disclaimer: i don't own the x-files, christ carter and all his people do... no infringement intended
"Are we home for real now?" Mulder asked as he carried me into my apartment, bridal-style. My feet had hardly touched the ground since leaving the hospital. Despite my attempts to persuade Mulder that I could walk on my own perfectly fine, he insisted on carrying me. The weird thing was that I let him.
"Hopefully. New meds, new me," I sighed. He carefully lay me down on the couch in my living room, kissing the top of my head while simultaneously grabbing the blanket off the armrest and covering me with it.
"Good. I want you to get some rest, though, Darlin'."
"I'm really not tired, Mulder."
"You've said that before."
"This time, I mean it. I'm full of… maybe not energy, but I'm definitely not ready to just conk out right here."
Mulder huffed, lifting me up slightly and assuming his position behind me. He rubbed the exposed area of skin where my shirt rode up on my stomach. Between that, his warmth, and the kisses he was pressing into the side of my neck, I was about ready to take back what I just said. Mulder, though, actually listened to me for once.
"Alright. But we are not leaving this apartment, do you understand?"
"Yes Sir!" I played. "In fact, I would be perfectly happy if we just sat here all day."
"You mean that?"
"I wouldn't say it if I didn't mean it," I told him, noting the serious tone our conversation was taking. He sighed and went back to kissing my neck. I closed my eyes and got lost. Lost in his touch. Lost in his kiss. Lost in my own mind. Images of a little blue-eyed girl with brown hair and my nose flashed when I became the most comfortable. They were perfectly fine images, until I remembered something about cancer that I wished I had never learned.
Mulder was surprised when I suddenly sat up in his arms.
"What's wrong?" he asked, sitting up with me. My breathing had become labored, and I covered my face with my hands. I promised myself that I wouldn't tell Mulder anything more about my dreams. Did my visions count as a dream? Did I really have to tell him what I saw in order for him to understand? Did I have to tell him at all?
I shook my head as tears started to wet my palms. Mulder knew by now not to push me into saying anything. Instead, he wrapped his arms around my middle and rocked us slowly back and forth. I felt his lips move on the upper part of my back, but I never heard him say anything. He wasn't speaking, not to me. Maybe he was, though. Maybe I needed to listen better.
That was not what I wanted to think about at the time, though. I didn't want to think about how unfair it was to string Mulder along on my emotional roller coasters. He gladly boarded with me, right? He knew what this would do to me. To us.
"I'm not going to be able to have children!" I blurted out before I could stop myself. The rocking suddenly halted, and his lips didn't move. He was trying to decide how to handle this.
"You don't know that for sure," Mulder said quietly as he turned me part of the way around so he could see my tear-streaked face. I was convinced, though.
"I do! I'm never going to have children. Not with the cancer treatment going like it is. I'll be left infertile. I'll never get to be a mother…"
"Don't talk like that," he cooed into my hair as I collapsed into him, clutching the sleeve of his shirt.
"It's true," I said simply after awhile.
"Scully, you'll be able to be a mom. No matter how you do it, if you want to be a mother badly enough, you'll get to be one. There are things you can do, Scully, even if you are left infertile. There's adoption--"
"I don't want to adopt, Mulder. I want to get pregnant. I want to have a baby growing inside of me. I want to give birth to that baby, even though I know it's painful, I still want to feel that. I want to have a child, Mulder. I want to have your child."
I could tell he was slightly taken aback by this confession. He eased his way back into the conversation, though, probably to let me know that he wasn't scared or mad at me for thinking those things so early into our relationship.
"Me? A dad?" he stumbled for words in disbelief.
"I'm sorry," I whispered into his hands, which I had moved upwards toward my face.
"No… Scully," he tried, but was still at a loss, "that… that makes me so happy."
I was surprised, to say the least, at his reaction. I had never thought of Mulder as a father before, I had just seen the little girl and knew that she could be nobody's child except for mine and Mulder's. Her eyes, her nose, her hair, her face. It was like somebody had smashed the two of us together in a small child's body.
"It does?" I could not bring myself to ask him why.
"Yeah. Little babies with you, Scully, what's not to be happy about?"
"I didn't think you'd want to be a dad. You've never mentioned it."
"I have just never found myself in the position. But now that you bring it up… I don't know, Scully. Being a father wouldn't be bad at all. They say it's the most rewarding thing in the world."
"Do you think it would be more rewarding for you than finding Samantha?" I considered his life quest. Of all the things in the world that could be compromised, if Mulder was going to be the a father, he would not be able to work in the field anymore. I would not let him. He would not let himself, after he realized what a danger that would be. Samantha, or a child that may not even be possible?
"I would do whatever I had to do for our child," he said softly. It pained him, I knew it, to talk about giving up on his quest for his sister. I suddenly felt like a horrible person for making him choose so prematurely.
"I'm sorry," I said for the second time that day.
"You apologize way to much, Scully."
"I shouldn't make you choose. That's… unsympathetic of me."
"If the roles were switched, I would ask you the same question. I would expect the same decision. Scully, I will never stop loving my sister. I will never really stop looking for her either, not unless I find her. But if we were blessed enough to have a child… then I would do what it takes to keep them safe and keep myself safe for them. And for you."
"I think it would kill me if you gave up. I would never be able to forgive myself if I knew that there was something that could have been done."
"Maybe there's nothing, Scully. Maybe there's nothing that can be done. Maybe everything has already happened. Maybe I've been wasting my time looking for her. And I would feel so unfulfilled if I gave up a chance for a future with you and a child for a past with Sam."
His words sent a new wave of emotion through me. Here was Mulder, Spooky Mulder, who had spent every day since that night his sister was taken looking for her. Searching for her. Hoping something would turn up. He had dedicated his life in the hope that he would find her someday. He passed up many promising career choices and was thought of a fool because he never gave up hope that Samantha was still alive and waiting for him to rescue her. Everything he had ever done since he was 12 was for her. And he would give that up for me. And for our child. It took a moment of deep breaths before I calmed down enough to realize that Mulder was crying, too. I put my hand to his face.
"Don't give up looking for her yet," I said, wiping the tears away from his gorgeous cheeks.
"Don't give up on our baby yet," he remarked back.
"I won't," I promised him.
"Because," he started, still crying, "you are going to get better. And once you are in remission we will try so hard to conceive. Even if they tell us we can't, we'll still try. We'll show them all. And then, when our baby is born, we'll show them all. And after that baby is born, we'll have another one. Then we'll have another one. We'll have as many babies as you want… as many babies as we can. We'll never stop, if that's what you want." I laughed at the thought.
"Let's just start out small, okay? You, me, and our baby girl."
"It's going to be a girl?"
"I think it will be. She'll have your hair and my eyes--"
"Hopefully not my nose," Mulder smiled, kissing mine.
"I wouldn't mind if she had your nose," I told him.
"Either way, if she looks anything like you, I'm going to have to beat the boys away with a stick."
"Until one comes along that reminds her of you."
"Yeah. I'd beat that one away with the entire tree."
i guess i'm on a writing frenzy now... good for this story because it needed a little attention :) don't worry, i'm still working on the other one. review please! i have a special reward for the 100th review in mind already!
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