Title: Recovering Gemini
Author: Neoxphile
Spoilers: TrustNo1, Providence, William, The Truth, IWTB
Disclaimer: I don't own any of the X-Files characters, but I promise to put them back in the toybox when I'm done with them.
Summary: Five years later, the child Scully gave up is alone in the world. Staged Duplicity sequel.
The first year after Mulder and I took our son back from my brother Charlie had been difficult. Even though we'd escaped and gotten William back, we still were looking over our shoulders at every moment. It took us a year of reassurances from Skinner that they were truly not looking for us any longer to finally begin to let down our guard. Even then Mulder didn't trust that entirely, but having some old friends of the gunmen surreptitiously bug key offices in the Hoover building did a lot to put his mind at ease.
Looking back, that hard anxious year was just a blur. It seemed as though we had long since settled into the white picket fence dream that my mother projected onto both Missy and I all our lives with a waxing sense of despair. I don't think anyone was happier than her when Mulder and I walked down the aisle four years ago. Maybe that's an exaggeration, but not by much.
I liked our life together, which Mulder had jokingly dubbed "Life 2.0" and it did seem like we'd rebooted our existence almost entirely. Life had settled into ordinary and predictable, with me being a doctor at last at Our Lady of Sorrows Hospital, and Mulder heading off four and a half days a week to work with homeless folks with treatable mental conditions. His practice was proud of every person they were able to help find a more stable life.
Medicine and social work weren't what we planned on, but we were soon to discover that there are many things you can't plan on. The most important of these things all started on what seemed like an average May afternoon.
Mulder-Scully Home
Carter, West Virginia
May 8th, 2007
I watched as my almost six-year-old son laboriously filled in a math worksheet at the kitchen table. His brow was furrowed, and the tip of his tongue poked out between his lips, but after a moment he wrote down the correct answer. I wanted to congratulate him, but it would break his concentration.
Instead, I busied myself with the salad I was making to go with dinner. As I was chopping tomatoes, I heard William say, "I'm all done."
"Good. Put it in your backpack. Then go wash up for dinner."
"Okay." He slid off his chair, and ran off.
"Will! Walk!"
"Okay, Mom!" he called back without slowing down.
I sighed. Mulder kept telling me that he was just being a boy, but I was still dumbfounded by the amount of energy that child had.
The phone rang, and the first words I heard were, "Dana, are you sitting down?"
"No, Mom. Should I be?" I asked warily. My mother wasn't the type of overly dramatic person who often told people to sit down to hear something.
"Yes," she said firmly, "and send William out to play so he doesn't overhear our conversation."
"You're scaring me, Mom," I complained nervously.
"I'm sorry, but please. Do it," she insisted.
I put her on hold, and found William in the bathroom still washing his hands. He was pleased when I suggested that he ask Mulder to play catch, though Mulder himself looked full of questions. With a look I promised to tell him everything, and they were soon outside with their baseball gloves.
"What's wrong?" I asked as soon as I picked the phone up again.
She took a shuddery breath that could clearly be heard despite the miles between us. "Something happened today, and I have no idea what to do." I was about to ask her what, but she went on. "It's about that little boy you gave up for adoption."
Instantly anxious, my fingers tangled in the phone cord. "Did something happen to Joey?" I demanded to know.
All sorts of terrible images went through my head, making me fear desperately for the little boy who had allowed me to effortlessly send William into hiding when they were infants. Up until he crash landed in my life, I was going to have to admit to having sent William away, but his presence allowed me to keep it a secret.
She responded to the urgency in my tone. "He's okay, Dana," she soothed. "But there's been a terrible tragedy in his family this week. His father is in jail and his mother committed suicide."
"What happened?" I immediately pictured a half finished murder-suicide, and in this macabre mental picture, poor Joey saw everything.
"Oh God, Dana, it's such an awful thing." I could hear her voice change, as if she was suddenly on the verge of tears. "How much of the news have you caught over the last three days?"
"Not much. Mom, tell me what happened."
"Joey's parents adopted another baby three months ago. A little girl almost a year and a half old. Three days ago the husband was supposed to have dropped her off at daycare on the way to work, but...he forgot."
At first I wondered what was so tragic about forgetting to bring a baby to daycare, when I suddenly remembered a news story I'd only half paid attention to. "Oh no. He left her in the car."
As much as I wanted my mother to say no, of course not, she said, "He did. When he got out of work there was a cop breaking the window of his car, but it was already much, much too late. The baby was long dead."
"Poor little thing," I muttered absently, horrified that Joey had lost his little sister that way. It seemed a cruel thing to think considering what had happened to the little girl, but I was also happy that if the man was destined to do this, it hadn't been Joey who'd been forgotten in a car.
"Usually they chalk this sort of thing up to a terrible accident, but they've arrested Joey's father. Because the baby was special needs the state has decided to prosecute, apparently thinking that it wasn't an accident."
"God. I guess they assumed that he decided that she was too much trouble and used the accident to get rid of her."
"Yes. His wife thought so too. She said so in her suicide note."
"Was Joey home when all of this happened?" I asked, and then stopped to wonder about something. "Mom, how do you know all these details? Was all this on the news?"
"No, Joey goes to a boarding school, so he wasn't around to see...what happened. As for your second question, a social worker came to the house to see me. She said her name was Carlie Thomas. Does that sound familiar?"
As she named her visitor, my mind summoned up a memory of the woman's sympathetic expression when I cried giving Joey to her. "Yes, that was her name. Why did she come to you, though?"
"She couldn't find you, so she came to me. She... she promised Joey's father that she would ask me if I thought you would take the boy back now."
"Back?" I asked senselessly.
Of course the Thomas woman thought Joey was my son, given that we'd said he was William. William Joseph Scully, answers to Joey. The baby son of a single mother who just couldn't keep him. In reality, he'd been the motherless child of woman who abandoned him on my doorstep just before managing to get herself killed.
Joey had only lived with me three months after his mother's body was discovered. Only up until Mulder's lunatic half-brother injected him with metal and told me that aliens would always be looking for him. Worried about his safety, I'd given him to an anonymous family, repaying him for his role in keeping my son safe too.
"Both his father and the social worker think Joey is your son," my mother pointed out, unaware that I'd just concluded that on my own. "So of course his father wanted to know if you'd want him back."
"He must think he's going to jail, if he's even thinking of Joey returning to me." The memory of Mulder behind bars, looking hopeless, sprang to mind, and I quickly banished the thought.
"Apparently," my mother agreed. "Even if he didn't do it on purpose, he might think that it's a fitting punishment. So naturally his thoughts would be on making arrangements for the boy - while he still has any say in the matter."
If they convicted him, he could lose his right to keep Joey, I realized. Even if he didn't go to jail, would he want to raise a child on his own, one that wasn't even his flesh and blood? A lot of men wouldn't.
"Me getting Joey, is that even a possibility?" I asked, not really thinking about whether or not it was a good idea. Yet.
"Apparently. Neither he nor his wife has any living relatives, so his thoughts naturally turned to you. I told the Thomas woman I'd ask you about it," my mother said neutrally, not trying to bend me towards one decision or the other.
"Oh. And if we didn't take him? Did she say what would happen to him?"
"I asked her that. She said it's hard to place six-year-olds. Joey would probably end up in a group home until they can find a foster family. Group home is a modern way of saying orphanage." A bit of heat seeped into my mother's voice, and though she had not said anything to pressure me, I could tell what she thought I should do. "If his father goes to jail, a foster family might be able to adopt him, not that their parent going to jail automatically makes the state release a child for adoption."
That's all it took to send my mind racing in ten directions, trying to sort out the pros and cons of bringing Joey home to us, and how on earth Mulder and I would decide on the best course of action.
My mother's next words stalled all of those thoughts. "Sweetheart, there's something you should know. I saw a picture of him..."
"Mom?"
"He looks just like William still. He...looks like you, Dana." My mother's voice dropped to a whisper. "He looks just like you. Even more than William does."
For a moment I was struck with a numb horror - had I accidentally given away the wrong baby? But after a moment I was able to quell the fluttery panic. The boys had looked enough alike to fool people who didn't see them every day, but not that much alike. Not to mention that William had a coffee stain on one hip, and Joey didn't have any birthmarks. I'd seen the familiar smudge on my son's skin often over the past few years.
"Dana," My mother said, intruding on my thoughts. "Why does he look like you?"
"I don't know."
I was willing to chalk it up to coincidence when she asked me something that my mind had already shied away from. "What if your doctor was wrong about how many embryos were viable, and Joey is also yours?"
"I think I would have noticed if I'd given birth to twins, Mom."
"Damn it, Dana," she snapped back. "You of all people should know that you don't need to carry a child for it to be yours. That little girl..." She trailed off, leaving both of us to think about my doomed daughter. "I want to know something. Did you ever do a DNA test on Joey?"
"No. Why would I have? His mother dropped him off, which proved that he had one." Not that I'd ever seen the woman who left Joey on my welcome mat.
"It didn't occur to you to wonder why he looked so much like William when they were babies?"
"Babies often look alike," I said defensively. In truth, now that she asked, I don't know why it hadn't occurred to me to wonder about that very thing.
"You're going to talk about this with Fox, aren't you?"
"Of course!"
"Tonight?" she prompted.
"All right." I paused after letting her think she'd convinced me to do something, thinking. "Did you give the social worker my number?" It seemed unlikely, considering my mother was the one calling.
"No. I told her that I'd try to get in touch with you by tomorrow, and have you call her."
"Okay, I'll talk to Mulder."
She gave me Carlie Thomas' number, and we said goodbye. Mulder must've been watching me through the window, because he and William reappeared a few minutes later.
"What's up?" he asked with a deliberate casualness.
"I'll explain after dinner."
This response seemed to frustrate him, but it wasn't a conversation we should rush through, and dinner would be ready in five minutes. Not to mention that I was sure that neither of us really want William there to hear it. Dinner was subdued. If not for William chattering about his day, there might have been no conversation at all.
"Mom, can I play video games?" William wheedled as soon as his plate was in the dishwasher.
"Sure."
He looked surprised that it hadn't taken more argument, but didn't waste any time scampering off before I could change my mind.
When I turned to Mulder, he was already staring at me. "Scully, are you going to tell me what's going on?"
I gave him a faint smile. "In our room." The living room where William would be playing and our bedroom were at opposite ends of the house.
"So?" Mulder asked after closing our door.
"That was my mom. Social services contacted her today about the baby I said was William. Joey's mother is dead, and his father is in jail."
"What the hell happened?" He looked shocked. "Is little boy okay?"
"That story on the news, about the baby dying after being left in the car?" He nodded, obviously having listened to the news. "The baby was Joey's little sister. They arrested his father, and his mother killed herself. The father had the social worker I gave Joey to get in touch with Mom. They wanted her to ask us if we'd take him back," I explained.
"You gave him up because you thought we couldn't protect them both. Has that changed?" Mulder asked carefully.
"I gave him up because I thought I couldn't protect him. When I gave him up, I had no idea if you and I would ever be reunited again. I couldn't bear to be apart from William much longer at that point, and if I was going to be raising him alone, I didn't think that I was up for protecting two helpless babies. If I had known that you would be back six weeks later... I would've toughed it out."
"You wanted to keep him," Mulder said softly.
"Of course I did. You don't take care of a baby that sweet for three months without wanting to keep him," I confessed. "Up until Spender gave him that shot, I thought I was going to. You'd come home, we'd go get William at my brother's, and we'd raise them as twins."
"I got the sense that might be the case, but you never told me," Mulder said.
I looked up at him with stinging eyes. "If I hadn't been sure that his new family would have demanded a paternity test, I would've begged you to contest the adoption on the grounds it was illegal because no one had notified you. I would have asked you to get him back for me because between the two of us, we could've kept them both safe."
"Scully..."
His sympathetic look loosened the first tear to roll down my cheek.
"Now I wish I had, and let them do a paternity test."
"Why?" he asked curiously.
"The social worker showed Mom Joey's picture. She's convinced that Joey is ours because he looks like me. What if he is ours, Mulder? No matter how hard it would have been, I wouldn't have given him up if I had known he was ours. Like I said, I thought we'd raise them as twins. But I had no idea that they might actually be twins."
"How likely is that?" Mulder asked gently. "I think you might have noticed giving birth twins. We could call Monica Reyes-"
I smirked at him. "I unwisely said the same thing to Mom. She was quick to remind me that I hadn't given birth to Emily. Mulder, what if she's right and we were lied to about how many ova were viable? Or embryos? It wouldn't be the first pre-birth kidnapping..." Not even the first in the family, I thought with a pang.
He looked lost in thought for a moment. "It doesn't matter if he's yours, though, does it? You want him back either way, don't you?"
That shut me up. Would bringing Joey into our lives be the best thing for him? For us?
My mind summoned up the helplessness that I felt at the hospital after Jeffrey Spender injected Joey with magnetite. At that moment I didn't know if he would live, and I had never felt less capable of protecting anyone. He was completely dependent on me, and I let him down.
Worse, I felt like I had been entirely responsible for putting him into danger in the first place. But if Joy's mother was right, if Joey's birth mother had been right, then these children had already been in constant danger before I met either of them. Alone I hadn't been able to protect Joey. I wasn't alone now.
"Scully?"
"Yes, Mulder. Even if he is not mine - ours - if he can't stay with the man who has raised him, he needs to be cared for by someone who understands what he might be. I spent the past five years regretting that I allowed him to be given to a family who had no idea what he was. I don't know how I'll live with myself for the next 12 years if I repeat that mistake."
"All right. We'll call that social worker and see if we can have him," Mulder said, as if the matter was settled.
"Don't we need to discuss this more? This not a puppy I saw the pet store and just had to have. Were talking about raising another child, don't you need more time to think about this?"
"If I hadn't left you and William, odds are that Joey would be living with us already," he pointed out.
"So you're agreeing with me because you feel guilty?" My voice rose, and I hated it.
"I'm agreeing because I want to make things right." He put his hand over mine. "Let's talk to social services and express our interest in Joey."
"Okay." I felt the fight go out of me.
"But let's not tell William before we talk to them." Mulder paused and gave me a long look. "Scully...if it turns out that he's not our biological son, I don't think we should take him back unless the plan is that we're taking him back permanently. All right?"
"All right," I agreed, wondering how long it would take to do a DNA test, and how we could do one secretly.
"Good," Mulder said softly. "It doesn't matter to me whose son he is if we can keep him, but I don't want to get attached if he's just going to be returned to his father in a few weeks or months."
"I understand that." It had only taken me three months to get attached the first time.
