disclaimer: not mine, don't sue
a/n: basically, life is not as complicated as we think, even if you can say so much by not saying anything at all
Samantha Ann
"Mulder, I'm pregnant," she blurted out, stopping his heart and causing a flush of red to spread across her cheeks. She had been worrying for almost two weeks about this moment. How to tell Mulder. How to tell him that she was pregnant with another man's baby. How to tell him that six years of waiting for him to come around had finally gotten to her and she went out and found herself a relationship. How that relationship had landed her in this situation, which was way more complicated than it sounded outright.
He knew about Mark. He knew about her attempts at normalcy by having him in her life. She hadn't told Mulder about him right away, but it got hard to hide the fact from him when mysterious bouquets of flowers started showing up in their drab basement office. And the phonecalls. And that Scully could never have lunch anymore.
It wasn't totally unexpected. The opposite, in fact. Mulder had been wondering for years when the jig was going to be up. When she decided that she was tired of waiting for him to make the first move. And he should have seized the day.
But he didn't, and that was how he found himself at work that day, almost choking on Scully's words, not ready to believe that she had made that decision with another man. Mark was a phase, he believed. That was why he could get away with giving the man subtle hints about their relationship. Oh, he made life hell for him. Scully knew. It was endearing, and that was why she didn't put up such a big fight about it.
"How…. how do you know?" Mulder asked, catching his breath again, then looking at Scully. She didn't need this. Because one look into her eyes told him that she hadn't made this decision at all.
"Intuition, and three positive pregnancy tests."
Mulder leaned back in his chair, scooting closer toward her. Scully's head was down, her hands folded in her lap. He knew instantly that she was ashamed of herself.
"Does Mark know?"
"Yeah."
"And what did he say?"
Scully met his eyes with her own, watery ones.
"He told me to get out," she whispered, trying her best not to let the tears fall. She was fighting with all she had to show Mulder that she didn't need anyone, and that a man she thought she loved (and the father of her child, nonetheless) leaving her was no big deal. That she was Dana Scully and nothing could break her.
"He what?" Mulder asked. More like yelled.
"Mulder," Scully trailed, hoping not to get into it with him right then. Next he would go into a rant about how he knew Mark was a bad choice, and how she shouldn't get involved with men she knew were bad for her. Because she should have known. She should have seen the signs. And the real shame came in her knowing that she hadn't.
"Where is he?"
"What?"
"Where is he?" Mulder asked again, deliberately. He had already stood up and walked over to the door, throwing on his jacket.
"Mulder, sit down. You're not making any sense."
"It makes perfect sense, Scully. You make a child, you take care of that child."
"There's no use talking to him, Mulder, I tried. He doesn't want anything to do with this baby, or me."
"I wasn't planning on talking to him, Scully."
"Mulder!" she screamed at him when he bolted out the door. He didn't realize how much he was like Mark himself. How talking to him was exactly like talking to Mark. She might as well have screamed at the picture of J. Edgar Hoover right outside their office.
Later that night, she was cuddled on her couch under a blanket, just thinking, when she heard a knock at her door. More like a thud, actually. She had tried calling Mulder seemingly a hundred times since he left to kill her former boyfriend. It was useless, though. He'd turn up.
And he did.
At first she didn't believe that Mulder had laid a finger on Mark because he looked unharmed. Until she saw his hands. His knuckles were bloody and mangled, and she was certain at least three of them were broken. But the look on her partner's face was one of accomplishment. He was proud of himself. He protected the most important woman in his life with brute force. So what if that made him an ape?
"Jesus Mulder!" she gasped, taking one large hand in her's and leading him inside. Without words, she sat him down at the table and started doctoring him. Usually, Mulder hated this. Oddly enough, that night he didn't seem to mind.
"If you think this is bad, Scully, you should see that bastard," Mulder explained to her as she applied some antiseptic to his cuts. It didn't even sting.
Scully didn't want to be interested in what he was saying. She was supposed to be against this: using fists to solve problems instead of reasoning. But just like all those times Mulder had taken her hand in front of Mark, shared an inside joke with her, and other things that made the man feel insignificant, she knew she was loved.
"Did you hurt him?" she asked, not looking at Mulder's face. If she did, then she would not be able to retain her composure.
"Oh yeah," Mulder smiled.
Those were the only words they exchanged for the rest of the night.
"Fox… it's Maggie Scully. You have to come to Georgetown Medical Center right away. It's Dana, she's gone into premature labor."
Mulder was just stepping out of the shower when he heard the phone ringing. He was sure it was Scully, and he was getting ready to head over there, so he let the machine pick it up.
For the six months since Scully had found out she was pregnant, Mulder had been there for her every step of the way. Though it was painful, he got her transferred out of the X-files, back to her job teaching at Quantico. It had been hard, and he had had to pull a lot of strings, but there was nothing he wouldn't do for his partner and her baby.
Around that time in their lives, Mulder basically lived at Scully's place, only coming home to pay his rent, feed his fish, and sometimes throw out the stuff culturing in his refrigerator. He was there to make sure she took her prenatal vitamins and stayed off her feet. He had been tying her shoes for her for the past week and cooking her dinner every night. Lately, they had been thinking about names. It was actually odd that he had been home and not at Scully's when her mother called that day. Skinner had been pissed at him because he lost a file pertaining to an important case. Mulder, having looked everywhere else, decided that his apartment was his last place to search. He left Scully that day, with a kiss to the forehead, and went home. After looking for several hours, he finally decided to give up and go take a shower. And that was when Mrs. Scully called.
Mulder's hair was still dripping wet and it was a surprise he made it out of the house with clothes on when he heard what was happening. He broke almost every single traffic law in existence driving to the hospital, but someone must have been watching over him because all the cops seemed to be busy that night. Too busy to look for a dedicated man rushing to get to his partner's side.
"Dana Scully!" Mulder yelled as he ran into the emergency room. It wasn't the first time he had burst into a hospital yelling that.
Nobody seemed to be listening to him, so he yelled louder. Then, he took off down a random hallway, trusting his connection with Scully to guide him to her. It hadn't failed him yet, and just as he turned a corner, he saw a familiar face, sick with worry, waiting outside a room.
"Mulder," Bill Scully scowled, standing up defensively.
"Where is she?"
"You aren't going in--"
"--is she in there? Is she in there?" Mulder asked frantically, technically ramming himself up against the larger man.
"You can't see her!" Bill yelled in his face. Mulder was not above doing to Bill what he had done to Mark. He was about to, when Mrs. Scully stepped out.
"Fox," she said, relieved to see the man. She had worried that he hadn't gotten her message and that Dana would have to go through this without him there. Not only that, she knew he would never forgive himself if he wasn't there for her daughter at this time. She knew how Mulder had been involved with her daughter since she broke the news to him. He was the only person she would expect to do what he had done.
"Where is she?" Mulder asked, immediately softening for the woman who had become like a mother to him.
"She's in there, Fox, but I have to warn you," she started as he pushed past her son, "she's in a pretty bad condition. And she's scared. They're trying to deliver."
Heading the warning, Mulder stepped in the room. There was Scully, in position to deliver, but he could tell something was terribly wrong already. There were countless doctors and nurses in there, and all were covered in blood. Scully's blood. Her baby's blood.
"Mulder," Scully whimpered, reaching out for him. He was drawn to her, and was by her side in seconds. She was pale and sweating, and there was blood and vomit caking her lips.
"Shhhh, Scully, I'm here," he assured her. Their hands found each other, as their hands often did, and she gripped him tightly.
"It hurts so much, Mulder," she told him, tears coming down her cheeks. He knew, even in that state, Scully was fighting not to cry. It wasn't worth it, though. She shouldn't have been focusing on that.
"Don't worry. I'm here and we're going to bring this baby into the world, okay?"
"I'm scared," she admitted.
"Me too."
"Okay, Dana, we need you to push," the doctor said from between her legs. They hadn't even been to Lamaze classes yet, and even if they had, Mulder doubted they would have helped. He and Scully were both running on pure terror.
Scully let out a blood-curdling scream as she fought to push the baby out. Her scream had the effect of a thousand knives ripping through Mulder. He hoped her mother in the hallway couldn't hear, because it surely would have broken her.
"That's good Dana, that's very good. Just a few more, okay?"
"You're doing great, Scully, this will be over soon," Mulder assured her, gripping her hand tighter and pressing kisses to her forehead.
Another few pushes and Mulder's hand (still not completely healed) couldn't take it any more. He would endure whatever pain he needed to, and then some, if it meant that Scully would be able to get through this.
"One more, Dana, one more," the doctor said, trying not to reveal himself to the agents. He was sure the amount of blood he had on his hands and front would cause the already terrified pair to go over the edge.
"Hear that, Scully? One more, just one more push, and you'll have your baby." Scully readied herself, and pushed with more force than she thought she had in her entire body. Even though her eyes were wide open, she couldn't see anything in those last few seconds, and the only sound she could make out was Mulder's voice.
That was because it was the only sound to be heard throughout the room. Of course this was not a normal birth, so it didn't have normal birth sounds. It was deathly quiet in the delivery room; not even the doctors were talking. All that could be heard were Mulder's words of encouragement and Scully's labored breathing.
No baby crying.
"Congratulations, Miss Scully, you have a baby girl," the doctor informed her. He shouldn't have congratulated her.
"Go see her, Mulder," Scully said because she couldn't.
Mulder walked over to the doctors and nurses who were wiping down the still baby.
"Would you like to cut the cord?" a nurse asked. He had never been asked that before. He had never been in a position to be asked that before. Mulder could have kissed the nurse right there. But who he really wanted to kiss was Scully, because she had allowed him to be involved in this pregnancy. He had the chance to experience something he thought he never would before… being a father.
Mulder delicately cut the umbilical cord, which is when he got his first good chance to look at the tiny girl. She was so small, only about the size of the doctor's blood-covered hand. And she hadn't fully developed yet, he could tell. Still, he thought she was the most beautiful thing in the world. And the future that she wouldn't get to have was lain out before his very eyes. Her first steps, first words, first day of school, first date.
They took the baby over to a tiny table, where they cleaned her off as delicately as they could. Mulder could see the still-developing veins through her translucent skin, and every time the nurses touched her arms, she bled. It was hard to see them stick tubes and other machines into the girl, just because they said her heart was beating. So what if your heart beats? If you can't breathe and you fit in the palm of a doctor's hand, are you alive?
Mulder made his way back to Scully just as they finished hooking the baby up to a respirator. She was being cleaned by different nurses, and she had a look on her face that Mulder couldn't exactly pinpoint.
"I'm so proud of you," he whispered into her hair.
"I'm sorry I didn't call you first. It just hit me… the pain…"
"Shhhh, you don't have to be sorry about anything. You did great."
It was several more minutes before the doctor looked up at the two and asked, "Miss Scully, would you like to see your daughter?"
She didn't want to see her daughter. But she couldn't help but see her daughter.
Carefully, as if she were made of glass (she was made of something far more fragile), Scully was handed her baby. Machines and all.
"She's beautiful, Scully," Mulder said once the awe Scully felt when she held the tiny child subsided.
All Scully could do was stare.
"Look, she has your eyes, and your tiny nose…"
"Everything about her is tiny, Mulder."
"I think she's perfect."
If Scully could have slapped him at that time, she would have wasted no time in doing so.
"Mulder, she's three months premature, she can't breathe on her own, she has at least ten different tubes sticking out of her--"
"--she's perfect because she's your's."
Mulder stepped out of the way as Mrs. Scully and Bill were let in the room. They awed over the tiny baby, of course, but their hearts were in their throats. It wouldn't be long before they would have to make a decision. The decision.
They asked her. And she asked that everyone leave.
"Stay, Mulder," she said as he approached the door. Mrs. Scully gave him a loving glance as he shut the door.
There was his Scully, laying in the bed, more exhausted than she knew. Still, she probably wouldn't be able to sleep for the next month or so, not soundly anyway. No matter what decision she made. And there was that small bundle in her arms. With the pink hat on. What he had sacrificed himself for the past six months for, and what he would sacrifice his very own life and happiness for if things worked that way. He took a seat next to them.
"What am I going to do, Mulder?" she asked after a long silence between them.
"No matter what you decide, I'll be there for you every step of the way."
"I don't want reassurances, Mulder. I want someone to make this decision for me."
"She's your daughter, Scully. You have the last say."
"You have been there, Mulder, through everything. And I don't know what I would have done without you. I don't know what I would be like now, in this situation, if you hadn't done what you did for me. So I like to think that I don't have the last say. Because when you decided to mutilate Mark and stand beside me… you became involved in a way that nobody can just ignore now. What should I do, Mulder? What would you do?"
"You have two choices, Scully. And I don't believe either of them are wrong."
"One of them is more right than the other."
"I could understand either way."
"I wanted this baby, Mulder. I've wanted it for a long time. And despite everything I went through when Mark rejected us, I was happy. Because I was going to be a mom. This is the daughter that I never thought I'd have. But she's sick. And even if she pulls through, she'll never be like other kids. We'd both love her no matter what, yes, but there's so much more to life than… this."
A quiet. The decision had been made for them.
"I think you know what you're going to do, then," Mulder said softly, touching the baby's tiny hand. She didn't even have fingernails yet.
"Please don't hate me."
"I could never hate you. Not for this, not for anything."
"Would you… before we do anything… sign the birth certificate?"
"You want me to legally be her father?"
"You are her father, as far as I'm concerned. And I want everyone to know that."
"Then I think I need a pen."
Father McCue wasted no time in getting to the hospital once Maggie Scully called and told him the situation. It hurt to see the baby nestled in Dana Scully's arms. She deserved so much more than this.
"In the name of the father, the son, and the holy spirit," he started, dipping his fingers in holy water and blessing the baby girl. The tubes had been taken out, and it was only a matter of time before she waited for them in heaven.
Mulder had moved his girls so that he was sitting with Scully between his legs on the bed. Maggie Scully and Bill were sitting in the chairs next to the bed. As much as he hated to see his sister with her back up against the man he despised, he knew not to make a scene now. This was his niece's christening. This was what she would have instead of a birthday or first steps.
They went through the motions, said the prayers, even Mulder. Because that was his daughter.
"Have you given her a name?" Father McCue asked when such things became important to know.
They had talked about names, but no decisions had been made. She beat them to it. But Scully looked up with the most certainty she had that day and plainly stated, "Samantha Ann."
Mulder had not cried yet. Not when he saw the love of his life weak and helpless in this bed, not when he heard her screams, not when he saw the tiny baby she had produced. But tears could not help but stream down his cheeks when she told them all her baby's name. Samantha. The one he had been searching for his entire life. The one who lay dying in a pink hat and blanket, who would wait for him in heaven soon. What a comfort it was to know that he had found Samantha, or that she had found him, even if it were for such a short time. His sister. His daughter. Life made strange sense to him.
Father McCue finished the christening before Samantha really left them. Everyone decided it was best to leave her alone with her daughter, to let them share their last few moments together. Mrs. Scully often wondered what place Fox Mulder had taken in her daughter's life, and if there would be any room for anyone else after he occupied a spot there. After all, though they pretended they couldn't see it, their love for each other was so intense and raw that she wouldn't be surprised if it expanded once they really let go for each other. That's how she was able to accept leaving the man with her daughter and grandbaby. It wasn't as if he took her spot. If Fox wasn't there, Dana wouldn't want anyone in the room with her as she gave her daughter to God.
"Do you need anything?" Mulder asked her as her family left the room. There wasn't much else he could say. He wanted her to make the first statement about Samantha.
"You," Scully said, and carefully moved over so he could sit next to her again. They both gazed down at the tiny bundle and knew that this was it. This was their last chance.
"Goodbye, baby girl. I love you so much and I'll always love you. I'm… glad that we got to be together for this long," Scully said, fighting back tears not because she didn't want to be weak, but because she didn't want them to mess up her last goodbye to her daughter.
Mulder saw that it was now his turn to talk to the baby. He fought for the right words.
"I don't really know what to say, kiddo," he started, delicately touching her cheek, "You've been such a big part of my life and you've only been alive for a few hours. And if there's anything I could do that would prevent what was happening to you, I would in a heartbeat. I would, even if your mom begged me not to. I hope you know how much we both love you, and how much we're both going to miss you. Thank you so much, sweetheart, for letting me know what it was like to be a father. Your daddy loves you."
Samantha, maybe as a way of letting them know that she had heard what they were saying, reached up and clutched Scully's finger. It was warm and it filled Scully with overwhelming joy. But a few seconds later that changed.
Her hand went limp.
Her body went cold.
Their daughter had left them.
But she would never really die.
Because within her tiny little hands and tiny little perfect nose, lie something more than just existing. Life is more than just existing. A life is more than waiting for death. In a tiny little girl with a tiny pink hat, two people had found their way. Two blind souls could now see, they could see each other.
Mulder wrapped his arm around Scully's shoulders. And her touched her daughter's perfect cheek. And he promised himself that he would be a father. To her, to Emily, and in the future. There was no one to stop them, after all.