A Winter's Tale, Part 8
Dec. 29th, 2007 12:30 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
anjouficTitle: A Winter's Tale 8/21
Author:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
comice aka Anjou (Anjou@rocketmail.com)
Posting Date: December 2007/January 2008
Rating: R for language and sexuality; M for Mature readers
Classification: Mulder/Scully, UST/MSR, AU
Archive: No archival until the story is completed, please. I'll be submitting to Ephemeral and Gossamer myself.
Spoilers: Through Two Fathers/One Son (S6), then AU. In other words, no Arcadia and beyond. Mytharc-y.
Disclaimer: All X-Files personnel belong to 1013 and Fox. All other elements are mine.
Author's Note: Thanks to all of you who have sent feedback. It looks wonderful under my Christmas tree!
Daily 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.
As always, thanks to my sister and editrix, Suzanne, for her support.
Summary: Cast your memory back to the dark days of Season 6, to the period immediately following the confrontation between Mulder and Scully in the Gunmen's Office. It is late winter, dark and cold, the landscape obscured and transformed by snow and ice. One must step carefully, for the very ground can be treacherous. This is a lesson Mulder and Scully have already learned when the pristine snow in Antartica yielded a long-buried secret. But the winter can hold many secrets, and could tell many tales, if it so chose.
This is but one.
~*~
Mulder was asleep when she awoke in the early morning, surprised to find that she had both her arms wrapped around his left one. She was holding it to her chest the same way that Hannah held the tiger to hers, like a bulwark against loneliness. Even more shocking was the fact that her fingers were laced through his. His head was turned toward hers on his pillow. Despite the horrible content of their last conversation, his face appeared peaceful, even happy. She searched his expression for any hint of a smirk, flushed at the thought that he'd been awake when she'd wrapped her arms around his and pulled in close. She wondered which of them had taken the other's hand, but surmised that this had been Mulder's response to her overture, from the way her hand was held inside his. It seemed like an echo of the careful regard he'd shown for her during the remainder of their conversation.
She'd fallen asleep during one of his long periods of silence between questions, aware that his mind was racing to assimilate the things that she'd told him, that he was formulating theories and drawing conclusions. After his initial shock at her statements about Diana Fowley, he'd pressed her for details about what exactly it was that she remembered from the time she was abducted. She felt that he was being careful not to press the Agent Fowley issue too hard, and for that she was grateful.
Talking about any of what she remembered had been extraordinarily difficult for her. She didn't like to think of herself as being uncourageous, but knowing that she had been spread wide open on a table while unknown men inserted their hands and devices and God knew what else inside her vagina to steal her ova was -- well, if it wasn't the definition of medical rape, she didn't know what was. The very idea of it was both obscene and humiliating. She had fought so hard to be seen as an equal in a patriarchal world and to be reduced in such a way, to have her choices and her essence stolen from her, was beyond demeaning. The idea that another woman would have participated in the acts that had violated her was an elemental betrayal that made her loathe Diana Fowley all the more.
Mulder had wondered if there was something particular about her, and her DNA that had made her a subject, and although the argument smacked a little of blaming the victim, she gave serious credence to the notion. She had always assumed that Duane Barry had snatched her to forestall his own kidnapping, as he'd said. But why her? Had his implants compelled him to take her? Was there something particular about her, or was it merely her proximity to Mulder that had placed her in harm's way? She shifted her hand out of Mulder's carefully, and unwrapped her stiff arms from around his. Her right shoulder was still thoroughly asleep from having been laid upon all night, but her bladder was wide awake and functioning. She shuffled into the bathroom rubbing her shoulder, aware that Mulder had awakened as soon as she moved.
When she re-entered the room, Mulder whispered, "Good morning," in a husky voice.
She smiled to see that he was rubbing the blood back into his left arm. "Sorry," she whispered back.
"Don't be," he answered her, and she stopped at his words, then sat down on the side of the bed she'd vacated. "Don't be sorry about any of it," he said. "I'm glad you told me, and I …"
Hannah rustled in her bed, making a whimpering noise, and then stretched before falling back into a disturbed sleep.
Scully glanced at the clock. It wasn't quite six o'clock, and by her calculations, Hannah had only been asleep for about nine hours, far less than she needed at her age. "Shhhh …" she shushed Mulder, indicating the child. "Let's let her sleep a little longer."
He nodded, watching Hannah move in her sleep. Her tiger had gotten jammed up under her pillow in the night, and the toys lined up on the other side of the bed were in a jumble.
"Mulder?" she whispered, waiting until he turned to look at her. "How old is Hannah?"
He shook his head, "I'm not sure" he said. "I think that she's between 4 and 5, but that could be on some of the discs I stole from the clinic." He shifted off the bed and went to his suitcase, pulling out a case of zip discs. "Do you think your laptop can read these?"
"I brought the external drive with me," she answered, moving quietly to the table where her laptop was and turning it on, "but I'm not sure how good the decryption software I've got installed is."
"Well," Mulder answered ruefully, "I've got nothing with me. I thought I'd be taking these discs home to crack."
"When did you find Hannah?"
"On Friday," he said, "the night after you followed me."
She started in surprise, almost dropping the drive on the table as she took it out of the pocket of the bag. "You saw me?"
Mulder imitated her, giving her the eyebrow.
"I was in a different car," she protested, whispering fiercely. "I covered my hair!"
Mulder looked at her fondly. "I'd know your face anywhere, Scully." The warmth in his voice reminded her of the tender way he'd touched her the night before and she felt herself flush suddenly, her skin tingling.
"Oh," she said, staring at him.
He stared back at her, his expression filled with emotion. The sound of her computer booting up provided the soundtrack for their fraught exchange.
"So you weren't going down by the river," she said.
He smiled. "No," he said, eyes twinkling. "Did you go dancing?"
"Mulder," she said, rolling out his name.
"Anyway," he said, stretching up into the air. She could hear his spine cracking. "I drove to Albany. I'd traced another potential clinic site there to a mostly deserted strip mall, and I observed it for a while, then caught some zs at a highway motel. I broke in after hours. There'd been nobody in or out of the building for a long time, and the security guard was asleep in his little booth. I thought that it would be a quick, uncomplicated job."
She nodded, glancing over at Hannah, who had turned over again, and motioned for Mulder to lower his voice.
"She was behind a door that said 'Medical Records: No Unauthorized Admittance'," he said wryly.
"What did it look like inside?" she asked him.
Mulder paused, pursing his lips and giving the description some thought. "Well. It wasn't a records room," he said, hands on his hips. He was bending slowly from side to side, still stretching out. It was actually quite distracting. "There was a small room, almost like a vestibule when you opened the door. Desk, lamp, file cabinet, computer. That's where the discs were," he said. "There was a locked case on top of the desk. I took the whole thing, but those pass keys Frohike gave me opened them."
She nodded, sticking the first disc in the drive and activating the decryption software.
"There was a microphone on the desk, like an old-fashioned PA, and there was a small room visible beyond it. The first room looked like a really tiny nurses' station, and the next room was like a supply room. It had stuff."
"Like what?"
She watched him think. "IV bags, gloves, syringes, masks, scrubs," he added thoughtfully, "And those hazmat suits on a hook on the right hand wall."
"The full suits?" Scully asked him, surprised.
"Yeah," Mulder said. "At that point, I thought that it was going to be another ova storage room behind there, or a lab with more embryos." He paused, gauging her response. When he'd told her about her ova after she'd found Emily, they'd had a lot of conversations about what information she expected to be told about. She'd been very clear, and very angry at his unwillingness to tell her the truth in some misguided effort to spare her. Those who had taken her had given her no such consideration, and keeping the truth from her only served to compound their crime. It was her body that had been violated, and her DNA that had been taken for experiments that she would have never authorized. Her not wanting to think about the things that had been done to her was her own choice –- but if there was information out there about her or her ova, it was her right to know it. For all they knew, Hannah could have been one of the embryos that he'd found in California.
"Go on, Mulder," she whispered.
He sat down at the table across from her, his eyes coming to rest on Hannah, curled in her bed.
"There were two windows on either side of another door, but the curtains were drawn on the inside. The lock was electronic, coded, but that keypad bypass that Frohike gave me cracked it in a few minutes. You'd think that an international conspiracy could afford better security."
"Mulder," she huffed in exasperation, wanting him to get to the meat of the story.
"There's not much more to tell, Scully," he said. "I opened the door and there were four beds, set up like a small hospital ward, with two TVs hanging from the ceiling. Hannah was in a bed near the windows, fast asleep. She was holding one of those coughing pillows like a teddy bear, and the TV was on above her bed. It was some show on Nickelodeon." He stared at Hannah, and then turned to Scully. "She was so tiny in the bed. She woke up and looked at me with those big eyes and said, 'Who are you?' and … she didn't even have a coat, Scully. I don't think she'd ever been outside. I wrapped her up in blankets and carried her out of there. I gave her the box of discs to hold. The security guard was so startled that he couldn't get his gun out of his holster, which is the only way we escaped disaster. I put her in the car and drove and drove. I headed back to DC but decided that going home was foolish. I made a pit stop for a couple of items I needed then I stopped at our storage locker outside Baltimore -- I got some ID and other stuff, and then went to a mall to get Hannah some things."
She nodded. "That must have been interesting," she said.
"I wore the ring," he answered. "I told the saleslady that our house burned down -- that you were away on a business trip and that I came home from work and fell asleep on the couch after I put Hannah to bed and some wet laundry in the dryer. That we'd escaped with the clothes on our backs and I had no idea what sizes she wore because you always took care of those things."
She pictured the scene in her head, knowing how charming Mulder could be, but still surprised that even when he was acting, he'd cast her in the role of Hannah's mother.
"She was very helpful," he said.
"I'm sure," Scully said dryly. "How was Hannah?"
"Stunned," Mulder said. "She was really quiet, with all the people and the lights and the noise. I carried her around and just kept talking to her. It played like she was traumatized by what had happened, so it worked. After she was dressed, I ditched my car at BWI and rented a new one using ID from the storage place."
The decryption software beeped to signal that it had identified the length of the string that passcoded the disc. Scully counted the spaces silently, turning the laptop so Mulder could see the screen. "Sixteen," she sighed. "This is going to take forever."
Hannah stirred in her bed, and rubbed her eyes, then opened them. Mulder's face was transformed at the sight of her, his smile brilliant. He got up and crossed the room, crouching by her bed. "Hi pumpkin," he said, "How are you?"
Hannah yawned. "I don't think I look like a pumpkin," she said sleepily. "My hair's not that orange."
Mulder laughed. "How'd you sleep?" he asked.
"OK," Hannah said, and tried to sit up but stopped, pushing down the covers. "I'm stuck," she said. Her nightgown was twisted all around her. Mulder stood her up in the bed and helped her get unwrapped.
"I think that's why Scully wears pajamas," he told Hannah, picking her up.
"Yes, it is," Scully answered. She wondered if Mulder had any idea how much in love with Hannah he was.
"Oh," Hannah said, yawning. "I need to pee."
Mulder walked them over to the bathroom and then put Hannah down, bowing as he opened the door for her.
She giggled and entered the room.
Scully checked the clock on the computer. It was barely 7:00. "You probably should have let her sleep longer," she said to Mulder. "She should be sleeping twelve hours of the day at her age."
Mulder shrugged guiltily. "She was awake," he said.
Scully gave him the eyebrow, but said no more.
"Any numbers or letters yet?" Mulder asked.
Scully shook her head as they heard the toilet flush.
"I'm hungry," Hannah announced as she came out of the bathroom. Her bedhead was truly impressive.
Mulder picked up his shaving kit. "OK," he said to Hannah. "Let me just get cleaned up and then we'll go get some food, all right?"
Hannah yawned in answer. "OK," she said blearily.
"Are you OK, Hannah?" Scully asked her.
"I dunno," she answered. "I'm sleepy."
Scully gave Mulder a significant look, and he sighed, starting to go into the bathroom, before he turned and looked back at her from around the half-open door. "Sixteen digits?" he asked her.
"Or letters," she said, "but yeah, sixteen. Why?"
He nodded. "Try 00 00 121 336 540 009."
"Mulder?"
"Just try it, Scully," he urged. "00 00 121 336 540 009."
She keyed in the digits, wondering what on Earth he was up to. The disc drive whirred, and then clicked as the disc opened. She knew her mouth was hanging open.
"It worked?" Mulder asked quietly.
"Yes," she said levelly, waiting for an explanation.
"Can you brush my hair?" Hannah asked from next to her elbow.
"Sure, honey," she answered, turning to the child.
Behind her, the bathroom door closed.
~*~
Part 9
Author:
comice aka Anjou (Anjou@rocketmail.com)Posting Date: December 2007/January 2008
Rating: R for language and sexuality; M for Mature readers
Classification: Mulder/Scully, UST/MSR, AU
Archive: No archival until the story is completed, please. I'll be submitting to Ephemeral and Gossamer myself.
Spoilers: Through Two Fathers/One Son (S6), then AU. In other words, no Arcadia and beyond. Mytharc-y.
Disclaimer: All X-Files personnel belong to 1013 and Fox. All other elements are mine.
Author's Note: Thanks to all of you who have sent feedback. It looks wonderful under my Christmas tree!
Daily 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.As always, thanks to my sister and editrix, Suzanne, for her support.
Summary: Cast your memory back to the dark days of Season 6, to the period immediately following the confrontation between Mulder and Scully in the Gunmen's Office. It is late winter, dark and cold, the landscape obscured and transformed by snow and ice. One must step carefully, for the very ground can be treacherous. This is a lesson Mulder and Scully have already learned when the pristine snow in Antartica yielded a long-buried secret. But the winter can hold many secrets, and could tell many tales, if it so chose.
This is but one.
~*~
Mulder was asleep when she awoke in the early morning, surprised to find that she had both her arms wrapped around his left one. She was holding it to her chest the same way that Hannah held the tiger to hers, like a bulwark against loneliness. Even more shocking was the fact that her fingers were laced through his. His head was turned toward hers on his pillow. Despite the horrible content of their last conversation, his face appeared peaceful, even happy. She searched his expression for any hint of a smirk, flushed at the thought that he'd been awake when she'd wrapped her arms around his and pulled in close. She wondered which of them had taken the other's hand, but surmised that this had been Mulder's response to her overture, from the way her hand was held inside his. It seemed like an echo of the careful regard he'd shown for her during the remainder of their conversation.
She'd fallen asleep during one of his long periods of silence between questions, aware that his mind was racing to assimilate the things that she'd told him, that he was formulating theories and drawing conclusions. After his initial shock at her statements about Diana Fowley, he'd pressed her for details about what exactly it was that she remembered from the time she was abducted. She felt that he was being careful not to press the Agent Fowley issue too hard, and for that she was grateful.
Talking about any of what she remembered had been extraordinarily difficult for her. She didn't like to think of herself as being uncourageous, but knowing that she had been spread wide open on a table while unknown men inserted their hands and devices and God knew what else inside her vagina to steal her ova was -- well, if it wasn't the definition of medical rape, she didn't know what was. The very idea of it was both obscene and humiliating. She had fought so hard to be seen as an equal in a patriarchal world and to be reduced in such a way, to have her choices and her essence stolen from her, was beyond demeaning. The idea that another woman would have participated in the acts that had violated her was an elemental betrayal that made her loathe Diana Fowley all the more.
Mulder had wondered if there was something particular about her, and her DNA that had made her a subject, and although the argument smacked a little of blaming the victim, she gave serious credence to the notion. She had always assumed that Duane Barry had snatched her to forestall his own kidnapping, as he'd said. But why her? Had his implants compelled him to take her? Was there something particular about her, or was it merely her proximity to Mulder that had placed her in harm's way? She shifted her hand out of Mulder's carefully, and unwrapped her stiff arms from around his. Her right shoulder was still thoroughly asleep from having been laid upon all night, but her bladder was wide awake and functioning. She shuffled into the bathroom rubbing her shoulder, aware that Mulder had awakened as soon as she moved.
When she re-entered the room, Mulder whispered, "Good morning," in a husky voice.
She smiled to see that he was rubbing the blood back into his left arm. "Sorry," she whispered back.
"Don't be," he answered her, and she stopped at his words, then sat down on the side of the bed she'd vacated. "Don't be sorry about any of it," he said. "I'm glad you told me, and I …"
Hannah rustled in her bed, making a whimpering noise, and then stretched before falling back into a disturbed sleep.
Scully glanced at the clock. It wasn't quite six o'clock, and by her calculations, Hannah had only been asleep for about nine hours, far less than she needed at her age. "Shhhh …" she shushed Mulder, indicating the child. "Let's let her sleep a little longer."
He nodded, watching Hannah move in her sleep. Her tiger had gotten jammed up under her pillow in the night, and the toys lined up on the other side of the bed were in a jumble.
"Mulder?" she whispered, waiting until he turned to look at her. "How old is Hannah?"
He shook his head, "I'm not sure" he said. "I think that she's between 4 and 5, but that could be on some of the discs I stole from the clinic." He shifted off the bed and went to his suitcase, pulling out a case of zip discs. "Do you think your laptop can read these?"
"I brought the external drive with me," she answered, moving quietly to the table where her laptop was and turning it on, "but I'm not sure how good the decryption software I've got installed is."
"Well," Mulder answered ruefully, "I've got nothing with me. I thought I'd be taking these discs home to crack."
"When did you find Hannah?"
"On Friday," he said, "the night after you followed me."
She started in surprise, almost dropping the drive on the table as she took it out of the pocket of the bag. "You saw me?"
Mulder imitated her, giving her the eyebrow.
"I was in a different car," she protested, whispering fiercely. "I covered my hair!"
Mulder looked at her fondly. "I'd know your face anywhere, Scully." The warmth in his voice reminded her of the tender way he'd touched her the night before and she felt herself flush suddenly, her skin tingling.
"Oh," she said, staring at him.
He stared back at her, his expression filled with emotion. The sound of her computer booting up provided the soundtrack for their fraught exchange.
"So you weren't going down by the river," she said.
He smiled. "No," he said, eyes twinkling. "Did you go dancing?"
"Mulder," she said, rolling out his name.
"Anyway," he said, stretching up into the air. She could hear his spine cracking. "I drove to Albany. I'd traced another potential clinic site there to a mostly deserted strip mall, and I observed it for a while, then caught some zs at a highway motel. I broke in after hours. There'd been nobody in or out of the building for a long time, and the security guard was asleep in his little booth. I thought that it would be a quick, uncomplicated job."
She nodded, glancing over at Hannah, who had turned over again, and motioned for Mulder to lower his voice.
"She was behind a door that said 'Medical Records: No Unauthorized Admittance'," he said wryly.
"What did it look like inside?" she asked him.
Mulder paused, pursing his lips and giving the description some thought. "Well. It wasn't a records room," he said, hands on his hips. He was bending slowly from side to side, still stretching out. It was actually quite distracting. "There was a small room, almost like a vestibule when you opened the door. Desk, lamp, file cabinet, computer. That's where the discs were," he said. "There was a locked case on top of the desk. I took the whole thing, but those pass keys Frohike gave me opened them."
She nodded, sticking the first disc in the drive and activating the decryption software.
"There was a microphone on the desk, like an old-fashioned PA, and there was a small room visible beyond it. The first room looked like a really tiny nurses' station, and the next room was like a supply room. It had stuff."
"Like what?"
She watched him think. "IV bags, gloves, syringes, masks, scrubs," he added thoughtfully, "And those hazmat suits on a hook on the right hand wall."
"The full suits?" Scully asked him, surprised.
"Yeah," Mulder said. "At that point, I thought that it was going to be another ova storage room behind there, or a lab with more embryos." He paused, gauging her response. When he'd told her about her ova after she'd found Emily, they'd had a lot of conversations about what information she expected to be told about. She'd been very clear, and very angry at his unwillingness to tell her the truth in some misguided effort to spare her. Those who had taken her had given her no such consideration, and keeping the truth from her only served to compound their crime. It was her body that had been violated, and her DNA that had been taken for experiments that she would have never authorized. Her not wanting to think about the things that had been done to her was her own choice –- but if there was information out there about her or her ova, it was her right to know it. For all they knew, Hannah could have been one of the embryos that he'd found in California.
"Go on, Mulder," she whispered.
He sat down at the table across from her, his eyes coming to rest on Hannah, curled in her bed.
"There were two windows on either side of another door, but the curtains were drawn on the inside. The lock was electronic, coded, but that keypad bypass that Frohike gave me cracked it in a few minutes. You'd think that an international conspiracy could afford better security."
"Mulder," she huffed in exasperation, wanting him to get to the meat of the story.
"There's not much more to tell, Scully," he said. "I opened the door and there were four beds, set up like a small hospital ward, with two TVs hanging from the ceiling. Hannah was in a bed near the windows, fast asleep. She was holding one of those coughing pillows like a teddy bear, and the TV was on above her bed. It was some show on Nickelodeon." He stared at Hannah, and then turned to Scully. "She was so tiny in the bed. She woke up and looked at me with those big eyes and said, 'Who are you?' and … she didn't even have a coat, Scully. I don't think she'd ever been outside. I wrapped her up in blankets and carried her out of there. I gave her the box of discs to hold. The security guard was so startled that he couldn't get his gun out of his holster, which is the only way we escaped disaster. I put her in the car and drove and drove. I headed back to DC but decided that going home was foolish. I made a pit stop for a couple of items I needed then I stopped at our storage locker outside Baltimore -- I got some ID and other stuff, and then went to a mall to get Hannah some things."
She nodded. "That must have been interesting," she said.
"I wore the ring," he answered. "I told the saleslady that our house burned down -- that you were away on a business trip and that I came home from work and fell asleep on the couch after I put Hannah to bed and some wet laundry in the dryer. That we'd escaped with the clothes on our backs and I had no idea what sizes she wore because you always took care of those things."
She pictured the scene in her head, knowing how charming Mulder could be, but still surprised that even when he was acting, he'd cast her in the role of Hannah's mother.
"She was very helpful," he said.
"I'm sure," Scully said dryly. "How was Hannah?"
"Stunned," Mulder said. "She was really quiet, with all the people and the lights and the noise. I carried her around and just kept talking to her. It played like she was traumatized by what had happened, so it worked. After she was dressed, I ditched my car at BWI and rented a new one using ID from the storage place."
The decryption software beeped to signal that it had identified the length of the string that passcoded the disc. Scully counted the spaces silently, turning the laptop so Mulder could see the screen. "Sixteen," she sighed. "This is going to take forever."
Hannah stirred in her bed, and rubbed her eyes, then opened them. Mulder's face was transformed at the sight of her, his smile brilliant. He got up and crossed the room, crouching by her bed. "Hi pumpkin," he said, "How are you?"
Hannah yawned. "I don't think I look like a pumpkin," she said sleepily. "My hair's not that orange."
Mulder laughed. "How'd you sleep?" he asked.
"OK," Hannah said, and tried to sit up but stopped, pushing down the covers. "I'm stuck," she said. Her nightgown was twisted all around her. Mulder stood her up in the bed and helped her get unwrapped.
"I think that's why Scully wears pajamas," he told Hannah, picking her up.
"Yes, it is," Scully answered. She wondered if Mulder had any idea how much in love with Hannah he was.
"Oh," Hannah said, yawning. "I need to pee."
Mulder walked them over to the bathroom and then put Hannah down, bowing as he opened the door for her.
She giggled and entered the room.
Scully checked the clock on the computer. It was barely 7:00. "You probably should have let her sleep longer," she said to Mulder. "She should be sleeping twelve hours of the day at her age."
Mulder shrugged guiltily. "She was awake," he said.
Scully gave him the eyebrow, but said no more.
"Any numbers or letters yet?" Mulder asked.
Scully shook her head as they heard the toilet flush.
"I'm hungry," Hannah announced as she came out of the bathroom. Her bedhead was truly impressive.
Mulder picked up his shaving kit. "OK," he said to Hannah. "Let me just get cleaned up and then we'll go get some food, all right?"
Hannah yawned in answer. "OK," she said blearily.
"Are you OK, Hannah?" Scully asked her.
"I dunno," she answered. "I'm sleepy."
Scully gave Mulder a significant look, and he sighed, starting to go into the bathroom, before he turned and looked back at her from around the half-open door. "Sixteen digits?" he asked her.
"Or letters," she said, "but yeah, sixteen. Why?"
He nodded. "Try 00 00 121 336 540 009."
"Mulder?"
"Just try it, Scully," he urged. "00 00 121 336 540 009."
She keyed in the digits, wondering what on Earth he was up to. The disc drive whirred, and then clicked as the disc opened. She knew her mouth was hanging open.
"It worked?" Mulder asked quietly.
"Yes," she said levelly, waiting for an explanation.
"Can you brush my hair?" Hannah asked from next to her elbow.
"Sure, honey," she answered, turning to the child.
Behind her, the bathroom door closed.
~*~
Part 9
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2007-12-30 07:37 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-12-29 10:18 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-12-30 07:37 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-12-30 02:42 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-12-30 07:37 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-12-31 01:36 am (UTC)And in a completely opposite direction, I'm really glad to read about Scully's abduction more seriously than CC et al ever seemed to take it. But that's an gripe, isn't it? XD
so yeah, still completely loving this.
no subject
Date: 2007-12-31 07:18 pm (UTC)Also, I'm a huge fan of Mulder with kids. The few times we saw it happen (with the exception of Kevin Kryder, maybe), Mulder seemed like a kid person.
no subject
Date: 2008-01-02 09:00 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-01-03 12:40 am (UTC)