================================================= NOTICE: Deslea's URL is now http://www.deslea.com, or http://fiction.deslea.com. Email address is now deslea@deslea.com or drjudd@catholic.org. This information supercedes all other information in this file. ================================================= Borderline *R* Deslea R. Judd drjudd@primus.com.au/drjudd@catholic.org Copyright 1997 DISCLAIMER This work is based on The X Files, a creation of Chris Carter owned by him, Twentieth Century Fox, and Ten-Thirteen Productions. Fox Mulder, Dana Scully, Walter Skinner, Margaret Scully, Pendrell, and Ellen remain the intellectual property of those parties and are used without their consent and without commercial gain. Liam Mulder is my creation and may not be used without my permission. Spoilers: Seasons 1-3; Season 4 to Paper Hearts. In particular: One Breath, Anasazi, Terma (oblique reference) and Paper Hearts. Time Frame: After Paper Hearts. Category: Story, Romance/Angst. Rating: R for a dirty word here and there and pretty low-key sex. Warning: MSR, but nothing too fluffy for the most part. Note: Not linked to my Offspring/On The Outside universe or Lyrics Of The Heart. Summary: A variation on the abusive-boyfriend fanfic challenge. Scully and Mulder are in a relationship, but the tragic legacy of his childhood is Borderline Personality Disorder - a disorder which leaves him with uncontrollable rages. Details the duo's struggle to avert a dometic violence situation. Does NOT glorify the struggles of domestic abusers. Be gentle with this one as some aspects of it are semi-autobiographical. The rest of this work will be posted, at least one part per week, over the next couple of months. Clarification: I usually use American language in my fanfics (on the basis that that's how Mulder and Scully speak); but I refuse to call a cot a crib. A crib, in my opinion, is a cradle...so Liam sleeps in a cot. Sorry!!! Fan mail is always appreciated!!! My e-mail is drjudd@tig.com.au. or drjudd@catholic.org. Archivists, feel free to add this to your collections; but be sure to let me know. This and my other stories may be found at http://home.primus.com.au/drjudd (shameless plug). Borderline 1/? *R* Deslea R. Judd drjudd@primus.com.au/drjudd@catholic.org Copyright 1997 ONE Mulder was fuming. Scully was late, and the baby was screaming at the top of his lungs. Had been for hours, despite feeding and changing. Wanted the one thing Mulder couldn't give him - the breast. The woman they got in to clean had had a domestic crisis and cancelled on them, and they had guests due over in a few hours. To top it off, Skinner had just phoned to chew him out about his latest expense report. He patted the five-month-old's bottom in a gentle, monotonous movement. Liam sniffled and hiccupped, winding down. Mulder breathed a sigh of relief, and shifted the child's weight. Bad move. Liam strained towards his chest, his mouth wide, trying to latch on. He pressed his lips against the fabric, the flat chest, with an air of desperation, whimpering. Finding nothing, he opened his mouth and screamed again. Mulder felt an overwhelming rage bubbling within him. He gritted his teeth in a grimace that was so tight it hurt, pacing faster and faster. He patted the baby's bottom, trying to calm him, but Liam's cries increased into yelps. The telephone rang in the middle of it all. Mulder paced furiously to the phone and snatched it up, yelling, "WHAT?!" The line was dead. The beep-beep-beep of the telephone in one ear and Liam's yelps in the other were too much. His patting of the baby grew harder and harder until he knew he was very close to the line between patting and smacking. A look of fear flashed across his features. Damn it, he had to get the baby somewhere safe - preferably somewhere as far from him as possible. Mulder ran to their bedroom, biting into his lip until he drew blood. The effort to restrain himself *hurt*. It was like holding the lid down on a pressure cooker. He could *feel* his jaws aching as he fought the urge to scream, knowing as he did that to scream was to release the demons within him that made him so...so...*dangerous*. He saw the cot at the end of their bed. It was only a few paces away, but it seemed like miles. He *had* to get Liam there safely, he *had* to. Just two paces more...one...thank you God, thank you God... Mulder put his child into the cot, and left him there, screaming. He ran across the landing, down the stairs, to the kitchen at the other end of the house and punched the brick wall. "I'm NOT going to hurt him! I'm NOT going to hurt him!" he shouted with each punch, trying desperately to shut out the baby's wailing. The blood streamed from his knuckles, but he didn't care. He realised that the reason he could hear Liam's screams was that the baby monitor was on. He put his fist through it. The monitor crackled, but the sound kept coming. He punched and punched and punched again. "Shut up, shut up, shut UP you stupid bastard of a machine!" The montior was quiet now, but he kept on punching until he'd punched through the machine to the wall behind it. He struck the steel wall mount with the side of his hand, drawing more blood. He kept on hitting it, becoming more angry, rather than less. Somehow the bleeding helped, though...as though it was draining away some of his momentum. There was a rattling sound outside, then the sound of tumblers turning. Scully walked in to the appalling sight of her wild-eyed, sweat-drenched husband punching a brick wall, his shirt covered with his own blood. The mail she'd been flipping through fell to the floor, unnoticed. "Mulder, you're bleeding-" "Get out, get the baby out, NOW!" he shouted, still punching the wall. Scully didn't need to be told twice. She ran up the stairs to their bedroom and lifted the wailing baby from the cot positioned at the foot of their bed. Grabbing a few toiletries, she stuffed them into the nappy bag and flew back through the house. She could hear Mulder shouting, "I'm NOT going to hurt them!" as she ran past him. "We'll be at Mom's, Mulder. I love you." She slammed the door. "Mom? Can we come in?" Margaret smiled gently at her daughter, not without sympathy. "Problems at home?" Scully shifted uncomfortably. "Can we come in before we start dissecting my marriage?" Margaret stood aside and followed them to the lounge. She took Scully's coat and bag, put Liam down in the playpen she kept ready for them and sat down opposite her daughter. She waited. Scully took a sip from the soft drink she'd bought at the fast-food place she'd stopped at to nurse Liam. "Oh, Mom. He tries so hard." Margaret looked at her daughter sadly. "Has he hit you?" Scully shook her head. "He's never laid a hand on us, I swear. I know you think I'm protecting him, but I'm not." "Aren't you?" "No!" She sat up angrily. "Do you see a mark on Liam or me? I'll strip and prove it, if you like. I won't have you thinking of him that way. Not when he tries so hard." She hung her head in her hands. "Mom, I probably would protect him if it were just me. But with Liam...no. The day he hits me is the day we leave." Margaret touched her daughter's hand. "You think it will come to that?" Scully shook her head. "No, Mom. He says he's motivated to make sure that doesn't happen, and I believe him. But...he gets these rages and sometimes it's so close." Hesitantly, she described the scene she had come home to that afternoon - Mulder, bloodied and furious at one end of the house, and Liam screaming at the other. Margaret's face twisted with compassion as Dana told of the injuries he'd done himself in his bid to protect their son. She said for the third time, "He tries so hard, and he hates himself for these episodes. And they happen so often. What if I'd been another half hour? I'd have gotten home to a child who'd been screaming hysterically for a half hour and a husband with no hands left." "Or worse," Margaret suggested, cautiously. Scully shook her head. "No, Mom. He'd have stayed away from Liam as long as he'd needed to. He'd have left the house if necessary. I'd hate for Liam to be left alone in the house, but it beats the alternative." Margaret looked over at Liam, smiling faintly. "Dana, honey, Fox needs help. You know that." Scully nodded slowly. "I know that, Mom. And so does he. But we have to be careful. What if he loses his job? What if the Bureau finds out he's been diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder? This could be just the excuse they need to put him out of harm's way." "Can they do that? Isn't it discrimination?" Her daughter shrugged. "They couldn't fire him, but they could reassign him - probably back to Violent Crimes Unit, in profiling. Out of the field. It amounts to the same thing - no more Mulder, no more X Files. I don't have enough years' seniority to be assigned authority over a division. Two more years, maybe; but not now." She paused. "Besides, there's something else, too. What if the authorities classified Liam as at risk by virtue of living with Mulder? What if they took him off us?" Margaret shook her head. "No, honey. At worst, they'd order you to live apart if you want to keep him - not necessarily a bad idea, as much I know it would hurt you. There's no reason you couldn't still function as a family. But that's worst-case scenario. Fox wants to get better, and you said yourself - he hasn't hurt either of you." Scully sighed deeply. "It's just so hard. BPD is a fuck of an illness - sorry," she added at her mother's reproving look. Margaret hated bad language. Margaret rubbed her temples. "We need some tea. Come with me and talk to me while I make it." Scully nodded and rose, following her mother to the kitchen. She went to the cupboard and passed her mother the teapot and two mugs. "What exactly is BPD, honey?" Scully leaned back against the wall. "Well, it's in DSM-IV. It's thought by some - and I support this - to be a manifestation, or secondary condition to, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. In Mulder's case, I think it developed subsequent to his sister's disappearance." She paused. "You might remember that just before Missy died Mulder's water was poisoned, and he started acting strangely...he was aggressive and unstable." Maggie nodded, spooning tea into the teapot. "His condition has been more pronounced since then...I think the poisoning was a catalyst which brought his condition into prominence." She passed a weary hand over her forehead. "Its manifestation includes somatic presentation - sleep disturbances, for example - Mulder rarely sleeps; dissociation - Mulder literally forgets things that have happened to him for periods of time, and he cuts himself off emotionally. It's an uphill battle to have a relationship with him because he cuts himself off from me -" she paused, thinking of those months after his father's death "- becomes emotionally frozen - and because he's so cut off from the events of his life, like his father's death, that he can't deal with them. Even his sister's disappearance, even though it's very focal for him, is fundamentally dissociated. He uses his crusade to find her as a way of literally blocking out the fact that she's missing. His crusade is so entrenched and constant that it blurs the long lapse of time between him in the present and her disappearance all those years ago." Margaret jolted, reminded of the time when Dana was so ill and Fox had fought so hard to find the people who had hurt her to avoid grieving for her. She switched off the kettle and poured the water into the teapot. "What do you really think about that, honey? You've never told me." Scully shook her head. "I don't know, Mom. I think that possibly his story is true. I know he believes it to be, and I know from my work that it is - I hesitate to admit it, but I must - possible. But I also think that his belief may itself be a dissociative strategy - that possibly that man who claimed he killed her really did so, and that maybe Mulder witnessed the act." Margaret nodded. "Okay. What else?" Scully poured the tea. "What do you mean - Oh! You mean more BPD stuff?" Her mother nodded. "Well, other signs include low anxiety tolerance, poor impulse control - oh, Mom, you know what Mulder's like - and a poor ability to enjoy work or recreation. There are also a lot of things like magical thinking, hypersensitivity, unstable relationships, self-destructive behaviour, and a poor grasp of standards of social behaviour." Her mother sipped her tea, saying grimly, "That's Fox to a tee." Scully walked to the living room, Margaret hot on her heels. "Yes, it is," she agreed. "The rages are more a byproduct of everything else I've mentioned - impulse control, dissociation, self-destructive behaviour, hypersensitivity, anxiety tolerance, yadda yadda yadda. He's in psychotherapy, but it will be years before he's well enough for this to not be a frequent problem." Margaret picked Liam up. "And for now?" Scully shook her head. "I don't know, Mom." "I just don't know." The house was dark and quiet when they arrived home. Scully let herself in, and deposited Liam, asleep in his capsule, on the floor of the living room. She went to the kitchen and flicked on the light, surveying the damage. The baby monitor was shattered, hanging off the wall. The steel wall bracket was splattered with dried blood. There were patches of paint missing from the wall, bare bricks exposed. She made a small sound of horror...compassion. She turned and left the room. "Mulder? Are you home?" Scully walked from room to room. She finally found him at the top of the stairs, his head in his ruined hands. His shoulders were slumped, and he was shaking. He didn't acknowledge her. She reached out with one hand and ran it through his damp hair. He was filthy, sweaty, disheveled; but she couldn't bring herself to mind. "Fox?" she whispered. Finally, he looked up. "You came back," he said tonelessly. Her voice was gentle and sad. "Of course I did." He looked away. "I keep thinking one of these times you won't." Scully frowned, wondering what she should say. She opted for honesty. "If you'd hurt Liam, I wouldn't have. But I don't believe that will ever happen." Mulder nodded slowly, accepting what he already knew. Finally, he said, "I called Ellen and cancelled tonight. Said you weren't feeling well." Scully gave a wan smile. "That's right, blame me." Mulder caught her hand, a look of alarm spreading over his face. "No, Dana. Never you. This is me...my problem...my fault. You and Liam mean the world to me, and you've done nothing wrong." Scully nodded, looking down at his hands. They were black with bruises, and his knuckles were encrusted with blood. There was a gaping wound on one side of his hand. "Your poor hands," she whispered. "You came off worse than us." "Thank God," Mulder muttered, but she didn't hear him. She was on her way down the stairs. "I'll get the baby and come and take care of them. Go have a shower." When she came back up and moved the baby from capsule to cot, she found Mulder in the ensuite, still clothed. She smiled faintly, reached into the shower, and turned it on. When the water was just right, she said gently, "Go on, Fox." He roused himself, and took off his clothes. Scully watched him, maternally. He stepped into the shower and absent-mindedly started to wash himself. She poked her head around the glass door. "You need help, Mulder," she said, raising her voice slightly to be heard over the running water. Mulder replied, "I'm in psychotherapy." His voice was moody...sulky. With self-restraint, Scully ignored his petulant tone. She said reasonably, "I know, but you need help with coping with this stuff now. From someone who knows what they're doing in this area." Mulder's brow creased. He shook his head. "Scully, I don't have the energy to track someone like that down." Damn it, she had him at a disadvantage. He was naked and vulnerable. It wasn't fair. Resisting the temptation to punch him herself, she said evenly, "Then let me! Let me, and promise you'll go to the person when I find one. We can't go on like this; you know that." Mulder regarded her for a long moment, then bowed his head, washing forgotten. "I know. All right." He looked up. "I love you, Scully. I know I don't always act like it, but I do." Scully's brow creased. Her expression was one of pain. "I know you do, Mulder. I love you, too. And I'm not going anywhere." Mulder held out his hand to her. She grinned, protesting, "I'm fully dressed! This is a two hundred dollar outfit!" "Fuck it. I'll buy you a new one." Scully laughed, shook her head, and walked out. Mulder shrugged. "Win some, lose some," he philosophised. He turned away from the door and started to wash his back. He didn't hear her until he felt her hands on his back. "Let me," she breathed in his ear, her body pressed against his. He gave a low groan and turned to face her. She reached up and flicked a dripping tendril out of his eyes, then leaned forward to kiss him. "God, I love you," he moaned against her lips, opening his mouth to receive her. He cradled her head in his hands and smoothed back her damp hair. Her arms were around him, her hands at the base of his spine. He was so warm against her. She kissed him deeply, softly, languidly... The water turned cold. She shrieked. "Bloody HELL!" Mulder laughed hysterically, sheltering her with his body and pushing her out of the cubicle, flicking off the faucets. He grabbed a towel and wrapped her in it, kissing the top of her head, sighing. "I do love you." Scully just smiled at him, turning away. He took her arm. "Dana?" She turned back to face him. "I *will* see someone. I promise." Scully leaned forward and kissed his lips. END OF PART ONE COMING IN PART TWO: SCULLY SEES A SOCIAL WORKER