Title: Miracle Season
Author: Neoxphile
Categories: Kidfic, multiple birth, Holiday, FT, Challenge fic.
Challenge details: late entries still be accepted at The Nursery Files see my profile for a link to the challenge page and look for the "Merry Multiples" challenge.
Spoilers/Timeline: though season nine, but pretend that William's adoption was foster care (or revoked) and that he returned to Scully not long after "The Truth".
Summary: A Christmas tale about merry little multiples for the Mulder and Scully, and for Doggett and Reyes... and Fowley torture.
Author's note: It's almost Christmas, so I'll finally upload this now. This story has one completed sequel, and one that's been stalled on my hard drive for a long long time. Show some interest in this series and maybe "Pirate Day" will eventually get completed =)
It was cold enough out to steam Mulder's breath while he worked to scrape a thick coating of frost off his car windows. Given it was December, that it was cold enough to frost windows and steam breath came as no surprise. Clearing off the windows should have felt like a small triumph, but doing so allowed him to see inside the van...which soured his mood.
Five-year-old William was quietly entertaining himself by looking at a picture book. He seemed oblivious to the chaos surrounding him, but he'd developed coping mechanisms so he wouldn't go insane from sensory overload.
Both Mulder and Scully had themselves feared insanity a few times over the past four years, but they'd been assured that it was a normal feeling for the parents of quadruplets. As he continued to stare into the van, he tried to remind himself that.
Jeremy had somehow managed to free himself from his boaster seat, and was screwing with the CD player by ejecting and inserting the CD over and over again. Back where they belonged, Brian and Eric were having a fight over a toy they'd found, and were swatting at each other. Alison, the only girl, and the only one with red hair rather than brown, looked like she was behaving. Mulder knew better through experience than to be fooled by her appearance of innocence.
Sighing, he opened the van door, picked Jeremy up and put him back in his seat, then took the toy away from Eric and Brian. Once everyone was settled again, he got behind wheel, getting the show on the road.
A man had to be out of his mind to volunteer to bring that crew Christmas shopping. Mulder, however, was willing to risk being put away in the loony bin in order to do all the shopping once, rather than in five separate trips like they'd done the year before.
His first stop was to drive to Doggett's place, so he could pick up him and his three-year-old daughter Kaylee. But when he got there, he saw Doggett waiting with two car seats. Both Kaylee and her twin brother Kevin were hanging on his pant legs.
"Monica dropped Kevin off. Hope you don't mind," Doggett said, sounding slightly frazzled.
Doggett wasn't used to having his son, so it didn't surprise Mulder much that he was feeling overwhelmed. At least, Mulder reflected, there weren't four of them. "The more the merrier," he replied evenly. Six kids to look after or seven, what was the big difference? Either way he and Doggett were severely out-numbered.
"No Scully?" Doggett asked after he'd buckled his kids into the van's last bench seat.
"Not this time. She's spending the day with her mother, trying to brace herself for the holidays ahead."
Doggett looked back over the seat for a moment, studying Mulder's noisy children. "I guess I can't blame her."
"It's hard to," Mulder agreed.
Ten miles later an unprecedented silence fell over the kids, making Mulder check the rearview mirror anxiously. They were asleep, all of them but William who was still quietly looking at a picture book. The steady drive must have lulled the younger ones to sleep.
"Are you nervous?" Doggett asked, breaking the silence.
"Always. But about what in particular?"
"It's almost miracle season," Doggett replied, looking over his seat again.
That made Mulder cringe a little. Miracle season is what the beleaguered X-Files agents had dubbed the third week of December. "No. I refuse to worry about that any more."
Doggett nodded, but he didn't look terribly convinced. "I guess you're right. Nothing has happened over the last two years, after all."
"Yeah," Mulder agreed, not looking at the other man. He'd never told anyone, not even Scully, that he thought he'd seen Marita Covarrubias in a store a few months before, pushing a carriage with three blond toddlers in it. "Besides, it would be someone else's turn, wouldn't it?"
"Maybe."
Glancing in the rearview mirror again, Mulder couldn't help but see his children and think about the day his and Scully's lives were inexplicably changed forever.
December 20th, 2002
The phone startled Mulder out of a pre-holiday malaise, nearly making him drop William's clothes. It had taken him until now to even consider dressing himself or his son, despite Scully's warning that she expected them both to be downstairs for lunch by noon.
Scully must have had her hands full too, because the phone continued to ring. After he finished wrestling the shirt over William's head, Mulder grabbed for the phone. "Mulder." He fully expected it to be Maggie, since he couldn't think of another person who'd be calling him or Scully while they were on vacation. They hadn't been popular since their return to the Hoover building, despite a full acquittal for Mulder on all the trumped up charges. No one but Doggett, Reyes and Skinner gave them the time of day any more.
"Your office has been broken into." Skinner's terse voice came over the line.
"What was taken?"
"Nothing."
""Nothing? So how do you know that there'd been a break-in?" He swore under his breath. "Is the office trashed?"
"The office is okay. I know someone was there because something was left behind."
"What?"
"I don't want to tell you over the phone. Just get down here as soon as possible, and bring Scully with you," Skinner said. "And Mulder, try to find a sitter. You don't want William with you."
A knife twisted in Mulder's gut; he wondered if there was a body in the basement. "We'll find someone."
The heels of their shoes clicked as they rushed towards the office. Doggett and Reyes were entering the office as they rounded the corner.
When they got into the room it was crowded and chaotic. A woman wearing a white lab coat carrying a rack of blood vials squeezed past them and left.
"What's going on, sir?" Mulder asked when he reached him.
"It's probably better to show you..." He gestured at the very back of the room.
Following Skinner's hand with his eyes, Mulder noticed for the first time that there were two wicker boxes sitting on the floor. "Are there body parts in those boxes?" Mulder asked, disturbed by the idea and the memory of the person whisking blood samples off.
"After a manner of speaking," Skinner said calmly. "Take a look in them."
Though Mulder and Doggett stepped forward, both of the female agents hung back. Mulder glanced over his shoulder at Scully, deciding that she must be worried that the deceased was someone they knew, since she wasn't normally squeamish.
Doggett reached the boxes first. "What the hell?" He picked something up and handed it back to Reyes. It was an envelope with the two agents' names on it.
Stepping up himself, Mulder saw a similar envelope addressed to him and Scully. It took him a moment to force himself to pick it up, because he was stunned by what was in the bottom of the box.
"What is it?" Scully hissed.
Shrugging, Mulder reached into the first box and extracted one of the things in the bottom. Seeming startled to be suddenly raised in the air, it flailed a little.
"Mulder! That's a baby!" Scully shouted, making the baby in Mulder's hands wail in alarm.
"I figured that out for myself," he told her, jiggling the baby to quiet it. "Come look."
Besides the baby in his hands, there were three more in the boxes addressed to him and Scully.
"The letter says they're yours," Reyes told them. "How could that possibly be?"
"Don't be obtuse, Reyes," Mulder said shortly. "There's been ample opportunity to gather what's necessary to create babies." What he wondered more was why there'd been a copy of the letter addressed to the other two agents. Maybe he and Scully were expected to have their hands too full to read themselves.
"Why would someone break in here and leave four newborns?" Scully asked, making Mulder think that she obviously put two and two together and came up with something other than four.
"I don't know," Skinner told her. "We read the letters before you got here. And I had blood drawn too, so we can begin DNA tests."
Mulder rolled up his sleeve. "I assume you'll need our blood too."
Skinner shook his head. "Actually, no. We have all of your DNA on file."
"That's good, I guess," Scully said faintly, looking at the babies without much emotion in her gaze.
Mulder looked at them too, wondering what would happen next.
"All of?" Doggett asked, looking confused. "Why do you say that?"
"They could have gotten...samples... from you too," Scully pointed out. "Both of you have spent a lot of time in the hospital since joining the X-Files."
After anxiously peering around the room, Doggett had confidently declared, "But there aren't any other babies here."
"Yet," Scully said grimly.
Little did Doggett know then that Scully had been right about everything.
Shortly after New Years the final confirmation came in that the four infants were indeed the offspring of Dana Scully and Fox Mulder, just as the letter had said; though they'd long since taken the infants home with them. That confirmation, and with it the assurance that they didn't need to turn the babies over to anyone, had lead to a scramble to buy a house so they'd have somewhere large enough to raise not one, but five little kids.
"And I'm going to be in debt until I die," Mulder muttered to himself.
"What?" Doggett asked, blinking the way people do when you interrupt their thoughts.
"Ah, I was just thinking about when Scully and I bought the house."
"Maybe Monica and I should have done that," Doggett said wistfully.
Unlike Mulder and Scully, Doggett and Reyes had not been romantically entangled when their own surprise package arrived after another break-in a year later. After long discussions, they agreed to each raise one of their twins, and Doggett had asked to take the girl because she didn't look nearly as much like his dead son as the boy did.
"You still could," Mulder suggested.
"After three years? She'd think I was insane for suggesting it," Doggett replied with a deep frown.
"Who knows, maybe Santa will bring you triplets for Christmas, and you'll get to revisit the subject." Mulder was surprised that Doggett didn't hit him.
"Someone made these kids and brought them to us, all right, but I'll bet dollars to donuts that it wasn't Old Saint Nick. Mulder, seriously. How often do you think about investigating the X-Files in the back of your van?"
"Never," Mulder said promptly.
"Never? Come on, be serious."
"If I think too hard or look too long, they might bring more," Mulder said with a shiver. "Ignorance may very well be bliss."
"Aww, Mulder. The kids aren't that bad."
Eyes on the road, Mulder wasn't sure he fully agreed. The kids were healthy and smart, and every one of them was a handful.
Meanwhile...
Something irritated the dreamer's slumber. Scrunching her eyes more tightly the woman whined softly and tired to block it out.
Beep...beep...beep...
It finally became so insistent that she did open her eyes. Everything was a fuzzy blur, like the time she'd borrowed her cousin's thick glasses and looked through them when they were ten.
Moving her arm, she found that she barely had the strength to do so. How long had she been sleeping? The beeping eventually registered. She was in the hospital. She couldn't remember getting sick, or having an accident, so the lack of recall coupled with being so weak suggested that it had been an accident that had her in the uncomfortable bed. She'd probably been there for a long while, too.
It was weak too, but her other arm worked, and when she flexed her knees, they responded. Apparently she wasn't too badly hurt, then.
Looking around the room, she didn't see any sign of a doctor or any nurses.
"Hey," she croaked rustily, her voice sounding like she hadn't used it for a long while. "Anyone there?"
Silence greeted her. Gritting her teeth to prepare for pain, she pulled the IV needle out of her hand, and noted with a shudder that the liquid in the IV bag wasn't clear, but a sickly greenish-yellow. Then she leaned back to rest.
After waiting a long while, she got frustrated and decided that she was going to have to see if she could find anyone to tell her what was wrong with her.
Her muscles protested sluggishly as she swung her feet over the side of the bed, and the world tilted too, making her feel woozy. After white and gray stopped eating the edges of her vision, she gingerly put her feet on the floor, then held onto the mattress while she attempted to stand.
Given that she didn't immediately collapse to the floor, she thought she was making pretty good progress. That in turn made her a little less scared about being in the hospital without a clue as to why she was there.
Her feet moved forward in a shuffling gait. She frowned, and then looked down to see if there was a reason why they were responding so poorly to the commands she gave them. To her surprise, she couldn't see her feet.
Blinking in confusion for half a second, she noticed something that she hadn't before, and it struck her as odd that it hadn't occurred to her before. She was fat under her hospital-issue gown. Really fat. That didn't make a lot of sense though, because from what she knew of prolonged hospital stays, people lost weight while unconscious, not gained. And her arms were thin too, so why was her belly so huge?
In response to her stupid question, something in her moved.
Panic instantly flooded her. They'd infected her with one of those things, and it was going to explode out of her after eating her from the inside. She held up a trembling hand, expecting to see translucence.
All she saw was the hand of a typical middle-aged woman. The veins were ropier than she would have liked, but other than that it looked like the hand she remembered. When she let her hand drop, it fell on something metal. A medical chart.
Snatching it up, she leaned against the bed and she opened the chart.
The words in it didn't make a lot of sense at first because it was in someone's shorthand. Then, as putting together certain words painted her a picture, her eyes filled with horror.
Inc. History
Dianna Fowley (DF)
Con- March 16th, 2001
Genetic – DF & unknown1
Result – December 24th, 2001
M; F(still)
Con – April 14th, 2002
Genetic – FM & DS
Result – December 19th, 2002
M M M F
Con – March 20th, 2003
Genetic – JD & MR
Result – December 20th, 2003
M F
Con – March 30th, 2004
Genetic – AK & MC
Result – December 17th, 2004
F F F
Con – March 12th, 2005
Genetic - DF & unknown2
Result – no implantation
Con – March 20th, 2005
Genetic - DF & unknown3
Result – no implantation
Con – March 30th, 2005
Genetic - DF & unknown4
Result – no implantation
- attempts suspended for 2005
Con- March 29th, 2006
The chart she held with hands that had begun to shake told her several things. One, that it was at least 2006, so she'd missed several years of her life if the dates were accurate. Two, while she was sleeping, her body had been violated, and someone had seen fit to use her as an incubator, apparently for other people's children. Nine of them! Now as well, if the movement in her was indication. And three, somewhere out there, she had a biological child that had lived. A boy.
What sort of hospital allowed something that monstrous to happen to a comatose woman? Looking around the cinderblock room, it occurred to her that maybe it wasn't a hospital at all. "I've got to get out of here," Fowley muttered to herself. Her eyes spied a robe, so she grabbed it and put it on, and after some effort got her feet into the slippers that were on the floor under the robe.
Before doing anything else, she tucked the chart under her arm. Then, moving cautiously, she edged her way towards the door. It wasn't locked. Sticking her head out the door, she looked both ways and saw no one. No one was guarding her, probably because they didn't expect that she'd wake up.
Well, they were in for a surprise. Keeping an eye out for people who might try to stop her from getting away, she made her slow way towards the outer doors.
A Mall in DC
"Stand still and be quiet, dammit!" Mulder hissed at the seven children who were running around making too much noise. A couple older women glared at him, but most of the other shoppers looked both approving and relieved.
His own brood knew he was serious, so they instantly stilled and shut up. Taking their cue from the older kids, Doggett's twins did likewise.
"You were trying to say?" Doggett asked calmly.
"I was saying that I was hoping you'd take the girls and William for a little while so they can pick out gifts - except for gifts William and Alison will give each other - and I'll take the rest of the boys to do some of their shopping. Then we can regroup and get the rest of their shopping done. Eventually."
Sighing, Doggett nodded his head. "We really need to work this out with more adults some year."
"Yeah. This is proving to have a steep learning curve," Mulder agreed. Bending down, he addressed his only daughter and William. "You two behave for John. If you don't, Santa is going to find out."
Wide-eyed, Alison gave him an innocent look. "He will?"
"Yeah," William piped up. "Santa's gots GPS on us to watch us all by sadeelit."
Doggett threw Mulder a startled look, but Mulder wouldn't look him in the eye. Trying not to smile, he instructed William and Alison to hold Kaylee's hands. Within two minutes they disappeared from view.
Mulder turned to survey the remaining kids. Without being asked, Eric and Brian were already holding hands, and Jeremy grabbed Kevin's smaller hand. "Okay troops, let's march." Mulder told the little boys.
Taking him at his word, his sons began to march, and little Kevin did a fair job imitating them.
For a moment Mulder did feel like he was leading a battle. With luck, the casualties would be light.
A street in DC
Fowley nearly fainted with relief when she got outside unmolested. She scurried away from the building as fast as she could, which wasn't very. Still, she was blocks away before long, even though she had no real idea where she was. Eventually she had to stop and rest, so she leaned up against a box meant for newspapers.
After a couple minutes of panting, it occurred to her that she could figure out the date by looking at the newspapers in the box. But first she shook her head ruefully. Her mind was still sluggish, and it didn't make things any easier.
The date on the paper said "December 15th, 2006" and it was definitely a DC paper, so at least she had some idea where she was. She pulled out the chart and stared at the last entry. No wonder she was so big, whatever she was carrying was going to be born soon, which was all the more reason to find help quickly.
But who could she get to help her? She'd yet to see anyone to ask for help, and she didn't have money to use the phone a hundred feet away. Staring at it gave her an idea, however, so she hurried over and grabbed the plastic encased phonebook that dangled from the phone by a metal cable. Flipping through the pages, she quickly found what she was looking for.
Mulder, F. 42 Cohanant Street. 555-1993
The number wouldn't do her much good without the fifty cents for a call, but the address might be an asset. When had the cost of a phone call jumped from a dime or quarter to fifty cents, she wondered, annoyed. A few more things like that and she was really going to start believing she'd been unconscious for years.
She was still hunched over the phonebook when a voice floated towards her. "Lady, are you okay?"
Straightening up, she ripped the page out of the phone book and turned towards a concerned face staring at her out a car window. "Not really."
"Is there anything I can do to help?" the woman asked.
"Do you know where Cohanant street is? I'm in trouble, but if I can get there, I'll be okay."
"You're not in labor or anything, are you?"
"No."
"Good. I'd of called an ambulance if you were...Yeah, I know where that street is, so hop in."
"Bless you," Fowley said, feeling something other than fright and confusion for the first time since she opened her eyes.
"What are you doing out here dressed like this?" the woman asked after putting the car in gear.
"I don't really know. I woke up somewhere strange, and all I know is that my friend is the only one who can help me figure out what happened."
"That's terrible! It sounds like you were drugged or something. To do that to a pregnant woman!" Her rescuer shook her head. "Let's hope your friend is as helpful as you think."
"Yes, let's," Fowley replied, suddenly feeling quite worn out.
A Mall in DC
Eric tugged at Mulder's hand after they left one of the toy stores with bags. "Aren't we gonna go see Uncle John now?"
"No. First we're going to go to one of the gift wrapping stations and get this stuff wrapped."
"How come?" Jeremy demanded to know.
"So no one cries if someone sees their present before Christmas," Mulder explained. That had happened last year – Brian had seen what Alison had got him, and they'd both cried over it.
"Oh yeah," his son agreed, perhaps remembering the incident as well.
"Does we gets to pick the paper?" Eric asked.
"I think so."
"Yay!"
Their excitement was cut short when they saw how long the lines for wrapping were. Even Mulder felt depressed when he saw Doggett waiting with three kids, and bags of wrapped presents. He hated to waste the time, but there wasn't a better way of doing things than having those guys wait for them.
Fortunately the line moved pretty quickly. Unfortunately the boys began to argue about who was going to pick which papers as soon as they moved close enough to see the patterns. To his amazement, Jeremy suggested that they each pick one paper they liked, so they could have all the presents they bought wrapped in it, and be able to identify who gifts were from Christmas morning that way. What amazed him was that the other kids thought it was a good idea, and they'd each picked a paper in less than two minutes. He was pleased, but silently praying that the wrappers didn't run out of each paper before they got the second half of their shopping done.
In just a few minutes they were able to rejoin the rest of their party. Alison held up her presents. "Lookit, I got all mine wrapped in this paper. It was Will's idea."
Mulder smiled to himself when he realized that not only had William come up with the same idea as Jeremy, the other kids had picked completely different papers. "Wow, I've got some smart kids," Mulder told them.
"Yup." they both agreed, smirking at their other siblings.
Doggett and Mulder shuffled the kids, and set off again. A wave of depression hit Mulder as he looked at the crowds and realized that it would still be a long while before they were going to leave.