A Winter's Tale, Part 20
Jan. 10th, 2008 06:00 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
anjouficTitle: A Winter's Tale 20/23
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: Here we are at Part 20! I guess I'll really have to finalize Parts 22 and 23 now. And when I finish writing, I'll start answering feedback.
After I take a long nap.
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.
~*~
When she began to calm down, she found Mulder watching her with something like his usual intent expression, but with the addition of the assessment that she'd become too used to seeing over the course of the past month. She closed her eyes against whatever insight he was having. She was drained, and his grasp on her was probably the only thing keeping her upright. She was slumped against him, knees pressed along the edge of the bed, his legs still bracketing hers, his arms wrapped around her. He shifted so she was sitting on his right leg, then leant over and plucked tissue from the nightstand, handing some of it to her. She expected him to attend to his own tears, but when he began to dry off her face, she returned the favor, wiping his wet cheeks and nose.
"Blow," he said to her, and she made a face at him instead, wresting the tissues from his hand. She blew her own nose, and tried to calm herself. She was still shaking, the aftershocks of so much emotion jangling her nerves.
He discarded their used tissues with his usual aplomb, sinking them into the basket in a high, arcing shot before turning back to her. He drew her against his chest, drawing patterns on her hip with his thumb. His other hand smoothed her hair, tucking it behind her ear. He regarded her with a tender expression, while her breath hitched in and out. He leant down and kissed her brow, while his hand drifted down to her left hand. His long fingers lightly traced the rings on her finger as he regarded her. "I liked to hear you call me that," he said.
"What?" she whispered back.
He looked at her, his face and hair damp from both of their tears, his reddened eyes pinning her with their intense stare. His arm held her firmly in place as she leant against him, exhausted. "Your husband," he said.
She swallowed hard at his statement, but didn't break his gaze.
"Could you see me as your husband?" he asked. His voice was serious and soft.
"You are my partner, Mulder," she said, but he didn't answer her, just continued to look her in the eye.
The silence spun out in the room, but she could still hear the echo of her own voice naming him as such. She knew that no matter what she said, he could already see the answer in her eyes. What he wanted was to hear her say it, for her to be as honest with him now as she'd been earlier. She took a deep breath, and never breaking his gaze, gave him the only possible answer, the truth. "Yes."
Mulder's chest heaved under her ribs; a light came into his eyes that she'd never before seen. His lips curved into something not quite a smile, and settled there. The hand that had been tracing her rings, rose to trace her face, her neck, her shoulder, her side. He laid her back on the bed, hovering above her as his hand continued down over her hip and leg until he reached her boot. He drew the zipper down, watching her the whole time. She was poised, waiting for his kiss, but instead he continued to watch her, gazing into her eyes as first one, then the other boot was discarded. He hooked his arm around her knees and pulled her legs up onto the bed, and settled himself over her.
He was still regarding her with that intent gaze, tracing her hairline with his fingers. She felt like she could see right into his soul, and was aware that he was looking into hers. Part of her had been afraid that his desire for her was tied to the losses he had suffered, that she was all he had to cling to. But the things he'd said earlier, the way he was looking at her now ...
He kissed her once, sure and sweet, and drew back, his hand slipping down to unknot his tie, and then unbutton his shirt. He drew his clothes off one by one, only stopping to kiss her. There was nothing hurried about his movements. He was measured in the way he revealed his warm skin to her, his eyes a steady burn as they returned to hers over and over. It was almost like he was assuring her and himself that this was no dream, that the connection between the two of them was real, that this was really happening.
She needed no such reassurance, overwhelmed as she was by the physicality of him, bared and alive under her hands. She was unable to stop herself from touching him, kissing him as he began to surely divest her of her clothing.
It was easier and more intense than anything she'd ever experienced. He pinned her to the bed with his eyes as they moved against each other, learning, adapting to each other. He was whispering something, but she wasn't sure that she comprehended it, lost as she was in the sensation, in the finality of it all.
She understood why it was that he wouldn't close his eyes for long, why he kept returning to their intimate gaze. In all their years together, this was the only way that she had not known him, and she was hungry for the experience. Watching the naked love in his eyes, feeling it resonate through her very bones, she felt a kind of ecstasy unassociated with her body's rising tenor. She could never have felt this way with anyone other than Mulder, would never have allowed herself to be known in this way with any other.
In the aftermath, when their breathing had returned to its normal pace, he kissed her over and over, until they were both smiling too much to continue. He moved them under the covers as they clung to each other, shivering this time from the cold they had not before noticed. She reached over him to retrieve yet more tissue to wipe away their mutual tears. It was the first time in forever that she had cried because of happiness, and they laughed at the same time. She knew without asking that they had shared the same thought.
Mulder lay in her arms, head against her breast, listening to her heartbeat. Somehow, it didn't surprise her that he wasn't sleepy. She felt far too alive to sleep just now. Instead, she explored the wide expanse of his shoulders and his back. She'd always secretly loved that part of his body, and now she committed it to sense memory, allowing her fingers to drift up to the nape of his neck and back down across the warm skin that sheltered him, muscle and bone.
Mulder's eyes were closed, and he hummed against her in satisfaction. They rested there together in the quiet for a long time, not speaking. She had always wondered if it would be awkward, the aftermath of their inevitable lovemaking, had imagined several different scenarios. She'd never considered this ease as one of the possibilities.
Mulder shifted up out of her arms to lay alongside her. He propped his head on his hand, then began to trace her features with an elegant finger, dropping his head to kiss her after running his fingers over her lips. The new light in his eyes had not waned, and she said a silent prayer that it never would. He drew back and watched her again, his generous mouth still curved with happiness. "I love you, you know," he said to her.
She smiled to hear him say it, despite the fact that she had no doubts about his feelings for her. She nodded in affirmation, leaning up to kiss him. "I love you too, Mulder," she said.
This time around, Mulder's Cheshire cat grin was full of teeth. She could feel herself smiling back at him, and watched his smile grow even wider. They were impossible and absurd, and she was happier than she'd ever been, despite everything that had happened to bring them to this moment. Mulder leant forward and kissed the tip of her nose, and then the mole above her lip.
"I've always wanted to kiss you there," he announced.
She eyebrowed him in what she hoped was an evocative fashion.
"I suppose it's only fair to warn you that's just one out of many places," he said.
"I'll consider myself warned, then," she said in a mock serious tone.
He was stroking her collarbones, tracing the bones in her shoulder. "Was Hannah really upset?" he asked suddenly.
"Yes," she answered, "but she was sleeping when I left."
He sighed. "We should go back soon," he said regretfully.
She nodded, but made no move to break away from him.
"We have a daughter, Scully," he said wonderingly. He shook his head, "I never really thought any of this would happen."
She watched him speaking, letting him share his thoughts with her.
"It's what I always wanted," he said finally. He'd been quiet for long minutes, but his hands had not been idle, as he continued mapping her flesh.
"A family, Mulder?" she asked.
He shook his head. "A family with you," he said. "My whole life, I've been trying to get back the family that I lost. Samantha …" he said quietly, and she watched him carefully, afraid that they'd lose the equilibrium they'd so recently gained. "Since my goal was to get back what I lost, the idea of having a family of my own wasn't something I really considered." He had been watching his hand sliding across the skin of her breast as he spoke, but now he looked her in the eye. "Until I met you."
She felt her skin flush at his words.
"Not right away," he said apologetically. "Not for a long time, if I'm truthful about it. It wasn't until you were sick that I realized, that I actually became conscious of how I felt about you. When I was faced with losing you -- that was when I understood myself."
"But, Mulder," she began, "you knew that I couldn't have children."
He shrugged. "I figured that we'd find a way around it. Besides," he said, sliding his hand up to cradle her chin in it, "having you would have been enough family for me."
"All that time," she said to him, and she knew her voice was faintly accusatory.
"I never said I was brave," Mulder said. "It was easier to indulge the dream, to believe that someday would just … come. I never considered that it wouldn't happen, until recently."
She regarded him soberly. The wound from their recent estrangement was just barely scarred. "We have to talk to each other, Mulder," she said. "We can't keep secrets from each other, not anymore. No more secret investigations for either of us."
He was nodding as he listened to her. "I know." He lay his head down on his bicep, and she turned on her side, facing him.
He took a deep breath in, and played with the cross at her neck. "What do we tell Hannah?"
"You mean, how do we tell her that we're her parents?"
"Should we tell her?" he asked.
"Why wouldn't we tell her?" she was confused by the very idea.
"If she's just got a matter of months …" Mulder swallowed very hard and looked on the verge of tears. "It seems cruel to me."
"Mulder!" she propped herself up on an elbow and stared at him. "What makes you think that Hannah's going to die?"
His expression was wary as he addressed her. "The Kurts that I spoke to at the lab said that their average lifespan is five years."
She was shaking her head before he finished speaking. "That has nothing to do with Hannah, Mulder," she said. "The Kurts are the clones of a teenaged boy whose genome was altered in ways that I can't even begin to comprehend."
Mulder stared at her. "But the alien DNA …" he said, "they said that the recombination of human DNA with it was unstable."
"You saved her life by taking her away from Scanlon," she said firmly. "But before that you saved her life because she had enough of your DNA to withstand their 'treatment'," she spat the word out, repulsed at the notion.
Mulder looked stunned. "But the other girls …"
"They died because they couldn't withstand the repeated exposure to the black oil," she said. "It's ironic, but it is probably the alien DNA that killed them. Kurt believes that Hannah's immune system is immature because of her alien DNA, not because of us."
"Are you saying that she's going to survive this?" He seemed afraid to hope.
Scully nodded. "Kurt does have concerns about Hannah's immune system, but he has an idea of how to fix that. Hannah needs your blood, Mulder," she said. "We need to graft some of your super-immunity into her."
Mulder looked astonished. "Are you sure about this, Scully? Are you sure she's going to live?"
"I'm not positive, Mulder, but the Kurt who has reviewed Hannah's records seemed confident to me. He's offered to show me the data, but from what he explained of the processes that were utilized to create the clones, it's vastly different from the IVF-like process that they used to create Hannah," she answered him. "She is not a clone, and she's not susceptible to the same sort of aging problems that the Kurts are."
"And Samantha was," he said, "Right?"
She nodded sadly. "Kurt offered to share the data with me on Samantha, but I haven't seen it."
"The original Kurt Crawford is dead though, isn't he?" Mulder's voice was quiet, but sure.
"He told me that none of the original selves of those that were 'given'," she grimaced in distaste as she placed emphasis on the word that Kurt had used, "survived the process."
Mulder startled at her words, "Cassandra Spender?"
Scully could feel her brow draw down as she thought about that, "I don't know the answer to that question, Mulder," she said slowly. "Kurt is very literal, and I asked him if any of the children had survived the hybridization process, and he said that none had survived in their original form. He said that any that we had met were clones, but that some of them may not known they were clones."
Mulder reached his hand out to play with her cross again. He was nodding. "I met one of those Samanthas," he said quietly.
"Mulder?" She had no idea what he was talking about.
"When you were sick," he said, and paused. He looked at her, and she saw the pain in his eyes. "When you were dying," he said hoarsely, "Cancerman offered me a deal to save you. He used Samantha to bait the hook."
"What happened?" she whispered.
"I met her at a diner," he said. "She looked just like the other adult Samanthas we'd met, but she was dressed like a suburban mom. She was very ill-at-ease with me," he paused. "She told me that she thought our mother was dead and that Cancerman was her father," he said bitterly, "And that she didn't remember any other family, and she wasn't interested in getting to know me."
"Oh, Mulder," she reached out and put her hand on his face.
"She said that she had a family of her own, children to consider. She practically ran out of the diner to get away from me, back to the car where he sat waiting, smoking. She let him wipe away her tears."
She hadn't thought it was possible for her heart to break more than it already had, but this life seemed to determine to prove her wrong. She wrapped her arms around Mulder and pulled him close. He accepted her comfort for a few minutes before he broke away.
"It pretty much destroyed me at the time," he said, brushing the hair from her brow, "especially with you so sick. I really thought that I was going to lose the both of you at the same time."
"I'm right here," she reminded him. She felt his hand slip around to the back of her neck. His thumb ran over her scar.
He bent to kiss her, then pressed their foreheads together. "You'll never know how grateful I am for that, Scully," he said. "Truly." He was quiet for another minute. "The more I thought about the woman in the diner, the less it seemed plausible to me that she was really Samantha," he said. "But the idea that he would raise one of the clones as his own, just to use as a blind at some future point …" He shook his head. "That seemed insane, even to me. But now … seeing all those Kurts today, knowing that they're the clones of someone else's lost child, a child that no one ever mentioned once … how could Samantha have survived?"
"I'm so sorry," she reiterated, feeling that her words were totally inadequate.
Mulder accepted her condolences wordlessly, but his eyes let her know that he understood. She wasn't sure that was true.
"I have never wanted to kill another person," she said to him, choosing her words carefully, "never understood the impulse that would drive someone to feel that they had the right to make that decision. But I understand it now. Those men, Mulder, they deserved what they got at El Rico. They deserved to die," she said fiercely. "Not because of what they've done to me and you, but because of what they did to their own children, to our children. The only sorrow I feel is for their family members."
Mulder nodded at her words.
"I think of Jeffrey Spender now, and I feel horribly sad for him," she continued. "If Cancerman really was his father …" she drifted off, watching Mulder. "What chance did he have at a good life? He believed that his mother was crazy, but the truth is that his father allowed his colleagues to torture her, all so they could save their own skins."
"I wonder about how the whole hybrid program started," Mulder said. "Was it all a ruse all along, an idea that the aliens planted to keep the Consortium members diverted?"
She shook her head. "I don't know."
"And what does it mean that they're all dead now? I can't believe that bodes well for us. It feels like a double-cross," he mused. "And if anyone deserved to be double-crossed, it was Ol' Smoky. There is irony there, I guess."
"But he still managed to escape though, didn't he?" She was aware how bitter her voice was, but didn't attempt to rein in her tone.
Mulder looked guilty. "I've had more than one opportunity to kill him," he said, "and I didn't take them. I'd like to believe that's out of my desire to expose their deeds on the world stage – because if we stopped them without public exposure, they'd just re-start their projects elsewhere, but … the whole truth is that he's toyed with me over the years." His tone had turned scathing. "He'd dangle Samantha over my head, and I'd jump, time after time after time. I should have known that she was dead a long time ago. I just didn't want to believe it." He paused. "Not anymore. It's time to stop doing what they expect us to do."
"What are you thinking, Mulder?" she asked him.
"I don't exactly have a plan yet," he said, "but I do know that I'm damned tired of being their pawn."
She nodded in response. "What were you looking for, Mulder?"
He looked confused by her question, "When?"
"When you found Hannah," she said quietly.
His expression cleared. "I … " he tilted his head back and stared at her, his expressive eyes green and bronze in the lamplight. "When you said that this was personal – I knew that, Scully. I've known that for a long time, but I guess I understood you in a different way than I had before," he said. "I found myself thinking about everything that's happened to you," he paused. "And I decided it was time to find Dr. Scanlon. I thought that I could get some justice for you, for all the women they robbed and murdered."
She felt the sting of tears in her eyes, but for once, didn't try to hide them.
"And I thought, if I found him, I'd find another store of your ova," he continued softly. "I wanted to give your choices back to you."
She closed the small distance between them, pouring all of the love that she felt for him into her kiss.
~*~
Part 21
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: Here we are at Part 20! I guess I'll really have to finalize Parts 22 and 23 now. And when I finish writing, I'll start answering feedback.
After I take a long nap.
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.
~*~
When she began to calm down, she found Mulder watching her with something like his usual intent expression, but with the addition of the assessment that she'd become too used to seeing over the course of the past month. She closed her eyes against whatever insight he was having. She was drained, and his grasp on her was probably the only thing keeping her upright. She was slumped against him, knees pressed along the edge of the bed, his legs still bracketing hers, his arms wrapped around her. He shifted so she was sitting on his right leg, then leant over and plucked tissue from the nightstand, handing some of it to her. She expected him to attend to his own tears, but when he began to dry off her face, she returned the favor, wiping his wet cheeks and nose.
"Blow," he said to her, and she made a face at him instead, wresting the tissues from his hand. She blew her own nose, and tried to calm herself. She was still shaking, the aftershocks of so much emotion jangling her nerves.
He discarded their used tissues with his usual aplomb, sinking them into the basket in a high, arcing shot before turning back to her. He drew her against his chest, drawing patterns on her hip with his thumb. His other hand smoothed her hair, tucking it behind her ear. He regarded her with a tender expression, while her breath hitched in and out. He leant down and kissed her brow, while his hand drifted down to her left hand. His long fingers lightly traced the rings on her finger as he regarded her. "I liked to hear you call me that," he said.
"What?" she whispered back.
He looked at her, his face and hair damp from both of their tears, his reddened eyes pinning her with their intense stare. His arm held her firmly in place as she leant against him, exhausted. "Your husband," he said.
She swallowed hard at his statement, but didn't break his gaze.
"Could you see me as your husband?" he asked. His voice was serious and soft.
"You are my partner, Mulder," she said, but he didn't answer her, just continued to look her in the eye.
The silence spun out in the room, but she could still hear the echo of her own voice naming him as such. She knew that no matter what she said, he could already see the answer in her eyes. What he wanted was to hear her say it, for her to be as honest with him now as she'd been earlier. She took a deep breath, and never breaking his gaze, gave him the only possible answer, the truth. "Yes."
Mulder's chest heaved under her ribs; a light came into his eyes that she'd never before seen. His lips curved into something not quite a smile, and settled there. The hand that had been tracing her rings, rose to trace her face, her neck, her shoulder, her side. He laid her back on the bed, hovering above her as his hand continued down over her hip and leg until he reached her boot. He drew the zipper down, watching her the whole time. She was poised, waiting for his kiss, but instead he continued to watch her, gazing into her eyes as first one, then the other boot was discarded. He hooked his arm around her knees and pulled her legs up onto the bed, and settled himself over her.
He was still regarding her with that intent gaze, tracing her hairline with his fingers. She felt like she could see right into his soul, and was aware that he was looking into hers. Part of her had been afraid that his desire for her was tied to the losses he had suffered, that she was all he had to cling to. But the things he'd said earlier, the way he was looking at her now ...
He kissed her once, sure and sweet, and drew back, his hand slipping down to unknot his tie, and then unbutton his shirt. He drew his clothes off one by one, only stopping to kiss her. There was nothing hurried about his movements. He was measured in the way he revealed his warm skin to her, his eyes a steady burn as they returned to hers over and over. It was almost like he was assuring her and himself that this was no dream, that the connection between the two of them was real, that this was really happening.
She needed no such reassurance, overwhelmed as she was by the physicality of him, bared and alive under her hands. She was unable to stop herself from touching him, kissing him as he began to surely divest her of her clothing.
It was easier and more intense than anything she'd ever experienced. He pinned her to the bed with his eyes as they moved against each other, learning, adapting to each other. He was whispering something, but she wasn't sure that she comprehended it, lost as she was in the sensation, in the finality of it all.
She understood why it was that he wouldn't close his eyes for long, why he kept returning to their intimate gaze. In all their years together, this was the only way that she had not known him, and she was hungry for the experience. Watching the naked love in his eyes, feeling it resonate through her very bones, she felt a kind of ecstasy unassociated with her body's rising tenor. She could never have felt this way with anyone other than Mulder, would never have allowed herself to be known in this way with any other.
In the aftermath, when their breathing had returned to its normal pace, he kissed her over and over, until they were both smiling too much to continue. He moved them under the covers as they clung to each other, shivering this time from the cold they had not before noticed. She reached over him to retrieve yet more tissue to wipe away their mutual tears. It was the first time in forever that she had cried because of happiness, and they laughed at the same time. She knew without asking that they had shared the same thought.
Mulder lay in her arms, head against her breast, listening to her heartbeat. Somehow, it didn't surprise her that he wasn't sleepy. She felt far too alive to sleep just now. Instead, she explored the wide expanse of his shoulders and his back. She'd always secretly loved that part of his body, and now she committed it to sense memory, allowing her fingers to drift up to the nape of his neck and back down across the warm skin that sheltered him, muscle and bone.
Mulder's eyes were closed, and he hummed against her in satisfaction. They rested there together in the quiet for a long time, not speaking. She had always wondered if it would be awkward, the aftermath of their inevitable lovemaking, had imagined several different scenarios. She'd never considered this ease as one of the possibilities.
Mulder shifted up out of her arms to lay alongside her. He propped his head on his hand, then began to trace her features with an elegant finger, dropping his head to kiss her after running his fingers over her lips. The new light in his eyes had not waned, and she said a silent prayer that it never would. He drew back and watched her again, his generous mouth still curved with happiness. "I love you, you know," he said to her.
She smiled to hear him say it, despite the fact that she had no doubts about his feelings for her. She nodded in affirmation, leaning up to kiss him. "I love you too, Mulder," she said.
This time around, Mulder's Cheshire cat grin was full of teeth. She could feel herself smiling back at him, and watched his smile grow even wider. They were impossible and absurd, and she was happier than she'd ever been, despite everything that had happened to bring them to this moment. Mulder leant forward and kissed the tip of her nose, and then the mole above her lip.
"I've always wanted to kiss you there," he announced.
She eyebrowed him in what she hoped was an evocative fashion.
"I suppose it's only fair to warn you that's just one out of many places," he said.
"I'll consider myself warned, then," she said in a mock serious tone.
He was stroking her collarbones, tracing the bones in her shoulder. "Was Hannah really upset?" he asked suddenly.
"Yes," she answered, "but she was sleeping when I left."
He sighed. "We should go back soon," he said regretfully.
She nodded, but made no move to break away from him.
"We have a daughter, Scully," he said wonderingly. He shook his head, "I never really thought any of this would happen."
She watched him speaking, letting him share his thoughts with her.
"It's what I always wanted," he said finally. He'd been quiet for long minutes, but his hands had not been idle, as he continued mapping her flesh.
"A family, Mulder?" she asked.
He shook his head. "A family with you," he said. "My whole life, I've been trying to get back the family that I lost. Samantha …" he said quietly, and she watched him carefully, afraid that they'd lose the equilibrium they'd so recently gained. "Since my goal was to get back what I lost, the idea of having a family of my own wasn't something I really considered." He had been watching his hand sliding across the skin of her breast as he spoke, but now he looked her in the eye. "Until I met you."
She felt her skin flush at his words.
"Not right away," he said apologetically. "Not for a long time, if I'm truthful about it. It wasn't until you were sick that I realized, that I actually became conscious of how I felt about you. When I was faced with losing you -- that was when I understood myself."
"But, Mulder," she began, "you knew that I couldn't have children."
He shrugged. "I figured that we'd find a way around it. Besides," he said, sliding his hand up to cradle her chin in it, "having you would have been enough family for me."
"All that time," she said to him, and she knew her voice was faintly accusatory.
"I never said I was brave," Mulder said. "It was easier to indulge the dream, to believe that someday would just … come. I never considered that it wouldn't happen, until recently."
She regarded him soberly. The wound from their recent estrangement was just barely scarred. "We have to talk to each other, Mulder," she said. "We can't keep secrets from each other, not anymore. No more secret investigations for either of us."
He was nodding as he listened to her. "I know." He lay his head down on his bicep, and she turned on her side, facing him.
He took a deep breath in, and played with the cross at her neck. "What do we tell Hannah?"
"You mean, how do we tell her that we're her parents?"
"Should we tell her?" he asked.
"Why wouldn't we tell her?" she was confused by the very idea.
"If she's just got a matter of months …" Mulder swallowed very hard and looked on the verge of tears. "It seems cruel to me."
"Mulder!" she propped herself up on an elbow and stared at him. "What makes you think that Hannah's going to die?"
His expression was wary as he addressed her. "The Kurts that I spoke to at the lab said that their average lifespan is five years."
She was shaking her head before he finished speaking. "That has nothing to do with Hannah, Mulder," she said. "The Kurts are the clones of a teenaged boy whose genome was altered in ways that I can't even begin to comprehend."
Mulder stared at her. "But the alien DNA …" he said, "they said that the recombination of human DNA with it was unstable."
"You saved her life by taking her away from Scanlon," she said firmly. "But before that you saved her life because she had enough of your DNA to withstand their 'treatment'," she spat the word out, repulsed at the notion.
Mulder looked stunned. "But the other girls …"
"They died because they couldn't withstand the repeated exposure to the black oil," she said. "It's ironic, but it is probably the alien DNA that killed them. Kurt believes that Hannah's immune system is immature because of her alien DNA, not because of us."
"Are you saying that she's going to survive this?" He seemed afraid to hope.
Scully nodded. "Kurt does have concerns about Hannah's immune system, but he has an idea of how to fix that. Hannah needs your blood, Mulder," she said. "We need to graft some of your super-immunity into her."
Mulder looked astonished. "Are you sure about this, Scully? Are you sure she's going to live?"
"I'm not positive, Mulder, but the Kurt who has reviewed Hannah's records seemed confident to me. He's offered to show me the data, but from what he explained of the processes that were utilized to create the clones, it's vastly different from the IVF-like process that they used to create Hannah," she answered him. "She is not a clone, and she's not susceptible to the same sort of aging problems that the Kurts are."
"And Samantha was," he said, "Right?"
She nodded sadly. "Kurt offered to share the data with me on Samantha, but I haven't seen it."
"The original Kurt Crawford is dead though, isn't he?" Mulder's voice was quiet, but sure.
"He told me that none of the original selves of those that were 'given'," she grimaced in distaste as she placed emphasis on the word that Kurt had used, "survived the process."
Mulder startled at her words, "Cassandra Spender?"
Scully could feel her brow draw down as she thought about that, "I don't know the answer to that question, Mulder," she said slowly. "Kurt is very literal, and I asked him if any of the children had survived the hybridization process, and he said that none had survived in their original form. He said that any that we had met were clones, but that some of them may not known they were clones."
Mulder reached his hand out to play with her cross again. He was nodding. "I met one of those Samanthas," he said quietly.
"Mulder?" She had no idea what he was talking about.
"When you were sick," he said, and paused. He looked at her, and she saw the pain in his eyes. "When you were dying," he said hoarsely, "Cancerman offered me a deal to save you. He used Samantha to bait the hook."
"What happened?" she whispered.
"I met her at a diner," he said. "She looked just like the other adult Samanthas we'd met, but she was dressed like a suburban mom. She was very ill-at-ease with me," he paused. "She told me that she thought our mother was dead and that Cancerman was her father," he said bitterly, "And that she didn't remember any other family, and she wasn't interested in getting to know me."
"Oh, Mulder," she reached out and put her hand on his face.
"She said that she had a family of her own, children to consider. She practically ran out of the diner to get away from me, back to the car where he sat waiting, smoking. She let him wipe away her tears."
She hadn't thought it was possible for her heart to break more than it already had, but this life seemed to determine to prove her wrong. She wrapped her arms around Mulder and pulled him close. He accepted her comfort for a few minutes before he broke away.
"It pretty much destroyed me at the time," he said, brushing the hair from her brow, "especially with you so sick. I really thought that I was going to lose the both of you at the same time."
"I'm right here," she reminded him. She felt his hand slip around to the back of her neck. His thumb ran over her scar.
He bent to kiss her, then pressed their foreheads together. "You'll never know how grateful I am for that, Scully," he said. "Truly." He was quiet for another minute. "The more I thought about the woman in the diner, the less it seemed plausible to me that she was really Samantha," he said. "But the idea that he would raise one of the clones as his own, just to use as a blind at some future point …" He shook his head. "That seemed insane, even to me. But now … seeing all those Kurts today, knowing that they're the clones of someone else's lost child, a child that no one ever mentioned once … how could Samantha have survived?"
"I'm so sorry," she reiterated, feeling that her words were totally inadequate.
Mulder accepted her condolences wordlessly, but his eyes let her know that he understood. She wasn't sure that was true.
"I have never wanted to kill another person," she said to him, choosing her words carefully, "never understood the impulse that would drive someone to feel that they had the right to make that decision. But I understand it now. Those men, Mulder, they deserved what they got at El Rico. They deserved to die," she said fiercely. "Not because of what they've done to me and you, but because of what they did to their own children, to our children. The only sorrow I feel is for their family members."
Mulder nodded at her words.
"I think of Jeffrey Spender now, and I feel horribly sad for him," she continued. "If Cancerman really was his father …" she drifted off, watching Mulder. "What chance did he have at a good life? He believed that his mother was crazy, but the truth is that his father allowed his colleagues to torture her, all so they could save their own skins."
"I wonder about how the whole hybrid program started," Mulder said. "Was it all a ruse all along, an idea that the aliens planted to keep the Consortium members diverted?"
She shook her head. "I don't know."
"And what does it mean that they're all dead now? I can't believe that bodes well for us. It feels like a double-cross," he mused. "And if anyone deserved to be double-crossed, it was Ol' Smoky. There is irony there, I guess."
"But he still managed to escape though, didn't he?" She was aware how bitter her voice was, but didn't attempt to rein in her tone.
Mulder looked guilty. "I've had more than one opportunity to kill him," he said, "and I didn't take them. I'd like to believe that's out of my desire to expose their deeds on the world stage – because if we stopped them without public exposure, they'd just re-start their projects elsewhere, but … the whole truth is that he's toyed with me over the years." His tone had turned scathing. "He'd dangle Samantha over my head, and I'd jump, time after time after time. I should have known that she was dead a long time ago. I just didn't want to believe it." He paused. "Not anymore. It's time to stop doing what they expect us to do."
"What are you thinking, Mulder?" she asked him.
"I don't exactly have a plan yet," he said, "but I do know that I'm damned tired of being their pawn."
She nodded in response. "What were you looking for, Mulder?"
He looked confused by her question, "When?"
"When you found Hannah," she said quietly.
His expression cleared. "I … " he tilted his head back and stared at her, his expressive eyes green and bronze in the lamplight. "When you said that this was personal – I knew that, Scully. I've known that for a long time, but I guess I understood you in a different way than I had before," he said. "I found myself thinking about everything that's happened to you," he paused. "And I decided it was time to find Dr. Scanlon. I thought that I could get some justice for you, for all the women they robbed and murdered."
She felt the sting of tears in her eyes, but for once, didn't try to hide them.
"And I thought, if I found him, I'd find another store of your ova," he continued softly. "I wanted to give your choices back to you."
She closed the small distance between them, pouring all of the love that she felt for him into her kiss.
~*~
Part 21
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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Date: 2008-01-11 02:10 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-01-12 04:06 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-01-11 04:07 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-01-12 04:07 pm (UTC)I so totally resemble this remark.
:: pats you ::
It will all be well.
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Date: 2008-02-23 09:44 pm (UTC)Linda61
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Date: 2008-02-25 11:47 pm (UTC)I hope you're having a fabulous time in Austria, and that you enjoyed the rest of the tale.
Take care,
Anjou