A Winter's Tale, Part 22
Jan. 12th, 2008 04:33 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
anjouficTitle: A Winter's Tale 22/23
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: Tomorrow's final posting may be delayed to either late in the evening EST, or until Monday the 14th. It can't be helped – I'm afraid this weekend has turned out to be far more hectic than I had planned. Sorry!
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.
~*~
She was curled on her side trying to focus on Possession when Mulder came out of the bathroom wearing his pajama bottoms and a t-shirt. He grinned at the sight.
"Finally!" he said, carefully climbing up onto their makeshift double bed. She'd taught him an old resident's trick – they pushed two of the empty beds in the infirmary together and locked their brakes in place before they lay the mattresses across the bed frames to cover the seam between the two beds. With extra pillows to cover the top of the bed where there was a gap, they'd made a passably comfortable Queen-sized bed, although she had her doubts that Mulder would keep to his own side of it. Hannah slept on her own in the bed next to them, her tiger tucked up under her chin.
She raised her eyebrows in response to his comment, looking at him over her shoulder as he curled up against her back. "After everything that's happened in the last twenty-four hours, it's me reading this book that provokes that outburst?" She made a disbelieving noise, and returned to her reading.
He kissed the back of her neck very gently. "Scully, I'm surprised at you. Are you trying to provoke an unseemly display in front of a minor? Our minor, I'd like to add."
"I don't think that hat with the light would fit over her hair, Mulder," she said, putting her finger in the book to mark her page. She could hear him wincing behind her.
"Scully, we really have got to work on your sense of humor," he deadpanned. "Maybe I can buy you one for your birthday?"
"Last month," she noted dryly.
"Who says we need to be pedestrian and give and receive presents on the actual day?" Mulder said archly. "What about the element of surprise?"
She huffed a laugh and then regretted it, feeling an ache deep in her belly.
"You OK?" he asked tenderly. "Need another icepack?"
She moved the nearly melted one off her abdomen and handed it to him, turning gingerly over onto her back so that she could see him. "I'm not even sure that it's doing anything other than easing my mind," she said. "There's no way that ice on my skin could help inflammation in my ovaries."
Mulder smiled at her. "Mind over matter, Scully."
She harrumphed.
"Do you want another?" She laid a cold hand against his chest and he shivered, but didn't shy away from her. "Just keep that hand north of the border, I beg of you." He began rubbing her cold hand in both of his desperately.
She laughed this time, and immediately moaned, causing Mulder to grimace.
"What does it feel like?" he asked.
She thought it over for a bit. "It feels really weird," she finally said. "It's not exactly painful, but it's very strange to be aware of a part of your body that you knew was there, but have never really felt before."
He nodded. "You never had mittelschmerz before?"
"Not that I recall," Scully said wryly. "Besides, that's only supposed to be affect one ovary at a time." She paused. "Exactly how much reading have you done on this subject, Mulder?" He was a dangerous man with a search engine.
"On ova regeneration, or on mittelschmerz?" he asked.
She thumped him with her still cold hand, and he laughed, capturing it.
"You're going to have to write an article for me to read on the first," he said, "and I had a girlfriend at Oxford who had mittelschmerz."
"Phoebe?" she asked. There was no longer any need for her to hide her distaste.
"Phoebe was a pain in a different part of the anatomy," Mulder answered, raising her hand to kiss it, while she smiled at him. "Now, really, how do you feel about all of this?"
"Sore," she answered.
Mulder made a face at her and waited.
"I'm glad, Mulder," she said. "On one level, I can't believe that they could regenerate my ova with the implant, but if the implant could cause healthy cells to become cancerous and then spontaneously remit, then it's not that unbelievable, relatively speaking." She made a face, listening to what she was saying aloud. "I guess."
Mulder waited for her to continue.
"I'm still not sure that I believe it, despite the discomfort," she said. "I'm going to have to confirm it with my own doctor." She gripped his hand. "I think maybe I'm afraid to count on it too much. If I could have a baby," she began, "should I?" They'd both been keeping their voices low, so as not to disturb Hannah, but her tone had taken on a note of urgency. "I worry that we won't be able to keep Hannah safe," she whispered. "How could we keep another child safe? How do we know that Scanlon won't to try to take Hannah, or any other child we might have?"
Mulder's eyes were hard at her words. "I will kill him where he stands," he said.
"Mulder," she said.
"I'm serious," he said.
"I know you are," she answered him. "But you can't help keep her safe if you're in jail! We need to figure out how we're going to protect her," she said. Behind her, Hannah coughed and Scully's head jerked in the direction of the sound. Her hand flew out of Mulder's grasp and went to the back of her neck as Mulder winced.
He got out of the bed carefully and padded over to peer at Hannah, who had roused a bit.
Scully had rolled onto her back, still holding onto her neck. Mulder gave Hannah a sip of water through a straw and waited for a second, making sure she was settled before he returned to his side of their bed. "She didn't really wake up," he whispered. "Do you need an ice pack for your neck while I'm up?"
She started to shake her head, but thought better of it. "It's fine," she said, and then rolled her eyes at Mulder's expression. "Really, Mulder. I've had much worse. It's a tiny burn." She had turned back on her side to face him.
"The laser that came out of that … thing," Mulder said, getting back under the covers and sliding over next to her, "was one of the stranger things I've seen."
She agreed with him. "It was so cold – it didn't hurt at all while it was happening, but now I feel it when I turn my head too fast." She changed the subject. "What did Byers say?"
"He wasn't back yet," Mulder answered, "but Frohike said he'd called in to say that Skinner had showed up at the meeting and that he'd agreed to verify the paper trail if asked. So far, no one has been looking for us."
"Where does the 302 say we are?" she asked.
"In California," Mulder answered, "following up on leads related to the El Rico massacre. Langly and Frohike moved your car from the mall parking lot to BWI, and the plane manifest shows that you flew out of there on Sunday evening."
"With you?"
"No," Mulder answered. "I flew out of there on Saturday morning."
"So if Scanlon is looking for Hannah," she said, "he'll look there first?"
"If the reproductive experiments are in as much trouble as the Kurts think they are, Scanlon has bigger problems than losing Hannah," Mulder said. "Besides, it sounds like the whole program is in disarray with factions fighting for supremacy since the burnings."
"We can't just trust that she'll be safe, Mulder," she insisted.
"I have no intention of doing so," he said heatedly.
She pressed her hand against his chest in apology.
He calmed down and continued on in a softer voice. "I have an idea," he said. "But it's going to require a lot of coordination, and a little time."
"Tell me," she said.
Mulder drew in a long breath through his nose and covered her hand with his. "We're going to have to lie," he said.
"Fine," she answered.
Mulder looked at her skeptically.
"Mulder," she said, "she's our daughter. I'll do what's necessary."
He looked faintly surprised.
"I asked nicely with Emily," she said, "and look where that got me. If she'd lived," she fought off the wave of bitterness, "they wouldn't have awarded her to me. What's your plan?" She was ready to poke holes in it.
"We could do this a couple of ways," Mulder said. "But basically, the first thing we need to do is to raise our profile and Hannah's to make it so that any further action against any of us would be a disaster for whatever factions remain active."
Scully was surprised to hear him set the tone for this discussion in that way. In general, Mulder preferred to keep a low profile. Back in the days when Patterson had been trying to groom him as his second-in-command, Mulder had resisted being paraded in front of the press – it had been one of their first and most persistent disagreements. "Go on," she encouraged him.
Mulder took a long breath in. "We could say that you were pregnant when you were kidnapped, and that they kept you just long enough for the baby to be viable. We make the case that Hannah was kept as leverage by the people who were burned at El Rico. We charge Strugholm and a few of the others that are dead with conspiracy and kidnapping, of both you and Hannah," he was watching her carefully. "And we charge Spender and Scanlon specifically with attempted murder charges against you, both for when you were kidnapped in 1994 and almost killed, and for Scanlon's treatment of your cancer."
She blinked at his audacity. "They would both die in jail," she said slowly.
"They'll probably die before they get to trial, Scully," he said. "If we can even find them in the first place. But we get their names, and most importantly, their faces on the Ten Most Wanted. There's bound to be publicity about the case, making it so they can't take Hannah without giving credence to the whole kidnapping story."
She had to admit that she was impressed with the idea, even though there were a tremendous number of moving parts to it. She started to ask him a question, when Mulder held up his hand.
"But Scully, if we do it this way, then people are going to feel validated in every rotten thing they've ever said about us and about our relationship. The Bureau may even try to go after us for fraternization. We could be destroying both our careers."
"I don't care about that," she said. "Really, Mulder. How else are we going to explain Hannah's sudden appearance?"
"We could say that your ova were stolen when you were kidnapped and that she was created …"
"No," she said firmly.
"Scully, your reputation …" he began.
"No," she said. "Your first idea was the better one, even if it's sketchy, and you know it. Why are you balking?"
He shook his head in frustration. "The idea that some of those bastards we work with will talk about you, the way I know they'll talk about you, makes me crazy. Saying that we've been in a relationship all these years just validates all the sexist bullshit that they spout about male-female partnerships."
"Mulder," she said affectionately. "I really think you're kidding yourself by believing that they don't talk about me, about us, that way already. Just because they'll believe that they're justified doesn't make any difference to me. I would never have lasted as long as I have at the Bureau if I didn't have a thick skin."
Mulder looked distinctly grumpy. "Well," he said, "Frohike had an idea: he said that he can make it look like we've been secretly married since 1994. We're already going to have to alter your hospital records to make it look like you had given birth before you were returned. He insists that he can make it look legit."
She laughed out loud, sore gut be damned. "Mulder! And you think that would cause less gossip!?" She was touched, but not truly surprised, by Frohike's chivalrous impulses toward her.
He looked even more grumpy at her laughing at him.
"That would become the whole story, Mulder, and would make it more scintillating – we need the focus to remain on the crimes that took place," she said. "Besides, how would we explain that to my mother?"
Mulder looked distinctly uncomfortable at her words.
"Is that what this is all about?" she asked him incredulously. "You're afraid that my mother will be angry because I was pregnant without being married?" She narrowed her eyes and really looked at him. "Or angry with you for making me pregnant?"
Mulder had the good sense to look chagrinned at her words. "Scully – I know that she's going to have an opinion about it."
"Oh, she definitely will," Scully said, "and I'll make it clear to her that her opinion is duly noted, and then continue on with my life." Mulder looked dubious at her words. "Mulder, trust me -- she's more likely to be angry that she didn't know that I was pregnant, or that I had a kidnapped daughter, than she is about me being pregnant without being married!"
"Well, that's another issue," Mulder said. "How are you going to explain this to your mother?"
"I'll tell her that we didn't know there was a baby, because it was so early in the pregnancy. I could tell her that until Emily was found that the possibility of our child being alive had never occurred to me and that we began actively looking for her. The problem will be in how to explain who Emily was," she mused. "I've already told my mother that because of what they did to me when I was kidnapped that I couldn't have children."
She heard Mulder hesitating, and she looked up at him. "I will not disavow Emily, Mulder," she said firmly. "I know that the easiest thing would be to say that Emily's appearance was a blind, meant to hide Hannah – that we were getting too close because of ongoing investigations and that they panicked and tried to fool us, but I won't do that."
Mulder leaned forward and kissed her forehead, and then her cheek. "I didn't think you would," he said, running his fingers through her hair. "What if we said that Emily and Hannah were twins?" he asked. She started at the suggestion. "Who is going to challenge us or correct the information we put out?" he asked. "The consortium? You can tell your mother that I've been suspicious since Emily was found, and that I never stopped investigating, but that I didn't tell you about it, because I didn't want to get your hopes up."
She stared at him. "You'd do that?"
Mulder looked confused. "Scully, I would have been looking all this year if you hadn't put down the edict against it."
"No," she said quietly, "you'd really claim Emily?" Mulder actually looked a little hurt at her words, so she squeezed his hand and whispered, "Thank you," before she kissed him.
Mulder relaxed against her, gathering her into his arms carefully. "Don't thank me, Scully," he said when they broke apart. "I should have said something at the time."
She placed her fingers against his lips. "You're saying it now," she countered. "It still counts, as far as I'm concerned." She lay there thinking for a moment, her head on Mulder's shoulder, her hand smoothing over the cotton of his t-shirt. "The problem with that is that we don't run to twins in my family, Mulder," she said.
"Not even Irish twins?" Mulder teased.
She poked him, but she was smiling.
"Actually, I had twin uncles," he said.
"Had?" Scully asked.
"My father's older brothers," he said. "One of them died before I was born – WWII," he explained. "The other one died shortly after I finished Oxford."
"Dare I ask what their names were?" Scully asked, looking up at Mulder.
His expression was pained. "Forbes," he said finally. "And Brooks."
"Brooks?" Scully asked.
Mulder covered his face with his right hand. "It's a last name, Scully," he said. "In this case, one of my paternal grandmother's family names."
"Not that Forbes is much better," she muttered.
"Oh, Forbes-y was all right," Mulder said, clenching his jaw and affecting an upper-class accent. "Never quite right after losing his brother in the war, you know, but still a good man."
"Your relatives would be horrified that you've chosen to breed with the help, Mulder," she said.
"Fuck 'em," Mulder answered.
'No, thanks,' Scully thought, but kept her mouth shut. "Going back to the plan," she said, "the big problem I see is that my kidnapper was Duane Barry."
"No," Mulder answered, "he was the one who took you, but he delivered you to unknown others – which reminds me – don't let me forget to put Krycek on the Ten Most Wanted," he sounded gleeful at the prospect. "The actual file on the conspiracy surrounding your kidnapping has never been closed, and the contents relating to your medical condition when you appeared at the hospital were classified as 'need-to-know'."
She startled at this information. "But I read ..."
"You 'needed to know'," Mulder said sarcastically. "I'm sure that Cancerman pressured Skinner, or probably Blevins, to classify it because they knew that exposure to the virus was what had branched your DNA, but it'll work in our favor now. They'll never be able to prove that what we're saying isn't true without revealing how they know."
"But the original information, the paper files –" she said.
"Frohike says he can take care of that," Mulder said.
She raised her eyebrows at him.
"I told him not to tell me how," Mulder said. "I suggest you don't ask, either."
"Plausible deniability?"
"It works for them," Mulder answered.
"What if the Bureau balks?" she asked.
"I'm expecting them to," Mulder said. "I can't believe that Blevins was the only one in league with Cancerman, not to mention the fact that we're implicating two ex-FBI agents in your kidnapping and the subsequent kidnapping of our two children."
She felt herself flush at the easy manner in which Mulder had adopted
Emily, but he continued on. "The Director's Office isn't going to be too happy about the scandal this whole situation is going to cause, and if we went to them first, they'd definitely try to squelch the whole thing," he said. "That's why we're not going to them first."
"Who are we going to?" she asked, puzzled.
"Matheson," Mulder answered. "His position on the Intelligence Committee gives him the clout we need. My plan is to get him to contact the Director just before we get back and make it clear that the story here is how the FBI has uncovered the long-term results of a corruption scandal that has already implicated a Section Chief. The only thing I can't figure out is how to work Jeffrey Spender's disappearance into this."
She was surprised to hear him say as much, and knew that her expression reflected that.
"I keep thinking about what you said about him, about what kind of a chance he had because of who his father was. I think I understand him more than I did before." Mulder paused. "Besides, I owe him that much for his support. And I figure there has to be some way to make it look like Baby Spender set us on the trail to find Hannah. That way, I can put out an APB on Diana as a person of interest with regard to his disappearance and Hannah's discovery."
"Mulder –"
"She's still alive," Mulder said surely, "and there are a lot of questions that she needs to answer." His voice was hard, but level.
She decided not to press the issue any further, since she knew that Fowley's betrayal was still a sore subject with Mulder. "Still, the question remains – what are we implying that the conspirators were doing?" Scully asked.
"As far as what the press gets told, we emphasize the corruption angle, implying that Hannah was kept as a hostage to ensure that if we got too close, we could be stopped. I'm sure that when the press digs, they'll find out more about what it is that we do, and they'll have more questions, which is fine by me. Especially since I'm going to have Samantha declared dead."
She looked up at him in surprise. "Do you think your mother will let you do that?" she asked.
"I'm not asking for permission," Mulder said tightly. "If what the Kurts say is true, then both my parents have lied to me, not just my father."
"Mulder," Scully said, "you don't know if that's true. You don't know what your mother knows."
"And she will never tell me," Mulder said darkly. "I've been thinking about my parent's arguments, the way they escalated in the months before Samantha was taken," he paused. "I think about her taking me to the doctor's office, and how on edge she always was. That was when she started taking pills. She's always known a lot more than she's ever been willing to tell me. They were both a part of this."
Scully wrapped her arm around him, thinking. She couldn't imagine what kind of forces would have compelled Mulder's mother to capitulate to the Consortium, how she could have stood over Mulder every day for months, watching while he took his 'iron pill'. She and her mother had always had markedly different opinions on a number of things, but she had never once questioned the fact that her mother would never do anything to physically harm her. She knew, deep in her bones, that her mother would do exactly the opposite, that she would do anything to ensure her children would not be harmed. As Scully herself knew that she would do anything for Hannah. "I'll never understand these people, Mulder," she said, her voice was harsh with sorrow.
"My parents?" Mulder asked.
"All of them," she said. "Kurt's parents and grandparents, Spender. Strughold. How they could choose between their children, deciding which one would die so the others could live? What kind of a person can make that choice?"
"Sophie's Choice," Mulder said.
"And she lost both her children," Scully said. She couldn't help but think of the children she'd never known, Hannah's sisters, Emily's clones, the nameless girls from the F and G series, all taken from her, and sacrificed on the altar of a vast and failed medical experiment.
Mulder wrapped both of his arms around her. "That will not happen to us, Scully. We're going to keep Hannah safe."
She closed her eyes and said a prayer that he was right.
When she spoke again, after silence had claimed the room except for Hannah's snuffles, he startled at her voice. "Are you sure that Senator Matheson will help us, Mulder?"
She could feel him nodding above her.
"Lindsay will make sure of it," he answered her. "Frohike's setting up a clean call tomorrow so that I can let her know what's going on. She'll help us, Scully." He had begun playing with the rings on her left hand as he spoke. He bent and kissed her forehead, and then lifted her chin so he could see her. "You never asked me about your rings," he said.
"I just assumed they were Lindsay's," she said, wondering at the expression on his face.
"No, Scully," he said. "They're your rings."
"My rings?" she echoed.
"Yes," he said quietly. "When you were sick …" she sucked in a breath, "I bought them then. I thought that if I had them, they would be a hedge against a future without you."
She stared at him, thinking how his friend Dean's ring had provided no such protection.
He shrugged, "I know it was stupid, but I bought them anyway."
A thought occurred to her, "Were these what you came back to DC to get?"
He nodded. "When I found Hannah, I knew that she was yours. I thought that I could prove to you that I was committed to this, to you." He shook his head, ruefully "but then when you got to us, nothing went like I had pictured it. It just … didn't."
She held her hand up and stared at her rings.
"I should have given them to you a different way," he whispered. "I should have asked you when you got better."
She propped herself up on his chest and looked down at him. "I thought you asked me yesterday," she said softly.
He shook his head at her. "There should have been candles," he said. "A nice dinner, first." She smiled at his wistful sentiments. "And what are we going to tell Hannah when she asks about how I asked you?"
She smiled at him, then took her rings off and handed them back to him. "Ask me now," she said.
"Let me just get up –"
She shook her head, pressing him back against the bed. "No," she said.
He looked up at her, his mouth twitching to hold back a smile.
"What?" she asked.
"It's just interesting that you're on top for this conversation," he said.
"Just think of it as a post-modern twist on being down on one knee, Mulder," she said, smiling down at him. "Quit stalling."
"I think I'm nervous," he confessed. "Is that stupid? Because you already said yes, didn't you, Scully?" His eyes were searching hers, his fingers rubbing the empty space where her rings had resided for the past few days. "Scully?"
She smiled enigmatically.
Mulder closed his eyes and blew out a breath. When he opened them, he looked her right in the eye. "Dana Katherine Scully," he said, "I love you more than anything else in this world. Please say that you'll marry me and be my family." He lifted her hand and kissed her ring finger.
She smiled down at him. "Yes," she said succinctly.
"Yes," he said, but there was a question in his tone.
"Yes," she said.
"That's all I get?" he complained.
She rolled her eyes. "You know that I love you, Mulder. You've been my family for a long time now. I'll be proud to stand up in front of the whole world and declare that you and I and Hannah are a family." She leant forward gingerly, careful not to strain her abdomen and Mulder leant up to meet her kiss. "Yes," she whispered against his mouth.
When she pulled back, Mulder was smiling at her through the tears in his eyes. He kissed her rings, one by one. "I knew they were lucky," he said triumphantly.
She laughed at him, then winced at the twinge in her belly.
Mulder shifted in the bed so that she could lay on her side. He picked up her ring finger, and then looked at her before he began to slide the wedding band onto her finger.
"Oh," she said, "Mulder, you need to hold onto that one for the wedding."
"Right," he muttered. He jammed the ring onto his pinkie finger after staring at it for a second. "It looks better on you," he said critically. He slid the engagement ring onto her finger and looked at it for a few seconds, before he bent his head and kissed her hand again. "Now, we're official," he said, holding onto her hand.
"Kiss me, Mulder," she said and he smiled before he applied himself to the task thoroughly, kissing her like she was everything in the world that he'd ever wanted. When they broke apart regretfully, recognizing their fundamental lack of privacy in their current circumstances, she was breathless and flushed and Mulder was no better. "Rain check," she said, fighting to control her respiration.
"Oh, yeah," Mulder said, rolling away from her.
They lay there side by side, chests heaving, staring at each other.
"Scully," Mulder said conversationally. "Where'd you put that ice pack?"
She laughed and rolled onto her side, away from him. "G'night, Mulder," she said.
"It could be better," he muttered, then curled up behind her, kissing her neck once more tenderly. "Good night, Scully."
~*~
Part 23
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: Tomorrow's final posting may be delayed to either late in the evening EST, or until Monday the 14th. It can't be helped – I'm afraid this weekend has turned out to be far more hectic than I had planned. Sorry!
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.
~*~
She was curled on her side trying to focus on Possession when Mulder came out of the bathroom wearing his pajama bottoms and a t-shirt. He grinned at the sight.
"Finally!" he said, carefully climbing up onto their makeshift double bed. She'd taught him an old resident's trick – they pushed two of the empty beds in the infirmary together and locked their brakes in place before they lay the mattresses across the bed frames to cover the seam between the two beds. With extra pillows to cover the top of the bed where there was a gap, they'd made a passably comfortable Queen-sized bed, although she had her doubts that Mulder would keep to his own side of it. Hannah slept on her own in the bed next to them, her tiger tucked up under her chin.
She raised her eyebrows in response to his comment, looking at him over her shoulder as he curled up against her back. "After everything that's happened in the last twenty-four hours, it's me reading this book that provokes that outburst?" She made a disbelieving noise, and returned to her reading.
He kissed the back of her neck very gently. "Scully, I'm surprised at you. Are you trying to provoke an unseemly display in front of a minor? Our minor, I'd like to add."
"I don't think that hat with the light would fit over her hair, Mulder," she said, putting her finger in the book to mark her page. She could hear him wincing behind her.
"Scully, we really have got to work on your sense of humor," he deadpanned. "Maybe I can buy you one for your birthday?"
"Last month," she noted dryly.
"Who says we need to be pedestrian and give and receive presents on the actual day?" Mulder said archly. "What about the element of surprise?"
She huffed a laugh and then regretted it, feeling an ache deep in her belly.
"You OK?" he asked tenderly. "Need another icepack?"
She moved the nearly melted one off her abdomen and handed it to him, turning gingerly over onto her back so that she could see him. "I'm not even sure that it's doing anything other than easing my mind," she said. "There's no way that ice on my skin could help inflammation in my ovaries."
Mulder smiled at her. "Mind over matter, Scully."
She harrumphed.
"Do you want another?" She laid a cold hand against his chest and he shivered, but didn't shy away from her. "Just keep that hand north of the border, I beg of you." He began rubbing her cold hand in both of his desperately.
She laughed this time, and immediately moaned, causing Mulder to grimace.
"What does it feel like?" he asked.
She thought it over for a bit. "It feels really weird," she finally said. "It's not exactly painful, but it's very strange to be aware of a part of your body that you knew was there, but have never really felt before."
He nodded. "You never had mittelschmerz before?"
"Not that I recall," Scully said wryly. "Besides, that's only supposed to be affect one ovary at a time." She paused. "Exactly how much reading have you done on this subject, Mulder?" He was a dangerous man with a search engine.
"On ova regeneration, or on mittelschmerz?" he asked.
She thumped him with her still cold hand, and he laughed, capturing it.
"You're going to have to write an article for me to read on the first," he said, "and I had a girlfriend at Oxford who had mittelschmerz."
"Phoebe?" she asked. There was no longer any need for her to hide her distaste.
"Phoebe was a pain in a different part of the anatomy," Mulder answered, raising her hand to kiss it, while she smiled at him. "Now, really, how do you feel about all of this?"
"Sore," she answered.
Mulder made a face at her and waited.
"I'm glad, Mulder," she said. "On one level, I can't believe that they could regenerate my ova with the implant, but if the implant could cause healthy cells to become cancerous and then spontaneously remit, then it's not that unbelievable, relatively speaking." She made a face, listening to what she was saying aloud. "I guess."
Mulder waited for her to continue.
"I'm still not sure that I believe it, despite the discomfort," she said. "I'm going to have to confirm it with my own doctor." She gripped his hand. "I think maybe I'm afraid to count on it too much. If I could have a baby," she began, "should I?" They'd both been keeping their voices low, so as not to disturb Hannah, but her tone had taken on a note of urgency. "I worry that we won't be able to keep Hannah safe," she whispered. "How could we keep another child safe? How do we know that Scanlon won't to try to take Hannah, or any other child we might have?"
Mulder's eyes were hard at her words. "I will kill him where he stands," he said.
"Mulder," she said.
"I'm serious," he said.
"I know you are," she answered him. "But you can't help keep her safe if you're in jail! We need to figure out how we're going to protect her," she said. Behind her, Hannah coughed and Scully's head jerked in the direction of the sound. Her hand flew out of Mulder's grasp and went to the back of her neck as Mulder winced.
He got out of the bed carefully and padded over to peer at Hannah, who had roused a bit.
Scully had rolled onto her back, still holding onto her neck. Mulder gave Hannah a sip of water through a straw and waited for a second, making sure she was settled before he returned to his side of their bed. "She didn't really wake up," he whispered. "Do you need an ice pack for your neck while I'm up?"
She started to shake her head, but thought better of it. "It's fine," she said, and then rolled her eyes at Mulder's expression. "Really, Mulder. I've had much worse. It's a tiny burn." She had turned back on her side to face him.
"The laser that came out of that … thing," Mulder said, getting back under the covers and sliding over next to her, "was one of the stranger things I've seen."
She agreed with him. "It was so cold – it didn't hurt at all while it was happening, but now I feel it when I turn my head too fast." She changed the subject. "What did Byers say?"
"He wasn't back yet," Mulder answered, "but Frohike said he'd called in to say that Skinner had showed up at the meeting and that he'd agreed to verify the paper trail if asked. So far, no one has been looking for us."
"Where does the 302 say we are?" she asked.
"In California," Mulder answered, "following up on leads related to the El Rico massacre. Langly and Frohike moved your car from the mall parking lot to BWI, and the plane manifest shows that you flew out of there on Sunday evening."
"With you?"
"No," Mulder answered. "I flew out of there on Saturday morning."
"So if Scanlon is looking for Hannah," she said, "he'll look there first?"
"If the reproductive experiments are in as much trouble as the Kurts think they are, Scanlon has bigger problems than losing Hannah," Mulder said. "Besides, it sounds like the whole program is in disarray with factions fighting for supremacy since the burnings."
"We can't just trust that she'll be safe, Mulder," she insisted.
"I have no intention of doing so," he said heatedly.
She pressed her hand against his chest in apology.
He calmed down and continued on in a softer voice. "I have an idea," he said. "But it's going to require a lot of coordination, and a little time."
"Tell me," she said.
Mulder drew in a long breath through his nose and covered her hand with his. "We're going to have to lie," he said.
"Fine," she answered.
Mulder looked at her skeptically.
"Mulder," she said, "she's our daughter. I'll do what's necessary."
He looked faintly surprised.
"I asked nicely with Emily," she said, "and look where that got me. If she'd lived," she fought off the wave of bitterness, "they wouldn't have awarded her to me. What's your plan?" She was ready to poke holes in it.
"We could do this a couple of ways," Mulder said. "But basically, the first thing we need to do is to raise our profile and Hannah's to make it so that any further action against any of us would be a disaster for whatever factions remain active."
Scully was surprised to hear him set the tone for this discussion in that way. In general, Mulder preferred to keep a low profile. Back in the days when Patterson had been trying to groom him as his second-in-command, Mulder had resisted being paraded in front of the press – it had been one of their first and most persistent disagreements. "Go on," she encouraged him.
Mulder took a long breath in. "We could say that you were pregnant when you were kidnapped, and that they kept you just long enough for the baby to be viable. We make the case that Hannah was kept as leverage by the people who were burned at El Rico. We charge Strugholm and a few of the others that are dead with conspiracy and kidnapping, of both you and Hannah," he was watching her carefully. "And we charge Spender and Scanlon specifically with attempted murder charges against you, both for when you were kidnapped in 1994 and almost killed, and for Scanlon's treatment of your cancer."
She blinked at his audacity. "They would both die in jail," she said slowly.
"They'll probably die before they get to trial, Scully," he said. "If we can even find them in the first place. But we get their names, and most importantly, their faces on the Ten Most Wanted. There's bound to be publicity about the case, making it so they can't take Hannah without giving credence to the whole kidnapping story."
She had to admit that she was impressed with the idea, even though there were a tremendous number of moving parts to it. She started to ask him a question, when Mulder held up his hand.
"But Scully, if we do it this way, then people are going to feel validated in every rotten thing they've ever said about us and about our relationship. The Bureau may even try to go after us for fraternization. We could be destroying both our careers."
"I don't care about that," she said. "Really, Mulder. How else are we going to explain Hannah's sudden appearance?"
"We could say that your ova were stolen when you were kidnapped and that she was created …"
"No," she said firmly.
"Scully, your reputation …" he began.
"No," she said. "Your first idea was the better one, even if it's sketchy, and you know it. Why are you balking?"
He shook his head in frustration. "The idea that some of those bastards we work with will talk about you, the way I know they'll talk about you, makes me crazy. Saying that we've been in a relationship all these years just validates all the sexist bullshit that they spout about male-female partnerships."
"Mulder," she said affectionately. "I really think you're kidding yourself by believing that they don't talk about me, about us, that way already. Just because they'll believe that they're justified doesn't make any difference to me. I would never have lasted as long as I have at the Bureau if I didn't have a thick skin."
Mulder looked distinctly grumpy. "Well," he said, "Frohike had an idea: he said that he can make it look like we've been secretly married since 1994. We're already going to have to alter your hospital records to make it look like you had given birth before you were returned. He insists that he can make it look legit."
She laughed out loud, sore gut be damned. "Mulder! And you think that would cause less gossip!?" She was touched, but not truly surprised, by Frohike's chivalrous impulses toward her.
He looked even more grumpy at her laughing at him.
"That would become the whole story, Mulder, and would make it more scintillating – we need the focus to remain on the crimes that took place," she said. "Besides, how would we explain that to my mother?"
Mulder looked distinctly uncomfortable at her words.
"Is that what this is all about?" she asked him incredulously. "You're afraid that my mother will be angry because I was pregnant without being married?" She narrowed her eyes and really looked at him. "Or angry with you for making me pregnant?"
Mulder had the good sense to look chagrinned at her words. "Scully – I know that she's going to have an opinion about it."
"Oh, she definitely will," Scully said, "and I'll make it clear to her that her opinion is duly noted, and then continue on with my life." Mulder looked dubious at her words. "Mulder, trust me -- she's more likely to be angry that she didn't know that I was pregnant, or that I had a kidnapped daughter, than she is about me being pregnant without being married!"
"Well, that's another issue," Mulder said. "How are you going to explain this to your mother?"
"I'll tell her that we didn't know there was a baby, because it was so early in the pregnancy. I could tell her that until Emily was found that the possibility of our child being alive had never occurred to me and that we began actively looking for her. The problem will be in how to explain who Emily was," she mused. "I've already told my mother that because of what they did to me when I was kidnapped that I couldn't have children."
She heard Mulder hesitating, and she looked up at him. "I will not disavow Emily, Mulder," she said firmly. "I know that the easiest thing would be to say that Emily's appearance was a blind, meant to hide Hannah – that we were getting too close because of ongoing investigations and that they panicked and tried to fool us, but I won't do that."
Mulder leaned forward and kissed her forehead, and then her cheek. "I didn't think you would," he said, running his fingers through her hair. "What if we said that Emily and Hannah were twins?" he asked. She started at the suggestion. "Who is going to challenge us or correct the information we put out?" he asked. "The consortium? You can tell your mother that I've been suspicious since Emily was found, and that I never stopped investigating, but that I didn't tell you about it, because I didn't want to get your hopes up."
She stared at him. "You'd do that?"
Mulder looked confused. "Scully, I would have been looking all this year if you hadn't put down the edict against it."
"No," she said quietly, "you'd really claim Emily?" Mulder actually looked a little hurt at her words, so she squeezed his hand and whispered, "Thank you," before she kissed him.
Mulder relaxed against her, gathering her into his arms carefully. "Don't thank me, Scully," he said when they broke apart. "I should have said something at the time."
She placed her fingers against his lips. "You're saying it now," she countered. "It still counts, as far as I'm concerned." She lay there thinking for a moment, her head on Mulder's shoulder, her hand smoothing over the cotton of his t-shirt. "The problem with that is that we don't run to twins in my family, Mulder," she said.
"Not even Irish twins?" Mulder teased.
She poked him, but she was smiling.
"Actually, I had twin uncles," he said.
"Had?" Scully asked.
"My father's older brothers," he said. "One of them died before I was born – WWII," he explained. "The other one died shortly after I finished Oxford."
"Dare I ask what their names were?" Scully asked, looking up at Mulder.
His expression was pained. "Forbes," he said finally. "And Brooks."
"Brooks?" Scully asked.
Mulder covered his face with his right hand. "It's a last name, Scully," he said. "In this case, one of my paternal grandmother's family names."
"Not that Forbes is much better," she muttered.
"Oh, Forbes-y was all right," Mulder said, clenching his jaw and affecting an upper-class accent. "Never quite right after losing his brother in the war, you know, but still a good man."
"Your relatives would be horrified that you've chosen to breed with the help, Mulder," she said.
"Fuck 'em," Mulder answered.
'No, thanks,' Scully thought, but kept her mouth shut. "Going back to the plan," she said, "the big problem I see is that my kidnapper was Duane Barry."
"No," Mulder answered, "he was the one who took you, but he delivered you to unknown others – which reminds me – don't let me forget to put Krycek on the Ten Most Wanted," he sounded gleeful at the prospect. "The actual file on the conspiracy surrounding your kidnapping has never been closed, and the contents relating to your medical condition when you appeared at the hospital were classified as 'need-to-know'."
She startled at this information. "But I read ..."
"You 'needed to know'," Mulder said sarcastically. "I'm sure that Cancerman pressured Skinner, or probably Blevins, to classify it because they knew that exposure to the virus was what had branched your DNA, but it'll work in our favor now. They'll never be able to prove that what we're saying isn't true without revealing how they know."
"But the original information, the paper files –" she said.
"Frohike says he can take care of that," Mulder said.
She raised her eyebrows at him.
"I told him not to tell me how," Mulder said. "I suggest you don't ask, either."
"Plausible deniability?"
"It works for them," Mulder answered.
"What if the Bureau balks?" she asked.
"I'm expecting them to," Mulder said. "I can't believe that Blevins was the only one in league with Cancerman, not to mention the fact that we're implicating two ex-FBI agents in your kidnapping and the subsequent kidnapping of our two children."
She felt herself flush at the easy manner in which Mulder had adopted
Emily, but he continued on. "The Director's Office isn't going to be too happy about the scandal this whole situation is going to cause, and if we went to them first, they'd definitely try to squelch the whole thing," he said. "That's why we're not going to them first."
"Who are we going to?" she asked, puzzled.
"Matheson," Mulder answered. "His position on the Intelligence Committee gives him the clout we need. My plan is to get him to contact the Director just before we get back and make it clear that the story here is how the FBI has uncovered the long-term results of a corruption scandal that has already implicated a Section Chief. The only thing I can't figure out is how to work Jeffrey Spender's disappearance into this."
She was surprised to hear him say as much, and knew that her expression reflected that.
"I keep thinking about what you said about him, about what kind of a chance he had because of who his father was. I think I understand him more than I did before." Mulder paused. "Besides, I owe him that much for his support. And I figure there has to be some way to make it look like Baby Spender set us on the trail to find Hannah. That way, I can put out an APB on Diana as a person of interest with regard to his disappearance and Hannah's discovery."
"Mulder –"
"She's still alive," Mulder said surely, "and there are a lot of questions that she needs to answer." His voice was hard, but level.
She decided not to press the issue any further, since she knew that Fowley's betrayal was still a sore subject with Mulder. "Still, the question remains – what are we implying that the conspirators were doing?" Scully asked.
"As far as what the press gets told, we emphasize the corruption angle, implying that Hannah was kept as a hostage to ensure that if we got too close, we could be stopped. I'm sure that when the press digs, they'll find out more about what it is that we do, and they'll have more questions, which is fine by me. Especially since I'm going to have Samantha declared dead."
She looked up at him in surprise. "Do you think your mother will let you do that?" she asked.
"I'm not asking for permission," Mulder said tightly. "If what the Kurts say is true, then both my parents have lied to me, not just my father."
"Mulder," Scully said, "you don't know if that's true. You don't know what your mother knows."
"And she will never tell me," Mulder said darkly. "I've been thinking about my parent's arguments, the way they escalated in the months before Samantha was taken," he paused. "I think about her taking me to the doctor's office, and how on edge she always was. That was when she started taking pills. She's always known a lot more than she's ever been willing to tell me. They were both a part of this."
Scully wrapped her arm around him, thinking. She couldn't imagine what kind of forces would have compelled Mulder's mother to capitulate to the Consortium, how she could have stood over Mulder every day for months, watching while he took his 'iron pill'. She and her mother had always had markedly different opinions on a number of things, but she had never once questioned the fact that her mother would never do anything to physically harm her. She knew, deep in her bones, that her mother would do exactly the opposite, that she would do anything to ensure her children would not be harmed. As Scully herself knew that she would do anything for Hannah. "I'll never understand these people, Mulder," she said, her voice was harsh with sorrow.
"My parents?" Mulder asked.
"All of them," she said. "Kurt's parents and grandparents, Spender. Strughold. How they could choose between their children, deciding which one would die so the others could live? What kind of a person can make that choice?"
"Sophie's Choice," Mulder said.
"And she lost both her children," Scully said. She couldn't help but think of the children she'd never known, Hannah's sisters, Emily's clones, the nameless girls from the F and G series, all taken from her, and sacrificed on the altar of a vast and failed medical experiment.
Mulder wrapped both of his arms around her. "That will not happen to us, Scully. We're going to keep Hannah safe."
She closed her eyes and said a prayer that he was right.
When she spoke again, after silence had claimed the room except for Hannah's snuffles, he startled at her voice. "Are you sure that Senator Matheson will help us, Mulder?"
She could feel him nodding above her.
"Lindsay will make sure of it," he answered her. "Frohike's setting up a clean call tomorrow so that I can let her know what's going on. She'll help us, Scully." He had begun playing with the rings on her left hand as he spoke. He bent and kissed her forehead, and then lifted her chin so he could see her. "You never asked me about your rings," he said.
"I just assumed they were Lindsay's," she said, wondering at the expression on his face.
"No, Scully," he said. "They're your rings."
"My rings?" she echoed.
"Yes," he said quietly. "When you were sick …" she sucked in a breath, "I bought them then. I thought that if I had them, they would be a hedge against a future without you."
She stared at him, thinking how his friend Dean's ring had provided no such protection.
He shrugged, "I know it was stupid, but I bought them anyway."
A thought occurred to her, "Were these what you came back to DC to get?"
He nodded. "When I found Hannah, I knew that she was yours. I thought that I could prove to you that I was committed to this, to you." He shook his head, ruefully "but then when you got to us, nothing went like I had pictured it. It just … didn't."
She held her hand up and stared at her rings.
"I should have given them to you a different way," he whispered. "I should have asked you when you got better."
She propped herself up on his chest and looked down at him. "I thought you asked me yesterday," she said softly.
He shook his head at her. "There should have been candles," he said. "A nice dinner, first." She smiled at his wistful sentiments. "And what are we going to tell Hannah when she asks about how I asked you?"
She smiled at him, then took her rings off and handed them back to him. "Ask me now," she said.
"Let me just get up –"
She shook her head, pressing him back against the bed. "No," she said.
He looked up at her, his mouth twitching to hold back a smile.
"What?" she asked.
"It's just interesting that you're on top for this conversation," he said.
"Just think of it as a post-modern twist on being down on one knee, Mulder," she said, smiling down at him. "Quit stalling."
"I think I'm nervous," he confessed. "Is that stupid? Because you already said yes, didn't you, Scully?" His eyes were searching hers, his fingers rubbing the empty space where her rings had resided for the past few days. "Scully?"
She smiled enigmatically.
Mulder closed his eyes and blew out a breath. When he opened them, he looked her right in the eye. "Dana Katherine Scully," he said, "I love you more than anything else in this world. Please say that you'll marry me and be my family." He lifted her hand and kissed her ring finger.
She smiled down at him. "Yes," she said succinctly.
"Yes," he said, but there was a question in his tone.
"Yes," she said.
"That's all I get?" he complained.
She rolled her eyes. "You know that I love you, Mulder. You've been my family for a long time now. I'll be proud to stand up in front of the whole world and declare that you and I and Hannah are a family." She leant forward gingerly, careful not to strain her abdomen and Mulder leant up to meet her kiss. "Yes," she whispered against his mouth.
When she pulled back, Mulder was smiling at her through the tears in his eyes. He kissed her rings, one by one. "I knew they were lucky," he said triumphantly.
She laughed at him, then winced at the twinge in her belly.
Mulder shifted in the bed so that she could lay on her side. He picked up her ring finger, and then looked at her before he began to slide the wedding band onto her finger.
"Oh," she said, "Mulder, you need to hold onto that one for the wedding."
"Right," he muttered. He jammed the ring onto his pinkie finger after staring at it for a second. "It looks better on you," he said critically. He slid the engagement ring onto her finger and looked at it for a few seconds, before he bent his head and kissed her hand again. "Now, we're official," he said, holding onto her hand.
"Kiss me, Mulder," she said and he smiled before he applied himself to the task thoroughly, kissing her like she was everything in the world that he'd ever wanted. When they broke apart regretfully, recognizing their fundamental lack of privacy in their current circumstances, she was breathless and flushed and Mulder was no better. "Rain check," she said, fighting to control her respiration.
"Oh, yeah," Mulder said, rolling away from her.
They lay there side by side, chests heaving, staring at each other.
"Scully," Mulder said conversationally. "Where'd you put that ice pack?"
She laughed and rolled onto her side, away from him. "G'night, Mulder," she said.
"It could be better," he muttered, then curled up behind her, kissing her neck once more tenderly. "Good night, Scully."
~*~
Part 23
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
Thanks!
Date: 2008-01-18 03:27 pm (UTC)I'd check at the Lost & Found site, but if there is one I've never seen it. Glad you're enjoying the novel. A.S. Byatt is a tremendously talented writer, imo.
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Date: 2008-01-14 01:57 am (UTC)And I think I forgot to say earlier how amused and pleased I am at Possession showing up, since the entire reason I read that book in the first place was because of XF. *g* Good times.
And I have such a weakness the cancer!ring trope. I expected it to be the explanation here but I'm always glad to see it (and I do rather enjoy being right, of course :p).
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Date: 2008-01-18 03:29 pm (UTC)Really? Was there a reference to it on the show that I'm not recalling? Or was it simply the Oxford connection?
I expected it to be the explanation here but I'm always glad to see it (and I do rather enjoy being right, of course :p).
Awww ... I'm glad you liked it! It was predictable, but I enjoyed writing it anyway.
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Date: 2008-01-20 01:08 am (UTC)No, it was a Scullyfic book club book, I think. Or else it was just recced to high heaven on the list, and that's why I read it. ;)
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Date: 2008-01-21 06:48 pm (UTC)