Scully took this chapter and made it her own, without any thought of how it's affect my story line (yet another revision, you can't trust anyone!). This is turning into a very different tale than the simple one I'd initially envisioned. I'm writing with tears in my eyes after Mulder's confession and sadness in my heart with Scully response. You'll see what I mean. I hope you enjoy as much as I've enjoyed both writing it and reading your reviews. I can't thank you all enough for the encouragement.
Fossicking in the keepsake box, Sully came undone with a vial. Still containing deionised water, blue in colour, what it held, what it represented, stirred her memories. Mulder had moved hell and earth to obtain the tiny metallic implant and fought her family to have it entrenched in her neck. Now she understood why, and the importance of this object.
Scully's mind found a single image, focusing on the moment. One memory stood out. In seven years, she realised how important this one recollection, how it truly demonstrated Fox Mulder's feeling for his partner, for HER.
She'd been asleep. Sleep had come in fits and starts. So tired, I'd become so tired, Scully remembered those harrowing days, I took a few moments rest whenever I could. I woke up and felt Mulder at my side.
The image came unbidden. He sat on the floor of her hospital room, her death bed. Father McCue and her family gathered as the day vanished into night. The last rights had been given, just in case she slipped away before the sun reappeared. Scully made her decisions, she'd signed the Not for Resuscitation order with her own hand, realising how futile bring her back would prove. She'd made peace with God and her family. Only Mulder remained. She'd admitted to herself, in that moment, as she contemplated her own demise, exactly what her partner meant to her. She expected to die, couldn't see any other option, there would be no last minute reprieve this time. Regrets filled her mind, remorse at withholding her emotions from Mulder, of what they might have had, if she'd had the courage to acknowledge and show her love.
Like a dream, he half lay on her bed, half kneeled on the floor in a crumpled, broken heap. Mulder's larger, stronger hand covered hers, crushing in its intensity to be close. Brown locks brushed her stomach, his head resting on the pristine white sheets. Beneath, a spreading patch, tears adding to the wetness as more rolled, uncontrolled and silent down his face, his cheek. Each caught in the moon light cascading through the open window. It made the scene even more eerie and depressing as he too realised how soon she might leave him alone and friendless in this world.
Face distorted, contorted in pain, so deep and unyielding, Scully had never seen Mulder in such a depth of despair. Her hand automatically reached out to him, stroking the top of his head, attempting to offer comfort. In his hopeless despondency, he didn't feel her touch, couldn't react to it if he had. Mulder became trapped in a place beyond consolation and reassurance. Resting there, she felt the silent, wracking sobs traveling the length of his body. Shoulders shuddered, his chest heaved in air when he remembered to breath. Throughout it all, not a sound escaped. Scully's emotions, grieved by the sight, joined in the silent requiem.
At the time she thought he cried for all he'd lost, all he would lose in the coming days. Scully still believe that. Now, after his confessions about his first wife, Dana couldn't help drawing the same conclusion Mulder must have on that night, not even a year ago. It's happening again, this horrendous disease is taking away the woman I love for the second time. What have I done to deserve this?
'Mulder,' the word came out as a soft sigh. The exceptional bond between them worked overtime. He'd followed her mental mussing, understood the ramifications just as Scully appreciated a new perspective.
'I tried to tell you last week,' Mulder returned in a muted tone, realising she now understood, comprehended the depth of his feeling for her. In believing, Scully finally allowed the emotions she kept walled away in her heart to break free. A subtle change in her facial expression displayed the devotion and adoration she felt.
Moving closer, the space between them all but non-existent, a hand reached out to cup Scully face. The soft, delicate skin of her cheek against his roughened palm felt like haven. Closing her lids, Dana pushed into the contact as her hand to drift upwards. Finding Mulder's warm skin, she laid her delicate fingers over his. The emotion of the moment too much to take in, Mulder's thumb stroked the darkening patch of skin beneath her eye. Both desperately tired after working all night, they needed this. Mulder and Scully needed this deep and undivided connection. Their future and that of three small, helpless children depended on it.
'I know,' Scully remembered the words. She'd wanted them to be true, for Mulder to truly mean it. She'd been unable to believe at the time, given the amount of pain medication the doctors had pumped into his system. Opening her eyes, capturing Mulder's expressive hazel gaze, she finally accepted the truth.
Needing to feel closer to Mulder, Scully's hand reached behind his head. She remembered the other times they'd been this close. In the hallway of the Allentown hospital, the day Penny passed. Mulder had kissed her in comfort. A kiss of promise, he'd do anything in his power to battle the cancer ravaging her body.
Then came reassignment and transferred to Salt Lake City, effective immediately. He'd begged her to stay, for him. Mulder admitted she made him a better person, a whole person. The kiss might have happened, one meaning so much. Like so many other events in their life, powers beyond them intervened.
The diamond on her left hand caught in the light, bring Scully back to the present. Mulder, unable to wait, lowered his head. They met half way, in a light, gentle kiss. It expressed so much, friendship, the basis of their commitment to each other and the passion that would come, later, at a more appropriate and convenient time.
In yet another rapid change of mood, Mulder pushed up off the couch. Pulling Scully with him, he moved toward the door she'd discovered an hour ago. Watching the tall man pick his way through years of accumulated debris, Scully wonder if he stopped using his bedroom after his wife's death.
Mulder stoped in his tracks, his voice filled with pain. 'I haven't been in this room since Katherine….'
Scully's expression displayed her anxiety for him. Returning to his task, Mulder located the bureau, opened the bottom draw and pulled out a book covered in the same material as Katherine's keepsake box. It didn't take Scully long to realise the photo album accompanied the carton in the living room, completing Katherine Mulder's story.
'You always thought the Diana Fowley's of this world attracted me, Scully,' he quipped, a lingering sadness covering his expression. Making his way back to the couch, he sighed heavily as he left the bedroom, the memories still too much for him to bear. 'I want to show you the kind of woman I fall for.'
The album became a revelation. The first picture, taken at a grave site, showed Katherine wrapped in Mulder's arms. If a photo had been taken in the hallway of the Allentown hospital the day Scully decided to fight her fate, you could swear the women were at least sisters. Katherine, in three inch block heals, fit snuggly beneath Mulder's chin, just as Scully did.
'Katherine was a doctor?' Scully asked, turning the page to see a shot of the woman in a white coat surrounded by medical equipment.
'Medical Scientist,' Mulder answered, 'she worked for the same fertility clinic I used to hide your ova.'
Scully's head snapped around, her eyes capturing Mulder's with a furious glare. The puzzle pieces finally coalesced. While she wanted to be angry with Mulder for once again holding out on her, Scully found her wrath aimed at the clinic for allowing their gametes to be used without their knowledge or permission.
'They used us and our DNA to create three children, Mulder,' Scully stated furiously, 'and implanted them into another woman. If the Gunmen hadn't followed up on this, we'd never know, never get the chance to hold our children.'
Glancing nervously at the mass of papers on his coffee table, Mulder wondered how he'd convey the most important points in the time they had. Taking each of her shoulders in one of his strong, warm hands, he started, 'Scully, I need you to listen to the whole story before you say anything. Do you think you can do that?'
Nodding, she bit the inside of her cheek. Dana Katherine Scully knew she wouldn't like what came next. The dullness creeping into Mulder's expression assured her, he didn't like it either. They'd both been used.
'After being injured early in our marriage, Katherine convinced me to freeze,' suddenly lost for words, Mulder embarrassment coloured his words, 'samples. Knowing how dangerous my work could be, she wanted to have choices. You're going to be my wife, Scully and thanks to Katherine's forward planning, we have choices.'
'Some of those choices have been made for us. Three children are currently in state care. They're our children, Scully, and I can't let them stay there and neither can you. Why they've been conceived and born, I don't have a definitive answer. I now know Dr Scanlon worked at the clinic with Katherine but left shortly after her death. I don't know if this had any bearing on her demand to store my sperm. I suspect she'd become an innocent porn in a much larger game.'
'Part of my donation ended up with Transgen Industries in the hand of Dr Calderon,' forced to stop at Scully's sharply drawn in breath, Mulder saw her connect the dots.
'Emily,' she muttered.
'The first and only successful attempt to incorporate alien DNA into your stolen ova,' Mulder sympathized. 'You never ran Emily's paternity through the DNA data base, Scully. If you had….'
'Oh,' the strangled noise escaped her throat.
'They considered our daughter a failure. They deliberately kept her from us. It didn't matter what you did, Scully,' Mulder attempted reassurance, 'neither of us would have succeeded in adopting her, separately or together. They considered her a tool, learning all they could before they allowed the alien DNA in her system to kill her.'
'I have records of all the attempts made to hybridize your DNA and mine. Scully,' Mulder ensured their gaze remained locked, 'the only successful attempts incorporated both of our genomes. These children are the only living result of all that experimentation and I have proof they are completely human. Most of our genetic material has been erased from the experimental stock. The last eleven blastocysts are safely stored in dry ice in the trunk of my car. We don't have much time to find somewhere to store them, if you want to carry our child one day.'
'Of all the thousands of ova they stole,' Scully swallowed convulsively, working hard to overcome her anger, 'all the damage they did to my body, for what Mulder. They left me barren and didn't care enough to expunge the junk DNA from their experimentation. I lost months of my life.'
Taking the visibly shaking woman into his embrace, Mulder pulled her as tightly against him as possible. Laying a kiss on the crown of her head, he mumbled, 'I know, Scully, I know. I wish I had all the answers for you, but I don't. I know we have three defenseless children who need the care and protection of their parents. No matter how they came to be, they're ours, Scully. Yours and mine and I'm not about to let anyone else raise my children after all we've been through.'
Her tears, held at bay so long, fell. Large, hot drops of salty water wet Mulder's rumpled shirt. He didn't care. This day had become cathartic for both of them.
'Do you honestly think they'll let us have them?' Scully found the courage to ask.
'Yes,' Mulder replied, 'they don't serve any purpose to the greater project. By allowing us custody, they effectively close the X-files, or leave them in the hands of Fowley and Spender which amounts to the same. We won't be able to work together and at least one of us will have to be at home. The emotional upheaval for our little girl will be devastating. Taking an eleven month old will be hard work, Scully. She's at a point in her life where she's learning to explore her environment, using the adults she's come to trust as a safe haven. That's been ripped away from her. She'll need time to develop a relationship with us. If we want to gain her trust and resolve any issues she'll develop because of this, at least one of us needs to be a stay at home parent.'
'They decrease our efficacy as we deal with becoming a family. Even if we did get the X-files back, Scully, it'd be impossible for us to work them together. Apart from the FBI's regulations regarding fraternization between partners, it'd be unsafe for both of us to be in the field together. I'm not about to risk our children becoming orphans for a second time for my selfish reasons. Besides, you'll need to take maternity leave,' Mulder stated easily, 'because the Bureau isn't forward thinking. Unlike Europe, paternity leave for men isn't an option. The best I can do is take the eleven weeks leave the Bureau owes me to help you settle into become a mother of three.'
'I hadn't thought that far ahead,' Scully confessed.
'I am an Oxford trained psychologist,' Mulder's sarcastic humor won him a slight smile from his partner. 'The boys turn a week old today. They'll attach to you easily. They won't remember the transition from one set of parent to another.'
'Three children under the age of one, Mulder,' suddenly the enormity of the situation dawned on Scully. Taking mental stock of what she'd already achieved, Dana added several items to her mental to do list. 'We need to file the licence before our 10am appointment,' she started, intending to divide the workload between them.
'Scully,' Mulder moved a finger to her lips in a gesture meant to silence her, 'Judge Macomb isn't going to marry us. I'm hoping he'll give us temporary custody of our children as he's the one who granted The Sisters of the Poor interim guardianship. He can rescind the ruling with the evidence I've gathered. Genetically these are our children and we have a right to them given the extreme circumstances surrounding their conception.'
'I trust him completely,' Mulder stated with determination as he saw the arguments gather in Scully's orbs. 'I'm not going to play on the connection to Katherine or the fact the profile I wrote captured his brother killer. Harold helped me forge connections in congress which gave me access to confidential information and the X-files. He never believed Katherine's death to be a completely natural event. Until I started work on the X-files, until I saw the things our government did to innocent women, to you, I wouldn't allow myself to believe him. It took me until last night to prove he might be right.'
I honestly don't know how I didn't see it before. Mulder plays Scully's emotions beautifully. They really are very co-dependant.
