Beating the Darkness Back, Part 6
Oct. 31st, 2008 08:51 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
anjouficTitle: Beating the Darkness Back 6/7
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?
~*~
July 20, 2008
The echo of his feet on the pavement was in the same rhythm as his heartbeat. The same tempo as the name repeating ceaselessly in his head like a mantra, a month after Skinner had come to speak to them.
William. William. William.
He hadn’t run this much in years, and knew it was foolish for a man sliding toward fifty to run in this heat, but he couldn’t bring himself to care. If he didn’t run, he’d never sleep. If he ran enough, he could maybe sleep without nightmares.
It would be easier, of course, if he could talk to Scully about all this, but conversations between them were few and far between these days. She’d retreated to work with a vengeance, preferring to spend her time saving other people’s children while he impotently tried to find theirs.
Mulder was living the nightmare of his own childhood from a whole new perspective. Surprisingly, it gave him little sympathy and insight into the world of his parents as he couldn’t help but ascribe blame to them for placing them all on this destructive path. His parents’ aims might have started out as noble, if not self-serving, but their actions had resulted only in death and dissolution as far as he could tell. Maybe he was feeling sorry for himself, and for Scully, but it seemed to him that his life was one long chain of agony, with the periods of true joy hidden inside the links to keep him hanging on, waiting for the next one. He knew that he should be grateful for the years of relative peace that he and Scully had enjoyed, but like so many things that are pleasurable, it had come with an enormous price tag.
And even that joy, that interwoven-ness that he and Scully shared which teetered on the edge of being pathological, had failed to protect them from being torn apart by this latest news. They’d moved into their new house, this new aspect of their lives, in virtual silence. They were ostensibly free to go wherever they wished, to do whatever they wanted. But freedom, Mulder had long ago learned, was an illusion, just like safety. You could be taken anytime, if not by an alien craft, then by the randomness of a malevolent passerby, or failing brakes, or even a comet falling from the sky. Sure, the odds were against it -- but somebody had to be the winner, the celestial schmuck who got struck by lightning twice.
Mulder rounded the corner that brought him to their street and slowed to a walk, then circled the block twice more before he turned down their driveway and stretched out in the backyard. It was lush and green even in the summer heat, but not because he or Scully had paid any sort of attention to it. The previous owners had created an automated system for watering the garden that worked well, so they’d left it alone. The sprinklers were on now, countering the late afternoon heat, and he ducked his head under one, then shook himself like a dog before he shucked his shoes and socks and crossed the wide deck that they never used.
When they’d first seen the house, Mulder’d had all sorts of visions of them enjoying the deck here the way they’d enjoyed the outside living space in the Bahamas. But that had been before the darkness had come roaring back and swallowed them whole. As it was, they’d never once used the grill that was built into one side of the deck, much less the refrigerator. They barely managed to feed themselves. He fumbled with the string inside of his shorts where he’d tied his keys and unlocked the back door, entering the kitchen. He’d seen Scully’s car in the driveway, but didn’t bother yelling for her as he crossed the room. He had to go upstairs to take a shower anyway. He’d see her then.
Oddly, she wasn’t upstairs, at least not in their bedroom or its neighboring bathroom. He wandered downstairs, intending to check on his e-mail and see if there was any news from David. He wasn’t expecting any; there’d been nothing when he’d checked two hours ago, but he couldn’t stop himself from looking again. After that, he’d try and focus on reading the case histories of two new patients that Maguire wanted him to become involved with. He sighed softly as he trod across the floor to the room he’d claimed for his office. It had probably been a den in the original house configuration, but he’d figured that it would be a good idea to have a space adjacent to the deck, back when he’d had visions of the two of them on a warm summer evening, sharing a beer and talking at the end of the day while he grilled them dinner.
“Scully?” he stopped short at the sight of her, sitting at his desk with the case file from Skinner spread out around her as she intently read what was on his screen. “What’re you doing?”
“You haven’t been telling me everything, Mulder,” she answered in a flat, angry voice.
“What’re you talking about?” He was immediately pissed off. “You know that David has private detectives looking everywhere for them. They had a credible lead to Boston, but it appears that either Ms. Van De Kamp changed her mind about treatment there, or someone changed it for her.” When she continued to stare at him with a stony expression, he asked, “What?”
“Adoption strategy?” she asked accusatorily.
He closed his eyes. She was reading his notes, which tended to be a bit more freeform.
“Scully …” he began.
“The woman is dying of cancer,” she said curtly. “Her husband is already dead. You’d take away her child, too?”
“Wow,” Mulder said sarcastically. “You certainly got a lot out of a two word note from a conversation I had with David. Like, for example, that I’m a totally heartless bastard.”
Scully was silent, watching him. Her face was so thin; her mouth was drawn down in a way that showed all of the fine lines that worry had etched upon her face. “Then what is this?” Her tone was still too professionally interrogatory for his liking.
“As you said,” Mulder emphasized. “The woman is dying. In fact, she may already be dead.” Scully flinched at his words, but did not look away from him.
“Since she didn’t show up in Boston, David’s detectives are looking for obituaries and legal notices across the country and searching any available Social Service delivery databases for William’s name. It’s a long shot, but if he’s in the system somewhere, we’ll need a strategy to get custody of him.” He paused. “David thinks that the best strategy is to assert my paternity rights, which, as you know, were never severed.” Scully’s eyes dropped and she flushed. She started to say something, but Mulder cut her off. “David’s sending an affidavit for you to sign, attesting to the fact that William is my biological son. That, coupled with the DNA testing that you did before he was adopted, should prove the biology. Of course, the court may require that it be re-affirmed.”
“Mulder …” she began.
He cut her off angrily, “What else would you like to know?”
“What if she’s already given custody of William to one of her siblings, or her husband’s?” she asked softly.
“She had no siblings,” Mulder answered. “And although Van De Kamp was from a large family, he was by far the youngest. Most of his surviving siblings are much older. None of them are interested in parenting a seven-year-old boy. They weren’t close.” He paused. “Anyway, I wouldn’t hesitate to challenge a claim of theirs,” he said. “It’s clear to me that William’s safety is the most important thing.”
Scully’s head jerked up. “Meaning what?” she said. “That I’m not interested in William’s safety? That I wasn’t thinking of William’s safety when I did this?”
When Mulder didn’t answer her, she sucked in a breath and turned angrily back to the screen. “What does this mean? Question: magnetite half-life, Spender, May 2004?”
“That’s not an investigative avenue,” Mulder prevaricated. “Well, the part about Spender is. David’s trying to locate my erstwhile baby brother.”
“Why?” Scully asked curtly.
“Why?” Mulder said. “For one thing, he might still be connected to the Consortium and have an idea of where they’d take William. For another, I’d like to know what exactly he put into our son.”
“He said that it was a solubilized magnetite.”
“And you believed him?”
“The only thing that was detected on any blood test was elevated iron levels,” Scully said.
“On a conventional blood test,” Mulder countered.
“I ran a sample myself!” Scully argued.
“At the FBI lab,” Mulder answered. “Where the samples and the test results could have been tampered with by innumerable people.”
“What would you have had me do?” Scully asked wearily. “The Gunmen were dead.”
Mulder turned away in frustration. What he would have had her do, if he could turn back time, was reach out to him. When he thought about how they had ended up fleeing only weeks later, and the uncertainty of William’s life now, the irony was overwhelming. Maybe he was deluding himself to think that they could have kept William safe, but anything was better than this present agony. Besides, looking back at the history of his family with the Consortium, it seemed to him that the real delusion was to be found in the belief that William’s whereabouts could be kept hidden from a global conspiracy.
Scully’s words cut across his morbid thoughts. “You still haven’t told me why you were interested in the half-life of magnetite.”
“Well, if you’re right, and if Spender did inject magnetite into him, wouldn’t the effectiveness degrade over time?”
He could feel her listening to his answer, but he didn’t turn around to face her.
“If I remember correctly, that would be around five years.” Scully said steadily, “So, what’s the significance of May 2004?”
“Neural plasticity,” Mulder said briefly, turning around.
“Meaning?”
Mulder shrugged. “Meaning neural plasticity,” Mulder said. “The first big phase of it, developmentally speaking, ends around age 3. Not that there aren’t other opportunities, but I was wondering if that shedding of all the unused neural pathways would have any effect on what was done to him.”
Scully studied him silently. “You’re lying to me,” she said quietly.
“I am not lying!” Mulder said defensively.
“Well, then you’re omitting something,” she said speculatively. She turned back to the computer screen. “What’s the significance of May 2004?” she repeated.
“His third birthday,” Mulder said gruffly. He was hedging.
“You’d hardly need a note to remind you of that,” Scully said shortly. She tapped the computer screen and tried another verbal tack. “What happened in May 2004?”
Mulder sighed, and gave in. “When Daddy Spender did his brain surgery on me, I had a lot of strange dreams,” he began.
Scully’s brows were drawn down as she watched him, her arms crossed tight over her body. “You’ve told me this before,” she said tersely.
He shook his head. “I dreamt about a boy on a beach, building space ships.”
She cocked her head at him. “William?”
He bobbed his head in a maybe-yes, maybe-no gesture. “He wasn’t even an idea to me then, Scully. And this was a five-year-old boy, maybe six.” He paused. “I began dreaming about that boy again in May 2004.”
She stared at him. “How often?”
“Not often,” he said.
Scully’s expression was skeptical and a little bitter. “You expect me to believe that? That you’ve been dreaming of our son all these years, but not often?” Her initial shock was giving way to anger.
“It’s true!” he insisted. “I would want it to happen, and it wouldn’t. It would … it wasn’t on any kind of a schedule. At first I thought that it was stress-related, to his birthday and …” he paused. “I was pretty depressed at certain points, so …”
Scully’s look of anger did not soften at this admission. “When did you start to believe that it was William who was initiating the contact?”
He shook his head. “I don’t think it’s that simple, Scully. When I had the first dream, he didn’t even exist. When they started again, he was age appropriate. I assumed that it was my subconscious that was generating the image of him, that it was the expression of my own desires.”
“What changed your mind?” she asked angrily.
“I didn’t say my mind was changed! It’s still possible that they’re simply my dreams,” Mulder said heatedly.
“Except that it’s this boy, isn’t it, Mulder?” Scully challenged him, tapping the picture of William in the file. “It’s this exact boy in your dreams, isn’t it?” There were tears in her eyes, and her voice was shaking.
He nodded, opening his mouth to explain, but she held up her hand.
“You’ve been seeing him, and talking to him, for years,” she whispered, standing up suddenly. His desk chair was propelled backwards into the wall. “And you never even said a word.” Her expression defied him to deny it, but he couldn’t.
“Not one word,” she echoed, tears streaming down her face. She pushed past him and walked into the living room.
“Scully,” he said, as she picked up her purse. “Can’t we talk about this?”
The look that she threw him over her shoulder was murderous. Then she turned and walked out the door.
~*~
July 23, 2008
It was the middle of the night when he woke from a sleep he’d only achieved by running himself ragged and then drinking tequila while he was still dehydrated. The house had been deathly quiet for the last couple of days, with only him rattling around in the too-large space until appointments with Maguire rousted him from it. As far as he could tell, Scully hadn’t been home for more than the time it probably took to change her clothes, and then only while he was gone.
But now, in the mid-night stillness, he could clearly hear the sound of her weeping. He followed it to the empty room that they’d both known without saying was meant to be William’s. Even with no hope of seeing him when they’d bought this house, they’d ordered furniture for his room. Now that Mulder was no longer a fugitive, Scully had hopes of enticing her mother back to the East Coast for a visit, so they’d gone furniture shopping. They’d only intended to buy furniture for their own room and for a guest bedroom, but they’d both stopped at the foot of a twin bed, clearly meant for a child.
They’d stared at it for a minute before Scully said, “We should get this in case my brothers visit,” in a rush.
The likelihood of that occurring was almost nonexistent, and both of her brothers had more than one child. And yet, he’d let the statement go unchallenged, the way he’d done so many times through the years. They both knew the furniture was for the imaginary William that they’d always acknowledged, if sometimes only tacitly.
In their last house, William had had his own unoccupied, unfurnished room. This new house, with its ample space for guests they’d probably never have, had different requirements. In truth, he understood Scully’s desire. It seemed wrong to furnish a room for a possible guest and not one for their son. So, he’d just nodded in agreement and told the saleswoman to add the bedroom set to their order and include a mattress.
The furniture had been delivered earlier in the day. Mulder found her seated on the floor next to the bed as if she’d collapsed there, her head down as she sobbed on the empty plastic-covered mattress.
“Scully,” he said in sorrow. He wanted to go to her, but was still unsure of his welcome, so he crossed the room and crouched down next to her, not touching her.
She turned her tear-stained face to his, and moved her hand toward him, still caressing the empty mattress where their child should be sleeping. “Do you blame me for giving him away?” she asked him.
Mulder rocked back on his heels at the blunt question, sitting down on the floor next to her with his back against the bed. He could feel the tears rising in his throat as he tried to formulate an answer. He picked up the hand that she’d pushed toward him and kissed the back of it, holding it over his heart. He took in a breath. “A little,” he admitted.
She sobbed, but nodded.
“Do you blame me for leaving you all alone with him?” he asked her.
“A little,” she confessed in a halting voice. “I don’t want to blame you, Mulder.”
“But you do, a little,” he answered. He was surprised at how easily the words came out, when the very idea felt like a knife in his gut. “We can’t keep running away from what we feel, Scully,” he said, turning toward her.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” Her voice was an anguished whisper, and now, finally, he began to cry, in great, heaving sobs.
“Tell you what?” he choked out. “That I dream about our son sometimes, and that we play in the sand?” He shook his head helplessly. “That sometimes I’m horribly lonely for a child that I only knew for two days? How could I do that to you? For the longest time, I thought I was just dreaming, that it was simply a manifestation of my desire for some connection with him.”
She moved to his side and put her arms around him as they cried together.
“I’m jealous that you’ve seen him all this time,” Scully said finally. “That you could talk to him and touch him, when I couldn’t.”
He shook his head at her words. “We never really speak,” he said. “In my first dream, I wasn’t interacting with him at all – I was watching. I thought maybe he was me as a child, or one of the other children from …” he didn’t finish his statement. “And then, after we had William and lost him, I didn’t think it was him at first, because his hair is so dark now. In my daytime imagination, William was a redhead like you.”
She nodded, smiling through her tears.
“I … it wasn’t until I’d seen him a couple of times and I really looked at him that I saw you in him, in his features, the shape of his face. I called him William, and he smiled at me,” he chuckled wetly. “He doesn’t speak to me, really. We just … we build these enormous sandcastles – but they’re not all castles,” he paused. “I sound insane, don’t I?”
She laughed through her tears, then grew serious as they wound down. "Mulder, why can't you ask him where he is in your dreams?"
"I haven't seen him in weeks and weeks," he choked out. He could see how his words alarmed her, but he was helpless to stop the torrent of fear that flowed out of him. "Not since we were at the beach, Scully," he sobbed. "Not once since then, and it makes me so afraid. The last dream made me afraid.” He whispered. “You were in that one."
She shook her head, mystified and frightened. "I don't remember any dream like that."
Mulder smiled through his tears. "I wouldn't have wanted you to be in that one," he whispered. "He was so sad. He was crying, Scully."
She covered her mouth with her hand. "His father?"
Mulder nodded. "I think so. I don't know if he came looking for me, and found you …" he shook his head in consternation. "They're still my dreams, no matter how you slice it. But this one … you've never been in them, Scully, but there you both were on the hammock, and he was crying, and you were soothing him, and then … he was just gone."
"Gone?" She shook her head in confusion and alarm.
"He turned into a pile of sand," he said quietly, and Scully's indrawn breath was harsh and high-pitched.
He'd known that it would remind her of Emily's coffin, but he was surprised by her sharp response. "What?"
"The sand … do you think he's dead, Mulder?"
He shook his head. When he spoke, his voice was raw and hoarse. "I can't let myself think like that, Scully," he said, "or I will go crazy." He paused. "Do you blame me for not going out there and trying to find him?" She was shaking her head while he was speaking. "For letting David make all the contacts?"
"No," she said firmly. "They took you away from me once. I can't lose both of you, Mulder. I can't."
"Then, please stop running away when we have problems," Mulder said quietly. "It's killing me, Scully."
She looked at him searchingly.
"I mean it," he said. "I can take it if you blame me. I can even take it if you hate me a little bit. What I can’t take is when you withdraw from me like this.”
She burst into tears again and buried her face in his chest.
"Just don't leave me," he said haltingly. "Please, Scully."
Her hands reached up and threaded around his neck. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry," she said over and over as they kissed for the first time in weeks, faces wet and swollen, barely able to breathe through their tears. She pressed her forehead against his. "I'm sorry."
Mulder nodded and wiped the tears from her face. "I’m sorry, too," he said wearily, leaning back and levering himself up from the floor. He held out his hand to her and quietly said, "Come to bed."
Scully looked down toward William's empty bed, running her hand across the rumpled plastic in a caress. Then she turned and placed her hand in his, and let him help her rise.
~*~
Part 7
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?
~*~
July 20, 2008
The echo of his feet on the pavement was in the same rhythm as his heartbeat. The same tempo as the name repeating ceaselessly in his head like a mantra, a month after Skinner had come to speak to them.
William. William. William.
He hadn’t run this much in years, and knew it was foolish for a man sliding toward fifty to run in this heat, but he couldn’t bring himself to care. If he didn’t run, he’d never sleep. If he ran enough, he could maybe sleep without nightmares.
It would be easier, of course, if he could talk to Scully about all this, but conversations between them were few and far between these days. She’d retreated to work with a vengeance, preferring to spend her time saving other people’s children while he impotently tried to find theirs.
Mulder was living the nightmare of his own childhood from a whole new perspective. Surprisingly, it gave him little sympathy and insight into the world of his parents as he couldn’t help but ascribe blame to them for placing them all on this destructive path. His parents’ aims might have started out as noble, if not self-serving, but their actions had resulted only in death and dissolution as far as he could tell. Maybe he was feeling sorry for himself, and for Scully, but it seemed to him that his life was one long chain of agony, with the periods of true joy hidden inside the links to keep him hanging on, waiting for the next one. He knew that he should be grateful for the years of relative peace that he and Scully had enjoyed, but like so many things that are pleasurable, it had come with an enormous price tag.
And even that joy, that interwoven-ness that he and Scully shared which teetered on the edge of being pathological, had failed to protect them from being torn apart by this latest news. They’d moved into their new house, this new aspect of their lives, in virtual silence. They were ostensibly free to go wherever they wished, to do whatever they wanted. But freedom, Mulder had long ago learned, was an illusion, just like safety. You could be taken anytime, if not by an alien craft, then by the randomness of a malevolent passerby, or failing brakes, or even a comet falling from the sky. Sure, the odds were against it -- but somebody had to be the winner, the celestial schmuck who got struck by lightning twice.
Mulder rounded the corner that brought him to their street and slowed to a walk, then circled the block twice more before he turned down their driveway and stretched out in the backyard. It was lush and green even in the summer heat, but not because he or Scully had paid any sort of attention to it. The previous owners had created an automated system for watering the garden that worked well, so they’d left it alone. The sprinklers were on now, countering the late afternoon heat, and he ducked his head under one, then shook himself like a dog before he shucked his shoes and socks and crossed the wide deck that they never used.
When they’d first seen the house, Mulder’d had all sorts of visions of them enjoying the deck here the way they’d enjoyed the outside living space in the Bahamas. But that had been before the darkness had come roaring back and swallowed them whole. As it was, they’d never once used the grill that was built into one side of the deck, much less the refrigerator. They barely managed to feed themselves. He fumbled with the string inside of his shorts where he’d tied his keys and unlocked the back door, entering the kitchen. He’d seen Scully’s car in the driveway, but didn’t bother yelling for her as he crossed the room. He had to go upstairs to take a shower anyway. He’d see her then.
Oddly, she wasn’t upstairs, at least not in their bedroom or its neighboring bathroom. He wandered downstairs, intending to check on his e-mail and see if there was any news from David. He wasn’t expecting any; there’d been nothing when he’d checked two hours ago, but he couldn’t stop himself from looking again. After that, he’d try and focus on reading the case histories of two new patients that Maguire wanted him to become involved with. He sighed softly as he trod across the floor to the room he’d claimed for his office. It had probably been a den in the original house configuration, but he’d figured that it would be a good idea to have a space adjacent to the deck, back when he’d had visions of the two of them on a warm summer evening, sharing a beer and talking at the end of the day while he grilled them dinner.
“Scully?” he stopped short at the sight of her, sitting at his desk with the case file from Skinner spread out around her as she intently read what was on his screen. “What’re you doing?”
“You haven’t been telling me everything, Mulder,” she answered in a flat, angry voice.
“What’re you talking about?” He was immediately pissed off. “You know that David has private detectives looking everywhere for them. They had a credible lead to Boston, but it appears that either Ms. Van De Kamp changed her mind about treatment there, or someone changed it for her.” When she continued to stare at him with a stony expression, he asked, “What?”
“Adoption strategy?” she asked accusatorily.
He closed his eyes. She was reading his notes, which tended to be a bit more freeform.
“Scully …” he began.
“The woman is dying of cancer,” she said curtly. “Her husband is already dead. You’d take away her child, too?”
“Wow,” Mulder said sarcastically. “You certainly got a lot out of a two word note from a conversation I had with David. Like, for example, that I’m a totally heartless bastard.”
Scully was silent, watching him. Her face was so thin; her mouth was drawn down in a way that showed all of the fine lines that worry had etched upon her face. “Then what is this?” Her tone was still too professionally interrogatory for his liking.
“As you said,” Mulder emphasized. “The woman is dying. In fact, she may already be dead.” Scully flinched at his words, but did not look away from him.
“Since she didn’t show up in Boston, David’s detectives are looking for obituaries and legal notices across the country and searching any available Social Service delivery databases for William’s name. It’s a long shot, but if he’s in the system somewhere, we’ll need a strategy to get custody of him.” He paused. “David thinks that the best strategy is to assert my paternity rights, which, as you know, were never severed.” Scully’s eyes dropped and she flushed. She started to say something, but Mulder cut her off. “David’s sending an affidavit for you to sign, attesting to the fact that William is my biological son. That, coupled with the DNA testing that you did before he was adopted, should prove the biology. Of course, the court may require that it be re-affirmed.”
“Mulder …” she began.
He cut her off angrily, “What else would you like to know?”
“What if she’s already given custody of William to one of her siblings, or her husband’s?” she asked softly.
“She had no siblings,” Mulder answered. “And although Van De Kamp was from a large family, he was by far the youngest. Most of his surviving siblings are much older. None of them are interested in parenting a seven-year-old boy. They weren’t close.” He paused. “Anyway, I wouldn’t hesitate to challenge a claim of theirs,” he said. “It’s clear to me that William’s safety is the most important thing.”
Scully’s head jerked up. “Meaning what?” she said. “That I’m not interested in William’s safety? That I wasn’t thinking of William’s safety when I did this?”
When Mulder didn’t answer her, she sucked in a breath and turned angrily back to the screen. “What does this mean? Question: magnetite half-life, Spender, May 2004?”
“That’s not an investigative avenue,” Mulder prevaricated. “Well, the part about Spender is. David’s trying to locate my erstwhile baby brother.”
“Why?” Scully asked curtly.
“Why?” Mulder said. “For one thing, he might still be connected to the Consortium and have an idea of where they’d take William. For another, I’d like to know what exactly he put into our son.”
“He said that it was a solubilized magnetite.”
“And you believed him?”
“The only thing that was detected on any blood test was elevated iron levels,” Scully said.
“On a conventional blood test,” Mulder countered.
“I ran a sample myself!” Scully argued.
“At the FBI lab,” Mulder answered. “Where the samples and the test results could have been tampered with by innumerable people.”
“What would you have had me do?” Scully asked wearily. “The Gunmen were dead.”
Mulder turned away in frustration. What he would have had her do, if he could turn back time, was reach out to him. When he thought about how they had ended up fleeing only weeks later, and the uncertainty of William’s life now, the irony was overwhelming. Maybe he was deluding himself to think that they could have kept William safe, but anything was better than this present agony. Besides, looking back at the history of his family with the Consortium, it seemed to him that the real delusion was to be found in the belief that William’s whereabouts could be kept hidden from a global conspiracy.
Scully’s words cut across his morbid thoughts. “You still haven’t told me why you were interested in the half-life of magnetite.”
“Well, if you’re right, and if Spender did inject magnetite into him, wouldn’t the effectiveness degrade over time?”
He could feel her listening to his answer, but he didn’t turn around to face her.
“If I remember correctly, that would be around five years.” Scully said steadily, “So, what’s the significance of May 2004?”
“Neural plasticity,” Mulder said briefly, turning around.
“Meaning?”
Mulder shrugged. “Meaning neural plasticity,” Mulder said. “The first big phase of it, developmentally speaking, ends around age 3. Not that there aren’t other opportunities, but I was wondering if that shedding of all the unused neural pathways would have any effect on what was done to him.”
Scully studied him silently. “You’re lying to me,” she said quietly.
“I am not lying!” Mulder said defensively.
“Well, then you’re omitting something,” she said speculatively. She turned back to the computer screen. “What’s the significance of May 2004?” she repeated.
“His third birthday,” Mulder said gruffly. He was hedging.
“You’d hardly need a note to remind you of that,” Scully said shortly. She tapped the computer screen and tried another verbal tack. “What happened in May 2004?”
Mulder sighed, and gave in. “When Daddy Spender did his brain surgery on me, I had a lot of strange dreams,” he began.
Scully’s brows were drawn down as she watched him, her arms crossed tight over her body. “You’ve told me this before,” she said tersely.
He shook his head. “I dreamt about a boy on a beach, building space ships.”
She cocked her head at him. “William?”
He bobbed his head in a maybe-yes, maybe-no gesture. “He wasn’t even an idea to me then, Scully. And this was a five-year-old boy, maybe six.” He paused. “I began dreaming about that boy again in May 2004.”
She stared at him. “How often?”
“Not often,” he said.
Scully’s expression was skeptical and a little bitter. “You expect me to believe that? That you’ve been dreaming of our son all these years, but not often?” Her initial shock was giving way to anger.
“It’s true!” he insisted. “I would want it to happen, and it wouldn’t. It would … it wasn’t on any kind of a schedule. At first I thought that it was stress-related, to his birthday and …” he paused. “I was pretty depressed at certain points, so …”
Scully’s look of anger did not soften at this admission. “When did you start to believe that it was William who was initiating the contact?”
He shook his head. “I don’t think it’s that simple, Scully. When I had the first dream, he didn’t even exist. When they started again, he was age appropriate. I assumed that it was my subconscious that was generating the image of him, that it was the expression of my own desires.”
“What changed your mind?” she asked angrily.
“I didn’t say my mind was changed! It’s still possible that they’re simply my dreams,” Mulder said heatedly.
“Except that it’s this boy, isn’t it, Mulder?” Scully challenged him, tapping the picture of William in the file. “It’s this exact boy in your dreams, isn’t it?” There were tears in her eyes, and her voice was shaking.
He nodded, opening his mouth to explain, but she held up her hand.
“You’ve been seeing him, and talking to him, for years,” she whispered, standing up suddenly. His desk chair was propelled backwards into the wall. “And you never even said a word.” Her expression defied him to deny it, but he couldn’t.
“Not one word,” she echoed, tears streaming down her face. She pushed past him and walked into the living room.
“Scully,” he said, as she picked up her purse. “Can’t we talk about this?”
The look that she threw him over her shoulder was murderous. Then she turned and walked out the door.
~*~
July 23, 2008
It was the middle of the night when he woke from a sleep he’d only achieved by running himself ragged and then drinking tequila while he was still dehydrated. The house had been deathly quiet for the last couple of days, with only him rattling around in the too-large space until appointments with Maguire rousted him from it. As far as he could tell, Scully hadn’t been home for more than the time it probably took to change her clothes, and then only while he was gone.
But now, in the mid-night stillness, he could clearly hear the sound of her weeping. He followed it to the empty room that they’d both known without saying was meant to be William’s. Even with no hope of seeing him when they’d bought this house, they’d ordered furniture for his room. Now that Mulder was no longer a fugitive, Scully had hopes of enticing her mother back to the East Coast for a visit, so they’d gone furniture shopping. They’d only intended to buy furniture for their own room and for a guest bedroom, but they’d both stopped at the foot of a twin bed, clearly meant for a child.
They’d stared at it for a minute before Scully said, “We should get this in case my brothers visit,” in a rush.
The likelihood of that occurring was almost nonexistent, and both of her brothers had more than one child. And yet, he’d let the statement go unchallenged, the way he’d done so many times through the years. They both knew the furniture was for the imaginary William that they’d always acknowledged, if sometimes only tacitly.
In their last house, William had had his own unoccupied, unfurnished room. This new house, with its ample space for guests they’d probably never have, had different requirements. In truth, he understood Scully’s desire. It seemed wrong to furnish a room for a possible guest and not one for their son. So, he’d just nodded in agreement and told the saleswoman to add the bedroom set to their order and include a mattress.
The furniture had been delivered earlier in the day. Mulder found her seated on the floor next to the bed as if she’d collapsed there, her head down as she sobbed on the empty plastic-covered mattress.
“Scully,” he said in sorrow. He wanted to go to her, but was still unsure of his welcome, so he crossed the room and crouched down next to her, not touching her.
She turned her tear-stained face to his, and moved her hand toward him, still caressing the empty mattress where their child should be sleeping. “Do you blame me for giving him away?” she asked him.
Mulder rocked back on his heels at the blunt question, sitting down on the floor next to her with his back against the bed. He could feel the tears rising in his throat as he tried to formulate an answer. He picked up the hand that she’d pushed toward him and kissed the back of it, holding it over his heart. He took in a breath. “A little,” he admitted.
She sobbed, but nodded.
“Do you blame me for leaving you all alone with him?” he asked her.
“A little,” she confessed in a halting voice. “I don’t want to blame you, Mulder.”
“But you do, a little,” he answered. He was surprised at how easily the words came out, when the very idea felt like a knife in his gut. “We can’t keep running away from what we feel, Scully,” he said, turning toward her.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” Her voice was an anguished whisper, and now, finally, he began to cry, in great, heaving sobs.
“Tell you what?” he choked out. “That I dream about our son sometimes, and that we play in the sand?” He shook his head helplessly. “That sometimes I’m horribly lonely for a child that I only knew for two days? How could I do that to you? For the longest time, I thought I was just dreaming, that it was simply a manifestation of my desire for some connection with him.”
She moved to his side and put her arms around him as they cried together.
“I’m jealous that you’ve seen him all this time,” Scully said finally. “That you could talk to him and touch him, when I couldn’t.”
He shook his head at her words. “We never really speak,” he said. “In my first dream, I wasn’t interacting with him at all – I was watching. I thought maybe he was me as a child, or one of the other children from …” he didn’t finish his statement. “And then, after we had William and lost him, I didn’t think it was him at first, because his hair is so dark now. In my daytime imagination, William was a redhead like you.”
She nodded, smiling through her tears.
“I … it wasn’t until I’d seen him a couple of times and I really looked at him that I saw you in him, in his features, the shape of his face. I called him William, and he smiled at me,” he chuckled wetly. “He doesn’t speak to me, really. We just … we build these enormous sandcastles – but they’re not all castles,” he paused. “I sound insane, don’t I?”
She laughed through her tears, then grew serious as they wound down. "Mulder, why can't you ask him where he is in your dreams?"
"I haven't seen him in weeks and weeks," he choked out. He could see how his words alarmed her, but he was helpless to stop the torrent of fear that flowed out of him. "Not since we were at the beach, Scully," he sobbed. "Not once since then, and it makes me so afraid. The last dream made me afraid.” He whispered. “You were in that one."
She shook her head, mystified and frightened. "I don't remember any dream like that."
Mulder smiled through his tears. "I wouldn't have wanted you to be in that one," he whispered. "He was so sad. He was crying, Scully."
She covered her mouth with her hand. "His father?"
Mulder nodded. "I think so. I don't know if he came looking for me, and found you …" he shook his head in consternation. "They're still my dreams, no matter how you slice it. But this one … you've never been in them, Scully, but there you both were on the hammock, and he was crying, and you were soothing him, and then … he was just gone."
"Gone?" She shook her head in confusion and alarm.
"He turned into a pile of sand," he said quietly, and Scully's indrawn breath was harsh and high-pitched.
He'd known that it would remind her of Emily's coffin, but he was surprised by her sharp response. "What?"
"The sand … do you think he's dead, Mulder?"
He shook his head. When he spoke, his voice was raw and hoarse. "I can't let myself think like that, Scully," he said, "or I will go crazy." He paused. "Do you blame me for not going out there and trying to find him?" She was shaking her head while he was speaking. "For letting David make all the contacts?"
"No," she said firmly. "They took you away from me once. I can't lose both of you, Mulder. I can't."
"Then, please stop running away when we have problems," Mulder said quietly. "It's killing me, Scully."
She looked at him searchingly.
"I mean it," he said. "I can take it if you blame me. I can even take it if you hate me a little bit. What I can’t take is when you withdraw from me like this.”
She burst into tears again and buried her face in his chest.
"Just don't leave me," he said haltingly. "Please, Scully."
Her hands reached up and threaded around his neck. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry," she said over and over as they kissed for the first time in weeks, faces wet and swollen, barely able to breathe through their tears. She pressed her forehead against his. "I'm sorry."
Mulder nodded and wiped the tears from her face. "I’m sorry, too," he said wearily, leaning back and levering himself up from the floor. He held out his hand to her and quietly said, "Come to bed."
Scully looked down toward William's empty bed, running her hand across the rumpled plastic in a caress. Then she turned and placed her hand in his, and let him help her rise.
~*~
Part 7
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Date: 2008-11-01 01:21 am (UTC)But I'm so glad it didn't take them too long to realize they had to face it together.
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Date: 2008-11-02 04:49 pm (UTC)i've always liked to think that william (being the telekinetic/telepathic supersoldier/messiah/gibson-like/alien baby that he is) has been having dreams about m&s (and/or sharing dreams with them) and that he somehow knows about his real parents. if it's like that in your story too, then, well, awesome. ;)
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Date: 2008-11-03 12:37 am (UTC)Thanks!