Character: Dana Scully
Fandom: The X-Files
Rating: PG-13
Prompt
Dr. Frederick Frankenstein: That music...
Frau Blücher: Yes. It's in your blood - it's in the blood of ALL Frankensteins. It reaches the soul when words are useless.. (Young Frankenstein) 29 on scifi_muses on LiveJournal
Setting: Season Six Episode: One Son
Scully found him in the bullpen, perhaps looks far too delighted at the prospect of packing. Not that there was much left for either of them to clear from their desks. The fire last summer had destroyed most of what was in their office. And their near dismissal just days before had sent much of the rest of it home. Now all that was left were the random bits of office flotsam and jetsam, notepads and pens, file folders and paperclips. Mulder's computer was black and silent as he tossed three packs of yellow, wooden pencils into a cardboard box.
"Packing already," she eyed the meager contents. It was barely eight in the morning on Monday, none of the bullpen menagerie had arrived yet. Usually they stumbled in closer to nine, bleary eyed and wobbly from weekends that were far more exciting than Scully had experienced in a long time.
"Want to get an early start," Mulder frowned at a Styrofoam cup by his computer, glancing down at the liquid inside. "I wonder if I can grow penicillin out of this?"
"If it's green, just toss it," she replied, delicately wrinkling her nose as he threw the contents into the trashcan. She watched him work for several more, long seconds, trying to find words. In the midst of his joy at returning to the X-files, to his work, she knew that this would dampen it.
"I just spoke to Skinner," she murmured quietly in the still office. "Jeffrey Spender was shot. Skinner didn't know where he was, but he was in critical condition when he was carted away."
Her announcement made Mulder stop dead in the act of loading files folders into the box. "When?"
"It happened Friday night, down in the office. We've been cleared to return to the office, but they are trying to ascertain how it happened and when. Security found him about a half-hour after it happened. He nearly bled to death. No one is sure who did it and why."
"Do you know where he was taken?"
"No clue," Scully conceded. "I asked Skinner but no one gave him the information. I can check with him later, if you like."
Mulder nodded, still looked vaguely perplexed by the news. Frankly the story had shocked and baffled Scully. Spender had been a straight shooter, a model agent. He hadn't ever been on a case that could have put him in jeopardy like this. Who could possibly want to kill him?
"I think I have an idea," Mulder replied, his face falling he leaned heavily against his nearly empty desk.
"Who?" Scully moved to sit behind her own desk, watching as Mulder fiddled with a pen in his long fingers, growing more pensive by the moment.
Instead of answering her directly, Mulder simply sighed, scrubbing his face hard as he frowned at some distant spot on the wall beyond where they sat. "You know, when Samantha disappeared, my family splintered. My mother was so angry at the world, my father…he simply shut down. For years I always thought it was because they blamed me for what happened, that I was at fault for Samantha's loss. I tried so hard to make up for it somehow after that. I wanted to make them love me again, for my father to say he was proud of me…so I threw myself into school and sports. And every time I'd come home with a perfect grade or with some sports trophy I'd hope that this would be the moment my father would say, 'I'm proud of you, son.' And when he didn't…well, I'd find ways to act out. So there were incidences of me getting caught behind the baseball clubhouse with a joint in hand, or in the back seat of our old station wagon with the neighbors' youngest daughter. And while it wasn't the reaction I wanted out of them, at least it was a reaction."
Scully listened quietly, wondering where this was all going, but sensing that for Mulder this all had a point. The tragedy of Samantha's disappearance was well known to her, and she wasn't unfamiliar with the way Mulder's parents had fallen apart after their daughter's kidnapping, leaving their twelve-year-old son to try and come to grips with the loss on his own. She had no doubt that Bill and Teena loved their son, but neither one of them could pull themselves together enough to handle the blame and guilt of one teenaged boy. Teena had instead chosen to deny her past and the truths in it, never once explaining to young Fox that this had everything to do with his father and nothing to do with him. And as for Bill, his own guilt ate at him till he was barely a shell of a man by the time he died, only deciding too late to confess the truth of his role in all of this to the son who had carried the brunt of it.
Mulder continued, voice heavy and soft with the regretful memories of twenty-five years. "You know, just before Dad died, when I was laid up in that hospital in Alaska, we talked. I think I couldn't have felt more like shit if I tried then. I thought I had lost my sister, I thought my father blamed me…he told me as much before I left for the Great, White North. And Dad stood by my hospital bed, crying like I never had seen him do, not once. Not even when Sam went missing. And he asked me to forgive him. I didn't know then what he was talking about. Now, I think I do."
He frowned down at the pen still in his fingers, tossing it haphazardly into the box with the other office supplies. "My father and CGB Spender spent years working on this project, Scully. They gave up everything, their families, and their loved ones, all for the hope that in the end their gamble would pay off, that they would stop the inevitable. They played a dangerous game. They tried to steal from Peter to pay Paul. They developed the means by which the alien force could invade and take over this planet, hoping that by showing signs of cooperation they would gain the advantage and ultimately stop it. In the end they didn't bargain for the fact that this entire situation was so much bigger than they were, that their plans could be foiled by factors they didn't even see. Everything my father gave up for this, and in the end it is nearly destroyed."
"How does this all relate to Agent Spender," Scully finally asked, still just as lost as to what Mulder was getting at with all of this.
"My father had to make a choice, Scully, one that my mother to this day has never forgiven him for. He had to choose one family member to give to the project…just one. He tried to avoid it, to ignore it…he had hope that the vaccine he was trying to develop would come through, that all of this would be unnecessary. But in the end they forced him to choose, and so he picked my sister. I'll never know why he chose her over me, and I don't think Mom will ever tell me. But he hoped that in saving me I could do the one thing he couldn't…fight the future. To stand up to these men and not allow them to give in, to fight. All these years, Scully, I fought…I didn't know what I was fighting, I didn't know who, but I bucked the system till I nearly broke from it. And at the most critical juncture, when I should have stood the firmest, it was the one time in my life I failed. The one thing my father wanted from me, the one expectation he had in his entire life for me, and I failed him."
He turned glazed, hazel green eyes to her, blinking hard as his Adam's apple bobbed precariously in his throat. "I gave up that night, Scully. I called you because I was giving in, just like they were. I thought it was done, and there was no stopping the future. In those moments I failed everything my father wanted out of me. And somewhere in New York, a man who never wanted this fight was standing up and trying to stop it. Jeffrey Spender didn't believe in this. All he wanted in life was to be a good agent, to escape the strangeness of his past, of the horrors done to his mother and the coldness of his father. He hated me because I represented everything he had tried to escape from…perhaps all the things he could never be. And on that night of all nights he calls you to stop this, decides to stand up against the father who had so much hope for him. He failed his father too. It seems in a way both of our fathers had dreams for us, to carry on the legacy they tried to instill. We both failed that night. And now Spender has to carry the consequences of his actions."
It took a long moment for what Mulder was saying to sink into her brain. When it did her eyes widened impossibly up at him, her head shaking slightly at the unthinkable. "But Jeffrey is his own son!"
"Which makes the betrayal even more painful, don't you think," Mulder murmured, stuffing his hands into his pockets. "How frustrating must it be for the old man to know that the one child he would ever claim to have was the one standing against him."
"It's disgusting," Scully snapped, horrified as she thought of her own father, of the many issues and conflicts the two of them had. Ahab would never have considered…and yet she was comparing her beloved William Scully to a man so vile as to leave her shivering at the thought of cigarette smoke.
"This is a man who willingly sacrificed his own wife, Scully, who allowed a project to continue for years, using her as a guinea pig. Why would the idea of him trying to murder his son surprise you?"
"Because…it's his flesh and blood. It's his only child."
"Only recognized child," Mulder replied pointedly. "The jury is still out on that point, remember?"
The age-old argument, one that never had been resolved between Mulder and his mother. Teena likely would never give him an answer, not a definitive one. But in Scully's heart, she thought she knew the answer, and it had nothing to do with her science or genetics. "I don't know, Mulder. I think after everything that has happened, everything we both have seen these last few nights, I think that this question has already been answered, don't you?"
His dark eyebrows knit together as he shook his head. She continued, thoughtful. "However you may have felt you failed your father that night, Mulder, in the end you are still standing here, willing to fight. When you tried to walk away from all of this, you came out to that train yard to help me. You perhaps stumbled, but you never completely gave up. And you are still here, ready to throw yourself back into the work, ready to fight. And I think that is a tribute to your father…your real father. I don't think that Bill ever once gave up. Even when everyone else wanted to submit, he refused. Even if it cost him everything in the end, Mulder…he had hope that one day you would be able to do what he couldn't."
Her words, meant as a kindness, but the elicited a disgruntled snort from Mulder, who couldn't meet her eye. "Right, I was the man who was throwing in the towel, Scully. Some legacy I left my father."
"I don't know, Mulder…I think in the end you are more of a credit to Bill than you think you are. I think you honor him in ways that you don't even realize. And if he were here now I'm sure he'd say he was proud of you, like he never got to when he was alive."
Something hit home for her partner as he ducked his dark head, nodding quietly. What Scully wouldn't give for a chance…just one…to have Bill Mulder come back to tell his son the words he longed to hear. She knew that ache in Mulder's heart, knew it intimately well with her own father. And she wished he could find the same assurance in his father's approval that she had found.
"Two fathers, one son," Scully murmured as Mulder wiped at his face surreptitiously. "It's rather like a Greek tragedy when you think about it, because the son can only be true to one of them."
"I don't know, Scully," he sighed, turning to his nearly empty desk, "Perhaps the story is more about one man and two sons, and how his own follies cost him both. That sounds far more tragic."
Scully nodded, leaning back slowly as she considered. "True. But consider this. No matter what genetics say, you are Bill Mulder's son, you are a good man who is determined to finish his work and do what is right…to fight the future. And even if we were to find out tomorrow that this Spender was your biological father, it doesn't change the truth of who you are, or who your real father is. Just remember that."
He turned to look at her again, something of the old intensity burning in his eyes. If she looked close enough she thought she could see the old Mulder, the man who she once thought could move the world. Now she was more circumspect, but no less trusting of him. Perhaps the world could stop Mulder from time to time, but it didn't keep him down. And that was all she could ask for.
"Scully," Mulder finally quietly asked after long moments, the smallest of smiles lifting his full mouth. "What did I ever do to deserve you?"
A flush rose to her cheeks at his compliment, heartfelt as always with Mulder. But despite the honest words the memory of their confrontation at the Lone Gunmen office arose, the bitter argument they had, and the knowledge that he had gone to Diana Fowley afterwards. He had trusted her enough to want to go with her to El Rico, to want to give up. He hadn't trusted Scully. And that would be a hurt that would stay between them for some time.
"I don't know, Mulder," she finally rose from her seat, smoothing her skirt down over her hips. "I try to keep you honest, like you said. It's up to you whether you listen or not. Just don't ever doubt me and my purpose here."
She lifted her chin defiantly at this. "This is personal for me. And I don't trust Diana Fowley. But that doesn't make me that bad guy. You begged me once not to leave you and the X-files. I stayed for you, Mulder…please don't make me regret that decision."
Before he could make a response, the first stragglers of the morning wandered into the bullpen. They hardly seemed to notice either Mulder or Scully, but both agents suddenly found themselves very interested in the detritus of their desks, gathering things up for their return to the basement. Knowing the others would be coming soon, Scully almost couldn't move fast enough.
"Scully," Mulder finally murmured quietly. "I don't want you to ever believe I don't trust you."
Scully didn't answer. She didn't know what to say that wouldn't spark an outright argument, and that's the last thing she wants while they are still in a public space. Instead she took one of the other empty boxes Mulder had carted in and began to fill it with what was left of her things. "Let's just get downstairs for right now. And I'll see if I can't find out a bit more about Spender and his condition. Skinner didn't have any more details."
"Right," Mulder sighed, knowing for now the subject was to be left alone.
