Title:  A Man Called Mulder

Author: Langleigh

Disclaimers:  The X-Files, it's characters, concepts and theories are 
not mine.  They're owned by richer people than me, so please don't 
sue.  You won't get much.

Category:  S

Key Words:  Mulder, Amnesia, AU

Archiving:  Ephemeral, Gossamer, Julie (put it where you want it.)  
My site.  All others must ask.

Feedback: Send comments to Langleigh75@c... or debchilson@y...

Spoilers: Season 8, most specifically DeadAlive and since this is AU, 
everything else after that episode is being ignored.

Rating: G/PG

Summary:  Mulder wakes up with amnesia and must figure out who he 
really is.   

Acknowledgements:  To Julie, for the beta-reading.  And suggestions. 
And just for being you.  

Another Authors Note:  I started this story right after DeadAlive and 
meant it to be AU, even then.  It's the beginning of an AU arc that 
will someday crossover with the ill-fated but much loved Lone Gunmen 
Series and will someday become MSR.  And, considering that Season 8 
is over, will remain AU.    


Part 1

When his eyelids first fluttered open, they couldn't see a thing 
beyond the cruel light which blinded them. Then, slowly, he became 
accustomed to the light and the world around him came into focus.  
When it did, he realized that he was not alone, as he had thought.  
Someone was there.  A woman.  

She had red hair and a soft, rounded face.  She was hovering over 
him, her hands touching his own, and when she realized that he was 
awake, she became very excited.  Her reaction confused him.  He 
looked at her, puzzling over what was going on and said, "Who are 
you?"

The excited look fell from the woman's face.  "Mulder," she said, 
speaking a name he did not recognize though it did hold some 
familiarity in the back of his mind.  "It's me.  Scully."

He looked blankly at her, the name meaning nothing to him.  

"You?  You don't remember me?"  the Scully-woman asked.  He shook 
his head slowly.  "What * do* you remember, Mulder?" 

He closed his eyes, trying to think.  The warm darkness behind his 
eyelids was comforting, and he found he preferred it to the lights 
surrounding the Scully-woman.

"Mulder?" she urged, and he opened his eyes once again.  "What do you 
remember?" she all but whispered.

"I" he looked away.  "Nothing," he said at last. "Nothing."  He 
heard her soft gasp and turned back to her, studying her shocked face 
with the eyes of an innocent.  

"Who am I?" he asked.

*x*x*x*x*

After the Scully-woman left, doctors and nurses rushed in and out of 
the room, talking to him"asking him questions he did not know how to 
answer.  He could hear someone crying just beyond the door.  It 
sounded like it could have been the Scully-woman, but she did not 
return and he did not understand why she would be crying.  

Then a bald, heavyset man in a gray suit came into the room 
accompanied by one of the doctors.  

"Mr. Mulder," the doctor said, calling him by the name he'd come to 
realize must be his own, though it rang no bells for him at 
all.  "This is Assistant Director Walter Skinner, from the FBI.  He'd 
like to talk to you for a while."

The man in the bed just looked blankly at the man in the gray 
suit.  "FBI?"  he asked, his facial expression indicating that he had 
no clue what that was.  

"The Federal Bureau of Investigation,"  the doctor supplied.  Then 
the doctor addressed Gray Suit.  "I told you he was like this.  He 
seems to have no real knowledge of the world he lives in."  Gray Suit 
nodded and the doctor left.

"Federal Bureau of" Mulder whispered the title sounded familiar to 
him somehow, and he seemed to know that this was some form law 
enforcement agency. "Am I in some kind of trouble?" he asked.  

"No, you're not in any trouble that I know of," Skinner replied.  

"Then why are you here?  Do you know who I am?"  he asked.  "Because 
I asked the red-head who was here when I woke up.  She just started 
crying."

Skinner heaved a sigh, and said, "Your name is Fox Mulder.  You're an 
agent with FBI""
"The Federal Bureau of Investigation?" Mulder asked, repeating what 
the doctor had told him.  "Are you my boss?" he asked.

"Sort of " Skinner said.  

"Do I like you?" Mulder asked.

"I guess you could say we've been friends," Skinner answered.

"And that red-head.. she called herself Scully.  Who is she?"

"She"  Skinner hesitated.  What could he say about Scully?  It 
seemed that if Mulder had remembered anything or anyone, it would 
have been her.  "She was your partner.  You've worked together for a 
long time.  You don't remember any of this, do you?"  he asked, 
noting the increasingly troubled look on the recovered agent's face.

Mulder shook his head.  "Should I?"

(continued in part 2)

Part 2

Scully paused outside the door to Mulder's hospital room, hesitating 
over whether or not to go inside.  Her mind replayed the scene in 
Skinner's office earlier that day and the words Skinner had 
said:  "The doctors say his memory could return at any time or not 
at all.  No one really knows any more than Mulder does at this 
point.  I'm sorry, Agent Scully."  He went on to tell her that the 
doctors wanted to see her.  They felt that, as Mulder's partner of 
seven years, she might have a positive influence on the progress he 
made.  

The doctor confirmed what Skinner had already told her and then asked 
if she might be willing to take some time out from her busy schedule 
to spend time with Mulder.  That's what brought her back to the room 
from which she had fled in tears the day before.  
 
Inside, she could hear Mulder talking to himself, repeating his name"
his full name"to himself as if testing the way it sounded on his 
ears.  The sound of him saying "Hello, I'm Fox Mulder," in a cheerful-
yet-robotic voice nearly broke her heart.  Part of her wanted to turn 
and run, but her heart refused to give up on him.  They'd been 
through so much already.  Surely a little thing like amnesia wouldn't 
keep them apart for long.

*x*x*x*x*

"My name is Fox"" a knock on his hospital room door stopped the man 
who was now coming to know himself as Fox Mulder in mid-
sentence.  "Come in," he called out.  

"Hi.  Care for some company?"  It was the redhead from yesterday.  
The Scully-woman.  

"Oh, hi!" Mulder exclaimed.  "Yeah, no problem."  She came in and he 
noticed her rounded belly for the first time.  He puzzled over it for 
a few minutes, and then said,  "You're having a baby."  

Scully nodded, and Mulder smiled.  "I'm due in a few weeks.  You you 
missed a lot while you were gone," she told him.

His smile faded slightly and then rebounded as he said.  "Your 
husband must be very proud of the baby.  Do I know him?"  

Scully gasped, and Mulder's smile vanished.  "I'm sorry.  Did I say 
something wrong?"

"No no, you didn't," she assured him.  

"Good," he beamed.  "I was hoping to apologize for making you cry 
yesterday.  You're too pretty to be crying."

"Oh you don't have to apologize, Mulder.  It's not your fault that 
you don't remember me," Scully told him.

"But I want to.  I didn't mean to hurt you."

"Mulder" she began.

"Please, call me Fox," he corrected her.  "We were partners; we 
should be on a first name basis by now."

"Okay, Mul"Fox."  Scully replied.  The man on the bed seemed not to 
notice the increasingly troubled expression on her face.  

 "What should I call you?" he asked.  

"You usually call me Scully," she offered.  When he frowned, she 
added, "Dana."

"Dana"  Mulder tasted the name on his tongue.  It sounded beautiful, 
like the woman before him.  He smiled; being with this woman made him 
feel like smiling, even if he didn't know why.  

"How long have we known each other, Dana?" he asked, still testing 
the way her name sounded.  

"We were partners for seven years before before you" her voice 
choked.

"Before I got sick?" Mulder asked.  He didn't know much about what 
had really happened to him, and the doctors weren't forthcoming.  
Scully hesitated before nodding.  He wanted to ask her more, but 
before could, a doctor came in, shooing her out.  


(continued in part 3)


Part 3  
 
"Fox Mulder.. my name is Fox Mulder" Mulder muttered to himself as 
he packed the few belongings he had with him"a change of clothes 
provided by Scully"and waited to be discharged from the hospital.  
He'd been there a little over two weeks, undergoing treatment for his 
various injuries and therapy to help with the amnesia.  While the 
injuries had healed and the therapy had helped his rebuild his store 
of general knowledge, his entire life remained a total blank.  

The doctors had asked for the help of his co-workers in the FBI, and 
while Skinner and Dana Scully seemed willing to help him, she was 
close to having her baby and could not spend all that much time with 
him.  The Assistant Director was also busy these days.  Not that they 
totally ignored him, either.  One of them visited every day, but 
Mulder got the feeling they were uncomfortable talking to him.  And 
Dana always seemed about to cry.  She never stayed long.  

Mulder felt sorry for her.  He could tell that they had once been 
close friends, and he wished more than anything that he could 
remember their past.  His past, he corrected as he flagged down a 
cab.  

"Where to, mister?" the cabbie asked, and Mulder handed him a slip of 
paper with an address written.  This was where Dana Scully and Walter 
Skinner said he lived--an apartment not far from the Bureau.  They'd 
kept his apartment for him while he was sick, he'd been told, and 
religiously fed his fish.  

I have fish, he thought, wondering what kind they were and how long 
he'd had them. 
 
*x*x*x*x*

An hour later, Mulder sat staring at his fish, watching them swim 
round and round in their tank.  He fed them a little fish food, and 
watched as they gobbled it.  

"Did you miss me?" he asked them, not really expecting--or getting, 
for that matter--an answer.  "Didn't think so," he muttered, looking 
around the apartment.  He decided to so a little exploring.  Maybe 
seeing the place where he'd lived most of his former life would help 
jog his memory.  

The apartment was sparsely decorated: black leather couch, 
television, radio, a rather extensive collection of video tapes--some 
of them clearly pornographic and most of them in boxes from the local 
video store--a few books here and there, nothing special.  The 
bedroom was the real shocker.  It was piled high with cardboard boxes 
and other unused bits of furniture.  Underneath it all, in the center 
of the room was a deflated waterbed.  

"Weird..." Mulder breathed.  He didn't know what to make of it, and 
he wondered what kind of person could live in a place so devoid of 
homey touches.  It was as if his former self had only slept here and 
had not really *lived* there.

He'd have to go through all this stuff, he realized, but a more 
immediate concern was his growling stomach.  "I really should go pick 
up some groceries now," he said to no one in particular.  "Car...." 
he muttered.  "I don't even know if I have a car to drive."  

*x*x*x*x*

"I'm glad you came into see me, Mulder," Skinner said as he ushered 
Mulder into his office.  

"Yeah, well, you said you knew what happened to my car," Mulder told 
him.  "Though, for the life of me, I can't figure out why you made it 
sound like a big secret."

Skinner frowned a little.  "No, you wouldn't, I suppose.  Mulder... 
maybe you ought to sit down."

"Okay."  Mulder sat.  

Skinner started by asking what he remembered about why he was in the 
hospital.  

"Nothing... it's all just this black void," Mulder told him.  

"I see... "  said Skinner.  "You have no idea how hard this makes 
what I have to tell you."

"Just say it," Mulder told him.  He was beginning to get annoyed with 
the man who was supposed to be his friend and boss.  

"You weren't sick, Mulder.  You were dead."

"Dead?"  

"Yeah, dead.  For over a month. And then you just came back to life."

If this was some kind of joke, it wasn't very funny.  "What does this 
have to do with my car?"

"You're car was impounded when we thought you'd been abduc--"  
Skinner stopped himself suddenly.  "It was sold after you'd been 
declared dead."

"When you thought I'd been... what?  Abducted?  Like by aliens?"  
Mulder couldn't believe what he was hearing.  All this time he'd been 
thinking this Skinner guy was a sane man.  "Is this some kind of 
joke?"

"It's no joke.  You're free to talk with Agent Scully if you wish.  
She'll tell you the truth.  In fact, I wish you would go down there.  
Maybe seeing your old office might help straighten you out."

"Down where?"  Mulder asked.  

"To the X-Files..."  

(continued in Part 4)



Part 4

 "I don't know why I'm doing this," Mulder muttered as he followed 
the directions Skinner had given him down to the basement office 
where the X-Files was hidden.  None of this was familiar to him.  And 
what was this nonsense about him being dead... and abducted by 
aliens?  What kind of idiot does this Skinner guy think I am? 

*x*x*x*x*


Mulder blinked.  It was the only thing he knew to do.  Dana Scully--
this beautiful, obviously intelligent woman whom he'd come to respect 
in these last couple of weeks--had just told him the same thing that 
Skinner had been hinting at.     

"Do you really believe that I was abducted by aliens... who did 
something to me that *killed* me... and that I came back to life 
after I'd been *buried*?"  he asked.

"We, ah, don't actually know if you were really dead," said Scully's 
new partner, a man introduced to Mulder as Agent Doggett.  "You might 
have just been in some sort of stasis."

Mulder shook his head and looked pointedly at Dana Scully.  "Do *you* 
believe this?" he asked.  When she nodded her head, he sighed at the 
outrageousness of it all.  "Why?"  he asked in a tortured voice. 

"Because you do, Mulder..." came her reply.  "I mean... you *used* 
to.  This... the X-Files, aliens, abductions... it was your life 
before you disappeared.  You *made* me believe, because of everything 
we've been through together."     

Oh, this is really too much, Mulder thought.  It was giving him a 
headache, not only because she'd called him by his last name when he 
told her not to, but because the whole thing was ludicrous.  Rubbing 
his temples, he had to ask. "I made you believe in all of this?  
Why?  Why would I believe in something so absurd?"

"Mulder..."  Scully began and stopped as he frowned at her.  "Fox... 
what do you remember about your sister?"

*x*x*x*x*

Fox Mulder sat on the floor in his living room surrounded by a mess 
of papers, files and newspaper clippings.  According to Dana Scully, 
these things had been his life.  He read about his past--his sister's 
disappearance, his life, joining the FBI, and his past cases with 
Dana--all the while feeling as if these things had happened to 
someone else.  Someone clearly insane.  

"This is the guy they want me to be?" he asked his fish, and not 
getting any answer he set down the last case file and stood 
up.  "What kind of loony does this?  What kind of loony is so 
obsessed with finding a sister, who by rights is dead, that he joins 
the FBI so he can chase little green men across the country?"  He 
shook his head in amazement.    

"Look at this place," he continued ranting to the fish.  "It's bleak 
and lonely... and sad."  The man who lived here--the man they wanted 
him to be, he silently added--was a sad, sad man and sorely in need 
of a more healthy direction to his life.  

"I can't be that man," he said softly.  "I can't be the man I was 
before."  

Making up his mind for the first time since he'd awakened two and a 
half weeks earlier, Fox decided to call Skinner in the morning and 
find out how he could resign from the FBI.  He realized that his job 
there was too tied into this insane past life that he had no 
recollection of--and that he was repulsed by.   

Just thinking about walking away from it all--wiping the slate clean 
and starting a new life--made him feel better.  Smiling for the first 
time all day, he decided it was time to redecorate this lonely little 
apartment... and to redecorate his life.  



(the end)