#mulderfic

[scenes-in-between]

Trust No 1 (Part Four)

For the hundredth time in the last 18 hours, Gibson wonders why he agreed to this.

The train is busy and loud in a way he hasn’t had to deal with for a long time. Living for months crammed in a tiny trailer with Mulder’s noisy mind was nothing compared to this. Dozens of people in close proximity, only a handful of them asleep, all drowning each other out and making it nearly impossible to listen for threats. He finds himself trembling with the effort.

Jesus, poor kid, Mulder practically screams beside him.

“I’m fine,” he says through clenched teeth. “Just got used to the quiet.”

“Only a few more hours,” Mulder murmurs aloud, and Gibson nods.

A picture flares to life in Mulder’s mind, something Gibson has seen there before but Mulder’s never spoken about. Gibson doesn’t know if he’s remembering a nightmare or something that actually happened; it feels like the latter, but that’s impossible.

Mulder catches Gibson frowning at him and shrugs, sighing. “Sorry. I know it’s not the same, and I’m not suggesting I know exactly what you’re going through. I just can’t help remembering how it felt.”

“How what felt?”

Now Mulder’s the one to frown, confused. “You don’t know? I mean… You couldn’t see that memory just now?”

“People usually remember things in a kind of shorthand. There’s not always context. This memory of yours… I’ve seen it before, but I don’t know what it means or if it’s even real.”

“What did you see?”

“You’re in a hospital, I think. And you can hear people like I can. But it’s too much. It hurts, and you can’t… you’re not…”

“Yeah,” Mulder says quietly. “Yeah, that was real.”

“But how?”

There was an artifact, Mulder thinks. A piece of a ship, a spacecraft. I don’t know how or why it affected me like that, but it did. I could hear thoughts, but not like you do, not really. My mind couldn’t handle the input. It burned me up, shut me down. I almost died. Only reason I didn’t is that someone cut open my head and took whatever it was out of me.

Gibson can see images again as Mulder remembers waking up in that room, remembers Scully rescuing him. Mulder’s thoughts slide away from the narrative of the memory and latch on to Scully, and how he can’t wait to see her, and William, and there is this swell of affection that is unlike anything Gibson ever felt from his own parents. It makes him a little sad, even though he’s long since come to terms with the fact that his parents were always more afraid of him than anything else.

“They just cut it out of you?” Gibson prompts, hoping to steer Mulder back on course.

Mulder blinks. “Uh, yeah. I mean, I assume so. I used to have, well it was never a big scar, but…” He brushes his fingers over his forehead, almost like it’s a reflex. “Then later, after I came back from the dead, everything just… healed. Way faster and way more completely than should have even been possible. Can’t even feel the scar at all anymore. But yeah, that’s where they cut me open, and then when I woke up afterward, that was that. Only thoughts in my head were my own.”

Gibson wonders what it would be like to never hear anyone else’s thoughts, ever. The only way that ever truly happens for him is if he’s physically isolated, though when he’s not so out of practice, he can choose to turn the volume down by picking one thing or person to focus on. He realizes that as Mulder’s been talking (both in his head and out loud), that’s exactly what has happened; the rest of the mental chatter in the train car has faded into the background, nothing more than a dull murmur at the edge of his mind. He’s grateful for the respite, but it also means he might miss something, if there’s someone or something on this train that wants to hurt them. He really should go back to listening.

But also he’s just so, so tired.

“How much longer until the next station?” he asks, wondering if maybe, since he hasn’t picked up on the presence of any threats on the journey so far, he can afford to let his guard down a little, at least until they stop again and more new people get on board.

Mulder shifts and digs into his pocket for the brochure they picked up at the station the last time they transferred, which has a timetable with all the stops on this rail line. “Hmm, forty-five minutes, give or take? Why?”

“Can you do me a favor and just think about something really boring for a little while? Like, I don’t know, FBI protocols or something?”

Mulder chuckles. “Can’t say I’ve ever really been much of an expert on those. But sure. You gonna try to nap?”

Gibson doubts actually falling asleep is possible, but he nods anyway. Even if he can just rest for a while, that will be good. Just in case, though…

“Make sure I’m awake when we get to the next station, okay? So I can listen to the new people getting on. Just in case.”

Mulder nods, and a jumble of emotion spills out of him: pity, guilt, gratitude, regret, and something else Gibson can’t immediately identify. There’s this sense of he’s way too young to have to have to carry all this and I should be the one protecting him, which makes Gibson want to roll his eyes. Mulder still seems to think of him as the 12 year-old kid he was when they met, but he’s 16 now, and he’s been living on his own for a good long while. He can more than take care of himself. But there it is again, that flash of something else, and then it’s like Mulder makes the conscious decision to stop and focus on that one feeling because it completely takes over. It’s warm and something like affection but not quite, and Gibson puzzles over it some more before realizing, finally, that it’s pride.

Mulder is proud of him.

It’s not something Gibson has felt directed toward him many times in his life, and it makes him squirm a little bit. But it’s also nice.

“Thanks,” he says quietly, and Mulder nods again.

“You got it, kid.” 

All right, let’s see. Now, unfortunately for me, I’ve had to sit through more than a few training seminars on the application of Chapter 119 of Title 18 of the US Penal Code. Fortunately for you, this is just about the most boring subject on the face of the Earth, and as I happen to be cursed with an eidetic memory, I can recite the stupid thing chapter and verse. Consider this your first class ticket on an express train to Snoozeville.

Gibson can’t help but smile a little as he leans back in his seat and closes his eyes.

Chapter 119: Wire and Electronic Communications Interception and Interception of Oral Communications. Section 2510: Definitions. As used in this chapter-- (1) “wire communication” means any aural transfer made in whole or in part through the use of facilities for the transmission of communications by the aid of wire, cable, or other like connection between the point of origin and the point of reception…

The gentle rhythm of Mulder’s bland recitation melds perfectly with the steady rocking and the click-clack of the train, and in spite of his apprehensions, Gibson is asleep in minutes.

***

From the relative comfort of his office, the Shadow Man watches the grainy feed from the station platform’s surveillance camera. It’s not exactly riveting viewing; Agent Scully paces back and forth, having arrived at the station more than an hour before the train is due. But, this is what he does. He watches. All day long, day after day, he watches and he listens.

It’s a form of omniscience, being able to drop into the daily life of virtually anyone he may choose, whenever he needs to, observing unseen from the shadows. (Not the most imaginative moniker, this one these FBI agents have given him, but he supposes it does fit.) Tonight, all he needs is confirmation that Mulder really is going to get off that train.

Scully’s posture belies not only anticipation but also fear. Her guard is fully up, but she need not worry. Not tonight, anyway. Let them have their reunion. He will call tomorrow to arrange a meeting, and then he’ll eliminate Mulder once and for all. He has waited months for this opportunity; one more night is nothing.

That is, until something happens that tosses every one of his carefully-laid plans out the window: someone blacks out the camera lens.

Ah. So. His little employee has finally started to put the pieces together, has he? He supposes it was just a matter of time, but this is particularly inconvenient. Without eyes on the platform, he loses his advantage. Despite his claims to the contrary, it would absolutely be possible for Mulder and Scully to vanish into the wind, away from his view. He cannot let that happen.

He glances at the clock and scowls. It will be a close-run thing, getting to Alexandria from Bethesda before the train arrives, but the late hour and empty roads are on his side. He’s out the door and on the road in minutes, speeding southward.

Looks like Mulder and Scully won’t be getting their little reunion after all. But they’re the ones who decided not to play along. Now the plan has to change, and that’s fine by him. A predatory grin lurks at the corners of his mouth as he presses harder on the accelerator.

This ends tonight.

***

As the train begins to slow on approach to the station, Mulder’s leg bounces with both nerves and excitement. Beside him, Gibson is still and silent, all of his attention focused on the thoughts of the people outside.

Suddenly he gasps and grabs Mulder’s arm. “You can’t go out there.”

No, please, I’m so close...

“You can hear someone out there?” Mulder asks tightly.

“Yes! There’s a man, and he’s one of them. He wants to kill you.”

“Damnit…”

Scully said we’d be safe. Oh no, Scully… 

“Is Scully in danger?”

Gibson’s eyes are wide. “I don’t know. He’s… he’s got a gun, and he’s not aiming for her, but he doesn’t care that she’s in the way.”

Mulder leaps to his feet.

“Wait! You can’t!”

The three pops of gunfire are muted from inside the train car, but Mulder hears them anyway. He hurtles forward to lean over Gibson and peer out the window. There’s movement on the platform, bodies on the ground, but it’s too dark and they’re too far away for him to make out any detail.

The train picks up speed again, and a ripple of confused chatter fills the car and drowns out the conductor’s words coming over the loudspeaker. Mulder’s insides give a desperate lurch as he catches just a glimpse of Scully’s stricken face through the window. She’s on her feet, thank god. She wasn’t shot. 

For the span of a heartbeat, there she is in front of him, real and solid, not just a presence in his mind. But then she’s gone again as the train whisks him past, and he wants to cry out at the injustice of it. It’s not fair. I was so close. The months of separation feel like an iron band around his ribs.

But it’s clearly still not safe to go home. He knows she wouldn’t have brought him out of hiding unless she truly believed it would be okay, but apparently whoever led her to that belief was either wrong or lying. Will it ever be completely safe? Is this what the rest of his life is going to be, this hiding and running and always looking over his shoulder? Feeling like he’s in this limbo, merely existing while the rest of his life carries on thousands of miles away without him?

It’s not until Gibson grabs him by the arm and shakes him that he realizes the boy has been speaking. He blinks.

“What?”

“He’s on the train! The man who was on the platform. He knows you’re here, and he’s coming after you!”

Mulder snaps to attention. “Can you tell where he is?”

Gibson squeezes his eyes shut, visibly shaking from concentration or fear or both. “He’s… he’s three cars ahead, but under… hanging on to the underside. I think he was on the tracks and then grabbed on to the train as it went over him.” He opens his eyes again, wide. “We have to get out of here!”

Mulder’s stomach tightens as he does a quick mental calculation. While he didn’t plan for this exact scenario, he did look up several potential places he could try to go, in case it turned out that it wasn’t safe in D.C. after all. One of them is a quarry with significant iron deposits, just south of Alexandria. The tracks run near enough that he just might make it, might be able to lead the man there, if he can manage to avoid getting caught first.

Quickly, nonverbally, he rushes to convey his plan to Gibson. He’s got about two or three minutes to jump off the train and hope to god the man follows him. He jerks open the zipper on his backpack and pulls out one of the burner phones he bought, as well as a couple of hundred dollar bills, shoving both into his pocket. 

“I hoped we wouldn’t have to use these,” he says aloud, “but this is exactly why I bought them. Stay on the train for two more stops, then find somewhere to lay low. Let me know where you are, and I’ll come find you. The number for this phone is on the paper in the backpack. Got it?”

“What if something happens to you?”

Call Scully, Mulder tells him telepathically. “But I’m hoping it won’t come to that,” he adds.

Gibson nods, and Mulder gives his shoulder a squeeze before hurrying down the aisle to the door. He moves quickly between cars, into and through the one in front of where they were sitting, and then the next. If Gibson’s right, the man should be there just ahead of him, underneath the very next car. 

Mulder’s heart pounds as he turns the latch to open the exterior door. He certainly doesn’t want to get caught, but he also needs to make sure the man follows him into the quarry and doesn’t get on the train and go after Gibson. Outside the ground rushes past, and he steels himself for how much this next part is going to suck.

I am getting way too old for this shit.

He grips the handrail beside the door and leans forward as much as he dares.

“Hey asshole!” he shouts into the wind. “Looking for me?!”

Taking one last deep breath, he jumps.

***

Only when she is absolutely certain that the Shadow Man super-soldier isn’t coming after her does Scully stop running. She looks around wildly. Mulder has to still be here, somewhere.

“Mulder!”

It’s Arizona all over again, with her shouting his name into the night, hoping against hope for some answering call. 

“Mulder!”

But as was the case in Arizona, she receives no response.

***

The roller coaster of emotion is too much for Gibson. His own feelings are magnified by what he hears in Mulder’s thoughts, a sort of resonating loop that spirals him toward despair and exhaustion.

So he sleeps. It is, mercifully, a dreamless slumber, and it cradles him all the way back to New Mexico. Mulder gently shakes him awake, and they wordlessly disembark, waiting amid the other passengers while Mulder’s motorcycle is unloaded. Once they retrieve it, it’s a quiet ride back to the trailer neither of them had hoped to see again, though once they crest the hill and finally come within sight of it, Gibson lets out a sigh of relief.

#x-files fanfic #TXF: Trust No 1 #mulderfic #scullyfic #gibson praise #msr #mulder on the run #a/n: lol at myself for thinking (way back in october) that i would get this finished and posted soon #ah well #here it is at long last :) #will 2021 be the year i finally finish this scenes-in-between project? #who knows! but that would be cool! #;) #hi friends #hope you are all doing well

[publsize]

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— Cognac Philbert (@Cognac_Philbert) April 13, 2019

April 13, 2019 at 10:59PM

#IndustrialDesign

[scenes-in-between]

Trust No 1 (Part three)

“Who authorizes you? I mean, what gives you the right? Who ARE you?!”

“I’m the future, Agent Scully. And I risked my life being here.”

“Well then why do it? I mean, why meet me?”

“Because you can reach Mulder. Mulder needs to know what I know or he may have no future. Perhaps no one will. Another car is parked on the main road, half a mile out. If I see that you haven’t contacted Mulder in the next 24 hours, I disappear and you never see me again. Do you understand, lady?”

Scully stalks away, seething. All of the theatrics, all of the waste, and for what? A two-minute conversation that raised more questions than it answered? What was the point of any of it?

Scowling, she pulls her phone out of her jacket pocket - because apparently it was absolutely necessary to blow up her clothes and her gun and inspect her watch, but Mr. Mysterious had no qualms about letting her keep her phone? - and punches the speed dial for Monica Reyes. Monica picks up immediately.

“Dana! Thank god. We’ve been trying to reach you all day. Where are you?”

“At the end of a very long and very stupid wild goose chase,” she grumbles. “I’m sorry I couldn’t get in touch earlier. How’s William?”

“He’s just fine. John’s in the kitchen right now heating up a bottle for him.”

“Agent Doggett stayed with you?” she asks, surprised.

“Not the whole day,” Monica says. “After that couple left, he went to the office for a while, but then he came back a few hours ago when we still hadn’t heard from you. Seriously though, where have you been?”

Scully answers with a groan, then gives an abbreviated account of the day’s events as she continues making her way back to the main road. Her foot catches on something in the dark and she stumbles, cursing. Of all the times to be without a flashlight…

When she gets to the part about the car and the remote detonation, Monica says, “Holy hell, Dana! Do you need one of us to come get you?” 

“No, he said there’s another car parked up the road. I’m heading toward it now.”

“But are you sure that’s safe?” Monica presses. “What if it’s rigged to explode, too?”

“Whoa, wait, what’s rigged to explode?” Scully hears Doggett say in the background, and she shudders at the thought that she spent the entire day driving around on top of a bomb. However, the fact that she’s still alive right now is a fairly good indicator that she’ll be able to get home safely.

“If he wanted me dead, he had ample opportunity,” she says. “No, what he wants is for me to contact Mulder, which I can’t very well do if I’ve been blown up. I’ll be fine.”

“You’re sure?”

“I’m sure.”

What she’s not sure of is exactly where she is right now. It became harder and harder to track her relative location after she left the interstate. The very notion of spending who knows how many more hours on the road fills her with a mix of exhaustion and dread, and she’s angry all over again at the phenomenal waste of time today has been.

“Maybe you can help me figure out where I am, though,” she says. “It was too dark to read the street signs, the last couple of turns he told me to make, but I was on Route 17 going north for a while, somewhere between Norfolk and Fredericksburg. It’s not much to go on, but it’s all I’ve got at the moment.”

“I’m on it,” Monica tells her. “Can I use your computer?”

“Of course.”

“Here, you can talk to John while I pull up MapQuest.”

Ahead, Scully can just make out the bulk of a vehicle in the darkness. She reaches to unsnap her holster out of habit and grimaces when her fingers catch nothing but the fabric of her waistband.

In her ear, Doggett barks, “What in the heck’s going on? Where’ve you been all day, and why is Monica talking about things being rigged to explode?”

Scully sighs. “I’m going to let her fill you in on the details because I would just as soon not go through it all again right now. Short answer is that I’m fine, just tired and frustrated. I’ll be on my way home soon, hopefully. I want to thank you, though, for helping to look after William. I really do appreciate it.”

“Well, you’re welcome, but I didn’t do all that much. I’m just glad you’re okay.”

She approaches the car, again wishing she had a flashlight. It’s too dark to see anything through the rear windows, but the front of the car at least appears to be empty. Cautiously, she reaches for the door handle; it’s unlocked, and the interior light comes on when she opens the door. There’s a piece of paper on the driver’s seat.

“Son of a bitch,” she murmurs, picking it up.

“Agent Scully?”

“You can tell Agent Reyes that I don’t need her help after all. I’ve been left a map.”

“A map?” Doggett asks. “So where are you?”

Thirty miles. She is all of thirty miles from Fredericksburg. It is going to take her less than two hours to get home. It could have taken her less than two hours to get here. Of all the stupid, pointless, absolutely and completely asinine...

“Just a bit southeast of Fredericksburg,” she says tightly, glancing at her watch. “I should be home by nine.”

“All right then. Be careful.”

“Yeah.”

***

This isn’t the first time Monica has been asked to watch William, but it is the first time she’s had to try and put him to bed.

And he is not having it.

She’s never seen him like this. She’s never felt him like this; William’s energy is always vibrant -- she’s known that since the night he was born -- but it’s usually contained, like the potential energy in a compressed spring. Tonight, it’s like a storm, howling around him as he wails in her arms.

“I don’t know what’s wrong. Should we call Dana?”

John chuckles at her, evidently unconcerned, because of course he can’t feel what she feels.

“There’s nothing wrong. And there’s nothing she could do even if there was. He’s just tired.”

“No, John, I’m telling you, something is--”

“Here,” he says, holding out his hands. “I’ll show you.”

She passes the squirming baby to her partner and steps back, nerves jangling. John gathers William against his chest and starts to walk around the living room, gently bouncing him while murmuring softly. At first, Monica can’t hear what he’s saying over the sound of William’s cries, but as the boy gradually quiets, John’s words become clearer.

“There you go, easy does it, your mama’s gonna be home soon, don’t you worry, atta boy…”

He’s asleep within minutes, energy storm subsided. Monica shakes her head, a little abashed at having so comprehensively misread the situation. 

“You were right,” she says quietly.

“Eh, nothing I hadn’t seen before, that’s all.” He doesn’t meet her eyes, his gaze still trained on the top of William’s head as he slows the bouncing to a gentle sway. “Luke certainly did his share of fussing.”

She didn’t know him then, of course. She’s only ever known him as a grieving father; this is the first time she’s gotten a glimpse of what he was like as a dad, and it makes her unexpectedly emotional. 

“I’m gonna see if I can go put him down,” he says, and she nods, watching him go before turning to pick up the few scattered toys and take William’s dinner bottle back to the kitchen.

***

By the time she has retrieved her own car from where she left it parked this morning, after stewing on the whole drive home and running through the day’s various cryptic conversations over and over, Scully has come to three conclusions.

Number one: nearly everything that man claimed to know about her, he could have learned by bugging her apartment and going through her garbage bins. What did he really give her that was concrete? Knowing her clothing size seemed eerie at first, until she remembered the receipts she’s thrown away from a handful of recent shopping trips. Her childhood clown phobia? She and her mom were laughing about that in her living room a month or so ago. The rest of it -- resting heart rate, ATM pin, college boyfriend, et cetera -- was only specific enough to seem unnerving without actually proving that he knew any of it.

Her emails to Mulder would require some additional access, but that could be as simple as someone following her to the cafe. It’s probably one of the “regulars” that she -- blithely, it would seem -- dismissed as a potential threat.

Number two: while her apartment has definitely been under surveillance, apparently for quite a while, Mulder’s has not. The “one lonely night” the man mentioned? She’s reasonably certain he was referring to the night she asked Mulder to stay after the IVF failed, and that was not their first time together. If, as he said, the events of that night surprised him, then he could not have known about what they had already been doing at Mulder’s place. Or, for that matter, what they had been doing at her place before that night. So now she also knows approximately when the surveillance actually began.

Number three: if this man genuinely does have useful intel about super soldiers -- and that is an extraordinarily big “if” -- then it may in fact be worthwhile to call Mulder home. The idea terrifies and thrills her in almost equal measure. On the one hand, there is nothing she wants more than to have him home. Nothing. But on the other, if she has miscalculated, and calling him out of hiding only ends up getting him killed, she will never forgive herself.

In the end, it is Agent Doggett’s words from yesterday that settle the issue for her. If we know who these super-soldiers are we can go after them. This is somebody giving us a way that can make it safe for Mulder to come home. 

How else are you going to get him home?

It’s a risk, possibly a big one, but ultimately, it’s one she has to take. He has been gone for almost seven months. This is the first time in those nearly seven months that there has even been a chance he might be able to come home. If she lets this chance go by, how much more time will pass before they get another one?

She walks into her apartment having made up her mind. There is a giddy, fluttery feeling in her stomach that is only temporarily eclipsed by ravenous hunger as she steps through the door and the smell of Thai food envelops her. Reyes and Doggett look up from where they’re sitting, at her kitchen table, takeout cartons amassed between them.

“Hope you don’t mind, we got takeout,” Reyes says, standing. “We didn’t know if you’d have a chance to eat, but if you’re hungry, there’s a bunch left.”

The last thing she ate was a bag of almonds from the gas station, hours and hours ago. To say she’s hungry is a massive understatement.

“Mind? I could kiss you both right now.”

Doggett’s eyebrows shoot up to his hairline, and Reyes laughs. “I’ll get you a plate.”

Scully nods. “I’m just going to change and wash up.”

On her way to the bedroom, she grabs a plastic bag from the closet. The likelihood is slim that there will be much in the way of usable trace evidence on the clothes she’s wearing, but it would be irresponsible not to even look. She opens the bedroom door quietly so as not to wake William; by the soft glow of the bedside lamp, she can see him sleeping peacefully in his crib, and she smiles, some of the tension from the day melting away. Though she would love a shower, she's too hungry, so she settles for changing into sweats, carefully folding and bagging the "borrowed" outfit, then washes her hands and face before heading back to the kitchen.

Doggett and Reyes have tidied up their dishes and are in the process of putting on coats and shoes.

"We'll let you get some rest," Reyes says, though she’s looking at Doggett when she does. “Whatever else you might have to tell us about what happened today can wait until tomorrow.”

“Unless,” Doggett adds, in a tone that sounds like he’s continuing an argument from earlier, “there’s anything you think we need to know now. Or if you don’t feel safe staying here alone, knowing that this Shadow Man may well have eyes and ears on you.”

“Is that what we’re calling him?” Scully asks, arching one eyebrow. “Look, I appreciate the offer, but I’ll be fine. As violating as it feels to be surveilled by some NSA creep--” she emphasizes the words, fully assuming that she’s being listened to right now “--I don’t have any reason to believe that William and I are not safe here.”

“Well I still don’t like it,” Doggett says, frowning. “Why don’t you let us post a couple agents out front, just in case?”

“I really don’t think that’s necess--”

“That’s a good idea, actually,” Reyes interjects, then drops her voice to a murmur. “Especially in light of what happened this morning. We know you can take care of yourself, Dana, but we also don’t know exactly what we’re up against, here. Maybe the answer is to try and watch the watchers, find out who they are, see if we can figure out who else the Shadow Man is working with.”

Scully sighs but has to admit that’s a sensible course of action. Either the knowledge that she’s being watched over will deter this so-called Shadow Man and his associates, or it won’t, in which case they could be exposed and identified.

“All right,” she agrees.

“Good,” Doggett says. “I’ll take first watch until I can get someone else over here.”

As soon as they leave, Scully makes herself a plate of food and takes it to her computer desk. If the Shadow Man is able to access her emails even when she sends them from the internet cafe, it seems pointless to wait until morning to write to Mulder. The giddy feeling from earlier comes rushing back as she types.

Mr. Hale,

I am overjoyed to tell you that circumstances appear to have changed. Exercise caution, but put the plan in motion. I cannot wait to see you.

All my love,

Dana

She clicks “send” with her heart in her throat, wondering where Mulder is and when he’ll be able to read her message. How long it might take for him to make the necessary arrangements and begin the journey home. He could be in her arms as early as tomorrow, a notion that seemed impossible just 24 hours ago.

She powers down the computer -- according to their plan, his next communication will come via text message from a burner phone -- and picks up her plate to finish eating in the kitchen. A glance out the window as she stands up reveals Agent Doggett sitting in his truck across the street, cell phone held to his ear. She sighs, regretting the additional work and worry she’s given her former partner but also deeply grateful that he’s got her back, he and Reyes both. She appreciates them more than she can say.

With any luck, all of this will soon be over. Mulder will come home, the Shadow Man will give him the information they need to take down the super-soldiers, and things can go back to… well… “normal” for them, anyway. It’s maybe too much to hope for, but right now, she will allow herself to be comforted by the fantasy, at least for a little while. When she finally crawls into bed, later, she falls asleep with her cell phone on the pillow beside her, imagining the sensation of being wrapped securely in Mulder’s arms.

***

“Holy shit,” he breathes, reading her email for the third time.

The library’s just about to close, and he had checked his email one last time before leaving, more out of impulse than any actual expectation that there would be anything there. The surprise of a new email was immediately eclipsed by the surprise over its contents.

Home. He can go home. He and Gibson both, even. No more hiding in the desert. No more ache of longing binding his stomach and keeping him from sleep. It almost sounds too good to be true, but she called him Mr. Hale, the code phrase they established before he left so he’d be able to tell a genuine summons from a trap. This is the real deal.

Which means the threat is past. Maybe Skinner cut a deal, hell, maybe Kersh did. Who knows? Who cares?! He gets to go home!

The grin on his face is massive as he logs off and heads for the door.

***

“You’re leaving," Gibson says, before Mulder has even closed the front door behind himself. "You promised you wouldn’t. But I guess I shouldn’t have expected you to keep that promise.”

It's still weird, Gibson knowing what he's thinking about before he's even said anything, but it doesn't throw him for a loop the way it used to.

“No, we’re leaving, Gibson. Both of us.”

Gibson scoffs. “You know I’m not going anywhere. It’s not safe. You might be able to outrun them if they catch us, but I--”

“Scully said it’s safe. And yes, I’m sure the message really was from her.”

Gibson stares hard at him and Mulder thinks as forcefully and loudly and clearly as he can.

We can both be free. I swear. I will protect you.

“I believe that you believe that,” Gibson says finally. “But I don’t think either of us knows for sure whether that’s really true.”

“Look, I know you’re scared. And you’re right that there are no guarantees. But for the first time since I left Washington, there is at least a chance that it’s safe for us to get out of here. If we don't take it, I don't know when another one is gonna come along. Do you really want to hide here for the rest of your life?"

"If it doesn't mean dying horribly and having my head karate chopped off by an alien replicant? Yeah. I'm fine with that."

Mulder’s thoughts flicker, involuntarily, to Dr. Parenti’s severed head in a jar, to the gash in Skinner’s forehead, to his own memory of being hurled across Parenti’s lab by Billy Miles.

“Exactly,” says Gibson. “I’m not letting that happen to me.”

“I trust Scully,” Mulder says, thinks. “She wouldn’t call me home if it wasn’t safe. She’s too smart and too cautious to take a risk like that.”

This, at last, seems to convince him, if only somewhat. He may not trust Mulder’s judgment, but he apparently trusts Scully’s, at least enough to finally sigh and say, “Okay. I hope you’re right.”

Despite Gibson’s reluctance, it takes almost no time at all to pack. They don’t have much to take, not bothering with spare clothes. Mulder shoves the stuff he printed about Mount Weather into his backpack, along with a little food, the fake IDs from the Gunmen and all of their remaining cash. They’re out the door and on the road in less than twenty minutes.

On the way to the train station, Mulder stops to gas up the motorcycle and buy four prepaid cell phones from the convenience store. Two hours later, as they’re getting ready to board the train that will take them eastward, Mulder types Scully’s number into the first phone and sends a single-word text message.

“Midnight.”

Once the message sends, he opens the back of the phone, pockets the battery, and tosses the phone in a garbage can.

#x-files fanfic #TXF: Trust No 1 #scullyfic #mulderfic #gibson praise #monica whalesong reyes #john doggett #msr #mulder on the run #a/n: this installment of scenes in between was originally going to be in two parts #and then it turned into three #aaaaaand now it's gonna be four #there are just too many gaps to fill in #hopefully no one minds ;) #i promise it won't take me as long to finish and post part four #as it did to finish and post part three

[scenes-in-between]

Trust No 1 (Part One)

(Pre-episode)

“I got a motorcycle,” Mulder announces as he walks into the trailer. “Now I won’t need to bother Michael for rides anymore.”

Gibson blinks, stone-faced, his back ramrod straight.

“It’s okay, I paid cash,” Mulder adds, with a bit of an internal eye-roll.  Like I’d be dumb enough to use a credit card and put myself back on the radar. Relax, no one’s going to trace anything back to us.

“Us?” Gibson says, stiffly. “So you’re… you’re not…?”

Mulder frowns, confused. And then it dawns on him what Gibson’s actually worried about. 

“What, leaving? No, of course not. Jesus, Gibson, you really think I’d do that to you?”

“I know you’re thinking pretty loudly about getting on that bike and not looking back. And I don’t even blame you, but--”

“Oh, hell.” 

Mulder shuts the door and walks over to where Gibson is sitting. No matter how much practice he’s had at policing his thoughts, he still slips up all the time. And yes, of course he’s been thinking about going home, pretty much from the moment he saw the bike sitting parked at the gas station with a “For Sale” sign stuck to it. Of course he has. But it’s a fantasy; he’d never actually do it. No matter how little regard he has for his own safety, how much he’d be willing to risk if it meant seeing Scully again, he owes Gibson way too much.

“Gibson, I am not going to abandon you. Okay?” He concentrates, so there is no disconnect between his thoughts and his words. “I promise. Not after everything we’ve been through, everything you’ve done for me.”

Gibson studies him for another long moment, then gives the barest nod of his head and finally relaxes his shoulders. Mulder punches him lightly on the upper arm and gives a lopsided grin.

“I mean, I know I’m kind of an asshole sometimes, but come on. I’m not that big of an asshole.” 

***

Fifty-seven days. Just over eight weeks. That’s how long it’s been since Mulder’s last email, the one in which he warned her that he wouldn’t be able to write again for a while.

Not that his warning has stopped her from checking.

The internet cafe has become part of her routine. On Saturdays like today, when she’s not helping Doggett and Reyes in the field, Scully stops by with William on her way to run errands. A couple of days a week she doesn’t need to be at the Academy until noon, so she takes a morning walk to the cafe before her mom arrives to babysit. The baristas know her order by now - chai tea on the weekends, coffee with milk during the week - and are friendly but not chatty. It’s honestly probably too routine and predictable, or it would be if she were the one in hiding. She’s identified a handful of other “regulars,” but none that give her cause for concern; everyone here tends to keep to themselves. 

Chai in hand, she finds an empty computer and parks the stroller. William is dozing, bundled up against the late December chill outside, and the coffee shop is cozy and warm without being stifling. Scully has removed her gloves but doesn’t bother taking off her coat; that would be an acknowledgement of the hope that this time she will be staying longer than a minute or two. She tries to convince herself that she expects the empty inbox, that she won’t be disappointed by another day of radio silence, that her stomach won’t do a backflip at the sight of “3 new messages” because she knows they will all be spam.

It is a futile exercise.

Fifty-seven days. She’s managing. Raising this baby of theirs and molding young minds at the Academy and praying every night for Mulder’s safety. She has to believe this is temporary, and that eventually they can be a family again. A real family.

Suppressing a sigh, she logs off and tries to turn her focus to the day ahead.

***

The day after Mulder comes back with a bike of his own, it pours. Gibson is guiltily, but deeply, relieved. He wants to trust that Mulder won’t abandon him, knows all too well how people’s inner thoughts can be complicated and contradictory, but at the same time, he can’t help worrying.

The rain, however, does not dampen Mulder’s fervor. His trips to the larger library have been fruitful, and he has been hard at work on a plan to breach the facility that the old man in Gibson’s dreams spoke about. He spends the entire rainy day poring over everything he has printed at the library, papers carpeting the floor, seed husks piling up on the table.

***

The New Year arrives without fanfare. Scully doesn’t turn on the TV to watch the Times Square coverage (she hasn’t managed that since she and Mulder watched together, two years ago, in a hospital waiting room). For that matter, she doesn’t even make it to midnight. After William goes down for the night, she takes a bath, drinks a glass of wine, and crawls into bed.

On the surface, this year looks much the same as the last. She’s still alone, still wondering where Mulder is and hoping he’s all right. In truth, though, so much is different. She has William, for one thing, which on its own is a bigger difference than she can properly express. For another, up until a couple of months ago, she was hearing from Mulder somewhat regularly, receiving assurances that he was, at least, alive. She still worries - of course she does - but it’s nowhere near the same. She has good cause to believe, far more than she did a year ago, that he is going to be okay, and that they will eventually be together again.

That doesn’t make the waiting any less frustrating or the loneliness less sharp. But the absence of a constant, exhausting undercurrent of despair is both notable and welcome.

Next year, she vows to herself as she drifts off to sleep. We are going to figure this out and eliminate the threat, and next year he’ll be home. 

***

For all that Mulder intends, truly, to keep his promise to Gibson, the temptation to flee home to Scully continues to gnaw at him. Now that he actually has the means to do so, that he can envision concrete steps toward a way out of exile, it’s almost painful to pull off the highway in another town, heading toward another library, instead of just pressing on. But he did promise.

What he can’t resist doing, however, is writing to her.

It’s been almost ten weeks since their last correspondence, and even if it means he can’t return to this particular library again, he has to do it. His fingers tremble as he opens a blank email.

“Dearest Dana…”

#x-files fanfic #txf: trust no 1 #mulder on the run #mulderfic #scullyfic #gibson praise #msr #pre-episode #/// #yet another ridiculously long gap between updates #but i stand by my promise to see this absurd project through to the end #;) #no matter how long it takes me

[scenes-in-between]

Nothing Important Happened Today II

“Mulder can’t know. He can’t be brought back into this. He can’t be brought back into the FBI. It’s just too dangerous for him right now.” “It’s too dangerous for everyone.”

Scully wraps her arms around herself and wonders for the thousandth time if maybe Mulder was right after all, about the threat against him being an act of misdirection. She had been so certain that she and William would be safe, had put so much faith in the fact that they had been left alone on the night of his birth. (“Maybe he isn’t what they thought he was,” Mulder had said, and she had clung to those words like a lifeline.) Now, though, she is not so sure. After what she witnessed yesterday, she isn’t sure of anything.

That isn’t entirely true; she is absolutely certain that she wishes Mulder were still here.

Of course, what she didn’t tell Skinner is that she can’t get in touch with Mulder no matter how much she wants to; the measures they put in place for emergency contact prioritize security over convenience, and he has to be the first one to reach out, from an anonymous email account he probably hasn’t yet had the chance to set up. Whether she likes it or not, she is on her own with this.

No. Not entirely on her own. Agent Doggett is still fighting for answers, and she’s grateful now that he refused to drop the investigation after she asked him to, before. Without him and Agent Reyes, she doesn’t know how she could find out what exactly is going on with William, and why. What he is, or isn’t. 

Whether they will be coming for him.

Her gaze is pulled to the bassinet. He looks so peaceful, sleeping there. So normal. But she cannot deny what she saw yesterday afternoon, the mobile over his crib spinning wildly and seemingly at his (possibly unconscious) command. It was deeply unnerving and anything but normal. She cannot begin to guess at what it means, and there is no pediatrician in the world who would be able to give her any answers. The only place she might hope to find those answers is in the X-Files, but the very act of looking for them will be dangerous. The best chance she has of doing so without drawing too much scrutiny on herself and William is to seek them through the context of Agent Doggett’s investigation. Even that will be risky, but what choice does she have? She needs to know.

Unfortunately, there is nothing she can do tonight but wait, which makes her feel both helpless and restless. With a worried shake of her head, she surrenders to habit and walks toward the kitchen to make some tea.

***

24 HOURS EARLIER

Mulder’s eyes fly open as the bus comes to a stop, air brakes hissing. He hadn’t meant to fall asleep. His heart pounds as he struggles, briefly, to determine where he is, how long he slept, and whether he’s been found. A quick check of his watch answers the second question (about half an hour), and he squints into the darkness outside, trying to answer the other two.

“Rest stop,” says the tired-sounding driver over the intercom. “You got fifteen minutes.”

The bus’s interior lights flick on, and Mulder glances warily at his fellow passengers, under the guise of stretching his back. Nothing seems out of the ordinary, but it’s not as though anyone following him is going to be super obvious about it. Picking up the backpack tucked between his feet, he stands, easing his way into the aisle and off the bus. He hefts the backpack onto his shoulder and looks around, breathing in the crisp night air.

The rest area parking lot is far from empty, despite the hour. The bus is parked amid a line of big rigs, and a handful of smaller vehicles sit on the other side of the lot, along the curb near the restrooms. What draws his attention, however, is the motorcycle idling a few yards away. Not just because it’s out of place among the large trucks, but because he’s seen it before, outside the station when he changed buses a few hundred miles back, the rider recognizable by the long hair streaming out from under his helmet.

So much for a tail not being obvious about it.

He pretends not to notice and starts walking toward the restrooms, wondering what his options are, here. With that hair, the guy’s not FBI, so chances are slim he’s one of the men Kersh warned about. Doesn’t mean he’s not working for them, though, or that he’s not like them. Doesn’t mean he’s not dangerous. Mulder’s odds of survival, if he tries to bolt now on foot, are not great. If he gets back on the bus, the guy will undoubtedly keep following, but maybe Mulder will be able to lose him in a crowd at the next big station. It’s not ideal, but it might be the best he can hope for.

“Hey! I need to talk to you!”

The words are muffled by the helmet and the engine noise, but Mulder can just make them out anyway. Again, he pretends not to notice and just keeps walking.

“Stop, please! You’re in danger, and I’m trying to help you!”

This gives him pause. Could certainly be a trap, but… what if it’s not? Cautiously, he stops and turns around. Half a dozen bus passengers are headed his way, though none of them seem to be paying attention to him or the long-haired man on the bike. The man slowly rides up beside him and tugs his helmet off.

He’s just a kid. Now Mulder’s really confused.

“Who are you? Why are you following me?”

The boy looks nervously toward the parked cars, then back at Mulder. “My friend sent me to find you. You helped him before, and now he’s worried that your life is in danger. I’m supposed to bring you to him. But we’ve got to go, now. I’m not the only one who’s been following you.”

He jerks his chin toward the cars; frowning, Mulder turns to see a gray sedan with the driver’s side window rolled down. Even at this distance, he immediately recognizes the person behind the wheel. It’s Agent Crane.

“Shit,” he says, his stomach plummeting with dread and disbelief.

“Come on, let’s go!” says the boy, quickly strapping his helmet back on.

Mulder hesitates only for a moment before climbing onto the bike. His suitcases are, of course, all still loaded under the bus, but there’s no time and no way to carry them now. He’s got the backpack, at least, which is carrying the various fake IDs he got from the Gunmen and a not insubstantial amount of cash. It’s still a risk to take this kid at his word, but it’s one he’s willing to accept given that the alternative is a confrontation with Agent Crane.

Just before they speed off, he shouts, “Who’s this friend of yours who sent you looking for me?”

“Gibson!” the boy calls back. “Gibson Praise!”

#x-files fanfic #txf: nothing important happened today ii #scullyfic #mulderfic #baby william

[scenes-in-between]

Nothing Important Happened Today II - Post-episode

(post-episode)

Shaking their pursuer is not as easy as Mulder would have liked. The gray sedan is no match for the motorcycle in terms of agility and versatility, yet Agent Crane manages to find them again after not one, but two attempts at off-road evasion. The third attempt leaves them almost hopelessly lost, themselves. When they finally emerge from the woods somewhere in eastern Oklahoma, they are hungry, exhausted, and nearly out of fuel, but they are also alone.

Mulder won’t go so far as to assume it will stay that way, but for now, he will take the wins where he can get them. It has been a difficult few days, to say the least.

In the short time they’ve known each other, Mulder has learned only two things about his long-haired rescuer -- his name is Michael, and he’s a friend of Gibson Praise. He seems afraid to tell Mulder exactly where they’re headed; his only answer to that question is the slightly ominous “somewhere they can’t follow us.” They’ve been tracking south and west since they left the Vermont rest area, though. This is a significant departure from Mulder’s original plan, which was to travel by bus as close as he could get to the Canadian border, then find a place to cross in some sleepy New England border town where his fake ID wouldn’t be scrutinized too closely. Getting out of the country, at least temporarily, seems like the safest option, but when he asked Michael if they were headed to Mexico instead, the boy shook his head mutely and refused to elaborate further.

They limp the bike to a gas station, coasting in on fumes. Mulder goes inside to buy them some food while Michael fills the tank. They retreat back to the cover and safety of the woods to eat, rest and regroup, and Mulder tries again to draw some more information out of the boy.

“How did you find me, anyway?”

“I followed you,” Michael says with a shrug. “Gibson told me where to go.”

Mulder frowns. “Gibson knew I’d be at a bus station in Syracuse, New York? Hell, I didn’t even know I’d be there.”

“No, before then. When you got in the taxi outside your partner’s house.”

Outside your partner’s house. He’s been following since the very beginning.

This revelation hits Mulder like a truck, and his brain starts racing to connect the dots. If Michael if he saw him get in that taxi, then he must have been sitting outside Scully’s apartment for a while. He feels a cold sweat break out on the back of his neck, anxiety spiking at the idea that Scully’s place was being surveilled. (He won’t admit in the moment that he is more upset that it was being surveilled and he didn’t notice.) Why in the hell would Gibson Praise, of all people, have sent someone to sit and watch them? It doesn’t make sense.

“You mean you were watching us in DC before I even left? Are you telling me Gibson sent you to spy on us, to spy on Scully? I’m supposed to believe that?”

He’s been taking this boy at his word that he knows Gibson, but what if that’s all a lie, and his real intention is to draw Mulder away in the wrong direction so that Scully and William are left unprotected? 

“No!” Michael’s eyes go wide, and he shakes his head emphatically. Because I caught him in his lie? “Look, he just said you might be in trouble, and he couldn’t come himself to check on you, because then he’d be in trouble too. So he asked me to go. He gave me two addresses, and there wasn’t anyone at the first one, and when I got to the second one, that’s when I saw you leaving. So I followed.” 

“You followed.” The derision drips from his words, and his volume begins to escalate. “You followed, through six states and two bus changes before you finally got around to giving me this ‘warning’ you were supposedly sent to deliver? Or was that ‘warning’ just a lie to make me trust you after I caught you tailing me? Why don’t you cut the bullshit and tell me what’s really going on and who you’re really working for?”

No wonder Agent Crane has been able to find them again every time they have tried to evade him. This boy is working for him. It all makes sense now.

“You don’t understand! That’s not how it was!”

Michael bursts into tears and shrinks away from him, which snaps Mulder out of his spiral. He blinks, shame settling over him like a pall, as he watches the boy fight to keep his sobs in check and realizes how very unhinged he sounded just now.

What the hell is wrong with you? He’s just a kid, for god’s sake, not some criminal mastermind.

“Okay.” He takes a shaky breath, then another, still wary, but determined to try and keep his cool, hear the kid out. “You know what? You’re right, Michael. I don’t understand, but I’m trying to. Can you help me understand?”

Michael is quiet for a while, rubbing at his eyes and sniffling occasionally. Mulder passes him another SlimJim and waits, opening a bag of sunflower seeds for himself. He lets the familiar bite of salt on his tongue, the crack of the hulls between his teeth, help him regain his equilibrium.

Finally, Michael speaks up again, haltingly. “I thought… I thought you knew. About the danger. I thought you were going someplace safe, and if I just followed you there, then I could tell you what Gibson said, and it would be okay. Then if you wanted to go with me you could, but if you were safe where you were, then that would be okay too.”

“But you weren’t the only one following me,” Mulder adds quietly.

“I was at first. Pretty sure, anyway. But then that car started following your bus somewhere in… Massachusetts, I think? I don’t know how they found you, but… when they stuck with the bus all the way into Vermont, I knew it had to be the bad guys Gibson warned about.”

Mulder sighs again. He must have gotten picked up by a security camera in the bus station, even though he tried to keep his face down. Once Crane knew where he was and which bus he was boarding, it would have been trivial to grab a flight to some point ahead on the route and just wait for the bus to pass. 

“And Scully?” he asks, his voice tight. “Are the bad guys after her, too? Are they after the baby?”

“I don’t think so. At least, Gibson doesn’t think so. He only said they wanted you.”

It’s consistent with what Kersh told them, he has to reluctantly concede. But it still doesn’t make any sense.

“Did Gibson tell you how he knew about this danger?”

Michael hesitates, taking a drink of water and looking around nervously. “You know how he… hears things? I mean, that other people are thinking?” Mulder nods, and Michael continues. “About six months ago, he started being able to hear people who were really far away. But just certain people. People who used to be… human. But now they’re not.”

The returned abductees. The replacements. Billy Miles and the rest of the so-called super soldiers.

“And he heard these people thinking about wanting to hurt me?”

“That’s what he said,” Michael says with a shrug. “Something about how you were supposed to be like them, but it didn’t work, and so…”

He trails off, and Mulder waits for more, but nothing comes. This conversation has been, by far, the longest he’s had with Michael since they met, and the toll it has taken on the boy is clear. (Not to mention the toll Mulder’s outburst has taken on him.) He startles when Mulder lays a hand on his shoulder, eyes wide and scared.

“Thank you,” Mulder says. “I mean that. I’m sorry about getting upset with you, before. You did the right thing.”

Michael nods, distrust still clear on his face, but he doesn’t pull away.

“Why don’t you get some rest? I’ll keep watch.”

The boy shakes his head, moving to stand up. “I’m okay. We should keep going, before that man catches up again.”

Mulder groans inwardly at the thought of getting back on the motorcycle, particularly since he doesn’t know how much farther they have to go. 

“And you still don’t want to tell me where we’re headed?” 

Michael looks around nervously. “Gibson told me not to say, because you never know who’s listening, and if they know where we’re going, they can get ahead of us and catch us.”

It is a sensible, if frustrating, answer. “But we’re in the woods, Michael. No one’s listening.”

“He said not to count on that. They have ways of hearing things that regular people can’t.”

“You mean like Gibson can hear things?”

“Sort of. I don’t know, he didn’t really explain it.”

Mulder sighs. “Can you at least tell me why you said that they can’t follow us where we’re going?”

There is another long pause, and Mulder is about to give up on getting an answer when Michael finally says, in a near-whisper, “There’s something in the ground. It won’t hurt us, but… if the bad guys go there, they die.”

#x-files fanfic #txf: nothing important happened today ii #mulderfic #mulder on the run

[scenes-in-between]

Nothing Important Happened Today (Part 2)

Kersh leaves, closing the door behind himself, and Scully lets out a shaky breath. Without a word, Mulder gets up from the couch beside her and walks to the kitchen. She watches as he mutely goes about refilling the kettle and putting it on the stove, then puts both his hands on the countertop and leans forward, shoulders hunched. Even from across the room, she can see his jaw muscle bulging. 

They’ve both been given a lot to think about, just now. And if Kersh is telling the truth, they have precious little time to decide what to do, one way or the other. If he’s telling the truth. So much is riding on whether or not they believe him.

Unfortunately, Scully thinks she might.

The picture he painted for them is bleak. Terrifying. And it ends with a repeat of the scene played out a mere four months ago -- God, has it really only been four months? -- when she watched them lower Mulder’s body into the cold earth. Only this time, she will have their son in her arms. Tears sting her eyes and her breath comes a little shorter as the memory looms large and fresh. She cannot go through that again. She cannot lose him again.

“It feels like a trap,” Mulder mutters from the kitchen. “Like I’m not the real target, here.”

She blinks, then hastily swipes away the tear that has escaped down her cheek. “What do you mean?”

He pushes off from the counter and puts both hands behind his head. He turns slowly toward her.

“I stay, and they’ll stop at nothing to kill me. I stay, and I’m putting you and William in danger. But if I go, they’re just gonna leave you alone? End of story? I don’t buy it.”

It’s not that she disagrees with him. There are certainly elements of Kersh’s story that don’t sit entirely right with her, either. But if something happens to Mulder because they ignored this warning, she would never forgive herself.

“I can’t bury you again,” she says quietly. “I just… Mulder, I can’t.”

“But don’t you see? What if that’s exactly what they’re counting on? Send Kersh over to scare us into thinking that running is the only option, and then when I do… Scully, if I run, trying to save my own ass, and then something happens to you… something happens to him…” His voice breaks on the last word as he points toward the closed bedroom door, and he shakes his head. “I couldn’t live with it.”

“It doesn’t make sense, though. If they wanted to hurt me, or William, why wouldn’t they have done it in Georgia? We were defenseless, outnumbered. They weren’t going to have a better opportunity.”

She watches a shadow flit across his face at the reminder of how much danger they’d been in -- she knows he still blames himself for all of it -- but that’s not the point. The point is that they made it out of there unharmed, and without a fight. Mulder said it himself last night: whoever “they” are, William must not be what they thought he was. They’re not interested in him anymore. But if what Kersh says is true, it’s Mulder they’re after now.

“You think I should go,” he says quietly. 

“I don’t want you to go. God, Mulder, I’ve only just gotten you back.” She swallows around the lump in her throat. “But I can’t tell you how much it scares me to think about losing you again.”

“Yeah? Well I’m scared shitless about losing you. So where does that leave us?” 

“I don’t know,” she whispers, and the kettle begins to whine.

He sighs, turning away from her and going back to the stove. 

***

The baby wakes up again just as Mulder sets the steaming mugs on the coffee table. Scully leans forward and begins to stand up, but Mulder touches her shoulder.

“I got him.”

I’ll be the dutiful father, Scully. Please don’t send me away.

He frowns, unsure where that thought came from. Scully has made it clear she wants him around, that she’s only afraid for his safety. His subconscious, apparently, has some doubts.

In the bedroom, he carefully picks up the bleating little bundle and bounces him gently in his arms. The baby settles and quiets with the motion, and Mulder is struck with the simultaneous realizations that leaving is absolutely unthinkable, but also that he will do, without question, whatever it takes to keep this child safe.

Even the unthinkable, if it comes to that.

He still doesn’t believe Kersh, though he might have to accept the possibility that he just doesn’t want to believe. The fact that Scully seems to think the threat may be credible is starting to give him pause. After all, can he really trust his own judgement after he was so completely wrong about Georgia? For that matter, does it really make sense that these invulnerable superbeings would have to get him out of the picture if they wanted to come after Scully and William? As if his presence here is the only thing keeping them at bay? Even he has to admit that sounds a bit ridiculous.

The internal struggle must be showing on his face when he gets back to the living room because Scully immediately frowns and asks him what’s wrong. He gently hands her the baby and takes a step backward, shaking his head.

“I was just… thinking. Maybe you’re right. Maybe I should go.” He swallows. “If you really think Kersh was telling the truth, and my staying here puts you and William in jeopardy, then… yeah.”

Scully nods but doesn’t answer right away. Mulder sits down in the chair opposite her and watches with his heart in his throat as she settles into nursing the baby. The thought of leaving her, leaving them, cuts as sharply as any pain he’s ever felt, but equally intense is the protective feeling surging in his chest. He will draw the threat away from them, no matter how much it hurts. 

With any luck, he’ll stay alive long enough to come back to them someday.

“I don’t know what to believe,” Scully finally says. She’s looking down at the baby, though. Not at Mulder. “But I can’t think of a reason for Kersh to lie about this. I think… I think we might have to trust him.”

Mulder nods, unable to voice his agreement aloud. Grief and fear and love tumble through him like stones pulled by the tide.

***

They rent a truck under her name and pay for it in cash. The storage unit he rented after his mother’s death is less than half full, so there should still be room for nearly all of whatever he might want to keep. Of course, given the deadline they got from Kersh, it is likely that time, not space, will be the limiting factor in making that determination.

When they get to his apartment, Scully is a little stunned to see how much is already in boxes. She knows he has been going through his things -- as well as things from his mother’s house -- for the past few weeks, but it is somehow still a surprise to see the place looking so different. She hasn’t been here since the first few days after he came back, and she shoves aside the sudden ache arising at the thought that this is it -- the last time she will stand in this apartment. Yes, he was already planning on moving out eventually, but they were supposed to have more time to prepare, to gradually let go of the memories infused within these walls. 

They were supposed to have more time, period.

“I, um, I got through most of the stuff in this front room,” Mulder says, gently setting the sleeping William’s car seat on the floor beside the coffee table. “Bookcase is the only thing left.”

He rubs his jaw, turning. “If you don’t want to deal with keeping the fish, I understand--”

“Don’t be ridiculous, Mulder. Of course I’m keeping the fish.”

He opens his mouth like he’s going to say more, then closes it again and nods. She returns the nod, welcoming the familiar protective feeling as her brain shifts into “productivity mode.” They have a task and a time limit, and that will be enough to keep her from breaking down, at least for now.

“I’ll get started in the kitchen,” she tells him, turning away to find a box. 

They’ve already decided there’s not much in the kitchen worth keeping; she will pack up whatever can be donated and give it to the charity shop affiliated with her mother’s church, and throw away the rest. It is easy to remain detached as she methodically packs up generic silverware and dishes,  or as she gives his old, stained coffee pot a critical look before setting it in the trash pile. The pots and pans have seen better days, but she deems them serviceable enough, nesting them in a box with faded dish towels layered between. It is only when she gets to the final cupboard, the one she’s been subconsciously avoiding, that she falters.

How many times has she sat on his couch with one of these mugs in front of her? (So many that they all blend together.) Sharper are the rare memories of mornings she awoke in his bed to find coffee waiting for her on the nightstand. Or that of the night they started with tea and switched to whiskey while she bared her soul. And there, in the back corner, is a mug he used to keep at the office. It’s one she bought him, a silly airport impulse purchase from early in their partnership. She didn’t even know he still had it.

She’s cradling it in her hands when Mulder walks through the kitchen doorway. “I thought this broke years ago,” she says softly, without looking up.

He comes to stand beside her, resting a hand on her lower back and pressing a kiss to the top of her head.

“No, I brought it home after… when they split us up.” Now she does look up at him, and he shrugs. “Made me miss you too much, seeing it in the office every day.”

She sets the mug on the counter and turns, wrapping her arms around his waist, remembering all too well how it felt, walking into that office every day while he was missing. Remembering how something as innocuous as an old post-it note or half-empty bag of sunflower seeds was like a knife to the heart, when she didn’t know whether he was alive or dead. How things got both better and worse after she buried him.

I hate this, she wants to say. Don’t leave me again. 

But she doesn’t, because if she says that to him, he will stay, no matter the risk. So she holds him instead, praying fiercely that this is the right choice. She has to believe that sending him away now is the necessary cost of getting to keep him, later. That she will get to have him back again, for good.

Because if it isn’t true, then what the hell are they doing?

***

It takes most of the day to clear out the apartment; it's late afternoon when Mulder prepares to close the door for the last time. Reflecting is as involuntary as breathing, and he lets himself take a moment. He moved in here straight out of the academy, what feels like a lifetime ago. No matter how many times he's imagined leaving this place, moving on, he never pictured it being like this.

Instead of a home with Scully waiting on the horizon, he's facing an indefinite period of uncertainty. Of running, hiding, looking over his shoulder just to stay alive.

Whatever it takes to keep them safe. 

And that is at the heart of everything, isn't it? His immediate future may be dark and scary, but he will face it without hesitation if it means protecting his family. If he gets to come back home to them at the end of it, so much the better. It is with this renewed sense of resolve that he closes the apartment door and goes to join Scully downstairs.

His phone buzzes in his pocket when he steps off the elevator, and he fishes it out to see a "new voicemail" notification. Pressing play, he raises the phone to his ear. It's a message from Frohike.

"Hey, man. Me and the boys have come across something you'll find very tasty. I can't tell you over the phone, but call me so we can meet some place out of the way of prying eyes, if you catch my drift. You can reach me at 240 555 0106. Later."

Mulder sighs. They still have to take the truck over to the storage unit and unload. He does not really have time to get wrapped up in whatever the boys have got going on. On the other hand, who knows when he'll get to see them again? And he could probably use their help in getting set up with some alternate sets of identification.

He makes up his mind to call back after he and Scully have returned the truck.

#x-files fanfic #txf: nothing important happened today #mulderfic #scullyfic #msr #baby william #a/n: the very end of this dovetails into the finale of the lone gunmen series #and that's what frohike's voicemail and the screencap are from #;)

[scenes-in-between]

Existence (Part Three)

It occurs to Mulder, when the nurse comes to tell Agent Reyes she has a phone call, that there’s someone he should probably call, too. He sits up slowly, eases the sleeping baby from his chest to the crook of his arm, and carefully stands. There’s a pay phone at the end of the hall, and he makes his way over to it, hoping there’s still money left on the phone card he hasn’t used in over a year.

It rings all the way through to the answering machine, but the recorded message cuts off abruptly with a breathless, “Hello?”

“Oh, uh, hi, Mrs. Scully,” he stammers, thrown. “I’m sorry to call at this hour, but I thought you’d want to know--”

“Fox?! Where’s Dana, is she all right? I haven’t been able to reach her, and her doctor hasn’t seen her, and nobody will tell me where she is or if she’s alive, or--”

“She’s okay,” he says quickly, cursing himself for not even thinking about how upset she would be when Scully disappeared without warning. “She’s okay, and the baby’s okay, and I’m sorry you were worried, but everything’s--”

“Worried?” Her voice cracks, and when she speaks again, it is with a near sob. “Do you have any idea what I have been through these past three days? How terrifying it is to… to not know where your pregnant daughter is or if she’s even… if she…”

He looks at the floor, shame burning through him, as Mrs. Scully loses her composure on the other end of the line. Every hitching breath and muffled sob cuts like broken glass, and he bears them all, letting the impact of it hit him square in the chest.

He deserves this. All of it.

It doesn’t matter that he was trying to protect Scully, that he thought she would be safest if even he didn’t know where she was going. It doesn’t even matter whether he was right or wrong about that. What matters is that he didn’t even consider Margaret Scully’s feelings, that she didn’t enter into the equation at all, as far as he was concerned. He owes her more than that. After everything that has happened, from the moment her daughter walked into his office eight years ago, he owes her so much more.

“I’m sorry,” he whispers.

“You should be.” Her voice is thick, angry. “I know I’m supposed to tell you that it’s okay. I’m supposed to just quietly accept this life Dana has chosen, accept the dangers and the risks because she has accepted them. But it is not okay! How many times, Fox? How many times is she going to disappear, or get sick, or have people trying to hurt her? How many times am I going to have to wonder where she is or if she’s ever coming home? Or if I’m going to have to bury her like we buried you?”

“I don’t… I don’t know.”

“No. Of course you don’t. And to be honest, Fox, I don’t know how much more of this I can take.”

He has no answer to that. Mrs. Scully sighs into the receiver.

“Can you at least tell me where my daughter is now? And why you’re the one calling me instead of her?”

“She’s… resting,” he hedges, turning his gaze to the baby. He can’t help the soft smile that comes to his face, and a warmth blooms in his chest that has nothing to do with guilt or shame. “I was, um… I was calling to tell you that your grandson’s been born.”

She gasps. “Oh! Oh, but that’s… But I asked Dr. Speake to call me right away if Dana came to the hospital! I’ll be right there, just--”

“We’re not at Washington Memorial,” Mulder says quickly.

“You’re not? But… well, then where?”

He winces as he answers, “Blairsville, Georgia.”

“Georgia,” she breathes. “But that’s impossible. I don’t understand, Fox. She was supposed to be on maternity leave. No work, no travel, certainly no flying--”

“This wasn’t about work.” At least not directly. “I thought… there was a chance someone wanted to hurt her, and I… I couldn’t let that happen.”

“So you took her to Georgia? And couldn’t take five minutes to let me know she was going away?”

He squeezes his eyes closed. This is not how this phone call was supposed to go. He was supposed to deliver the happy news about the baby and reassure Mrs. Scully that everything was okay. Instead, here they are. And none of it is her fault. It is entirely his own shortsightedness that got them here.

“I’m sorry. I really am.”

“I know you are, Fox. You’re always sorry. But I can’t think of a time that’s ever actually changed anything.”

He’s stunned into silence, the wind figuratively knocked right out of him. She’s not wrong, and it’s not as though he hasn’t told himself the same damned thing, any one of the billion times he’s wallowed in shame and self-flagellation. Somehow, though, it hits that much harder, coming from her.

“Please ask Dana to call me when she can,” she says after a bit. “I would appreciate someone letting me know when she is coming home. Goodbye, Fox.”

“I--”

But she’s already hung up.

***

Monica doesn’t see Mulder and the baby at first, when she returns to the waiting area, and wonders if they’ve been let in to see Dana. She starts to try and find someone to ask, but then she spots him at the end of the hall, baby in one arm, phone to his ear, shoulders hunched. He’s too far away to hear what he’s saying, but his posture alone speaks volumes. Whoever he’s talking to, it’s not going well.

Looking away, she goes back to the chair she was sitting in before and wearily lowers herself into it. What I wouldn’t give for a cigarette right about now. Of all the reasons to want to quit, it’s the inconvenience of the habit that’s always been the most powerful motivator. Yes, she should want to quit because it’s terrible for her, and it’s not as if that isn’t a factor. It’s just… whenever she’s in a situation where she can’t stop for a smoke, it’s usually already stressful enough without throwing cravings into the mix. Being free of those cravings would be liberating, has been liberating, each time she’s managed to “quit” in the past.

“Probably time to try again,” she mutters aloud, rubbing her forehead.

She looks up again at the sound of footsteps down the hall and sees Mulder coming back toward her, his face ashen. Before she can ask him what’s wrong, though, the door at the end of the hall opens, and a nurse walks toward them.

“Mr. Mulder? Ms. Reyes? I’m pleased to tell you that Ms. Scully is waking up. You can come see her if you’d like, but only for a few minutes. She still needs a lot of rest.”

“That’s wonderful news,” Monica says, standing.

She turns her head to glance at Mulder, but instead of the relief she expected to see and feel from him, his jaw muscle bulges, and an anxious energy is rolling off of him in waves. They follow the nurse together in silence, and it is not until the door opens to Dana’s room and they can see her for themselves that he relaxes. He practically floats the last few steps to her bedside, while Monica hangs back at the doorway. Though clearly exhausted, Dana immediately brightens at the sight of him and the baby, and though Monica can only see Mulder’s back, she has no doubt there is a matching smile on his face.

When Mulder leans down to kiss Dana on the forehead, their son cradled between them, Monica eases back into the hallway to give them some privacy. There will be time for her to talk to Dana later; for now, Monica is just so glad to see that she’s all right.

***

“You’re really here,” she croaks, her own voice sounding foreign to her ears. “I was afraid maybe I’d dreamed it.”

Mulder eases himself onto the edge of the bed, beside her hip. “I’m really here.”

He slowly places the sleeping baby, all wrapped in new blankets, on the bed next to her, and her eyes fill with tears. He is still really here, too. They didn’t take him.

“Oh, Mulder, I was so scared…” she whispers, too choked up to say more than that.

“Shh,” he says, his fingertips grazing her forehead. “Everything’s okay. You’re safe, and he’s safe, and I’m not gonna let anything happen to either of you.”

A shadow flits across his expression; he has to know as well as she does that this isn’t a thing he can promise. There were just so many of them, and all like Billy Miles. If they’d wanted to hurt her, to take the baby, there wouldn’t have been a single thing Mulder or anyone else could have done to stop them.

She squeezes her eyes shut, shaking her head, and instantly she’s back in that room, Monica yelling at her to push, and all of them there, watching, waiting…

“Okay,” someone says, and she opens her eyes with a gasp as a hand touches her shoulder. Dimly, she realizes the ECG monitor is beeping like crazy, and the nurse has come to stand beside the bed, across from Mulder. “Take a deep breath, sugar. Easy does it. Sir, I’m going to have to ask you to step outside and--”

“No,” Scully says, shaking her head again. “No, please… please let him stay. I just need… I need…”

She feels Mulder take her hand in his, lets the familiar slide of his thumb across her knuckles ground her. That simple gesture, just one of many in the compendium of physical shorthand they have developed over the years, conveys without words that he is here, with her, in this moment. It’s support and concern and love, all communicated silently but no less earnestly for it.

Tucked between them, his head resting against her upper arm and his body snugly nestled against her side, is their son. The miracle she never expected to have and was terrified she wouldn’t get to keep. It is still a little hard to believe that he is finally here, whole and healthy and human. She spent so many months afraid, despite the tests and all of the attempts to reassure herself that he was normal, and some part of her never really relaxed enough to truly believe that she could have this. For that matter, she still keeps thinking she is going to wake up to discover the last couple of months never happened, that Mulder is still dead and buried in North Carolina, lost to her forever. It hardly seems possible she could be granted two things so extraordinarily miraculous and be permitted to keep them both, but maybe… just maybe…

Gradually, her heart stops racing.

“All right.” The nurse gives a wary nod, then turns to Mulder. “Y’all can visit a little while longer, but then she needs to rest some more. I’ll come back when it’s time.” Looking back at Scully, she adds, “But if you need anything before then, just press that call button. Okay?”

“Thank you,” Scully says.

When they’re alone, Mulder brings her knuckles briefly to his lips, then releases her hand to let it rest on the baby. She watches for a while as the small chest rises and falls under her palm, and when she looks back up at Mulder’s face, she sees him gazing at her with such a look of wonder that she can’t help smiling back at him.

“The, uh, the doctors were asking me about his name,” he says softly. “I didn’t know what to tell them. I never, um… I never asked if you had one picked out or…”

Right. That.

When Mulder was missing, she put off a lot of things, hoping against hope that he would be returned and they would have a chance do those things together. When he was “dead,” she was really only existing day by day; even something as seemingly simple as thinking about potential baby names was more forward-looking than she could manage. Since he’s been back, things were so shaky at first, and then he didn’t even want to know the baby’s sex, and so it’s really only been in the last week or two that she’s felt like she could even consider bringing up the subject of names with him.

And somehow, because their lives are the way they are, she just never quite got around to it. That’s not to say she hasn’t thought about names at all, but she is definitely nowhere near having chosen one for certain.

“No, I… I suppose I thought we’d have time to talk about it. Together. Then everything happened so fast in the last few days, and…” She shrugs, trying not to slip back into thinking too deeply about the last few days. “I don’t know. What do you think?”

“Me?” He looks surprised, like it never occurred to him he might have a say in this. “I don’t know. I was… gone… for so much of your pregnancy, and… I guess I just assumed you would’ve already had something in mind.”

“Nothing definite, no,” she says, shaking her head.

“Well, my father’s family had a tradition of always naming children after someone else. Of course, that’s how you end up saddled with a name like Fox, so I’m not sure I actually endorse the practice.”

She smiles. “So there’s another Fox Mulder somewhere in your family tree?”

“No, actually. But my grandmother’s maiden name was Fuchs, which is--”

“German for ‘fox,’” she says along with him, nodding in recognition.

“Yeah.” He chuckles. “Could’ve been worse, I guess.” Looking down, he reaches to touch the baby's cheek with one finger. “Still. Let's do this kid a favor and not name him after his old man, all right? I like him too much already to do that to him.”

“Mulder…”

“And not… not Sam,” he adds quietly. “There’s too much weight there, and I just… not Sam, okay?”

She reaches for his hand again, and he takes it, giving her fingers a little squeeze. “Okay.”

As legacy names go, there is one obvious answer. It’s one she thought about, briefly, when she was starting the IVF process over a year ago. One she could brush off as an homage to her father, if Mulder had decided he wanted nothing to do with anything past the sperm donation, but which would still (at least in her mind) acknowledge his contribution.

Of course, it might also be too obvious a choice, which is enough to make her question whether it is the right one.

“I think,” he says after a while, “it should be your decision. And I also think there’s no need to rush and decide right now. Hang out with him for a few days, see what feels right.”

It’s not what she wanted -- the burden of making this decision all on her own -- but she’s suddenly too tired again to argue, and she supposes Mulder is right that there’s no rush. So she nods and covers a yawn with her free hand. As if on cue, there’s a light tap on the door, and the nurse comes back into the room, along with a doctor.

“How are you feeling, Ms. Scully?”

“I’m okay,” says through another yawn.

Mulder leans forward to press a kiss against her forehead. “You rest. The little man and I will be right outside.”

“Actually,” the doctor says, “we’re going to go ahead and move you out of recovery and over into the L&D wing. We’ll get you all set up in a family room together. How does that sound?”

Family. The word gives her a happy, swoopy feeling in her stomach, and from the way Mulder is beaming down at her, he must be feeling the same way. She squeezes his hand.

“That sounds great.”

#x-files fanfic #txf: existence #mulderfic #scullyfic #monica whalesong reyes #baby william #maggie scully #msr

[scenes-in-between]

Nothing Important Happened Today (Part 1)

(pre-episode)

One night. They get one night at home together before it all goes to hell.

It's not the most restful night, either. The baby is up every two hours to eat, and both Mulder and Scully have nightmares in between. Even so, months later, he will look back on this night of broken sleep with a longing so fierce it feels he might combust from it.

He finally decides after William's 5 AM feeding that he might as well get some water boiling (coffee for him, tea for Scully), and even bleary-eyed and fuzzy-headed, it is hard to remember a time he's been happier. This is the dream he never really allowed himself to want, a domestic sort of bliss he never truly believed himself worthy of, messy and imperfect but also somehow exactly right.

He almost drops the kettle into the sink when someone knocks on the door.

Instinctively, he reaches toward the holster he’s not wearing, frowns, and pads on near-silent bare feet to the door anyway. A wary glance through the peephole does nothing to set his mind at ease.

“What do you want?” he says quietly through the closed door.

“We need to talk,” is the muffled reply.

“I have nothing to say to you.”

“Maybe not. But you’re going to want to hear what I have to say to you.”

Clenching his jaw, Mulder unlocks the deadbolt but leaves the security chain in place, then opens the door just the small amount that the chain allows.

“And why should I believe anything that comes out of your mouth?”

“Believe me or don’t,” Kersh says. “But I didn’t have to come here. And if I walk away right now, the only person whose ass that saves is me.”

***

Mulder closes the door, and for a moment, Kersh thinks he might not reopen it. But he hears the slide and clatter of the chain being undone, and then the door opens once more. Mulder is standing there with the same defiant scowl on his face that he’s worn so many times before in Kersh’s office, only this time, the flannel pajama pants and bare feet make him look even more like a petulant teenager. It might be funny, if the situation weren’t so dire.

The temptation is certainly there, Kersh has to admit, to simply walk away. To let whatever Mulder has coming for him just take its course and have that be the end of it, once and for all. Under different circumstances, he might indeed have done just that.

But what’s coming for Mulder won’t stop with him; Agent Scully and this brand new, innocent baby will be caught in the crossfire, and that is more blood on his hands than he can stomach. Kersh may have no love lost for Mulder, but he is not a complete monster.

At length, Mulder moves to one side so Kersh can actually enter the apartment instead of standing out in the hallway like a jackass.

“Whatever you have to say, keep your voice down,” Mulder murmurs as he closes the door. “The baby’s sleeping.”

Kersh gestures toward the couch. “Mind if we sit down?”

“No, I think we’re fine right here,” Mulder says, crossing his arms over his chest. “You won’t be staying long.”

Arrogant sonofabitch.

“All right, then. I’ll cut to the chase. Your life is in danger. You’ve got about 24 hours to get out of town before a chain of events is set in motion that no one will be able to stop.”

“I’m sorry, is that supposed to scare me? Maybe you haven’t noticed, but that’s not exactly new territory for me.”

“Oh, no? Then tell me, what does Agent Scully think about this cavalier attitude of yours, in light of the… new addition.”

At this, Mulder drops his arms and steps forward, getting his face right up into Kersh’s. “Don’t you threaten my son,” he practically hisses.

“That’s not a threat, you damned hothead, it’s a warning. A warning that you’ve got your head so far up your own ass that you fail to recognize the danger you’re bringing on them both by staying here.”

“Oh, and I’m supposed to believe that leaving them unprotected is a better plan? Thanks, but given how well that worked out the last time, I’m not making that mistake again.”

“They’re still alive, aren’t they?”

Mulder’s jaw muscle bulges, but whatever he’s about to say is derailed by the sound of another door opening in the apartment.

Kersh turns to see Agent Scully standing in the doorway to the bedroom, then quickly looks away; she’s wearing a robe over her pajamas, but even so, he is still her boss, and seeing her like this seems intimate in a way that feels deeply inappropriate.

“Sir? What are you doing here?”

“The Deputy Director was just leaving,” Mulder says before Kersh can answer.

Kersh levels a glare at him. “Actually, I think Agent Scully ought to hear what I’ve told you. Perhaps she will have the sense to listen.”

“No, I think we’re both done listening to your lies.”

He should have known it would be pointless to come here. Mulder was never going to listen to reason, especially not after learning about Kersh’s association with the very people he’s now trying to protect them from.

The same people who will not hesitate to separate his head from his body if they find out he’s been here.

It’s this last point that keeps him from throwing up his hands and walking out; if he leaves without doing what he came here to do, the risk will have been entirely for nothing, and Alvin Kersh is not someone who puts himself in harm’s way for no reason.

“If I were trying to mislead you, don’t you think I would have contrived to do so by some means that you would find more credible?”

“You’ve never shown even the slightest interest in helping us before,” Mulder counters. “Why start now?”

It takes every ounce of restraint not to roll his eyes.

“What I have refused to do, and will never do, is validate your ridiculous claims about aliens. You are so quick to blame everything on little green men that you ignore, to your great detriment, the very real and very human threats facing you. Especially now.”

Mulder scoffs. “There is nothing human about the men you were meeting in your office a few nights ago.”

“On the contrary. What you mischaracterize as alien is in fact the product of human science more advanced and more dangerous than you could possibly comprehend.”

This shuts Mulder up for a full two seconds. Then he shakes his head. “You actually believe that, don’t you? You really have no idea what you’re dealing with.”

“Mulder, can I speak with you for a moment?” Agent Scully says quietly from behind Kersh. “Alone?”

Mulder’s expression immediately changes, his eyes narrowing in concern. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing’s wrong, just… Would you excuse us a moment please, sir?”

“By all means,” Kersh says, without turning around.

With one more distrustful glare, Mulder stalks past him, and the two of them go into the bedroom and shut the door. Kersh, meanwhile, takes this opportunity to walk over to the chair in the living room and sit down. For several minutes, the only sound is a clock ticking somewhere nearby.

Kersh waits.

***

“I just think it's worth hearing what he has to say,” Scully whispers. “It's the only way we can hope to even guess as to what his true motivations might be.”

“We know that he wants me out of the picture, Scully. I don't think the 'why’ matters. I'm not going anywhere.”

“I know you're not.” She takes his hand and squeezes. His face softens, and he squeezes her fingers back. “But I still want to try and find out as much as possible about what we're up against.” She looks over at the bassinet. “If not for our sake then for William's.”

“Dana…”

“I need to know they aren't going to keep coming after him. That when they all walked away in Georgia, that was the end of it. Because if it wasn't…”

“I'm not going to let anything happen to him. Not to him, not to you, not to any of us.”

“Mulder…” She sighs. “We both know what they're capable of. We both know that's something you can't promise. Which is why it's all the more important to know whatever we can about what they want and what they're planning. That is the only way we will have any hope of fighting them. And while Kersh may believe the lie about their origins, that doesn't mean that the rest of what he might know about them is also untrue.”

“Unless by listening to him, we're playing right into their hands.” He shakes his head. “I don't trust anything that comes out of his mouth, regardless of whether or not he believes he's telling the truth.”

“I don't trust him either. But I still think that we should hear him out first, and then decide what to do with whatever information he might give us.”

Mulder drops her hand and rubs his face. “I don’t like it,” he murmurs from behind his hands. “This isn’t how it’s supposed to go.”

Nothing has gone “how it was supposed to” since the moment she found out she was pregnant. Mulder disappearing for months and coming back “dead,” all of the questions and the worry, the doctors she should have been able to trust but couldn’t, and all of it culminating in a birth that bore not even the faintest resemblance to any of what she had hoped and planned for. She fell through the proverbial looking glass the day Mulder left for Oregon, and she can count on one hand the moments since then when her life has felt like anything approaching normal.

And that’s even relative to the departure from “normal” that has characterized her life since the first time she walked into that basement office, nearly a decade ago.

She looks over again at William. If all of this turmoil is the price she has to pay for him, for his very existence, for the fact that however miraculous the circumstances surrounding his conception might have been, he is the product of a perfectly ordinary human union, then she will pay it without hesitation.

“Come on. We’d better get back out there.”

Without giving Mulder a chance to argue again, she opens the door. Kersh meets her eyes only momentarily before looking away uncomfortably. She’s not sure what he expected, dropping in on a new mother at 5:30 in the morning; no way in hell is she putting on a pantsuit right now. There is nothing immodest about her current state of dress, and if he has a problem with it, that’s on him.

Besides, maybe it’s a good thing if he’s thrown off balance a bit.

She walks to the couch and sits. “All right. I’m listening.”

#x-files fanfic #txf: nothing important happened today #msr #baby william #kersh #mulderfic #scullyfic

[scenes-in-between]

Alone

“I'm betting that Agent Doggett can take care of himself. He's a big boy. You gotta worry about the little boy. Or little girl. Boy? Or girl?”

Scully grants him a little smile, humoring him. She has been a saint these past several weeks, holding back on the secret she’s clearly wanted to share with him almost from the moment he woke up in the hospital. But he asked for time to process, and she gave it to him without complaint, putting up with all the times he’s tested the words in his mouth.

He. She. Boy. Girl.

Used to be you didn’t have a choice but to wait and see. He remembers his mother going to the hospital to have a baby but coming home with a sister. The moment stuck with him, that sort of revelatory feeling when possibility becomes reality. Of course, these days, the revelation is no less momentous; it’s just that it happens at a sonogram appointment instead of in the delivery room.

When Scully first told him that this baby was theirs, hers and his, that was as much revelation as he could handle, just then. Hell, he didn’t even handle that much particularly well. His head was so screwed up from the abduction that trying to regain his place in the world was almost too big a challenge on its own, let alone the notion of trying to navigate that challenge in the context of impending fatherhood. It seems silly now, the idea that not knowing the baby’s gender could provide some sort of emotional buffer, but it made sense at the time.

But then came his misadventure on the Galpex Orpheus. He could have died not knowing. Could have left Scully once again with the burden of knowledge she wanted to share with him but never had the chance. What kind of a selfish prick would that make him?

No, it’s time. It’s long past time. He’s ready.

He pulls the pillow out from under his shirt and sets it on the back of the couch, then reaches for her hand. “I wanna know. Really.”

She arches an eyebrow. “You’re sure?”

“Scully, I-- I’m sorry that it took me this long.” He brushes his thumb across her knuckles, and she squeezes his fingers lightly in response. “The fact that you feel like you have to thank me for going to this Lamaze class with you, like it’s some kind of favor… Look, I know things have been uneven since I…  came back. I mean, it's been weeks, and I still don't have my bearings, not really.”

“Mulder, the trauma you experienced--”

“I'm not--” he interrupts, then takes a breath and lowers his voice before continuing. “I'm not trying to make this about me. What I'm trying to say is thank you. For putting up with me. And I'm sorry that you had to. But I'm ready now.” He gives her what he hopes is a reassuring smile. “Lay it on me.”

She smiles up at him, for real this time, then guides his hand to the side of her belly. Under his palm, something moves -- an elbow, or maybe a knee, dragging across from the inside -- and he doubts there will ever be a time when he won’t find that completely strange and also completely awe-inspiring.

Some part of him knows the answer before she says it, has known it all along. But the confirmation is still enough to take his breath away.

“That’s our son.”

#x-files fanfic #txf: alone #mulderfic #msr #dana scully's year-long pregnancy #gender binary cw #a/n: just one this time and a super short one at that #someday i may come back and revisit m&s actually going to the lamaze class ;) #but not this time around #i want to try and wrap up s8 before i leave on a six-week road trip next month

[scenes-in-between]

Empedocles (1/3)

“They’re telling us not to worry. They’re running some tests.”

Agent Mulder looks just about as comforted by those words as Doggett feels (which is to say, not comforted in the slightest), but there’s nothing more they can do right now except wait.

It’s still weird as hell, Mulder up and walking around after being dead and buried for months. Not that Doggett has much room to talk; he still doesn’t know what to believe about what may or may not have happened to him in Squamash, but there’s something different and undeniable about seeing with his own eyes what happened with Mulder.

It’s clear, also, that Mulder still doesn’t trust him, let alone like him. They seemed to come to a tentative understanding after the whole debacle at the FSC, but in the couple of weeks since then, they’ve hardly spoken. What few interactions they have had have been civil at best, if not more than a little chilly. Mulder’s not exactly made himself an easy guy to like. He’s cocky and abrasive, and yeah, AD Skinner has asked Doggett to keep in mind what Mulder’s been through, but at a certain point, he has to wonder how much blame can be put on the trauma and how much is just down to personality. Truth be told, he’s still not convinced the guy deserves the unfailing loyalty of someone as genuinely good-hearted as Agent Scully, but he supposes it’s not really his place to say.

“You gentlemen are going to have to clear the hallway,” pipes up a nurse at the desk behind Mulder. “There are chairs down that way where you can wait. The doctor will let you know when there are updates on your friend’s condition.”

Mulder’s jaw muscle bulges and his eyes narrow, and he looks for all the world like he’s going to make them physically drag him away. Doggett gets it -- he’s worried about Agent Scully, too, and has no intention of leaving until he knows she’s going to be okay -- but causing a big scene is only going to end up getting them both kicked out of the hospital altogether.

He is surprised, then, when Mulder turns on his heel without a word and walks in the direction that the nurse pointed.

Doggett hesitates. A month ago, he would’ve been the one anxiously standing guard over Agent Scully’s room; now he can’t help feeling like an intruder, and it stinks. Technically, he’s still her partner, and even if he weren’t, he’s no less her friend than he was before Mulder came back. He’s got every right to be here, to be worried about her, to want to stay and make sure she’s going to be all right.

He very much doubts Mulder will see it that way, though, and he’s got no desire to get into another confrontation with the guy. No way in hell is he leaving, but he’ll find someplace else to sit.

***

Walking into the hospital would have set him on edge even if he weren’t scared to death about Scully and the baby. (Their baby.) But he is scared to death, and between that and the sounds and the smells of this place, the physiological impulse to run away as fast as he can is both undeniable and deeply unhelpful. It’s a flight response held in check by an even stronger unwillingness to leave Scully’s side. Even being this far away from her, just down the hall, makes him anxious.

He leans forward in the chair, resting his elbows on his knees. The phone call from that agent in New Orleans comes to mind, and he seizes it as a momentary source of distraction.

Agent Reyes said she needed his help on a case that somehow involves Agent Doggett. If she had said almost literally anything else, he would have told her no, but this… this may well be the one thing that could possibly grab his attention.

Mulder doesn’t know what Doggett’s story is, but the man is definitely hiding something; of that he’s certain. It’s more than a little suspicious that Doggett ended up getting to the hospital right behind the ambulance. His supposed explanation requires a hell of a coincidence in timing, and what would he have been dropping off at Scully’s in the middle of the day, anyway? It’s not hard to imagine he was surveilling her apartment instead, keeping tabs on her, or maybe even that he’s been tailing Mulder. So if helping Agent Reyes with this case will allow him to find out more about Doggett or where his allegiances lie, it’s worth doing.

But only after the doctors tell him that Scully’s going to be okay.

He glances down the hall toward her room. What if she’s not okay? Before he can stop it, his mind tumbles down a rabbit hole of every possible negative scenario -- Scully pulling through but losing the baby, Scully and the baby both dying, an emergency delivery that she doesn’t survive and leaves him walking out of this hospital a single father. Fuck, he’s barely got a grip on caring for himself right now; how in the hell would he even begin to take care of an infant, all on his own?

He sits up and wipes his damp palms against his thighs, shaking his head and breathing out, hard. He absolutely cannot afford to think like that. She’s going to be okay. She has to be okay.

“Sir?”

Mulder jumps at the nurse’s voice; Jesus, she’s standing right in front of him and he didn’t even see her walk up. He starts to get to his feet.

“What’s happening, is she okay? What did the doctor say?”

The nurse holds out a hand. “They’re still running tests. We don’t know anything yet. I came to ask for your help filling out some forms, since you’re the one who brought her in.”

He wilts back into the chair. “Right, yeah. Okay.”

They’re the same standard intake questions he’s answered a thousand times before. (They really do end up in the hospital way too goddamned often.) Most of Scully’s information is already on file here anyway, so there isn’t much to add, but his heart starts pounding harder as he recounts the symptoms she was having in her apartment and on the ambulance ride. His mouth goes dry recalling how she went quiet and still on the gurney, overwhelmed by the pain or maybe the blood loss; he doesn’t know. God, there was so much blood. In what world is that not a terrible sign?

“We should know more before too long,” the nurse tells him, and he can’t help noticing how she didn’t actually answer the question. “Now, we have a Margaret Scully listed as the emergency contact on file, but we haven’t been able to reach her. Do you know if there’s another number we can try?”

Used to be my name and number on those forms. Guess she hasn’t updated things since I came back to life. If I hadn’t been with her when this happened, would I even know she was in trouble?

“Mrs. Scully is probably still on an airplane right now.” He already asked if Scully wanted him to call her mom while they were waiting for the ambulance, and she told him Maggie left this morning to go visit Bill and Tara out in California. “I don’t know when she’ll be available.”

“And there’s no husband?”

“No, but I’m the f--” he starts to say, and then hesitates. Scully has kept the paternity of this baby pretty close to the vest. The Gunmen obviously know, or guessed, but beyond them, he’s not sure who else is even in the loop. Unless, god forbid, something happens to her, it should probably be Scully’s decision whether to make his involvement in all of this a matter of public record.

“I’m her friend,” he finishes lamely. “But please, if you know anything--”

“As I’ve already told you, I will update you as soon as I have some answers. Okay? Now just sit tight, and I’ll be back with you in a bit.”

He watches her go and resists the urge to get up and pace.

***

Hours pass.

If there’s any word on Scully’s condition, Doggett hasn’t heard it. He wonders if the nurses have forgotten about him.

He’s about to get up and go find someone to ask when Mulder comes walking down the hall. Doggett jumps to his feet.

“How is she, did they let you in to see her?”

Mulder looks startled. “Agent Doggett, you… you’re still here.”

“Of course I’m still here.” Doggett frowns. If Mulder wasn’t coming to give him an update, then where the hell is he going? “Have they told you anything?”

“Yeah, they, uh… Doctor Speake said she’s stable, they got the contractions and the bleeding stopped, but they’re still working on figuring out for sure what happened. They wouldn’t let me see her, but… yeah, it seems like she’s gonna be okay, at least for now.”

“Well, that’s good news, right? I mean, ‘stable’ is always better than the alternative.”

“Yeah, I guess so. Listen, I, um, there’s something I need to do. Are you gonna stick around here, or--?”

“I can stay, sure. I’ll let you know if anything changes.”

Mulder nods, glancing distractedly over Doggett’s shoulder toward the door. He shifts his weight back and forth a few times, like he might change his mind about leaving. Like he can’t trust Doggett to hold down the fort here for however long it takes him to do what he’s got to do.

Doggett sighs. “Look, Mulder, I’m just as worried about her as you are. I promise I’ll call you if her condition changes in any way, all right?”

For a second it looks like Mulder’s about to argue, but he just nods again instead. He throws a curt, “I’ll be back as soon as I can,” over his shoulder as he continues on down the hall.

It’s a weird feeling, being simultaneously judgemental about the fact that Mulder apparently has more important things to do than wait around at the hospital and also profoundly relieved that he’s getting out of here for a little while. On one hand, it feels like things are back to normal, like Doggett’s no longer shoved to the periphery, his friendship and partnership with Agent Scully treated like an afterthought. On the other hand, “back to normal” also means he’s left picking up the pieces while Mulder’s off somewhere else.

Grimacing, he shakes his head. That’s unfair, and he knows it. For all he knows, the guy’s gone back to Scully’s place to bring a bag of her things. Doggett saw his face; he wasn’t thrilled about leaving, and he damn sure wasn’t just assuming Doggett would be there to take up the slack. If anything, his leaving is actually a good sign, an indication that he is willing to trust Doggett at least a little.

And Doggett won’t betray that trust. He turns to head toward the nurses’ station; better make sure they know where to find him in case there’s any news.

#x-files fanfic #txf: empedocles #mulderfic #doggettfic #msr #minor ptsd mention #blood mention #/// #heeeeeeey i'm back #yes this is going to be a 3-parter but this is the longest bit (probably) #and i'm optimistic i'll have parts 2 and 3 up in a timely manner #:)

[scenes-in-between]

Three Words (3/3)

“I’m sorry. I don’t mean to be cold or ungrateful. I just… I have no idea where I fit in, right now. I just, uh… I’m having a little trouble… processing… everything.”

Oh my God, he doesn’t know. He doesn’t realize. He thinks…

“Mulder, I found out I was pregnant the day you went missing,” she blurts. To hell with laying too much on him too soon; he needs to know. “That vertigo I was having, on the case in Oregon… That was morning sickness.”

He goes completely still, and she waits, giving him a chance for it to sink in. Then his face falls, and he looks like he’s been punched, and damn it, she thought he would be happy.

“I guess, uh… guess I wasn’t the only one keeping secrets, back then. Well, fair’s fair.”

What the hell…?

“What are you talking about?”

“Look, it’s none of my business if you wanted to do another round of IVF last spring without involving me. It’s your… body and your choice and all of that. Though for the record, I would’ve been there for you no matter what.”

He stands up from where he’s been leaning against the desk and starts to head toward the bedroom. She steps over to intercept him, and he holds up his hands, defensively.

“I just… I can’t do this, Scully. Not right now. Please, I--”

“But there was no IVF!” she all but yells, desperate to keep him from walking away, desperate to make him understand. “Mulder, I cannot even begin to explain how it happened, but this pregnancy very much involves you.”

He blinks, then shakes his head. “Don’t bullshit me, Scully, and don’t lie to me just to spare my feelings. Your ova were taken from you. There is no way what you’re suggesting is even possible. You know it, and I know it. Now just let me--”

“Damn it, Mulder, the fact that you are even standing here talking to me isn’t possible! Those test results this morning weren’t possible!” She stares him down, willing him to hear her. “And even if they were, when has impossibility ever stopped you from believing in something?”

She reaches toward him, and he flinches away. Dropping her hand, she blinks back tears because damn it, none of this is going how it was supposed to.

He turns sideways and sinks down on the couch as if his knees have just given out. Hunching forward with his elbows on his thighs, he stares straight ahead at the coffee table and takes shallow breaths. She watches, barely breathing, herself.

“If what you're saying is true,” he finally says, his voice tight and almost inaudible, “then why are you only telling me now? Why not in the hospital?”

Are you kidding me with this?

“Because the look on your face… From the moment you first noticed--” She gestures broadly to her belly. “--this, you were… Mulder, you could not have looked more terrified, or horrified, and I thought… God, after everything you had been through, and everything you thought you still had to fear about your brain, the idea of being a father on top of it all was just too much. I was trying to give you time!”

She looks down, sighing ruefully. I tried to do the right thing, but it seems I could not have been more wrong.

“You have no idea how badly I’ve wanted to tell you,” she whispers, still staring at the floor. “How much it hurt to stand beside your grave, knowing you had died without ever learning--”

“Scully.”

She dares a glance back up at his face, and there it is again, that same slightly awestruck look that was in his eyes when he woke up yesterday morning. Because she knows him as well as she does, she can also see the fear lurking behind it, the tightness around his mouth and cautious set to his shoulders. Slowly, not taking his eyes off hers, he stands, closing the gap between them in one step. His gaze flicks down at her belly and then back up, questioning.

“Do you really mean it? That I… that we…?”

She nods, a smile spreading across her face as she reaches for his hands. He lets her bring them to rest flat against both sides of her stomach. A shiver runs through her at the contact; God, she has wanted this for so long.

“Yes, Mulder. I don’t know how, but yes. We did this.”

***

It’s unbelievable, so far outside the realm of possibility that it never even occurred to him this could be an option, not even when she told him about the timing. He simply could not wrap his head around the notion of an explanation that didn’t involve a donor egg, and he has been so focused on trying to protect himself, on finding a way to accept the reality of her moving on without him, that somehow it made more sense to believe she was lying, instead.  

But then she said the word “father,” and his defenses began to crumble.

He still doesn’t quite believe it, not fully. But he wants to. He doesn’t trust the hope that is starting to surge through him, standing here in front of her, because if he lets himself give in to that hope, and everything comes crashing down after all, he’s not sure he will survive it. But her thumbs are stroking the backs of his hands, and she is looking at him like he is an even bigger miracle than the one between his palms, and oh, he may already be past the point of no return.

We did this.

Something clicks, and this feeling that’s been plaguing him for days, the sensation of having fallen out of phase with the rest of the world, evaporates. For the first time since just after he woke up, he truly feels like he’s home.

He slides his hands out from under hers and brings them up to cup her face. Slowly, deliberately, trying to give her every opportunity to pull away if this isn’t what she wants, he brings his mouth to hers. With centimeters between them, she sighs against his lips and presses forward to close the gap.

His eyes close, and time stops. He doesn’t realize he’s crying until the salt hits his tongue.

Breaking the connection between them with a sharp inhalation, he presses his forehead against hers instead. Everything he has been holding at bay comes rushing to the surface, the good and the bad, memories of screaming her name on the ship all jumbled up with the desire to pick her up and carry her to his bed, along with the sinking realization, finally, of what she must have gone through in his absence. It’s disorienting and overwhelming, and he finds himself struggling to stay upright.

“Mulder.”

He throws a hand out blindly for the arm of the couch and staggers backward, all but collapsing onto the cushions. She’s beside him in an instant, grounding him with one hand on his knee and one on his shoulder. He gulps air, reaching for her fingers and squeezing.

“It’s okay, it’s okay,” she says. “I’ve got you.”

It’s not enough contact though, and he turns toward her, wrapping his arms around her ribcage and burying his face in the crook of her shoulder. Tentatively at first, but then more solidly when he doesn’t pull away, she runs her fingers through his hair. He can’t even make out what she’s murmuring in his ear, but it doesn’t matter. Whether from years of conditioning or just because of its very nature, her voice on its own is the single most soothing thing he can imagine. He focuses on the sound, breathing, as his panic slowly ebbs.

“I’m so sorry,” he whispers, once he has found some semblance of composure.

I’m sorry for falling apart, sorry for leaving you, sorry for coming back broken…

With a long sigh, he unwraps himself from around her and sits upright, scrubbing his hands over his face. “I don’t know how I ever thought I could do this without you,” he says, his words muffled. “I’m a mess.”

He lets his hands fall into his lap, and she reaches for them, squeezing gently. Her smile is crooked and a little sad, but the look in her eyes is one of reassurance, not pity.

“Good thing I’m not going anywhere, then.”

He leans forward to kiss her again, chaste and brief, before sitting back with another sigh. It’s going to be a long road ahead, none of it easy, but if she is really going to be there alongside him through it all, then he is one lucky sonofabitch.

“Yeah,” he says, the beginnings of a smile starting to creep at the edges of his mouth. “Yeah it is.”

#x-files fanfic #txf: three words #scullyfic #mulderfic #dana scully's year-long pregnancy #ptsd #a/n: hopefully this lives up to everyone's expectations! #hey no matter what happens tonight #these two are kissing today #because i say so #damnit

[scenes-in-between]

Empedocles (2/3)

“Sir, immediate family only. You fellas just don't listen. You have to go now.”

Mulder's been gone for nearly an hour, and all Doggett wanted to do was check on Scully’s condition. When there was no one at the nurses’ desk, he thought he would just pop into her room for a second and see for himself.

It's hard to see her looking so pale and small in that bed, pregnant belly or no, but at least she's not hooked up to a ventilator. He doesn't know if she's unconscious or just asleep, but she's breathing on her own, so that has to be a good sign.

Still, it’s enough to trigger… whatever the hell that was from his overstressed brain just now. Luke was so pale and small, too.

“What part of ‘you have to go now’ was unclear?”

Great. He’s so wrapped up in his own head that he’s kept on standing here long enough for the nurse to come back.

“I just--”

“Right. Now. I don't care who you work for, if I catch you in here again, I'm calling security.”

He swallows his protest and turns to leave. “I'm going. All right?” In the doorway, though, he pauses. “But can you at least tell me how she's doing? If there’s been any improvement or--”

“Nothing has changed since the last time we spoke. She's stable. She needs to rest. She is in very good hands. And as visiting hours are now over, I suggest you go on home and get some rest, yourself. We will call you or the other gentleman if anything changes.”

Given how not forthcoming she has been this entire afternoon and evening, he very much doubts she will jump right on the phone if Scully were to start going downhill suddenly. And if she does call, and she calls Mulder first, he is not especially confident that Mulder will bother to pass along the message. No, better to stay and keep an eye on the situation, himself.

“Look, if it's all the same to you, I'd really rather just--”

His cell phone trills in his pocket, and from the look the nurse gives him, he may as well have just dumped a bucket of raw sewage in the hallway.

“Sorry, I… excuse me.” He hurries to answer and silence the damned thing, turning and walking quickly up the hall, back toward the waiting area. “John Doggett.”

“John, it's Mike. Do you have a minute?”

Michael Cameron, an old buddy of his, over at the Bureau. Not that he's seen much of him since getting assigned to the X-Files, but they used to grab beers after work and stuff like that, once upon a time. Hell of a time he picks to get back in touch, after months of radio silence.

“Mike, hey. Now's not a great time, actually, I'm kind of in the middle of--”

“This’ll only take a sec. I just thought you'd want to know.”

Doggett sighs. “Know what, Mike?”

“I was just passing by Records downstairs, and I overheard old Spooky down there talking with some other agent about… well, about your boy's case, John.”

He blinks. That can't be right…

“You're telling me Mulder's at the Hoover Building right now, and he's asking questions about Luke?”

“That’s right.”

“And you're sure it was him?”

“Positive. I took another pass after I heard him talking and poked my head in the room. Couldn’t see the other agent in there, but I definitely saw him. Not sure what’s up with the jeans and leather jacket. Does he even have his badge back after… whatever happened to him?”

And just like that, Doggett’s blood is boiling. This is what was so goddamned important, important enough to bail on Agent Scully while she’s sick? Here he was feeling bad about rushing to judgment, beating himself up over not giving Mulder a fair shake, and all along the guy was running around behind his back, trying to dig up dirt on him? Fox Mulder can go straight to hell. Who the fuck does he think he is?

“Thanks, Mike,” he says through clenched teeth. “I’ll take care of it.”

He jabs the “end” button and barely holds back from hurling the phone at the wall. Now Mulder’s bullshit is going to drag them both away from the hospital. Not for the first time, Doggett finds himself wishing he and Skinner really had found a dead man in that casket.

He fumes all the way to the office, his grip on the steering wheel turning his knuckles white while his thoughts swirl cold and dark.

***

“So, you’ve known Agent Doggett a while, then?” Mulder asks lightly, not looking up from the New Orleans police report.

“Going on four years,” Reyes says. “He’s really one of the good ones, you know?”

“What, uh, what do you mean by that?” He turns a page, and the sinking feeling that’s been building almost since he got here continues to grow.

“Well you know how it is in this line of work. You can tell who’s in it because they care and who’s just interested in climbing the ladder. John probably could run the whole Bureau someday, but not because he stepped all over everyone in his path, trying to get there. He’s a good agent, and he’s a good man.”

Indeed, it’s looking more and more like Mulder was completely wrong about Agent Doggett. By all appearances, the man really has no hidden agenda or questionable allegiances, and even though Mulder’s not ready to trust him completely, he does have to admit that it’s entirely possible his own insecurities and (okay, fine) jealousy have made him see things that aren’t there.

Which makes him feel doubly guilty about leaving the hospital to look into this case.

There’s a chance he can make things right, though. If Agent Reyes really is on to something about there being a connection between this recent case and that of Luke Doggett’s murder, then helping her catch the guy would be something like a peace offering. Right?

“Oh, hello,” he murmurs, half under his breath. He reaches for the older case file and flips it open, scanning until he finds what he was looking for.

“What? Did you find something?”

He sets the files down next to each other and points, one index finger on each, finally looking up to meet Reyes’s eyes. “Maybe a connection. What are the chances this is the same Bob Harvey in both reports?”

#x-files fanfic #txf: empedocles #doggettfic #mulderfic #monica reyes

[scenes-in-between]

Hollywood A.D.

A/N: @settle-down-frohike gets credit for inspiring this one. ;) Also credit once again to Lady Manson for the screencaps.

“That’s it, Scully. I can’t take it anymore!” “Shh, Mulder, sit down.”

He can’t get out of the theater fast enough. No ifs, ands, or bees. No ifs… ands… or bees.

“Stupid, stupid, stupid,” he mutters, shoving open the door and stalking out into the warm Los Angeles night.

The Fox lot is not deserted, but the crowds from earlier have dispersed, and the relative quiet is a sudden contrast to the audience’s laughter still ringing in his ears. Strangely enough, it’s not an entirely welcome contrast, as he realizes it just makes him feel all the more exposed, standing out here alone in front of the theater, still holding his stupid plastic Lazarus bowl full of popcorn. He casts around for a moment, wondering where he can go, when he remembers that the sound stage one building over has been dressed up as the graveyard from the movie as a sort of promotional deal for the premiere -- get your picture in front of the green screen looking like you’re running away from zombies, that sort of thing. The door is still propped open, and when he pokes his head inside, he doesn’t see anybody in there.

Perfect.

He finds a place to sit and try to breathe through his embarrassment and anger. He’s just as angry with himself as he is with Shandling.

Shandling.

When he and Scully came out here to watch them shoot the movie, almost a year and a half ago, Garry Shandling had called him up the night before they left, caught him just as he was getting out of the bath.

“Let me meet you for a drink. I’ve got a few more questions for you, if you don’t mind.”

Even as he’d tried to play it cool, to affect disinterest in the glitz and sparkle of the Hollywood set, he secretly couldn’t help feeling a little starstruck. Just a little. So even though he would never in a million years admit it to Scully, the idea that a famous actor (okay, a moderately well-known actor) wanted to hang out and get a drink with him, Spooky Fox Mulder, black sheep of the FBI, was strangely appealing.

If only he’d just said no.

Instead, he agreed to meet Garry in the hotel bar downstairs. “I really appreciate you letting me pick your brain some more,” Shandling told him after they ordered a couple of whiskeys. “Meeting you and Agent Scully today made me realize I need to… rethink some aspects of this character.”

“What do you mean? I thought your character was… how did Federman put it? An ‘amalgamation loosely based on’ me?”

“Right, right, yeah. And he is. Technically. Like, on paper. But what Federman doesn’t understand is that truly embodying a character requires so much more than mere words on a page.”

“You mean like with the…” Mulder made a gesture meant to evoke their earlier discussion of whether he dressed to the right or the left, but Garry’s widened eyes made it clear he either didn’t remember or didn’t understand. Mulder sighed. “What you said to me before, about finding your character’s… rudder?”

“Right! Yes, exactly. Exactly like that, yes.”

“Look, Mr. Shandling--”

“Please! Call me Garry.”

“Garry. I’m certainly not gonna tell you how to do your job, but this isn’t a documentary, right? I mean, based on what we saw today, it would be generous to even say the movie’s ‘loosely based’ on the truth. So how much does it really matter whether your Fox Mulder does things exactly the same way I would?”

Shandling leaned in. “Listen, Fox-- Do you mind if I call you Fox?”

“I, uh, I prefer ‘Mulder,’ actually.”

Garry’s eyes narrowed, and he nodded slowly. “Interesting, very interesting. And how strong a preference would you say that was, on a scale of one to ten?”

Mulder chuckled. “Let’s just say the list of people who can get away with calling me ‘Fox’ doesn’t extend much beyond my mother.”

Garry sat up straight again, looking slightly alarmed. “We’ll go with a ten on that, then. Good to know. See, this is really helpful stuff.” He pulled a small notepad and pen out of his pocket, then scribbled a few notes before continuing. “To answer your question about how much all of this matters? It matters immensely.”

Mulder waited for him to elaborate, but Shandling just sat there looking intently at him until he finally shrugged, picked up his drink, and took a long swallow. “All right then, I guess. Fire away. What do you wanna know?”

One drink turned into two. And then three. And eventually four. Mulder found himself answering the most eclectic mix of questions, from really mundane things like how he took his coffee and what brand of toothpaste he used, to downright philosophical questions like whether he thought it was possible to have happiness without sadness or whether truth was more important than love.

(He struggled with that one more than he expected.)

“Okay, I think I’ve got everything I need on you, specifically. Now I need to dive into your relationship with your partner.”

Mulder snorted. “Yeah, good luck with that one,” he said without thinking, then cleared his throat. “I mean… there’s not much to tell.”

“Oh, I don’t believe that for a second. The way you two interacted at the set today… we’re talking layers of complexity. There may be nothing straightforward about it, but unpacking that history between the two of you may be the single most important part of informing my character and his interaction with Tea’s character.”

Mulder spared a moment to wonder why Tea Leoni wasn’t giving Scully the third degree right now too, if all of this really was that important. His eyes widened with the thought that maybe she was, and he just didn’t know it.

“Okay, so you’ve worked together for, what, five years now?”

“Uh, almost six,” he answered absently, still imagining Scully and Tea Leoni drinking and chatting and giggling. What he wouldn’t give to be a fly on the wall in that scenario.

“Now, I don’t know what it’s like in the FBI, but in this industry, two attractive co-stars working together that long, neither one married, or gay, you either end up hating each other or you end up sleeping together. Sometimes both.”

Mulder’s focus snapped back to the conversation at hand. “You’re kidding. You mean that’s not just a Hollywood stereotype?”

“Hey, it’s a classic for a reason. But you two… you certainly don’t seem to hate each other, and you’ve got an easy familiarity, but I don’t get the sense you’re doing the naked tango in your off hours. Am I right?”

“Yeah, no, we’re… Scully and I… we’re partners, and I trust her with my life, and she’s probably the best friend I’ve ever--” He stopped. That was way more of an admission than he was comfortable with, even considering all the other ridiculous things he’d admitted to Garry over the course of their conversation. He cleared his throat again. “We’re friends. No tangoing, clothed or otherwise.”

“But you’ve at least kissed a couple times, right?”

Mulder’s face, already warm from the alcohol, flushed in an instant. He hoped it wouldn’t be apparent in the bar’s low lighting. “What?! No. I told you, we’re--”

“Aw, c’mon, don’t hold out on me, man. No two people who are ‘just friends’ look at each other the way you and Agent Scully do when you think the other one’s not paying attention. There’s more to the story, and I’ve got to know what it is.”

“We really haven’t, though. I mean, there was just the one… okay, one time I walked in on her about to kiss a guy she thought was me.” Garry’s eyebrows shot up, and Mulder shook his head. “Don’t ask. I can’t even begin to explain that one. And then another time, I thought we were maybe going to, but then she got stung by a bee and almost died. Seriously though, that’s it.”

“Walk me through that second time, with the bee. Set the scene for me.”

Mulder groaned, rubbing a hand over his face. Up until then, he’d never spoken about that incident with anyone. He and Scully seemed to have come to a silent agreement to pretend it had never happened. He wasn’t exactly eager to re-live it, and yet…

“She was gonna leave.” His voice was quiet, almost like the words were sneaking out without his permission. He dropped his hand, fiddling with the napkin on the bar in front of him, staring down at it while the memory unfolded in his mind. “We’d… I’d gotten us in trouble again, and they slapped her with reassignment. So she came by my apartment to tell me she was quitting.”

He swallowed, remembering the panic he’d felt at the thought of losing her. The shock and dismay that even after all that time, she still thought she was holding him back.

“She, um, she started to go, and I followed her into the hallway.”

“And it was your Lloyd Dobler moment?” Shandling interrupted, and Mulder frowned. “You know. Say Anything? Peter Gabriel? ‘I gave her my heart and she gave me a pen?’”

“I don’t--” Mulder stammered, thrown out of whatever rhythm he’d started to find in the telling. He shook his head. “I told her I didn’t want to do the work without her. And we had… I don’t know, I guess you could call it a charged moment.”

“Locked gaze, passion crackling in the air, now or never, will they, won’t they?”

Mulder looked down, feeling foolish and starting to deeply regret his decision to share this. “Shut up, Shandling,” he muttered.

“No, no, it’s beautiful! Real life is rarely so cinematic. You’ve got to appreciate it when the stars align like that. The beauty before the tragedy, Oscar-worthy drama playing out in an ordinary apartment building hallway, unscripted.” He sighed almost dreamily. “So then what happened?”

“Then the bee stung her in the back of the neck, and she collapsed, and the moment passed. We were both a little more focused on trying to keep her alive.”

“And you never decided to revisit, give it another try?”

“No, it seems we’ve decided to pretend it never happened.” Mulder downed the last of his drink and rubbed his eyes again.

“Damn, cock-blocked by anaphylaxis. That is rough.” Garry shook his head, scribbling furiously on his notepad. “Really though, that explains so much.”

“Look, Garry, this is just for your, you know, research or whatever, right? This stays between us?”

“Oh, for sure. Definitely. This is all just background, helping me find my motivation and all that. Scout’s honor.”

Scout’s honor.

Sitting in the fake graveyard in his tuxedo, Mulder sets his popcorn to the side, puts his arms on his knees and lets his head fall down to rest on them. He should have known better. And now, this moment between him and Scully, this deeply personal and meaningful moment in their history together, is a throwaway line in a crappy movie, and worse than that, Scully’s going to know exactly where it came from.

“I’m so stupid,” he groans, heaving a deep sigh and picking his head up.

It’s not just the line. It’s the whole damned movie. For all Shandling’s bullshit claims about authenticity and embodying a character and whatever else he’d said, those depictions on the screen were nothing more than caricatures. His life’s work, turned into a joke. And if, god forbid, he’s not able to get a handle on this brain thing, this stupid movie is going to be the closest thing he’ll have to a legacy.

He’s hard-pressed to think of anything more depressing than that, just now.

And then, inexplicably, he just starts laughing. It comes out of nowhere, but once he gets going he finds it hard to stop. It’s just so ridiculous, isn’t it? All of it: the sniper zombies of the Cigarette-Smoking Pontiff, the stupid, plastic Lazarus popcorn bowls, even the very idea that he, Fox William Mulder, could have a legacy worth defending. He laughs until tears run down his cheeks, and then he wipes them away and pulls himself together and picks up his popcorn once more. Sighing, he stares into the middle distance and shakes his head.

He doesn’t notice when the stage door opens again.

#x-files fanfic #txf: hollywood a.d. #mulderfic #msr #mulder's stupid brain disease thing #(but just like a tiny mention right at the end) #alcohol cw

[scenes-in-between]

Fight Club

A/N for this ficlet here (because I got a little ranty, so it needed to be its own post).

“Don’t go thinking I’m going to start doing the autopsies.”

She smirks at him, and he drops the fake-pout to shake his head, chuckling. Truth be told, he finds it endlessly gratifying (and more than a little arousing) whenever she reveals how much she not only listens to his endless rambling on all things paranormal but actually treats it as something worth remembering. For all that she challenges his theories and makes him work for her buy-in, she recognizes the value and validity of exploring every possibility, assimilating even the more unconventional ideas into the knowledge base from which she draws when they encounter something new. He told her once how much he valued that she always respects the journey, and it’s no less true now, however many years later.

“So,” she says, interrupting his musing. “Betty Templeton. The agents were investigating her because…?”

He meets her raised eyebrows with a wave of his hand. “Go ahead, Scully. You’re on a roll.”

She frowns, licking her lips in that way she does. “Well, they claim to have lost control of their minds and behavior, and I assume that happened while they were in the presence of Ms. Templeton. So the same thing must have happened to someone else. Another pair of individuals, reduced to uncontrolled violence while also in the presence of Ms. Templeton.”

Grinning, Mulder clicks to the next slide, revealing a photo of the two missionaries, post-fight. He takes a moment to appreciate the satisfied look on her face before saying, “Orsen Peterson, age 42, and Jared Wells, 29. Two local men of God, out to spread the good word. Not exactly the type of guys you’d expect to find settling their differences with a good old-fashioned brawl on a suburban front lawn.”

“Betty Templeton’s front lawn?”

“The very same. But here’s the kicker. When questioned afterward, they revealed that not ten minutes earlier--”

“They’d seen or spoken with someone who looked exactly like Ms. Templeton, either on the street or at a different house.”

Mulder narrows his eyes. “You already read the police report, didn’t you?”

“I did not!” she says. “And I’m trying not to take offense at the fact that you seem to think I could only make an accurate deduction if I’m cheating.”

He’s quick to hold his hands up in surrender. “You’re right. Okay, I take that back. Clearly you’re just in the zone here. Tell you what. Why don’t you take the reins on this one?”

She looks skeptically at him, crossing her arms over her chest. “What do you mean?”

“Well, since you’re, what, three for three on calling the important details of the case without even looking at the file? You should definitely take the lead and call the shots when we get to Kansas City. Your gut’s singing on this one, and I wouldn’t want to interrupt the performance.” He’s treated to one arched eyebrow, and he leers at her in response. “Besides, I’ve always wanted to let you boss me around.”

She rolls her eyes and drops her hands to her hips. “Oh, please. You make it sound like you’re ordinarily in charge of me. And here I thought we were partners.”

“C’mon Scully, let a guy enjoy a moment here.”

She shakes her head. “In any event, I assume you’ve already made travel arrangements for us?”

“You are killing it today,” he says, grinning, and she rolls her eyes again.

“Oh come on, Mulder, that one was a gimme.” She nods toward the slide projector. “Anything else I should know about this case before we go?”

He clicks to the next slide, which is blank. “That’s all, folks.” Leaning forward to shut the projector off, he adds, “Our flight doesn’t leave til eleven, so we’ve got a couple hours to kill. What do you say we get out of here and grab something better than crappy office coffee on our way to the airport?”

(Screencaps this week courtesy of The X-Files Screen Grab Archive)

#x-files fanfic #txf: fight club #mulderfic #msr #banter