Beating the Darkness Back, Part 5
Oct. 29th, 2008 07:57 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
anjouficTitle: Beating the Darkness Back 5/7
Author:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
comice aka Anjou (Anjou@rocketmail.com)
Posting Date: October 2008
Rating: R for language and sexuality; M for Mature readers
Classification: Mulder/Scully, MSR, post-ep for IWTB
Archive: No archival until the story is completed, please. I'll be submitting to Ephemeral and Gossamer myself.
Spoilers: Through I Want To Believe
Disclaimer: All X-Files personnel belong to 1013 and Fox. All other elements are mine.
Author's Note: Beating the Darkness Back will be posted in seven parts. Parts 1 & 2, and 3 & 4 will be posted together, as they are just long sections that needed to be cut in half for ease of posting. This story is finished, although still undergoing final editing for Parts 5-7. I expect it will be all posted in a week's time. Posts can be read on my fic journal:anjoufic, as well as Ephemeral and other XF fic sites. The whole tale will be archived at my website, No Other … , maintained by the generous dtg, when it is completed.
Thanks to Konrad Frye and especially the fabulouslilydale for not only willingly answering questions about the novelization of "I Want To Believe" that clarified the timeline for this writer, but for being brave enough to have read it in the first place.
As always, my biggest thanks go to my sister and editrix, Suzanne, for her support, and above all, her patience.
Summary: Where do we go from here, now that we are free?
~*~
May 7, 2008
Mulder sighed in satisfaction as the mile markers ticked off on I-95. He was within twenty miles of Richmond, and if the traffic gods were with him, he'd be home soon. The drive back from Baltimore had been more boring than grueling, particularly because he sorely missed Scully and felt the ache of her empty seat keenly. All the years they'd spent in the car had ingrained the habit, so when there was no one to make wry observations to, or play car games with, he got bored rapidly.
Still, the trip had been worthwhile, even if he still wasn't sure at all that he was on the right path for this next part of his life. He'd contacted John Maguire at Johns Hopkins at the end of January on David Truesdale's advice. Maguire was a well-known professor of psychology whose specialty was working with victims of trauma. David knew of him because of the work Maguire had quietly done with the abductee community and their families. He'd thought Maguire would be a good resource, and a sympathetic ear for Mulder as he explored the possibility of finishing his degree.
Maguire had, in fact, known exactly who Mulder was when he'd called, and although he was disappointed that Mulder was neither approaching him for therapeutic assistance nor desired to work with the abductee community, he had agreed to essentially become Mulder's academic adviser.
The thing was, the closer Mulder got to completing his degree, the less sure he became that he wanted to do so. It wasn't that the coursework he'd been required to take to requalify for his credentials had been ordinary, or even unchallenging. It simply didn't interest him the way it once had. He'd seen a tremendous spectrum of human psychology in his years in the FBI, most of it abnormal. And he wasn't the least little bit interested in revisiting that part of humanity. In fact, the coursework on abnormal psychology had actually inspired a revulsive response in him, not to mention triggering a few nightmares. What he was more interested in exploring was trying to help those who had been affected by trauma, particularly children and adolescents, but he'd been specific in saying that he was interested in working with children whose abuse and neglect had been more mundane.
Maguire claimed to understand and support Mulder's academic explorations, but Mulder couldn't help but notice that Maguire inevitably steered their conversations back to his traumatic memories of Samantha, Scully and of course, his own abduction. Maguire seemed to be testing the state of Mulder's resolve to remain silent about them.
Although Mulder could certainly empathize with a person who has doggedly pursued the answers to a mystery, the twists and turns of his own life had also taught him empathy for those who he had formerly relentlessly chased for answers. Maguire had no real concept of what he was asking Mulder to share, had only seen the tip of the iceberg in his clients. Mulder knew that Maguire could sense the lie in Mulder's firm assertion that he did not remember what had happened to him in the months before he was returned dead, or that he had no notion of time passing during his interment, even though he most certainly had strong memories of them both.
What Maguire could not understand, and would see as pathological, was that Mulder's belief that there were eyes and ears everywhere had been well earned. Five months out of the house, Mulder still believed that his freedom had been tenuously earned. He would do nothing to jeopardize the rights he had regained -- nothing to jeopardize the promise he'd made to Scully. He'd chosen her, all those years ago, and whenever possible, Fox Mulder did not break his promises.
He smiled as he steered onto the familiar country roads, his headlights cutting through the spring evening, which somehow didn't seem as dark as the winter's night. He cracked the windows and let the rich smell of the sun-ripened earth fill the car. He glanced at the clock, hoping that he'd be home before Scully, that he'd have time to get dinner started before she arrived. He hated the fact that it had been three nights since he'd last seen her. The first night she'd been scheduled for her regular overnight shift and the second she'd spent at the bedside of a gravely ill child. Ever since her successful treatment of Christian – so far, he heard her voice gravely qualifying in his head – she'd been sought out by other parents seeking similar miracles. Thank God he'd been able to take her away for their vacation, otherwise he didn't know if she could have withstood the onslaught of work.
Their third night apart had been necessitated by his need to write finals for the classes he'd taken. It hadn't been particularly difficult as much as it had been time-consuming and tedious. He had been surprised to find that he wasn't the oldest graduate student in the group. Among his classmates had been a woman in her sixties who'd given up the idea of practicing thirty years before when her third child had been born with special needs. Mulder and she had bonded over coffee. Unlike Mulder, Millie had no doubts about what she was doing. Her efforts to bolster his resolve had only underlined his doubts. Still –- he wasn't willing to give up as yet. He just had no idea what the hell he was going to do about the practical aspects of his clinical training year, since Maguire had made it plain that he wanted to oversee Mulder's year personally. In Baltimore.
He pulled up to their gate, surprised to see that Scully's car was already in front of the house. He wondered if this meant that she'd basically worked straight through while he'd been gone, an idea that seemed more than likely to be true. He shook his head in consternation. She really had to start taking better care of herself. He pulled in behind her car and grabbed his overnight bag and laptop from the back seat before he crossed the porch, eager to see her.
He'd expected to find her upstairs, so was surprised to see her sitting on the couch, still wearing her raincoat, staring at the papers in her hand. She looked –- not exactly upset, but stunned. She didn’t seem to have noticed that he was home. "Scully?"
"There you are," she breathed out. She looked up at him, tearing her eyes away from the words on the page.
"Are you all right? Is that from your mother?"
She was shaking her head before he finished speaking. "No, Mulder, no," she said. "My mother's OK. No," she said, then stopped and looked down at the papers again, as if making sure that they were actually there. "Do you remember when I wrote up Christian's treatment course and outcomes for the Journal of Pediatric Neurology?"
"Scully," he said, delighted. "Did your monograph get accepted?"
"Oh, it's too soon for that, Mulder," she said, dismissively, "but I did send a copy of it to Dr. Sperry. It was her treatment for Sandhoff's disease I based my treatment plan on."
"OK," he said.
"She, um, forwarded the monograph to several of her colleagues," she said. Her tone seemed bewildered, almost disbelieving.
"And?!" Mulder said. Sometimes, she drove him completely crazy.
"Mulder," she said. "I've been solicited to apply for two posts, with the inference that if I apply, I will be offered them."
"Two?" he said in delight. He went over to the couch and picked her up, hugging her, while she held the papers out of the way. "Scully! You stud! Tell me!"
She shook her head, as if to clear it. "You know you said this would happen. That first night we went to the diner, you said this would happen."
"I did, didn't I?" he said proudly, then added. "98.9, Scully." He sat them both down on the couch. "Now, tell me."
"The first offer is from New York," she said, "from the Weill Cornell Medical Center at New York-Presbyterian."
Mulder tried to control his wince. As much as he loved the Yankees, he really wasn't wild about New York City. "I hear they’re getting a new Yankee Stadium!" he said cheerfully.
"I saw the face, Mulder," she said. "That's for a lectureship, two years minimum. Housing stipend."
"Not bad," Mulder said, slowly. They didn't actually need the housing stipend, but the fact that they'd offered it meant that they were serious. "The other one?"
She drew in a breath. "The other cannot possibly be right," she said firmly.
"Scully," he said. "Stop stalling and spill it."
"It's for an assistant professorship, Mulder."
He whistled. "Skipping right over the riff raff is the eminently, or perhaps over- qualified Dr. Dr. Scully."
She shook her head at him. "The letter also states that if I continue evolving new, successful treatment modalities, that I'll be assured acceptance onto the tenure track within three years."
Mulder was absolutely delighted at this news. "And I bet you'll have lots of new toys that were built in this century to help you evolve those new modalities." He kissed her. "Where's the second offer from?"
"It's too good to be true, Mulder," she said.
"C'mon, my little skeptic," he said, wrapping his arms around her and jiggling her. "Cough up the name."
"Johns Hopkins," she said softly.
"I knew it," Mulder crowed. "They just want you back, that's all. They realize that they never should have let you go in the first place." He kissed her neck. "I know just how they feel."
She swatted him away with her letters, her cheeks flushed pink. "But … we'd have to move," she said quietly.
"Scully," Mulder began, "do you remember how I always say 'If coincidences are just coincidences, why do they feel so contrived?'"
She raised an eyebrow at him.
"Let me tell you a fascinating story," he began, undoing the belt of her coat. "But before I do, let me observe that if you continue rolling your eyes like that, they may get stuck that way one day …"
~*~
After his shower, he observed her from the mirror in the bathroom while he spread shaving cream across his face. She was in bed, propped up on a stack of pillows, with her reading glasses perched on her nose. Her book was opened, waiting to be read, but she was staring off into the middle distance. He lost sight of her when he opened the mirrored front of the cabinet to get a new blade for his razor. Years of sleeping together had trained him that his best chance at getting lucky was to shave –- a woman who supposedly lived alone shouldn't be showing up with a wanted fugitive's stubble burn on her easily marked skin. Of course, in the wintertime, the rules were different, but only because Scully was willing to wear turtlenecks. He could hear the creaking of their bed as she moved across it, so he wasn't surprised to find her standing in the doorway of the bathroom, leaning against the jamb in her camisole and matching panties.
He began to shave carefully as he waited for her to speak, unperturbed by her serious face.
"I really don't want to leave our house," she said suddenly.
"It'll cost a shitload to move it," Mulder quipped, running his razor under a stream of water.
"Mulder," she said, exasperated. "I'm serious. We've been happy here, haven't we? And this place …" she rubbed the woodwork of the door fondly, almost caressing it. "This is our home," her anger had dissipated into wistfulness. "I don't want to sell our home."
He finished shaving his lip and then his chin as she watched him, patiently waiting. "Scully," he said. "Why would we sell our house?"
She looked askance at him.
"We can come down here on the weekends," he said. "It's not that far."
She looked stunned by his pronouncement, but he bent over and washed his face off before she could speak again.
"We're not hiding anymore," he said, after he shut the water off. "We don't have to pretend that we don't have money." He shrugged. "We don't need to sell our house."
“Are you sure we can afford that?”
“You want me to show you the bank accounts again?” He answered, turning around. He wiped his hands on the towel around his hips
Scully's shoulders eased down from their rigid posture. “I trust you,” she said quietly.
He smiled and took two steps forward, bringing him flush against her. “Good answer,” he said. He wrapped his arms around her, one hand stroking up under her camisole, one drifting underneath the elastic band of her underwear.
He felt her hands tug the damp towel loose as he walked her backwards toward their bed. He grumbled as she pushed him away from her so that she could wipe the water from his chest and his face, but sighed in pleasure as she stood on her tiptoes to kiss the extra-sensitive bare skin under his chin.
She pressed a line of kisses along his jawline moving toward his ear until she was practically standing en pointe. This time, it was she that broke away grumbling. “Too tall,” she muttered, dropping back down on her heels as her hands roamed over his shoulders and chest.
He grunted as she punctuated her remark with a kiss to his chest. How was it possible that after all this time, he still reveled in the feel of her hands on his skin, even now when they were such familiar friends? He hunched over her like the gentleman his mother had raised him to be and kissed her, feeling the sweet urgency rise at her nearness. His hands roamed under the camisole pulling it up and over her head, before he bent to draw her underwear off, stopping to place a kiss below her belly button as he passed by. "You know what I think the real problem is?" he said. He nipped at her thigh as she sighed.
“I imagine that you’re going to tell me, whether or not I want to hear it,” she said drily, ruffling his hair.
"Virginia,” he announced, smoothing his hands over her thighs and buttocks as he rose back up, “is for lovers. You just like living here, because it validates your illicit lifestyle."
She smirked at him. “You think so, huh?”
“Absolutely,” Mulder said, “your secret rebellious nature wins out time and again over your more pragmatic side. Why else would you have spent all that time living with a wanted fugitive?"
“For the yoga?” she asked innocently.
Mulder shrugged modestly, as she tugged at him, pulling him down on their bed where their size differential could be more easily accounted for. He followed her down to the bed, kissing her while they got supine.
"It all seems too good to be true," she whispered when they came up for air.
"I think it's about goddamned time," he said in a low voice, tracing her lips with his fingers. "You said that our luck was changed that day on the boat, remember?"
She nodded, watching him, waiting for his next move.
“Do you believe it now?” he whispered, watching her.
Her expression was slightly mischievous as she considered her answer. "I want to believe, Mulder," she said. She tugged on his shoulders, pulling him closer, her hair streaming across the pillows as she smiled. "Come here."
~*~
June 16, 2008
Mulder swore long and loud as the bottom dropped out of the box that he’d just packed full of psychology texts, books that he wasn’t even sure he wanted to take with him to Baltimore.
“Are you all right?” Scully bellowed from upstairs. It sounded like she was still in the closet, so she clearly wasn’t that worried.
“Where’s the tape gun?” he yelled back fractiously. It was fucking hot. At least their new house in Baltimore had central air. He would enjoy that.
“I don’t have it,” Scully hollered in a firm, no-nonsense tone. “But when you find it, can you bring it up here?”
“Why don’t we have two?” he muttered resentfully, looking around his mostly dismantled office. He tripped over a book just as he spotted the tape gun on top of the one empty bookcase in the room. “Why do we have so much crap?” he bellowed to Scully rhetorically.
“Speak for yourself,” she belted out.
He snorted, taping the bottom of the box back together. As if she hadn’t been up there packing clothes for the entire day – her shoes alone had filled one of the larger UPS boxes that they had. And that was another thing. Their new house, in Baltimore’s Waverly neighborhood, had closets. In fact, it had two in the master bedroom alone, which meant that he would be able for the first time in years, to hang more than a few token items in the closet of the room he slept in. And even if he were forced to use the closets in any of the other three bedrooms, at least they’d be upstairs. The unused bedroom on their second floor, the one they tended to ignore, had a tiny closet with a recidivist tendency toward mice, no matter what he did to try and keep the nasty vermin out.
He had discovered this fact painfully one day, when he put on a coat to go out and shovel the first snow of the season and found a family of mice living in the pocket he expected only his gloves to be residing in. Luckily, he’d been alone in the house that day, so no one other than the aforementioned vermin had witnessed the entirely understandable noises that had emanated from his throat, not to mention the interesting dance he’d done when taking off the coat. After that, he’d crammed his clothes in the tiny closet down in his office. He’d also never stuck his hand in a coat pocket without squeezing it from the outside again.
He sighed as he surveyed the wreckage of his office. He’d need to move the boxes of books so that he’d actually be able to pack the contents of his closet. He grumbled as he hauled a box out to their cramped living room. As he searched for a square foot that he could put it down upon, he heard the sound of a phone ringing upstairs. From the ringtone, he assumed that it was Scully’s, but if it was his, he wasn't going to answer it. Maguire had already called him twice, trying to get him to come up early to see an interesting child patient. From the limited history that Maguire had given him over the phone, Mulder knew that Maguire suspected that the child had been an abductee, but he was fairly convinced that the child was deluded. He pushed a stack of kitchenware boxes over to the left a little too hard, and had to rush to steady it with one arm while his right arm vigorously protested holding up the too heavy box of books.
After everything was more or less stable, he plunked the box down into the space he’d made, chest heaving. He could just make out the sound of Scully’s quizzical murmuring upstairs over the sound of his own labored breathing. She’d discharged all of her patients at her former employer to her nemesis on the previous day, so he had no idea to whom she could be speaking. As Mulder had predicted, Scully's nemesis was remaining at Our Lady of Sorrows for what he was sure would be an illustrious post-fellowship career. He smirked as he grabbed the tape gun and his bottle of water and began to climb the stairs. It was time for a break.
Scully had hung up by the time he got to the top, and was sitting on the bed staring at her phone with a frown on her face. She looked hot, and he meant that in its truest sense. She was wearing a pink tank top that had been clean when she put it on, but was now covered with dust and dirt from her time rooting around on the bottom of the closet. There was a smear of dirt on her face, and a huge smudge of it on her bare white leg and the pair of Mulder’s boxers that she’d commandeered to wear as shorts. She’d drawn her hair up on top of her head to keep it out of the way, but it had broken out of its confines and spilled out of the ponytail like a fountain of damp red gold.
“What’s up?” he said, flopping on the bed next to her.
“That,” she said, in a flat tone, “was Skinner.”
“What’d he want?”
“He said he’d be here in fifteen minutes.”
“For what?” Mulder asked, confused. “Is he coming to help us pack?
Scully stared at him with her patented ‘Mulder-you’re-crazy’ expression, seasoned with the irritation that came with being hot, cranky and dirty. “Why would Skinner help us pack?” she asked slowly.
Mulder shrugged. “I was hoping,” he said. “So, what does he want?”
“He refused to say,” Scully said crisply.
Mulder nodded. “You think he wants us to investigate something weird.”
“What else would he want, Mulder?” She got up off the bed abruptly and stomped into the bathroom. “I’m taking a shower.” The door slammed behind her, and the message was as clear as if she’d said, ‘Mulder, stay out.’
“I’m not going to do it, Scully,” he said loudly. He listened for a few seconds, hearing her actions in the small room become less pointed.
“You don’t even know what he wants yet,” she said back in a loud voice. Her tone was not as sharp as it had been.
“Doesn’t matter,” he said. “I’m not doing it.”
The door opened a crack, and he heard her sigh before she spoke. “Don’t make promises you can’t keep, Mulder.”
“Maguire has already called twice to try to talk me into getting up to Baltimore early,” Mulder said. “How am I supposed to help Skinner with anything?”
The shower was running, and he heard her step into it. “Let’s just listen to what he has to say, OK?”
He shook his head in exasperation at her contrary nature. “I’m not doing it,” he muttered crankily. “No fucking way.”
~*~
“You’re just telling us this now? When you’ve know for weeks that he was missing?” Mulder could hear the edge of hysteria beneath the rage in the quivering of his voice, but he was too far gone to stop it.
As Skinner’s explanation had haltingly been relayed to them, Scully had sunk down onto the couch. She was curled around herself, rocking slightly.
Mulder had seen his mother assume that exact same posture years ago, had watched helplessly as her eyes turned inward and she closed herself off from the world. Her suicide years later had simply been a coda to that day, that action. He had never wanted that life to be his.
“I didn’t have confirmation, Mulder,” Skinner said. His voice had a pleading edge to it.
“You suspected this when you took us to the airport in March!” Mulder yelled. Skinner shook his head, but Mulder’s voice rose over whatever clarification he might have made. “You knew something that day,” he accused. “Don’t lie to me!”
“All I knew was that his mother’s cancer had returned,” Skinner said, and this time it was his voice that rose over Mulder’s. “One of the ways that I kept tabs on him was that he was enrolled,” Skinner sketched quotes in the air, “in an asthma study. A detailed questionnaire about his and his family’s health and circumstances was sent twice a year.”
Scully looked up at Skinner in surprise.
He shrugged, and continued in a quieter voice. “That way, if there were any changes in his health status, I’d get some information on it directly.”
Mulder was not appeased. “So, she answered the questionnaire in March and you decided not to tell us about her cancer!”
“Not exactly,” Skinner said. “The questionnaire was due in January.” Mulder threw up his hands in frustration. “They’ve been late before, Mulder!” Skinner said loudly. “And it takes time for the questionnaire to get to me through all the dummy PO boxes. When it got to the point that I got worried, I had the call placed to remind them.”
“The call?” Mulder said, suspiciously, thinking of Skinner's first visit to their house. “Who called and how? And when, exactly, was this in January?”
“The call didn’t take place until the middle of March,” Skinner said firmly. “And I had Monica Reyes make it.”
“Oh my God,” Mulder began, but Skinner interrupted him.
“She called a number from a clean satellite phone that I purchased just for the purpose, and destroyed immediately after,” Skinner said. “I dialed the number. When we made the call, I was officially on vacation. She was on a case in Kansas.”
Mulder stared at Skinner.
“She has never asked who she was calling or why. We have not discussed it.” Skinner was unequivocal. “She had a script, and she followed it. Her experience as an interrogator allowed her to tease more information out of the subject.”
“William’s adoptive mother, you mean?” Mulder said bitterly.
“Yes,” Skinner said tersely. “She told Monica that they’d be unable to participate in the home visit this year because of her cancer treatment schedule.”
“Home visit?” Mulder asked.
“Yes,” Skinner said. “Once a year, someone goes to the house and vacuums samples, etc., to make it look legitimate. This also gives us the opportunity to look at William ourselves.”
Scully’s mouth hung open as she looked at Skinner. “Who?”
Skinner hesitated. “I usually send an operative that worked with the Gunmen, and has largely taken over their operation. She’s designated others.”
Now it was Mulder’s mouth that was hanging open. “Yves?” he asked disbelievingly. “You’ve sent an assassin to check on our child?”
“She owed me,” Skinner said tersely.
“I can’t fucking,” Mulder began. “This is a nightmare.” He paused to take control of himself and focus. “So, she was being treated at a local cancer center,” Mulder said. “And you decided not to tell us.”
“You were on your way out of the country for your first vacation in years,” Skinner said curtly. “We were monitoring the situation. I knew that I’d be getting an update in May. I decided to wait.”
“I cannot believe that you didn’t tell us what was going on! This is our son!” Mulder shouted.
“Mulder,” Skinner said. “I firmly believed that I’d be coming to you today to tell you that they’d hit a bump in the road, but that everything was going to be all right. It wasn’t until Gary went to camp on the farm and found it deserted that we found out about William’s father’s fatal heart attack-“
“In March,” Mulder asked.
“It happened while you were gone, yes,” Skinner confirmed. “But I did not know that before you went away.”
“And why didn’t you tell us when you found out?!” Mulder yelled. “And who is Gary?”
“I’ve only known for two weeks,” Skinner said defensively. “Gary and I served together in Vietnam. He’d camp on their farm when he went out there for motorcycle rallies.”
“I don’t even fucking believe what I’m hearing,” Mulder said. “That was a security plan? A guy who goes camping on their land?”
“Twice a year, Mulder,” Skinner said. “Every Memorial Day weekend since William was one year old and then again in the fall. And not only did Gary and I serve together in Vietnam, but he continued on, in Special Ops.” Skinner paused significantly. “Over the years, he’d run into a few of your boogie men, Mulder. He never asked why I wanted him to go to Wyoming, but he was a good set of eyes and ears for unfriendlies.”
“Fine,” Mulder ground out. “Tell me what he found.”
“He found the house quiet,” Skinner said. “The fields were only partially planted, and what had been cultivated was dead. He went to the nearest town and because he’d been coming there for years, the restaurant owner was willing to tell him that Van De Kamp had died.”
Scully roused herself to ask a question. “What happened?”
Skinner sighed. “They’d gone to Cheyenne so that she could be treated for her cancer. He’d drive her in, and then come back and work in the fields, then drive back and get her four days later. Then he’d do it again two days later.”
She nodded.
“The hand he had working for him said that he was exhausted, that he’d stay up all night taking care of his wife, and then work in the fields. He’d brought her and the boy home late on a Friday and went out to the barn to close it up for the night.” Skinner paused, and his voice dropped to a whisper. “When Van De Kamp didn’t come into the house in the usual amount of time …” he hesitated. “The hand said that William went out to the barn …”
Scully made an anguished noise.
Mulder glared at Skinner, whose eyes had dropped to his shoes.
“By the time the ambulance got out there,” Skinner began, then shook his head. “After the funeral, William and his adoptive mother returned to Cheyenne to continue her treatment.” He looked up at Mulder. “By the time we got this information, she’d already been discharged. We were told that she’d been advised to go to a larger, more state-of-the-art cancer center.”
“How did you get this information?” Mulder asked suspiciously.
“Agent Doggett took some vacation,” Skinner said quietly.
Mulder swore out loud. “Perfect!” he said. “You do you realize that everything you’ve done could have led them right to our son, if they don’t have him already?”
Scully moaned a little at his words.
“This is my fault,” Mulder said bitterly. “I should have fucking known better. I should have fucking known that the only reason that I was allowed to regain my legal status was because they no longer had any use for me, and whatever’s left of what they did to me. They knew that they could get William.”
“I don’t think that’s true, Mulder,” Skinner said heatedly. “I called you – no one else suggested it!”
“Oh, really,” Mulder said. “How do you fucking know that your nanites didn’t suggest the idea to you in your sleep one night? My God!” He turned around and kicked one of the boxes hard, caving in the side. “They could’ve had him for months now, for all you know. And even if they didn’t know that he was missing, they certainly do now. I cannot believe that you used FBI sources!”
“Agent Doggett would not betray you,” Skinner said through gritted teeth.
“Not willingly, no,” Mulder said. “But that’s not even the point, sir, and you fucking know it. This is my son, not yours. It wasn’t your decision to make. And this is not just about the last two weeks -- you should have told us what was going on with him months ago!”
“I’m sorry,” Skinner said.
Mulder knew that Skinner was sincere, but right now he couldn’t bring himself to give a fuck. Skinner’s apology was not answered with any form of forgiveness.
“We need to see exactly what you’ve done,” Scully’s voice was a whisper, but hearing it again after such a long silence made Skinner jump.
Skinner pointed to the file on the coffee table. “It’s all right there,” he answered. “Agent Doggett wanted to come with me,” he said. “He wants you to know that he’s available anytime you want to talk to him, day or night.”
“That’s fine,” Scully said. Her voice was absent any kind of affect. She picked up the file on the coffee table as if it were a bomb needing to be diffused. When she flipped it open, pictures of William were visible. He heard her indrawn breath and couldn’t resist going over to look at their son.
Mulder should have been more surprised, but mostly what he felt was a sinking in his gut. It was all real, and it always had been. Smiling up at him, in what was clearly a school picture, was the boy from his dreams. He was sure that when he read the file, he'd find that William's father had died shortly before the dream he'd had on vacation.
“That’s from last year,” Skinner said gruffly.
When the tears that Scully had been silently crying began to fall on the photo, Skinner turned to leave their house.
“Walter,” Mulder said, his tone still harsh with anger. “I want everything that was given to you for safekeeping.”
Scully sobbed a little on the couch.
Skinner’s shoulders tensed, and then dropped. He turned away from the door. “It’s in a safety deposit box, encased in lead,” he said quietly. “The Gunmen set it up before they died.”
“That’s fine,” Mulder gritted out. “But I’ll be taking custody of it from now on. I should have taken custody of it, and of everything else that was mine, long ago.”
Skinner’s jaw was set in anger, and he turned to Scully. “Have you had symptoms?” Skinner was addressing Scully, but she didn’t look up at him. Her finger was tracing William’s features, as she shook her head.
“No,” she said softly. Her voice had a distant quality to it. “Everything’s been fine since it was removed.”
Mulder closed his eyes at the horror that the idea of her words conjured up in him. He would never forget the almost paralyzing sense of fear he’d felt when she’d calmly told him that she’d removed the chip at the end of her second trimester when it had malfunctioned.
Shortly after he'd been buried in North Carolina, timing too coincidental for him to ignore, the site of the chip had become infected, and proved resistant to antibiotics. The ante had been upped when Scully had had three incidents of lost time that had terrified both her and the Gunmen. She’d removed the chip, intending it to be temporary until the infection cleared up. But when she’d reinserted the chip, she'd suffered repeated petit mal seizures until it had been removed for good 24 hours later.
In his heart of hearts, Mulder had never believed that the chip had malfunctioned. Instead, he believed that when their child had become viable, Scully had become expendable. They’d been clearing the decks, trying to make it easy for William to be taken.
Luckily, it had all had gone wrong for them. Mulder’d been resurrected without being turned. And for whatever reason –- exposure to the African ship or Jeremiah Smith, even her pregnancy with William itself -- Scully’s cancer had not returned. They existed, as she’d rightly observed, in spite of everything that had been done to kill them.
When Scully said nothing further to refute Mulder’s words, Skinner turned back to him and nodded curtly. It was Scully who’d made Skinner promise that if she died, that he'd ensure William's safety. At the time, with Mulder dead, she’d had no one else on whom to depend. When push had come to shove in that desperate, hopeless year that they'd been apart, she'd activated what she'd hoped was a failsafe for William's safety. When they'd been reunited but on the run, and then living precariously, there'd been no point in changing those arrangements.
Obviously, Mulder thought bitterly, that had been a mistake. “Truesdale will contact you,” he said aloud. With William missing, and possibly in their clutches, he had to assume that he and Scully were now both expendable. Other contingencies for William's safety would have to be activated. “Who besides Doggett knows?”
“He listed all of his contacts in the file,” Skinner said grimly. “Mulder –“
“We’ll be in touch,” Mulder said shortly. He opened the door to the porch.
Skinner looked back at Scully, but she did not raise her eyes from the photo of their son.
“I’m sorry,” he said one more time, directing his words at Scully.
She nodded, and Skinner turned to go.
Mulder closed the door behind Skinner and crossed the room to his office to call David and activate every resource that he had available to find William. Scully’s soft voice stopped him as he crossed the threshold.
“It’s not Skinner’s fault, Mulder,” she said quietly. Her voice was practically a whisper. “It’s mine.”
He closed his eyes and scrubbed a hand across his face at her words. He had no answer for her, could not give her the absolution that she wanted, even though he believed that he himself was really to blame. Instead, he said, “I’ve got to call David,” and left the room.
~*~
Part 6
Author:
comice aka Anjou (Anjou@rocketmail.com)Posting Date: October 2008
Rating: R for language and sexuality; M for Mature readers
Classification: Mulder/Scully, MSR, post-ep for IWTB
Archive: No archival until the story is completed, please. I'll be submitting to Ephemeral and Gossamer myself.
Spoilers: Through I Want To Believe
Disclaimer: All X-Files personnel belong to 1013 and Fox. All other elements are mine.
Author's Note: Beating the Darkness Back will be posted in seven parts. Parts 1 & 2, and 3 & 4 will be posted together, as they are just long sections that needed to be cut in half for ease of posting. This story is finished, although still undergoing final editing for Parts 5-7. I expect it will be all posted in a week's time. Posts can be read on my fic journal:
anjoufic, as well as Ephemeral and other XF fic sites. The whole tale will be archived at my website, No Other … , maintained by the generous dtg, when it is completed.Thanks to Konrad Frye and especially the fabulous
lilydale for not only willingly answering questions about the novelization of "I Want To Believe" that clarified the timeline for this writer, but for being brave enough to have read it in the first place. As always, my biggest thanks go to my sister and editrix, Suzanne, for her support, and above all, her patience.
Summary: Where do we go from here, now that we are free?
~*~
May 7, 2008
Mulder sighed in satisfaction as the mile markers ticked off on I-95. He was within twenty miles of Richmond, and if the traffic gods were with him, he'd be home soon. The drive back from Baltimore had been more boring than grueling, particularly because he sorely missed Scully and felt the ache of her empty seat keenly. All the years they'd spent in the car had ingrained the habit, so when there was no one to make wry observations to, or play car games with, he got bored rapidly.
Still, the trip had been worthwhile, even if he still wasn't sure at all that he was on the right path for this next part of his life. He'd contacted John Maguire at Johns Hopkins at the end of January on David Truesdale's advice. Maguire was a well-known professor of psychology whose specialty was working with victims of trauma. David knew of him because of the work Maguire had quietly done with the abductee community and their families. He'd thought Maguire would be a good resource, and a sympathetic ear for Mulder as he explored the possibility of finishing his degree.
Maguire had, in fact, known exactly who Mulder was when he'd called, and although he was disappointed that Mulder was neither approaching him for therapeutic assistance nor desired to work with the abductee community, he had agreed to essentially become Mulder's academic adviser.
The thing was, the closer Mulder got to completing his degree, the less sure he became that he wanted to do so. It wasn't that the coursework he'd been required to take to requalify for his credentials had been ordinary, or even unchallenging. It simply didn't interest him the way it once had. He'd seen a tremendous spectrum of human psychology in his years in the FBI, most of it abnormal. And he wasn't the least little bit interested in revisiting that part of humanity. In fact, the coursework on abnormal psychology had actually inspired a revulsive response in him, not to mention triggering a few nightmares. What he was more interested in exploring was trying to help those who had been affected by trauma, particularly children and adolescents, but he'd been specific in saying that he was interested in working with children whose abuse and neglect had been more mundane.
Maguire claimed to understand and support Mulder's academic explorations, but Mulder couldn't help but notice that Maguire inevitably steered their conversations back to his traumatic memories of Samantha, Scully and of course, his own abduction. Maguire seemed to be testing the state of Mulder's resolve to remain silent about them.
Although Mulder could certainly empathize with a person who has doggedly pursued the answers to a mystery, the twists and turns of his own life had also taught him empathy for those who he had formerly relentlessly chased for answers. Maguire had no real concept of what he was asking Mulder to share, had only seen the tip of the iceberg in his clients. Mulder knew that Maguire could sense the lie in Mulder's firm assertion that he did not remember what had happened to him in the months before he was returned dead, or that he had no notion of time passing during his interment, even though he most certainly had strong memories of them both.
What Maguire could not understand, and would see as pathological, was that Mulder's belief that there were eyes and ears everywhere had been well earned. Five months out of the house, Mulder still believed that his freedom had been tenuously earned. He would do nothing to jeopardize the rights he had regained -- nothing to jeopardize the promise he'd made to Scully. He'd chosen her, all those years ago, and whenever possible, Fox Mulder did not break his promises.
He smiled as he steered onto the familiar country roads, his headlights cutting through the spring evening, which somehow didn't seem as dark as the winter's night. He cracked the windows and let the rich smell of the sun-ripened earth fill the car. He glanced at the clock, hoping that he'd be home before Scully, that he'd have time to get dinner started before she arrived. He hated the fact that it had been three nights since he'd last seen her. The first night she'd been scheduled for her regular overnight shift and the second she'd spent at the bedside of a gravely ill child. Ever since her successful treatment of Christian – so far, he heard her voice gravely qualifying in his head – she'd been sought out by other parents seeking similar miracles. Thank God he'd been able to take her away for their vacation, otherwise he didn't know if she could have withstood the onslaught of work.
Their third night apart had been necessitated by his need to write finals for the classes he'd taken. It hadn't been particularly difficult as much as it had been time-consuming and tedious. He had been surprised to find that he wasn't the oldest graduate student in the group. Among his classmates had been a woman in her sixties who'd given up the idea of practicing thirty years before when her third child had been born with special needs. Mulder and she had bonded over coffee. Unlike Mulder, Millie had no doubts about what she was doing. Her efforts to bolster his resolve had only underlined his doubts. Still –- he wasn't willing to give up as yet. He just had no idea what the hell he was going to do about the practical aspects of his clinical training year, since Maguire had made it plain that he wanted to oversee Mulder's year personally. In Baltimore.
He pulled up to their gate, surprised to see that Scully's car was already in front of the house. He wondered if this meant that she'd basically worked straight through while he'd been gone, an idea that seemed more than likely to be true. He shook his head in consternation. She really had to start taking better care of herself. He pulled in behind her car and grabbed his overnight bag and laptop from the back seat before he crossed the porch, eager to see her.
He'd expected to find her upstairs, so was surprised to see her sitting on the couch, still wearing her raincoat, staring at the papers in her hand. She looked –- not exactly upset, but stunned. She didn’t seem to have noticed that he was home. "Scully?"
"There you are," she breathed out. She looked up at him, tearing her eyes away from the words on the page.
"Are you all right? Is that from your mother?"
She was shaking her head before he finished speaking. "No, Mulder, no," she said. "My mother's OK. No," she said, then stopped and looked down at the papers again, as if making sure that they were actually there. "Do you remember when I wrote up Christian's treatment course and outcomes for the Journal of Pediatric Neurology?"
"Scully," he said, delighted. "Did your monograph get accepted?"
"Oh, it's too soon for that, Mulder," she said, dismissively, "but I did send a copy of it to Dr. Sperry. It was her treatment for Sandhoff's disease I based my treatment plan on."
"OK," he said.
"She, um, forwarded the monograph to several of her colleagues," she said. Her tone seemed bewildered, almost disbelieving.
"And?!" Mulder said. Sometimes, she drove him completely crazy.
"Mulder," she said. "I've been solicited to apply for two posts, with the inference that if I apply, I will be offered them."
"Two?" he said in delight. He went over to the couch and picked her up, hugging her, while she held the papers out of the way. "Scully! You stud! Tell me!"
She shook her head, as if to clear it. "You know you said this would happen. That first night we went to the diner, you said this would happen."
"I did, didn't I?" he said proudly, then added. "98.9, Scully." He sat them both down on the couch. "Now, tell me."
"The first offer is from New York," she said, "from the Weill Cornell Medical Center at New York-Presbyterian."
Mulder tried to control his wince. As much as he loved the Yankees, he really wasn't wild about New York City. "I hear they’re getting a new Yankee Stadium!" he said cheerfully.
"I saw the face, Mulder," she said. "That's for a lectureship, two years minimum. Housing stipend."
"Not bad," Mulder said, slowly. They didn't actually need the housing stipend, but the fact that they'd offered it meant that they were serious. "The other one?"
She drew in a breath. "The other cannot possibly be right," she said firmly.
"Scully," he said. "Stop stalling and spill it."
"It's for an assistant professorship, Mulder."
He whistled. "Skipping right over the riff raff is the eminently, or perhaps over- qualified Dr. Dr. Scully."
She shook her head at him. "The letter also states that if I continue evolving new, successful treatment modalities, that I'll be assured acceptance onto the tenure track within three years."
Mulder was absolutely delighted at this news. "And I bet you'll have lots of new toys that were built in this century to help you evolve those new modalities." He kissed her. "Where's the second offer from?"
"It's too good to be true, Mulder," she said.
"C'mon, my little skeptic," he said, wrapping his arms around her and jiggling her. "Cough up the name."
"Johns Hopkins," she said softly.
"I knew it," Mulder crowed. "They just want you back, that's all. They realize that they never should have let you go in the first place." He kissed her neck. "I know just how they feel."
She swatted him away with her letters, her cheeks flushed pink. "But … we'd have to move," she said quietly.
"Scully," Mulder began, "do you remember how I always say 'If coincidences are just coincidences, why do they feel so contrived?'"
She raised an eyebrow at him.
"Let me tell you a fascinating story," he began, undoing the belt of her coat. "But before I do, let me observe that if you continue rolling your eyes like that, they may get stuck that way one day …"
~*~
After his shower, he observed her from the mirror in the bathroom while he spread shaving cream across his face. She was in bed, propped up on a stack of pillows, with her reading glasses perched on her nose. Her book was opened, waiting to be read, but she was staring off into the middle distance. He lost sight of her when he opened the mirrored front of the cabinet to get a new blade for his razor. Years of sleeping together had trained him that his best chance at getting lucky was to shave –- a woman who supposedly lived alone shouldn't be showing up with a wanted fugitive's stubble burn on her easily marked skin. Of course, in the wintertime, the rules were different, but only because Scully was willing to wear turtlenecks. He could hear the creaking of their bed as she moved across it, so he wasn't surprised to find her standing in the doorway of the bathroom, leaning against the jamb in her camisole and matching panties.
He began to shave carefully as he waited for her to speak, unperturbed by her serious face.
"I really don't want to leave our house," she said suddenly.
"It'll cost a shitload to move it," Mulder quipped, running his razor under a stream of water.
"Mulder," she said, exasperated. "I'm serious. We've been happy here, haven't we? And this place …" she rubbed the woodwork of the door fondly, almost caressing it. "This is our home," her anger had dissipated into wistfulness. "I don't want to sell our home."
He finished shaving his lip and then his chin as she watched him, patiently waiting. "Scully," he said. "Why would we sell our house?"
She looked askance at him.
"We can come down here on the weekends," he said. "It's not that far."
She looked stunned by his pronouncement, but he bent over and washed his face off before she could speak again.
"We're not hiding anymore," he said, after he shut the water off. "We don't have to pretend that we don't have money." He shrugged. "We don't need to sell our house."
“Are you sure we can afford that?”
“You want me to show you the bank accounts again?” He answered, turning around. He wiped his hands on the towel around his hips
Scully's shoulders eased down from their rigid posture. “I trust you,” she said quietly.
He smiled and took two steps forward, bringing him flush against her. “Good answer,” he said. He wrapped his arms around her, one hand stroking up under her camisole, one drifting underneath the elastic band of her underwear.
He felt her hands tug the damp towel loose as he walked her backwards toward their bed. He grumbled as she pushed him away from her so that she could wipe the water from his chest and his face, but sighed in pleasure as she stood on her tiptoes to kiss the extra-sensitive bare skin under his chin.
She pressed a line of kisses along his jawline moving toward his ear until she was practically standing en pointe. This time, it was she that broke away grumbling. “Too tall,” she muttered, dropping back down on her heels as her hands roamed over his shoulders and chest.
He grunted as she punctuated her remark with a kiss to his chest. How was it possible that after all this time, he still reveled in the feel of her hands on his skin, even now when they were such familiar friends? He hunched over her like the gentleman his mother had raised him to be and kissed her, feeling the sweet urgency rise at her nearness. His hands roamed under the camisole pulling it up and over her head, before he bent to draw her underwear off, stopping to place a kiss below her belly button as he passed by. "You know what I think the real problem is?" he said. He nipped at her thigh as she sighed.
“I imagine that you’re going to tell me, whether or not I want to hear it,” she said drily, ruffling his hair.
"Virginia,” he announced, smoothing his hands over her thighs and buttocks as he rose back up, “is for lovers. You just like living here, because it validates your illicit lifestyle."
She smirked at him. “You think so, huh?”
“Absolutely,” Mulder said, “your secret rebellious nature wins out time and again over your more pragmatic side. Why else would you have spent all that time living with a wanted fugitive?"
“For the yoga?” she asked innocently.
Mulder shrugged modestly, as she tugged at him, pulling him down on their bed where their size differential could be more easily accounted for. He followed her down to the bed, kissing her while they got supine.
"It all seems too good to be true," she whispered when they came up for air.
"I think it's about goddamned time," he said in a low voice, tracing her lips with his fingers. "You said that our luck was changed that day on the boat, remember?"
She nodded, watching him, waiting for his next move.
“Do you believe it now?” he whispered, watching her.
Her expression was slightly mischievous as she considered her answer. "I want to believe, Mulder," she said. She tugged on his shoulders, pulling him closer, her hair streaming across the pillows as she smiled. "Come here."
~*~
June 16, 2008
Mulder swore long and loud as the bottom dropped out of the box that he’d just packed full of psychology texts, books that he wasn’t even sure he wanted to take with him to Baltimore.
“Are you all right?” Scully bellowed from upstairs. It sounded like she was still in the closet, so she clearly wasn’t that worried.
“Where’s the tape gun?” he yelled back fractiously. It was fucking hot. At least their new house in Baltimore had central air. He would enjoy that.
“I don’t have it,” Scully hollered in a firm, no-nonsense tone. “But when you find it, can you bring it up here?”
“Why don’t we have two?” he muttered resentfully, looking around his mostly dismantled office. He tripped over a book just as he spotted the tape gun on top of the one empty bookcase in the room. “Why do we have so much crap?” he bellowed to Scully rhetorically.
“Speak for yourself,” she belted out.
He snorted, taping the bottom of the box back together. As if she hadn’t been up there packing clothes for the entire day – her shoes alone had filled one of the larger UPS boxes that they had. And that was another thing. Their new house, in Baltimore’s Waverly neighborhood, had closets. In fact, it had two in the master bedroom alone, which meant that he would be able for the first time in years, to hang more than a few token items in the closet of the room he slept in. And even if he were forced to use the closets in any of the other three bedrooms, at least they’d be upstairs. The unused bedroom on their second floor, the one they tended to ignore, had a tiny closet with a recidivist tendency toward mice, no matter what he did to try and keep the nasty vermin out.
He had discovered this fact painfully one day, when he put on a coat to go out and shovel the first snow of the season and found a family of mice living in the pocket he expected only his gloves to be residing in. Luckily, he’d been alone in the house that day, so no one other than the aforementioned vermin had witnessed the entirely understandable noises that had emanated from his throat, not to mention the interesting dance he’d done when taking off the coat. After that, he’d crammed his clothes in the tiny closet down in his office. He’d also never stuck his hand in a coat pocket without squeezing it from the outside again.
He sighed as he surveyed the wreckage of his office. He’d need to move the boxes of books so that he’d actually be able to pack the contents of his closet. He grumbled as he hauled a box out to their cramped living room. As he searched for a square foot that he could put it down upon, he heard the sound of a phone ringing upstairs. From the ringtone, he assumed that it was Scully’s, but if it was his, he wasn't going to answer it. Maguire had already called him twice, trying to get him to come up early to see an interesting child patient. From the limited history that Maguire had given him over the phone, Mulder knew that Maguire suspected that the child had been an abductee, but he was fairly convinced that the child was deluded. He pushed a stack of kitchenware boxes over to the left a little too hard, and had to rush to steady it with one arm while his right arm vigorously protested holding up the too heavy box of books.
After everything was more or less stable, he plunked the box down into the space he’d made, chest heaving. He could just make out the sound of Scully’s quizzical murmuring upstairs over the sound of his own labored breathing. She’d discharged all of her patients at her former employer to her nemesis on the previous day, so he had no idea to whom she could be speaking. As Mulder had predicted, Scully's nemesis was remaining at Our Lady of Sorrows for what he was sure would be an illustrious post-fellowship career. He smirked as he grabbed the tape gun and his bottle of water and began to climb the stairs. It was time for a break.
Scully had hung up by the time he got to the top, and was sitting on the bed staring at her phone with a frown on her face. She looked hot, and he meant that in its truest sense. She was wearing a pink tank top that had been clean when she put it on, but was now covered with dust and dirt from her time rooting around on the bottom of the closet. There was a smear of dirt on her face, and a huge smudge of it on her bare white leg and the pair of Mulder’s boxers that she’d commandeered to wear as shorts. She’d drawn her hair up on top of her head to keep it out of the way, but it had broken out of its confines and spilled out of the ponytail like a fountain of damp red gold.
“What’s up?” he said, flopping on the bed next to her.
“That,” she said, in a flat tone, “was Skinner.”
“What’d he want?”
“He said he’d be here in fifteen minutes.”
“For what?” Mulder asked, confused. “Is he coming to help us pack?
Scully stared at him with her patented ‘Mulder-you’re-crazy’ expression, seasoned with the irritation that came with being hot, cranky and dirty. “Why would Skinner help us pack?” she asked slowly.
Mulder shrugged. “I was hoping,” he said. “So, what does he want?”
“He refused to say,” Scully said crisply.
Mulder nodded. “You think he wants us to investigate something weird.”
“What else would he want, Mulder?” She got up off the bed abruptly and stomped into the bathroom. “I’m taking a shower.” The door slammed behind her, and the message was as clear as if she’d said, ‘Mulder, stay out.’
“I’m not going to do it, Scully,” he said loudly. He listened for a few seconds, hearing her actions in the small room become less pointed.
“You don’t even know what he wants yet,” she said back in a loud voice. Her tone was not as sharp as it had been.
“Doesn’t matter,” he said. “I’m not doing it.”
The door opened a crack, and he heard her sigh before she spoke. “Don’t make promises you can’t keep, Mulder.”
“Maguire has already called twice to try to talk me into getting up to Baltimore early,” Mulder said. “How am I supposed to help Skinner with anything?”
The shower was running, and he heard her step into it. “Let’s just listen to what he has to say, OK?”
He shook his head in exasperation at her contrary nature. “I’m not doing it,” he muttered crankily. “No fucking way.”
~*~
“You’re just telling us this now? When you’ve know for weeks that he was missing?” Mulder could hear the edge of hysteria beneath the rage in the quivering of his voice, but he was too far gone to stop it.
As Skinner’s explanation had haltingly been relayed to them, Scully had sunk down onto the couch. She was curled around herself, rocking slightly.
Mulder had seen his mother assume that exact same posture years ago, had watched helplessly as her eyes turned inward and she closed herself off from the world. Her suicide years later had simply been a coda to that day, that action. He had never wanted that life to be his.
“I didn’t have confirmation, Mulder,” Skinner said. His voice had a pleading edge to it.
“You suspected this when you took us to the airport in March!” Mulder yelled. Skinner shook his head, but Mulder’s voice rose over whatever clarification he might have made. “You knew something that day,” he accused. “Don’t lie to me!”
“All I knew was that his mother’s cancer had returned,” Skinner said, and this time it was his voice that rose over Mulder’s. “One of the ways that I kept tabs on him was that he was enrolled,” Skinner sketched quotes in the air, “in an asthma study. A detailed questionnaire about his and his family’s health and circumstances was sent twice a year.”
Scully looked up at Skinner in surprise.
He shrugged, and continued in a quieter voice. “That way, if there were any changes in his health status, I’d get some information on it directly.”
Mulder was not appeased. “So, she answered the questionnaire in March and you decided not to tell us about her cancer!”
“Not exactly,” Skinner said. “The questionnaire was due in January.” Mulder threw up his hands in frustration. “They’ve been late before, Mulder!” Skinner said loudly. “And it takes time for the questionnaire to get to me through all the dummy PO boxes. When it got to the point that I got worried, I had the call placed to remind them.”
“The call?” Mulder said, suspiciously, thinking of Skinner's first visit to their house. “Who called and how? And when, exactly, was this in January?”
“The call didn’t take place until the middle of March,” Skinner said firmly. “And I had Monica Reyes make it.”
“Oh my God,” Mulder began, but Skinner interrupted him.
“She called a number from a clean satellite phone that I purchased just for the purpose, and destroyed immediately after,” Skinner said. “I dialed the number. When we made the call, I was officially on vacation. She was on a case in Kansas.”
Mulder stared at Skinner.
“She has never asked who she was calling or why. We have not discussed it.” Skinner was unequivocal. “She had a script, and she followed it. Her experience as an interrogator allowed her to tease more information out of the subject.”
“William’s adoptive mother, you mean?” Mulder said bitterly.
“Yes,” Skinner said tersely. “She told Monica that they’d be unable to participate in the home visit this year because of her cancer treatment schedule.”
“Home visit?” Mulder asked.
“Yes,” Skinner said. “Once a year, someone goes to the house and vacuums samples, etc., to make it look legitimate. This also gives us the opportunity to look at William ourselves.”
Scully’s mouth hung open as she looked at Skinner. “Who?”
Skinner hesitated. “I usually send an operative that worked with the Gunmen, and has largely taken over their operation. She’s designated others.”
Now it was Mulder’s mouth that was hanging open. “Yves?” he asked disbelievingly. “You’ve sent an assassin to check on our child?”
“She owed me,” Skinner said tersely.
“I can’t fucking,” Mulder began. “This is a nightmare.” He paused to take control of himself and focus. “So, she was being treated at a local cancer center,” Mulder said. “And you decided not to tell us.”
“You were on your way out of the country for your first vacation in years,” Skinner said curtly. “We were monitoring the situation. I knew that I’d be getting an update in May. I decided to wait.”
“I cannot believe that you didn’t tell us what was going on! This is our son!” Mulder shouted.
“Mulder,” Skinner said. “I firmly believed that I’d be coming to you today to tell you that they’d hit a bump in the road, but that everything was going to be all right. It wasn’t until Gary went to camp on the farm and found it deserted that we found out about William’s father’s fatal heart attack-“
“In March,” Mulder asked.
“It happened while you were gone, yes,” Skinner confirmed. “But I did not know that before you went away.”
“And why didn’t you tell us when you found out?!” Mulder yelled. “And who is Gary?”
“I’ve only known for two weeks,” Skinner said defensively. “Gary and I served together in Vietnam. He’d camp on their farm when he went out there for motorcycle rallies.”
“I don’t even fucking believe what I’m hearing,” Mulder said. “That was a security plan? A guy who goes camping on their land?”
“Twice a year, Mulder,” Skinner said. “Every Memorial Day weekend since William was one year old and then again in the fall. And not only did Gary and I serve together in Vietnam, but he continued on, in Special Ops.” Skinner paused significantly. “Over the years, he’d run into a few of your boogie men, Mulder. He never asked why I wanted him to go to Wyoming, but he was a good set of eyes and ears for unfriendlies.”
“Fine,” Mulder ground out. “Tell me what he found.”
“He found the house quiet,” Skinner said. “The fields were only partially planted, and what had been cultivated was dead. He went to the nearest town and because he’d been coming there for years, the restaurant owner was willing to tell him that Van De Kamp had died.”
Scully roused herself to ask a question. “What happened?”
Skinner sighed. “They’d gone to Cheyenne so that she could be treated for her cancer. He’d drive her in, and then come back and work in the fields, then drive back and get her four days later. Then he’d do it again two days later.”
She nodded.
“The hand he had working for him said that he was exhausted, that he’d stay up all night taking care of his wife, and then work in the fields. He’d brought her and the boy home late on a Friday and went out to the barn to close it up for the night.” Skinner paused, and his voice dropped to a whisper. “When Van De Kamp didn’t come into the house in the usual amount of time …” he hesitated. “The hand said that William went out to the barn …”
Scully made an anguished noise.
Mulder glared at Skinner, whose eyes had dropped to his shoes.
“By the time the ambulance got out there,” Skinner began, then shook his head. “After the funeral, William and his adoptive mother returned to Cheyenne to continue her treatment.” He looked up at Mulder. “By the time we got this information, she’d already been discharged. We were told that she’d been advised to go to a larger, more state-of-the-art cancer center.”
“How did you get this information?” Mulder asked suspiciously.
“Agent Doggett took some vacation,” Skinner said quietly.
Mulder swore out loud. “Perfect!” he said. “You do you realize that everything you’ve done could have led them right to our son, if they don’t have him already?”
Scully moaned a little at his words.
“This is my fault,” Mulder said bitterly. “I should have fucking known better. I should have fucking known that the only reason that I was allowed to regain my legal status was because they no longer had any use for me, and whatever’s left of what they did to me. They knew that they could get William.”
“I don’t think that’s true, Mulder,” Skinner said heatedly. “I called you – no one else suggested it!”
“Oh, really,” Mulder said. “How do you fucking know that your nanites didn’t suggest the idea to you in your sleep one night? My God!” He turned around and kicked one of the boxes hard, caving in the side. “They could’ve had him for months now, for all you know. And even if they didn’t know that he was missing, they certainly do now. I cannot believe that you used FBI sources!”
“Agent Doggett would not betray you,” Skinner said through gritted teeth.
“Not willingly, no,” Mulder said. “But that’s not even the point, sir, and you fucking know it. This is my son, not yours. It wasn’t your decision to make. And this is not just about the last two weeks -- you should have told us what was going on with him months ago!”
“I’m sorry,” Skinner said.
Mulder knew that Skinner was sincere, but right now he couldn’t bring himself to give a fuck. Skinner’s apology was not answered with any form of forgiveness.
“We need to see exactly what you’ve done,” Scully’s voice was a whisper, but hearing it again after such a long silence made Skinner jump.
Skinner pointed to the file on the coffee table. “It’s all right there,” he answered. “Agent Doggett wanted to come with me,” he said. “He wants you to know that he’s available anytime you want to talk to him, day or night.”
“That’s fine,” Scully said. Her voice was absent any kind of affect. She picked up the file on the coffee table as if it were a bomb needing to be diffused. When she flipped it open, pictures of William were visible. He heard her indrawn breath and couldn’t resist going over to look at their son.
Mulder should have been more surprised, but mostly what he felt was a sinking in his gut. It was all real, and it always had been. Smiling up at him, in what was clearly a school picture, was the boy from his dreams. He was sure that when he read the file, he'd find that William's father had died shortly before the dream he'd had on vacation.
“That’s from last year,” Skinner said gruffly.
When the tears that Scully had been silently crying began to fall on the photo, Skinner turned to leave their house.
“Walter,” Mulder said, his tone still harsh with anger. “I want everything that was given to you for safekeeping.”
Scully sobbed a little on the couch.
Skinner’s shoulders tensed, and then dropped. He turned away from the door. “It’s in a safety deposit box, encased in lead,” he said quietly. “The Gunmen set it up before they died.”
“That’s fine,” Mulder gritted out. “But I’ll be taking custody of it from now on. I should have taken custody of it, and of everything else that was mine, long ago.”
Skinner’s jaw was set in anger, and he turned to Scully. “Have you had symptoms?” Skinner was addressing Scully, but she didn’t look up at him. Her finger was tracing William’s features, as she shook her head.
“No,” she said softly. Her voice had a distant quality to it. “Everything’s been fine since it was removed.”
Mulder closed his eyes at the horror that the idea of her words conjured up in him. He would never forget the almost paralyzing sense of fear he’d felt when she’d calmly told him that she’d removed the chip at the end of her second trimester when it had malfunctioned.
Shortly after he'd been buried in North Carolina, timing too coincidental for him to ignore, the site of the chip had become infected, and proved resistant to antibiotics. The ante had been upped when Scully had had three incidents of lost time that had terrified both her and the Gunmen. She’d removed the chip, intending it to be temporary until the infection cleared up. But when she’d reinserted the chip, she'd suffered repeated petit mal seizures until it had been removed for good 24 hours later.
In his heart of hearts, Mulder had never believed that the chip had malfunctioned. Instead, he believed that when their child had become viable, Scully had become expendable. They’d been clearing the decks, trying to make it easy for William to be taken.
Luckily, it had all had gone wrong for them. Mulder’d been resurrected without being turned. And for whatever reason –- exposure to the African ship or Jeremiah Smith, even her pregnancy with William itself -- Scully’s cancer had not returned. They existed, as she’d rightly observed, in spite of everything that had been done to kill them.
When Scully said nothing further to refute Mulder’s words, Skinner turned back to him and nodded curtly. It was Scully who’d made Skinner promise that if she died, that he'd ensure William's safety. At the time, with Mulder dead, she’d had no one else on whom to depend. When push had come to shove in that desperate, hopeless year that they'd been apart, she'd activated what she'd hoped was a failsafe for William's safety. When they'd been reunited but on the run, and then living precariously, there'd been no point in changing those arrangements.
Obviously, Mulder thought bitterly, that had been a mistake. “Truesdale will contact you,” he said aloud. With William missing, and possibly in their clutches, he had to assume that he and Scully were now both expendable. Other contingencies for William's safety would have to be activated. “Who besides Doggett knows?”
“He listed all of his contacts in the file,” Skinner said grimly. “Mulder –“
“We’ll be in touch,” Mulder said shortly. He opened the door to the porch.
Skinner looked back at Scully, but she did not raise her eyes from the photo of their son.
“I’m sorry,” he said one more time, directing his words at Scully.
She nodded, and Skinner turned to go.
Mulder closed the door behind Skinner and crossed the room to his office to call David and activate every resource that he had available to find William. Scully’s soft voice stopped him as he crossed the threshold.
“It’s not Skinner’s fault, Mulder,” she said quietly. Her voice was practically a whisper. “It’s mine.”
He closed his eyes and scrubbed a hand across his face at her words. He had no answer for her, could not give her the absolution that she wanted, even though he believed that he himself was really to blame. Instead, he said, “I’ve got to call David,” and left the room.
~*~
Part 6
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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Date: 2008-10-30 01:20 am (UTC)*is on tenterhooks*
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Date: 2008-10-31 01:59 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-10-31 02:18 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-10-30 01:27 am (UTC)Must have more!
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Date: 2008-10-31 01:59 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-10-30 01:50 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-10-31 02:00 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-10-30 02:13 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-10-31 02:00 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-10-30 04:47 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-10-31 02:00 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-10-30 05:38 am (UTC)Impatient am I
but with greatness comes impatience :)
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Date: 2008-10-31 02:01 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-10-30 03:26 pm (UTC)Should you ever find the time, know that there are those of us who would love to read the last of the Speechless series.
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Date: 2008-10-31 02:01 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-10-30 03:47 pm (UTC)NOW! Too much awesome in one part, hon. ♥
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Date: 2008-10-31 02:02 am (UTC)And thanks!
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Date: 2008-10-30 07:35 pm (UTC)Next part, please *desperately tries to keep inner fingirl freak in check behind a civilzed facade*
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Date: 2008-10-31 12:00 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-10-31 02:03 am (UTC)Also, thanks.
WOW
Date: 2008-10-30 10:21 pm (UTC)I can't wait to read the next chapter. Seriously, I've checked your page like 10 times today! LOL
Re: WOW
Date: 2008-10-31 02:03 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-10-30 10:26 pm (UTC)I can't tell you how much I am enjoying your story. I can't wait to read more!
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Date: 2008-10-31 02:04 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-10-30 11:59 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-10-31 02:04 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-11-01 01:00 pm (UTC)Lucky for me, you've already posted 6 and I don't have to wait. *smug*
Love this line: a tiny closet with a recidivist tendency toward mice. BWAHAHAHA!