Isolation (15/16)
by ML 

email: msnsc21@yahoo.com
Rating: PG13 for mild violence and swearing

Type: Gen, het. M&S, a character/other pairing 
Disclaimer: You know the tune, sing it with me now: I don't own
them, I'm just borrowing for a while.  The original characters:
they're mine, all mine.

Author's Notes: This was written for the 2010 XF BigBang.  
I couldn't have done it without Wendy's expert beta.  Bouquets 
of thanks to her! That said, if there are any errors or omissions, 
that's my fault.  More notes at the end of the story.  

Summary: It's time to come out of hiding and get back to the
business of saving the world.  Mulder is looking for people to help
him and Scully do just that.  With so many of his former friends and
colleagues either missing or dead, he gets help from an unexpected
quarter -- and finds that he's not the only one who's ready to get
back into circulation.   

Takes place in 2008, after the events of "I Want to Believe".

We never gave up, we never will.  In the end, if that's the best
they can say about us, it'll do.
-John Fitzgerald Byers

x-x-x

Chapter Fifteen

They arrived at the hospital in caravan.  Scully drove Annie and
Brian.  Mulder followed with Fletcher, Frohike, Langly, Gibson, and
Connie.  No one wanted to wait at the warehouse for the outcome. 
Scully had tried to convince them that not everyone had to come to
the hospital.  In the end, however, it didn't seem fair that anyone
be left out.

Only Annie was allowed to go into the room with Brian and Scully. 
The rest were asked to wait in a small conference room that Nurse
Chavez had reserved as a "family waiting room" at Scully's request.

Annie did her best not to cry as Brian was attached to various
monitors by Dr. Scully.    

"You're going to get sleepy," Scully explained to Brian, "and, when
you wake up, you'll remember who you were before."

Brian nodded.  "Can Annie stay with me?" he asked.

"Of course," Scully said.  Her own throat was tight.  How many times
had she sat by Mulder's hospital bed, watching and waiting for him to
wake up and see her?  It wouldn't be like that for Annie.  Her
partner was being taken away from her, possibly forever.

She blinked back her own tears and injected the antidote into the
drip.  "I'll be right outside if you need anything," she said, and
left them alone.

Brian smiled up at Annie.  "I love you," he said.  "I'll do my best
to remember that."

"I love you too," Annie said.  "And I'll never forget."  She leaned
down and kissed him, and felt his lips return the pressure before
they relaxed into unconsciousness. 

x-x-x

Down the hall in the conference room, the rest waited for word on
their friend.

Frohike was telling Langly about finding Byers in Perdita, and about
Annie.  "Don't you think she looks like Susanne?" Frohike asked
Langly.

"Dude, how can you tell what she's like?  You've known her about
three days."  Langly said.  "Just because they're both blonde doesn't
make her like Susanne."

"Blonde, and a scientist," Frohike said.  "She was teaching high
school science, but she studied microbiology."

"It doesn't matter," Langly said.  "Susanne was a dream, anyway. 
Byers knew he'd probably never see her again."

"Well, Frohike said, "Annie seems nice, and she seems to love Byers -
- I was never sure that Susanne did."

"You were just jealous," Langly accused.

"No way," Frohike said, hand on his heart.  "I've always loved Agent
Scully.  Nothing can turn me from that love.  It's a pure and devoted
love, the physical is not necessary."

"Only because Scully would probably kick your ass if you tried
anything."

"Who's Susanne?"  Annie asked from the door.  She'd sat with Brian
for more than an hour.  Scully was in his room now, checking his
vital signs.

"No one important," Frohike said quickly.

"Please tell me," Annie asked.

"She was someone Byers knew a long time ago," Frohike said.  "They
weren't dating or anything."

"No, Byers just had a massive crush on her," Langly interjected. 
"Frohike thinks you look like her."

"She was a damsel in distress.  Byers helped her out.  She
disappeared.  She came back, and needed help again.  Byers helped her
out again.  We helped her disappear.  End of story," Frohike said. 
"It was more than ten years ago."

"Oh," Annie said.  That wasn't something that had been mentioned on
the websites they'd looked at together.  But of course Brian had had
a life as John Byers.  These two knew more than any website would
know.
"Can you tell me more about Bri -- John Byers?" she asked.

"What do you want to know?"  Langly asked.

"Whatever you can tell me," Annie said.

When Scully checked in on the group in the room, Langly and Frohike
were regaling Annie with tales of their friend.

"It's a little like a wake," she remarked to Mulder out in the
hallway.

"A little," he agreed.  "What do you think will happen when Byers
wakes up?"

"I don't think he's going to know Annie," she replied.  "It's going
to be hard for her."

Mulder put his arms around Scully.  "I know."

Scully rested her head against Mulder's chest.  "I wish there was
something we could do for her."

"Well," said Mulder, "we can give her something to put her back up
against.  I have an idea."

x-x-x

When Annie checked in on Brian again, Scully was by his bedside. 
She nodded, and whispered, "Why don't you get some sleep," and
indicated the other bed in the room.  Mulder was dozing in a
reclining chair nearby.  

She shook her head and wandered back to the waiting room.  Someone
had brought in a couple of thermal containers of coffee and hot
water.  

Connie sat there alone, stirring a cup of what looked like cocoa. 
She gave a little half-smile.  "Want some hot chocolate?" she 
offered.

Annie nodded and Connie got another mug and filled it from the hot
water container, handing it and a packet of hot chocolate mix to
Annie.

"Where did everybody go?" Annie asked.

Connie shrugged.  "That Fletcher guy said he had to go, and the rest
went down to see if the cafeteria was still open."

"Which one was Fletcher?" Annie asked.  She'd been introduced to
everyone hurriedly, but her mind had been on other things.

"He's the suit with the creepy smile," Connie said.  "I don't like
him," she added unnecessarily.

Annie nodded.  "I'm sorry, I know we were introduced," she said to
Connie, "I don't know your connection to the other people here.  Did
you work with them before?"

Connie shook her head. "No, the one they call Langly -- he was my
boss until he remembered who he really is.  Then the bastards burned
down his business."

"These people?  The ones here now?" Annie asked, shocked.

"No, except I think that Fletcher guy might have.  He kidnapped
Roger and brought him here."

"I hear he's the one responsible for the guys regaining their
memories?"

"Yeah, and losing them in the first place," Connie confirmed. 
"Langly used to be Roger Mintage.  Now he doesn't remember any of it.
He doesn't remember me, and I saw him every day for nearly two 
years."

"He doesn't remember anything?"

"That's what he says.  The doctor lady, Scully, says that maybe
someday he will.  No one knows for sure."

Annie stirred her chocolate for a few minutes.  "Is that why you're
here?  Do you hope he'll remember?"

Connie shrugged.  "They told me I could stay as long as I like. 
Langly's teaching me stuff -- he's a real computer genius.  So I
guess I have a job."

Annie noticed that Connie hadn't answered.  She understood that. 
She had her own unspoken hopes, her own unanswered questions.  Right
now,  nothing seemed real.  Until she knew for sure what was
happening to her Brian, she couldn't think clearly.  

x-x-x

Finally too exhausted to do anything else, Annie went back to
Brian's room.

Dr. Scully stood at Brian's bedside.  The monitors seemed to be
beeping more more quickly than they had before.  Brian was turning
his head from side to side and his eyelids were fluttering.

"He's doing fine," Scully whispered.  She gestured to Annie to come
stand by the bed.  She pointed to the monitors, explaining the
activity.  "He's dreaming right now."

Annie hesitantly reached her hand out to smooth the hair on his
forehead, looking at Scully.

"It's okay," Scully said.  "You can touch him."

Instead of touching his head, Annie put her hand over his.  "What's
he dreaming?"  She didn't want to think of him having nightmares
without being there to comfort him.

"I don't know," Scully said.  "I don't think it's nightmares.  He'd
be under much greater stress if it was."

"Br- Brian used to have nightmares, sometimes," Annie said.  She
didn't want to look away from him.  His face was so familiar, so dear
to her.  Could it be possible that he wouldn't know her when he woke
up?

"I know this is hard for you," Dr. Scully said gently.  "We won't
let anything happen to him.  Try to get some rest."

It was too late, Annie thought.  Something was already happening to
him.

Scully touched her shoulder.  "I think you should try to sleep," she
said.  "I'll wake you if I see any change."

Annie nodded and went to the empty bed.  She lay down and turned her
back to the low light by Brian's bed.  She didn't think she'd sleep. 
In a few seconds, she did.

x-x-x

"Annie."  Someone was shaking her awake.  "Annie, he's waking up."

She opened her eyes to see Mulder.  Scully was again -- still? -- at
Brian's bedside.  Out in the hall, others were quietly milling
around.  Although no natural light could be seen in this room, she
sensed that it was morning.

"Brian?" Scully was saying.  "How are you?"

Over Mulder's shoulder, Annie could see Brian's eyelids fluttering.
For a few tense seconds, no one spoke.  Brian's eyes opened.  He
reached his hand up to his chin and frowned slightly, then tried to
sit up.

"Agent Scully, what are you doing here?  Is everything okay?  What
did you call me?" he said.  "Where am I?" Then he went pale,
evidently remembering.  "I thought we died," he whispered.  "It felt
like dying."

"That's because you almost did," Fletcher said from the doorway. 
"But I saved your asses."  He, Langly, and Frohike were all standing
just outside the infirmary.

"You're the one who got us there in the first place, you scuzzball,"
Frohike said.

"All of you, out of here.  Now." Scully said firmly.

"Aye aye, Nurse Ratched," Fletcher said.

"Hey, show some respect," Frohike said.

Mulder went to the door.  "You heard Dr. Scully.  Visiting hours are
noon to eight.  Only close family members allowed."

Annie stood, frozen.  She was afraid to move, either toward the
door, or closer to the bed.

"It's okay, John," Scully was saying to Brian.  "There was an
accident.  You survived it.  So did Frohike and Langly.  They're both
fine."

Byers drew a breath of relief and looked around.  "Are they here?"

"They're outside," Mulder said, "I think you should rest a while
before seeing them."

Byers nodded.  He felt his chin again.  "Did you have to shave off
my beard?" he asked.  "I've heard they can interfere with anesthesia
masks."

"We'll talk about that later," Scully told him.  "You should
probably rest now."

Annie thought she might be able to sneak out after he'd closed his
eyes, but the slight movement she made caught his attention.  He
tried to sit up, and smiled politely at her.

"I didn't see you standing there," he said.  "Forgive me for not
getting up.  I'm John Byers.  Are you working with Agent Scully?"

"We'll explain it all later," Scully said.  "Get some rest."

Byers obediently closed his eyes again.

Mulder led Annie out of the room.  As soon as they got to the
lounge, however, the rest of the group surrounded them.

"How is he?" Langly wanted to know.

"Does he know who he is?" asked Frohike.

"He's fine," Mulder said.  "Scully's checking him out right now. 
You know the drill.  He needs to rest for a while.  Hold your 
horses."

He took Annie back out to the hallway, away from the others.  He
turned her to  face him, putting his hands on her shoulders.  "I know
this isn't easy for you.  Maybe you'd like to go back to the house
for a while?  There's not much privacy here."

Annie shook her head.  "I'm fine," she said, which elicited a smile
from Mulder.

"I don't believe that from you, any more than when I hear it from
Scully, but never mind.  If the guys -- or anyone -- bug you too
much, let me know."

Scully came out of Brian's room.  "He's resting.  Annie, I'm so
sorry.  It might change -- he might remember you later."

Annie shook her head.  "I'm going to try and be realistic about
this.  He may never --" her voice broke a little -- "never remember
our life together.  I have to get used to that."

"When he wakes up again, we'll have to tell him what we know about
his life before," Scully said.  "Do you want to be there?"

"Don't you think he'd feel obligated in some way?  I don't want
that.  I loved him as Brian, and from what his friends have told me,
I'd like him as John Byers, too.  But if Brian and John are similar,
I also know that he'd feel an obligation to me if you tell him we
were married.  Better to leave it alone.  We knew each other, that's
all."

Mulder and Scully looked at each other.  "It's up to you," Scully
said finally.  "But I think you're wrong."

x-x-x

Several hours later, Byers asked for Annie.  She went to the doorway
of his room, and was surprised to see him dressed.  He'd been sitting
in an armchair, but he stood up when she entered.  He looked like
Brian, and yet not like Brian.  There was no recognition of her in
his eyes.

"How are you?" she asked hesitantly.  She wasn't sure what to call
him.

"Doctor Scully says I'm fine," he said.  "I've had bloodwork, a CAT
scan, and my heart and EEG readings are all within normal ranges." 
He smiled ruefully.  "But other than that, I don't know how I am."

Annie nodded.  She didn't know how she was, either.

"I know you're Annie," he said.  "And I know you knew me as Brian
Jordan.  Isn't that correct?"

"Yes," Annie said.  She'd twisted her wedding ring off a while ago;
now she fingered it in her pocket.

"I hope you'll call me John," he said.  He waited until she sat in
the other chair and then sat down.  "I also hope you'll tell me about
that life," he said.  "I'm afraid I don't remember much."

"Do you remember anything?" Annie asked.  A small seed of hope
sprouted.

"Not much, just a general feeling.  I think I was happy.  They said
I was living in a small town in Northern California.  I was a
newspaper editor."  He laughed a little and shook his head.  "Not
that far off from what I was doing before."

"You were a crusading editor.  You were always writing editorials
about things that you cared about, and you made others care. 
Sometimes you made people mad, too."

"What kinds of things did I write about?"

"Preserving small-town life, while not rejecting everything modern. 
Learning to distinguish between important things and trivial things."
Annie smiled.  "You did this piece on the road repairs that the town
needed.  I thought that the Rabble would come after you with
pitchforks."

"You call the townspeople rabble?" he asked, looking confused.

"No," Annie said.  "That's the bunch at Donna's cafe.  They call
themselves the Rabble."

"Oh," he said.  It was obvious to Annie that none of these things
rang a bell.  "Before -- before I was Brian Jordan, I wrote about the
things I thought mattered, too."

"What kind of things?" Annie asked.

He thought a moment.  "About doing what's right, not what's popular.
About exposing things that were wrong."  He smiled a little,
remembering.  "I made people mad then, too."

"Did you like what you were doing?"

"I did.  I felt what I was doing was important, that what I said
needed to be said.  If I could make only one person think a little
differently about our world and what was going on in it, that was
something."

"I've heard that you did more than that.  I read that you saved a
lot of people by preventing a terrorist attack.  You kept a dangerous
toxin from being released."  

"They told me the same thing.  I remember it.  That's something I
wish I could forget." 

"But you remember that you're John Byers, and you don't remember
anything about Brian Jordan."

"I'm afraid that's true," he admitted.  "It's funny, I used to dream
of living in a small town.  Of living in a house with a white picket
fence around it."

"That was your house."  She couldn't help the tears starting in her
eyes.

Byers looked at her.  "Just my house?" he asked gently.

Unable to speak, Annie shook her head.

"In my dream, I wasn't the only one living there."

"They told me about Susanne," Annie blurted out.

He looked grave.  "Frohike and Langly like to gossip.  Sometimes
they have ideas about things that aren't quite correct."

"I'm not Susanne.  I couldn't be."

"But we were married, weren't we?"

She nodded.  "They weren't supposed to tell you.  I don't want you
to feel...like I'm a left over obligation."

"I guessed."  He held up his hand and she could see the pale line
where his ring used to be.  "You may know me as Brian, but I think
that one thing hasn't changed: I believe in the truth, and in telling
the truth."

"Then you tell me about Susanne," she insisted.  Knowing that her
Brian had lived another life was bad enough.  To also find that he
had loved someone else was like discovering an old flame had moved
back into town.  This was his reality now, and she was not a part of
it.  

"Susanne is a real person.  The idea of a life with her was a
fantasy," Byers said.  "I had an idealized view of the world, one I
wished was true.  The Susanne I wished for was part of that world." 
He shook his head.  "The reality was different.  She lived in a
dangerous world.  When our paths crossed the first time, I had no
idea how dangerous.  She was the reason I met my friends, and why I
decided it was important to expose the truth, no matter what."

"It's hard to be idealistic when people can take your life away,"
Annie said bitterly.

"That's true.  But here's something that no one else told you. 
Maybe they don't remember.  We chose to do what we did.  No one
coerced us into preventing the release of the toxin.  We made a
decision to do our best.  We knew what the consequences were.  We
traded our three lives for the lives of the many.  Then Morris
Fletcher somehow managed to save us, and in return, he wanted us to
participate in this program."

"You mean he blackmailed you into it."

"No.  He saved us first, and then asked for our assistance.  It
turned out to be a deal with the Devil, but he did save us.  Every
deal comes at a cost."

"I didn't ask for this deal!" Annie cried.  "I want things to go
back to the way they were."

This wasn't going well at all, she thought.  She was saying exactly
the words she'd told herself she wouldn't say.  Even if he hadn't
been  coerced into becoming Brian Jordan in the first place, she was
using guilt to try to force him to become Brian again.

"I'm sorry," she said.  "I didn't mean it.  I know this is hard for
you.  You didn't ask for this, either."

Byers shook his head.  "Neither of us did."  I wish I could remember
you.  I wish things had turned out differently."

"What do we do now?" she asked through her tears.

"I honestly don't know," he said.

~*~

Concluded in Chapter Sixteen