Mulder's eyes widened as he mouthed, "Pregnant?" Alice nodded. He began to smile, pulling her over to him and into a hug.
"Mulder, I'm terrified," she whispered into his ear.
"Me too, but I promise I'll be here for you." He ran a hand through her hair, adding, "I... wow. How long have you known?"
"Just a couple of days." She sat up, explaining, "I was going to tell you earlier, but then we found out Scully was alive, and all that. I didn't want to trouble you with it then. But I thought you ought to know." She wanted to ask about the DNA anomalies in his personnel file, but it wasn't the time. She had surprised him enough for that morning. "I still can't believe it myself. I mean, I didn't think I'd be having a kid at this point in my life. Maybe in a few years, but..."
"Neither did I. I'm kind of old to be a dad, aren't I? I'm practically old enough to be your dad."
She leaned her head on his shoulder, wrapping an arm around his waist. "You'll be a great dad, Mulder."
They spent the rest of the day lazily researching the process they would have to put Scully through. Essentially, she would have to be brought extremely close to death to make the alien think that it's vessel was in danger and that it wasn't worth staying around. At that point, it could be captured and returned to space (or its craft, if it could be found among the hundreds of aircraft hangars the government has around the country). However, "Scully would have to be almost dead to make this thing let go of her. We're going to have to freeze her and inject her with all sorts of things, by the looks of it," Alice observed, looking up from a heavy book. "We're going to need a lot of stuff."
"It'll be risky," Mulder confirmed, "but if we can do it right, she should be okay."
The next day, they arrived at a military hospital facility with briefcases of materials. Passing through different levels of clearance, they finally reached where Scully was being held. An armed guard opened the cell door for them, allowing them to enter. Scully sat there looking bored, drawing detailed diagrams of a ship that the normal Scully would never have dreamed up. "If it isn't Mulder 1, 2, and 3."
Alice glanced down at her stomach. She wasn't even close to showing yet. How could the creature have known? "Hello to you too," She smiled.
"I'm not going to let you go through with your tests, you know," it told her, staring at the briefcases they held.
Mulder set his down. "I know. We want to talk, though."
"About what? About the sad, scared little boy whose daddy sold his sister off to some aliens, who tries to find answers that don't exist, the boy who no one loves? Or about the poor little girl who is nothing but a younger replacement for the woman he really loved? The man, scared that his relationship will fail and his child will turn out just as screwed up as the last one, all because of him? The woman who is afraid of so many things, yet only wants her husband to make someone jealous, deluding the man into thinking she loves him?"
"Stop it," Alice spat. "That's not true."
"Why marry a man who could be your father? Why marry a woman with the same hair color and the same job as the one you wanted to spend your life with? Why-"
"Give it a rest," Mulder commanded. "We came here to talk about you, not us. Where'd you come from?"
"I'm not answering any more government questions. I had enough of them. 70 years too many."
"What's that you're drawing, then?" Alice asked, moving to see the paper. Mulder walked over on the other side as Scully looked at Alice, and quickly stuck her with a needle full of sedatives. Alice reached out to catch her as she fell. "I'm surprised that worked."
"We might have less time, though. Who knows what that alien is doing to her metabolic system." Mulder and Alice pulled Scully into a standing position and carried her down the hall, straight into the closest refrigerated unit they could. They had already set up a bin full of ice water, which they carefully set her into.
Alice got to work immediately, popping open their briefcase sand removing several vials and needles. "I'm going to draw some blood before we start injecting her. Maybe it'll teach us something."
Mulder nodded, watching her work. "What do we start with?"
"I'm going to start with a standard saline solution, and then just run an IV if I can. That way we an just keep switching things out." She screwed the vials of blood closed and set them in a styrofoam container.
"You have all the antidotes, right?"
"Of course."
It was a long wait in the freezer room. They had watched her heart rate and blood pressure slowly fall, and Alice had begun injecting her with all sorts of solutions. "I started with more potent versions of standard vaccines. Chickenpox, MMR, all the stuff we've been inoculated against."
"What have you got running now?"
"Heroin."
"Heroin? You're making her OD?"
"Kind of," she admitted. "The body needs to be as close to death as possible." She pulled her coat tighter around herself, leaning into Mulder, who sat next to her.
"Are you cold?"
"I'm sitting in a freezer, throwing ice into a bath to freeze an alien. So yeah, a little bit," she laughed.
"What if she was right? It, I mean."
"About what?"
"About me screwing things up. Again."
"Nothing that alien said is true," Alice promised him. "You're a wonderful husband, and I'm sure you'll be a great father. And I love you. I love you so much, you can't begin to quantify it."
"But what if-"
"Mulder, you have to trust me. You're not going to mess anything up."
"You're not a replacement for Scully."
"What?"
"She said that I married you because I couldn't have Scully. You're not a replacement. You're... The first time I met you, you didn't object to my theories. You didn't think I was insane or spooky or anything. You've done nothing but defend me since, and when you don't agree, it's usually for a logical reason. You're not a replacement for Scully. You're way more than her. You're what I've always wanted." He kissed the top of her head.
"Fox, you really do know how to charm a girl whose freezing her ass off."
"You know, I even made my parents call me Mulder."
"Really? Well, I'll call you what I feel like calling you." She smiled and pecked his cheek, adding, "I love you, Foxy Mulder."
"Hmm... I think you should call me that from now on."
Alice laughed. "We'll see. Maybe I will."
"Hey, did she just-"
"Alice, Mulder..." Scully was sitting up, the green glow fading from her eyes. "Help me..." They rushed to the side of the ice bath. "Where am I? Why..?"
"She's fighting," Alice smiled. "Scully, your body's been taken hostage by some sort of alien creature. We're trying to flush it out."
"Well I'm freezing." She winced, opening her eyes to reveal the glow again. "You can't... do this... easily..."
"We've got all day," Mulder advised the creature as Alice added another chemical into the IV bag.
"Try me, Spooky."
They sat back, watching it fade in and out of consciousness. Every so often, Scully's head would jerk up, one of them having won the battle for control. "Why do you tell people off for calling me 'Spooky' so much?" Mulder asked, putting an arm around Alice as they stared at the creature.
"You may have gotten used to it, but it's awfully cruel. Have you heard the things they whisper about you? They think you're crazy, that you're weird, that there's something wrong with you. 'Spooky Mulder' is one of those nicknames kindergarten bullies stick to because they never emotionally mature beyond that."
"Well, I might be crazy. For a long time, the FBI made me think I was. It could've gotten to me."
"You're not crazy, Mulder," she countered. "You're wickedly smart, and I think that scares them. But you're also incredibly sweet."
"You know, they talk about you too. About you being weird enough to be with me, about Stockholm Syndrome and all sorts of things."
"They're idiots," Alice resolved, laying her head on his shoulder.
"Help me..." They turned to see that this was Scully, not the creature, talking. "Please..." She began to cry, glancing up at her IV. "What are you doing to me?"
"We have to," Mulder painfully explained. "We've got to get this thing to leave you."
"You're killing me."
There was a commotion outside, the door bursting open. A group of armed men came in, one of them saying, "We have a cease and desist order. Agent Scully needs to be taken down to the laboratories."
Mulder and Alice stood up, blocking them with their bodies. "She can't be moved," Mulder declared, counting their guns. "She's getting close to a near-death state. She's going to need medical treatment soon."
"Mr. Mulder, you know what we can do."
"I also know that if an agent dies on your watch, you'll cover it up. You can't silence everyone."
Scully coughed wretchedly, shivering. "Mulder, Alice..." Alice backed over to her, Mulder still standing off with the group of men. Scully coughed again, the blood pressure monitor dropping drastically. Her heartbeat had slowed to a crawl. With one final cough, a green most began to form above her, turning into the figure of a small alien. It gave a cry before disappearing, floating into the air vents.
"Quickly, she needs a doctor," Alice instructed, pulling Scully out of the ice bath and wrapping her in towels. "Get a wheelchair or something. If we don't get her into the medical wing in the next five minutes, she's going to die." One of the men ran for a wheelchair as Alice switched the toxic IV cocktail for an antitoxin. "It's Naloxone. It'll combat the drugs for now, but she might need a round of dialysis. And we need to get her core temperature up."
"Thank you," Scully whispered as the man returned with a wheelchair. She was gently deposited into it before they began to rush for the medical wing.
"We've got to keep her talking. What do you remember? What was it like?" Mulder asked as they took a sharp left turn.
"I don't remember. We were in the hotel... I went for towels... Where am I?"
"You're at a military base outside of DC. You were possessed by an alien," Mulder told her. "We had to do all of this to get rid of it."
"What did I miss?" she breathed, looking over at Alice. "Your hand..." Alice smiled, taking her hand in her left, showing Scully the ring and trying to keep her from getting frostbite. "Engaged?"
"Married. You were gone for a while. You missed a lot."
"Congratulations." They helped to lift her onto a heating pad, covering her in blankets as she was hooked up to several instruments near her bed. She closed her eyes with a smile.
"You can't sleep yet." Alice shook her shoulder, saying, "Besides, I haven't told you everything."
"What?" Scully winced as she turned to see Alice better. "Are you..."
"Yeah." She put a hand to her stomach, adding, "But that's fairly new."
They sat up with her, talking until a doctor verified that her temperature had reached a safe level and she could go to sleep. Scully would need to stay there for a few days to make sure he drug cocktail wasn't going to do any lasting damage, but she would be released by the end of the week if everything went well.