I see Melnick walking further into the
tunnel a few steps, until Lt. Bianco steps in front of him, firearm
raised. Time to intervene here.

"What's the problem?" I break their eye contact with each other.
Bianco insists that since we found what we're looking for, we should
get out of here. But Melnick has spotted something on the floor.

I look where he points. Three bodies, in plastic.

Scully asks me to get closer, but the smell prevents any *real*
close-up view. She asks that they be uncovered, to see if the skin
looks the same as the others. I don't wanna touch them, and I'm sure
she didn't intend for me to, but I'm not sure I can uncover them
without risking more contamination.  She sees enough through the
plastic to make an educated guess that the same contagion killed them.

Dr. Lyle sees a shadow outside the cloth at the end of the tunnel. Lt.
Bianco follows us back into the main tunnel, but then he decides for
himself that it's time to get out. Thing is, *he's* not in charge
down here.

Scully tells me what I already know. If there's someone here, he could
be infected as well. So could *we*. She is right in wanting us to
remain here and find the unknown person. I can hear Karras through her
mike again, telling her she's being "irrational". Now *there's* a word
I don't use to describe Scully very damned often.

While she and Karras argue, we're stranded where we stand, waiting to
be told what to do, as if I don't already know. I ask her anyway. She
tells us to leave the bodies and go after whomever else is in the
tunnel.

"All right, we just got our order." I bring the group together to move
out.  "We're gonna continue on."

"Says who?" That's Bianco again. He's consistent, if nothing else.

"Says the *boss*." That should shut him up.

Instead, he walks from the back of the group and keeps pace beside me.
He seems genuinely curious at first. "Agent Doggett, this agent you
work with deals with weird stuff, right?"

I nod. "She works on something called the X-Files. FBI cases dealing
with unexplained phenomena."

"You know her at all?"

I lock my gaze with his, wondering where he's headed with this. "Yeah,
I know her." (Although not as well as I feel I should by now.) "We've
worked together for a short time."

"I wonder why she sent you down here instead of coming herself." So
that's where he's at. Trying to pit us against each other. If the
situation weren't so serious, I'd laugh in his face.

"It was the right call," I tell him simply. He gives me a look. "You
gotta problem with that?"

We both stop, and he answers. "Yeah. I got a problem with somebody I
don't know that keeps me down here in the dark looking for jack squat,
when we've already found our man."

I hope I was never this one-dimensional when I was a cop. Well, he is
a *transit* cop, after all. "It's a question of contagion." I wonder
why he can't see that. Maybe he doesn't *wanna* see it. Or maybe he
already *knows* about it.

He pushes the issue. "It's a question of who's in charge."

This alpha male chest-beating stuff is getting tiresome really fast.
He's trying my patience, what little patience I haven't already
sweated out. I hear Scully in my earpiece again, calm, cool. So she's
been hearing all this, then. "Agent Doggett? You all right down
there?"

"Fine," I answer tonelessly. I can handle this crap, it's just
annoying.  "What'dya got for us?"

We're close to where the train stopped now. I ask Scully what we're
looking for. She doesn't really know, either.

Melnick's shouts bring us back to him again. Shit - it looks like
there's electrical current running through his arm. Scully's voice
again, barely coming in over the man's shouts. She wants to know what
it is. I wish to hell I knew.

"Agent Scully, *talk* to me!" I need her advice. My instinct would be
to put water on it, but with electricity, that could be dangerous,
too.

Scully advises to do just that, stressing fresh water. I pull the
plastic canteen off my belt and empty it onto Melnick's arm. It seems
to ease his pain, but he's in bad shape.

"What *was* that?" Dr Lyle asks. Great. The CDC doc doesn't know what
it is .

"I don't know. And I don't like it that *you* don't know." I try to
get answers from Scully, but she's as helpless as we are on this. Then
she voices her real fear. A biochemical weapon.

"Great!" That's just frikkin' great. Bianco asks what Scully said.
"She said a lotta people might be takin' cabs home tonight."

Bianco is still ranting about Scully's "guessing" what's going on, but
my partner's voice mercifully pulls me away from that, and his voice
fades to background noise. As usual, hers is the voice of reason.
Cool. Rational. She lets me know that the only place anyone could be
hiding is just ahead, about a hundred yards.

Melnick can't be moved, so I leave Dr. Lyle with him. We'll have a
hazmat team pick them up. Bianco follows me, but only reluctantly. We
come upon an abandoned station, and I try to raise Scully on the
headset. There is no response.

"Here we are pissin' away our time, and she's asleep at the wheel,"
Bianco grouses. Screw him. I keep tryin' to get Scully.

"C'mon, Agent Doggett," he chides. "Make a decision. Let's get outta
here."

"We gotta find whoever it is that's still down here, Lieutenant."

"And what if we don't find him?" he argues. "Maybe it'll be *us* they
find laying face-down on the floor, dead."

While we "debate" on whether or not my partner knows what she's doing,
something catches my eye. On Bianco. He's got green glowing areas on
his hands and face. He's *infected*. I bring his attention to it. I
think he already knew.

"The stuff's *on* me. You see that? It's spreading! I *told* you,
Agent Doggett, we shoulda gotten out."

"That's exactly why we gotta stay." He's blind to the implications
here. If this gets out, it could threaten the whole city. I try to
calm him down, but he's panicked. He starts walking away, so I pull
my gun on him.

I ask him to put his weapon down, and he does so, very slowly. I lean
over just a bit, to pick it up...

Bianco kicks dirt from the floor into my face - while I can't see, he
nails me on the left side of my head, and I fall into a darkness much
deeper than the tunnel's....

I hear a voice. My eyes still closed, I take deep breaths and try to
remember where the hell I am. The voice is insistent. Concerned. It's
my partner.

"Agent Doggett?!" I wonder how many times she's said *that* while I
was out.  I wonder how long I've *been* out.

I mutter something that she takes to be the affirmative. "I'm here. I
hear ya." I'll bet she's been getting a dandy picture of the ceiling
while I'm lyin' down here. Damn, my head hurts.

I hear a relieved sigh on the headset. "God, you had me- I started
fearing the worst." Her voice is much softer now, but no less
concerned.

I know she thinks I was infected, but I tell her it was just Bianco
blind-siding me. Then I sit up and look around. Bianco is gone. I
tell Scully this, and explain that he was infected. There's an
uncomfortable pause, and then she asks, "And what's your condition,
Agent Doggett?"

I look down at my hands. A green, glowing residue is all over them.
Damn. "I assume it's not good."

I hear concern in her voice again. She wants to send a hazmat team
down to quarantine me. But if I wait for them, Bianco could get out of
the tunnels and into the city. I can't let that happen.

I walk for a few moments, hearing Scully's end of conversations above.
Then her voice is directed my way again. "Agent Doggett, we've got a
new wrinkle."

"Don't tell me." I bet it's not a *good* wrinkle.

"We're running out of time. It's twenty to four."

"I'm movin' as fast as I can." Granted, that ain't too fast, but there
you are.

"Agent Doggett, you shouldn't be moving at *all*," her voice softens
again, with just a touch of "Doctor Scully" in it.

I don't need to explain to my partner the need to find Bianco, to keep
him isolated. She understands that all too well. She's worried about
*me*, and although I appreciate that in more ways than I can express
right now, I hafta find him.

She warns me that the toxin could react to an increase in body
temperature, or heart rate, and I counter by telling her that maybe
just *moving* is keeping it from causing a reaction. We just don't
know, and she agrees with that.

"Just make sure Karras holds those trains 'til I find Bianco."

I hear a heavy sigh on the headset before Scully lets me know there
are already passengers at the next station.

"You tell that son-of-a-bitch he's gotta clear the system! He's-"
Something catches my attention. It's Bianco, on the floor, hurt. I
hear my partner giving directions to someone on-line with the CDC.

"Agent Scully, what do you want me to do?"

"Get out of there, Agent Doggett," she responds.

"What about this man?"

Her voice is tinged with more worry. "I'm gonna send a hazmat team
down for him, but from what I've seen, the reaction's progressive."
She wants me to get away from him, to avoid further contamination.

Bianco asks me not to leave him here. There's only one option, really.

I help him to his feet and we work our way through the tunnels, very
slowly. I see something ahead, and lay Bianco down to pursue whatever
it is. It's a boy - he looks like he might be a homeless kid, I dunno.
He won't respond to my questions. He only points off down the tunnel.

Scully is worried about contagion again, but the boy is not infected.
This is apparently the piece of the puzzle Scully needed. She figures
out what causes the contagion to react on the skin. It's sweat.

"Just my luck." If I sweat much more, we'll hafta *pour* my clothes
off when I get outta here. *If* I get outta here.

Scully explains that the electrical current is carried by the sweat, and I wonder... Electricity...

The boy wants me to follow him, so I do. He enters a room aglow with
green residue - on the ceiling, walls, pooling on the floor. It
reminds me briefly of the green slime in the hospital room where I
found Scully that day...

Tracing our course on her monitor, Scully locates a tunnel link where
she could get a hazmat team in to quarantine us and get us the hell
out. Sounds like a plan. I go back and help Bianco through the room,
onto the main track, close to an access point.

But the puddle is leaking into the main tunnel. "We got big, big
problems here," I inform Scully.

"Yes we do," she agrees.

"You see this flood?"

"No, it's worse than that." The tension in her voice is raised a
notch. Great. This impossibly hopeless situation just keeps getting
worse and worse. "I think this moron Karras has started the trains
rolling."

Dammit! I glance at the "go" switch above our heads, and sure enough
it flashes red to green. There's a train in the tunnel. In *this* tunnel.

I lean Bianco against the wall, and leave the boy to help him. I've
only taken a few steps onto the track, avoiding the live third rail,
when I don't need my flashlight anymore. The train's headlights
illuminate the whole damned tunnel.

Scully is yelling at me to get off the tracks, to get out of here, but
I need to keep the contagion from spreading to the people on the
train. I'm no hero, but I can't let this infection get out of the
tunnel. It's just that simple. Worried for me, she's not seeing the
bigger picture right now.

I pull the gun from Bianco's hands, with difficulty. The lieutenant
has a death-grip on the gun, and it takes a few moments to pry it
away. Does he really think he can shoot his way out of whatever the
hell we've stumbled into? I let Scully know I have an idea, but I
don't bother telling her how far-fetched it is. She's already worried
enough.

I ram the gun into the green water by the third rail, and wait for the
train to make the circuit complete. Just before it hits the spot, I
jump off the track - right into the wall.

I hear the train shriek as it hits the circuit, and the tunnel is lit
by what looks like lightning, everywhere. I lean heavily against the
wall where I landed, trying to catch my breath. Sounds of static
electricity fill the tunnel, and I can't hear for a few moments.

When I *can* hear again, her voice is there. "-Can you hear me?!" is
all I catch of whatever she has said.

"Yeah," I answer as best I can. My chest is heaving - it feels like
electricity still buzzes through the tunnel. "Yeah, I'm here."

"Thank God," I hear her much-relieved voice, and I feel a ripple of
warmth course through me, despite the fact that I'm sweating bullets
already. "Uh- I lost you on the visual."

I fiddle with the controls on my headset, and hear her again. "OK. OK,
I've got you. You're back."

I somehow manage to get to my feet, and gaze down the track at the
tail lights of the subway train. I see electricity still buzzing
around the puddle below me, and then the green glow of the water is
gone. I look at my hands, knowing Scully can see them as well. It
looks like the infection is gone, too.

I stand motionless for a few moments, looking at Bianco and the boy.
The lieutenant's expression is not unreadable, but he doesn't speak.

"Are you ok?" Scully again, softly this time, reminding me she's still
up there, she's still concerned. Like I'd *forget* that.

"I can only hope, Agent Scully."

The four hundred yards to the access tunnel might as well be four
hundred thousand. Bianco and I make it about halfway there, before the
injuries of the day finally take their toll. I send the boy on ahead
to meet the hazmat team, as my legs give way underneath me...

I slip into half-awareness as I feel the jostling that tells me I'm
being loaded onto a stretcher. I've been *here* before, that's
fersure. But never in quite this state of - whatever state I'm
currently in. The ride up the stairs is no picnic, and by the time we
reach the platform, I'm a little more alert. They slide the stretcher
onto a gurney for the ride to the EMS unit.

If I tilt my head back a bit, I can see the red reflection of the
ambulance lights. I wish I could see outside, somehow. I was down in
that tunnel for so long. I'd like to see daylight.

Rolling along, watching the rows of platform lights race across the
ceiling , I'm almost dizzy enough to pass out again. I close my eyes
to shut out the distorted view above.

I feel a little jolt as we bump lightly into what I'm guessing is the
back bumper of the ambulance. It doesn't help my pounding headache a
damn bit, and I squeeze my eyes tighter, to try to ease the pain a
little.

"Whoa, hang on a second!" I hear a voice that *still* sounds like it
comes from above, even though she's right beside me now. My partner
has caught up to the gurney, and I *feel* her right here, even though
my eyes are still shut. I exhale a huge breath. I can't even begin to
explain my relief that she's here now.

"Agent Doggett?" she's noticed my unsuccessful attempt to beat down
the headache by clenching my eyes shut even tighter. "Are you ok?"

"Yeah, just swell," I respond. I open my eyes and look into hers. They
are distorted a bit by the hazmat suit she wears. And they look darker
than usual. Troubled. It's probably just my eyes adjusting after being
down in the tunnels for so long. Or not.

Using her best "Doctor Scully" technique, she talks them into letting
her ride along to Boston General. They slide the gurney in, and she
settles in on one side while the EMT hooks me up to a few more
monitors on the other.  He gives us as much privacy as you can get in
the business end of an EMS unit, as he radios ahead to the hospital.

I feel a hand - her hand - on my arm. Even though she wears protective
gloves, her touch warms me, and I feel safe, for the first time in hours.
"You're gonna be fine. It looks like you're pretty much clear of the contagion.
We're just gonna take you in, clean you up and run some tests, to make sure."
She nods like she's convincing herself as well as me.

I turn my head a little, and glance at her gloved hand. "Not takin'
any chances, though, huh?"

Shit! I didn't mean that the way it came out! She pulls her hand away
like she's touched a hotplate. She thinks I'm backhandedly referring
to her not going down there with me. I know she does.

"Scully - I didn't mean-"

"No, it's ok. You've got every right to feel that way."

"*What* way? You made the right call. We needed you up there with that
idiot Karras. You figured out what caused the contagion to react. *You*
got my ass outta there."

She nods, unconvinced, and her eyes turn a shade darker. It's not my
own eyes playing tricks this time. I know a troubled look when I see
one. I've seen a lot of them.

I reach over with the hand that's not trapped by an IV line, and lay
it atop hers. She raises her head and looks down at me again. And she
takes the gesture as an invitation to speak. Good.

"When you were 'down', Agent Doggett," she begins.

"Which time?" I try to lighten the mood a little.

She *almost* smiles. Almost. "*Both* times. There was a part of me
that wanted to pitch my headset in the trash and come down after you.
I think you deserve an explanation why I didn't do that."

I shake my head. "You don't owe me any explanation, Agent Scully. You
did what you felt you needed to do, and I did what I needed to do.
There was no point in exposing yourself to the organism when we
already had a team in the tunnel."

Why the hell did I say that? I really need to *know* why she didn't
come along. It's her ball game, but I felt a deeper reason - I *still*
feel it.  And I feel isolated, by more than her hazmat suit, when she
won't open up to me.

Scully looks at the floor of the vehicle, then back at me. "There
are...  *medical* reasons why it's more unsafe than it would normally
be for me to expose myself to anything hazardous."

I knew something was going on, with the personal time and the hospital
admittance. Please, God, don't let her tell me that her cancer has
returned . How could I tell her what it would do to me to lose her
now? I couldn't. She'd never understand. Her heart is somewhere else,
with Agent Mulder.

"What is it, Agent Scully?" I push as gently as I can. Despite my
urgent need to hear what she is saying, I feel my eyes drifting shut.
Damn. The pain meds kicking in.

If she answers my question, I'm no longer awake to hear it...

****

Boston General Hospital

I run a finger over my left cheekbone as I lay waiting for the nurse
to return. It's still a little tender, nothing major. Bet I'll have a
nice shiner, though. I don't know why I have to stay here any longer.
I feel *fine*...

Damnit, the nurse said she'd be right back. Where the hell is she? I
push the call button for the third time, call "Nurse!" a couple times,
and finally I just get out of bed, intent on finding her.

I see a glimpse of red just outside the door, and then I'm stopped in
my tracks by my partner, looking very much "Doctor" Scully. I feel
like a little boy caught trying to sneak out of school.

"Where do you think you're going?" she asks. Damn, that schoolboy
image hits me again, and I smile sheepishly.

"To find the nurse. She said she was gonna talk to the doctor about me
goin' home. I could be dyin' in here, for all she knows."

"Well you're not, Agent Doggett," Scully replies. She explains that
she met the nurse and has the information from the doctor. I'm clear
of the infection.

Let's cut to the chase. "Well, can I get outta here?"

"Yes." She looks pleased to be able to tell me that.

I start to walk around to the curtained divider, to change into my
clothes, when I suddenly remember about the back of hospital gowns.
With just a hint of a smile, I turn to face my partner, and walk
sideways into the changing area. Scully has the good sense to avert
her eyes a bit, in case I hadn't turned fast enough.

I trust this woman with my life, and she does the same with me. But
when it comes down to familiarity, we really don't know each other all
that well. In the ways that count in the field, yes. I usually know
exactly what she's gonna do, how she's gonna react, and that's saved
my ass a coupla times. But after hours? She is still very much closed-off to me.
I realize that I really wish that were different.

Pulling my mind back to the case as I pull on my pants, I ask about
the rest of the people who were in the tunnel with me. Scully tells
me that the boy is with social services, and that plastic surgeons are
working on Bianco and Melnick. Dr. Lyle has been discharged.

I slip my t-shirt on over my head. Glad they were able to bring our
suit-cases up here, 'cuz I don't *ever* wanna see that shirt I was
wearing in the tunnel again.

"You know, I'd like to think that this is over," I tell my partner.
"But there's gonna be hell to pay for these guys."

"No... it's *over*, Agent Doggett," I hear from outside the curtain.

I step out, not caring that I'm still zipping up my pants. "Excuse me?
This guy Karras put a *train* back on the tracks. He recklessly
endangered peoples' lives."

Scully holds up the envelope she carries. "But there is no proof of
that."

"What do you mean, there's no proof?"

With a sigh, Scully explains that the organism is dead. There is no
trace of it anymore. It was destroyed, probably by the electrical
charge I set off.

I don't try to hide a look of disgust, as I slip a dress shirt on.
"We've got victims. Dead bodies."

Since they were infected with a pathogen that still hasn't been
identified, Scully tells me that not one criminal charge will stick.

"These guys were just doing their job," she goes on. "Keeping the
trains running." She pauses, and lowers her eyes. "But they've got you
to thank. And not just for saving their butts."

"No, you figured it out," I insist, "I was just your eyes and ears."
By now she *has* to know I'd do almost anything for her, without
question. Is it too much to ask for a little openness in return?

She smiles. I think her smile affects me like it does because I see it
so rarely. She hasn't had much to smile *about* since Mulder
disappeared last year. And then there's whatever health issues she's
still keeping from me.

"Agent Scully-" I start. She raises her head, and meets my eyes, just
for a moment. I feel like maybe it's time. Maybe *now* she'll tell me
what the hell is *really* going on. Maybe she'll pick up the thread of
conversation I zoned out of in the ambulance. Damned pain meds.

Just that quickly, the moment passes. A sad look crosses her face, and
her voice almost sounds teary. "Let's go home."

And she is gone. I watch her thoughtfully as she leaves the room. Then
I grab the rest of my clothes, still stuffed in my suitcase, and
follow her down the hall and out of the hospital. I feel like I was
*so* close, and now I'm right back where I started, with nothing. I
wonder if she'll ever *really* open up to me.
 

~fini~
 

Author's Notes:

Doggett's thoughts as they leave the hospital should "feel" familiar.
That's intentional. They're almost Mulder's exact words to Scully in
one of the last scenes of FTF.

Much appreciation as always to Doggett's Bitch, who did a bit of
beta-ing on this piece, as well as the always-welcome Doggett
insights. :)