Ch 9 – To What End?

Eleven Months Earlier - October 2014

Scully winced as she drove, pain suddenly ripping through her core as the girls argued loudly in the backseat.

"Oooh." She groaned uncomfortably, her own cry going unnoticed.

Scully wasn't sure what'd precipitated the cramping sensation she'd been enduring on and off since that morning. She knew it wasn't her time of the month, although that'd been desperately erratic since her abduction years before… And she refused to believe it was the stress brought when she found that Mulder had packed a bag that morning, and left a note.

Although, that's when she'd felt that first pain: the second she read that note.

She still didn't know how she'd tell the girls their father had left. Just up and left without an explanation or a goodbye. Scully found herself on the brink of tears, torn between her heartbreak and her anger.

She wasn't sure what upset her more, the fact that he'd just simply walked off without explanation, or the knowledge that he'd done it again, that he'd put her and their children in jeopardy all over again to rejoin the cause that'd cost them both so dearly. And to what end?

To restart the X-Files without consulting her, seemed the biggest betrayal of all.

"Hey, stop it!" Molly cried. "Mommy! Mommy help, she's hitting me!"

"No I'm not! Mom she lost my sweater at recess! And then she bit me!"

Scully's hand slowly, but instinctually drifted to her middle, the pain suddenly growing deeper and duller at once, leaving her lightheaded and almost numb.

"No I didn't!" Molly cried.

"Will both of you just knock it off?!" Scully yelled in her most commanding tone.

"Mom look out!"

"Ahhhhhhhhhhh!"

All three of them screamed as Scully swerved off the road and into the dirt. The girls sobbed as the car came to a sudden standstill, Molly climbing into Maggie's embrace, both girls clinging to each other, forgetting about their fight.

They didn't know it, but the sound of their terrified screaming had covered their mother's sudden, pain-filled cry. Scully wavered in shock, almost gasping as the pain shot through her like fire. She winced, seeing only bright white light for a flash of a second, before she looked down, finding her crotch was completely covered in blood.

'Aa.. Oh…oh, no… no please…' She panicked, swallowing hard, her heart starting to race.

Scully understood in an instant, wondering how she could've been so stupid to have not realized before. She bit her lip, tears of pain and sorrow forming in her eyes, anger brewing in her heart.

"Mom!" Maggie asked, she leaned into the front seat, trying to see what was happening. "Are you okay?"

But poor Molly just continued crying. "Daddy I want my daddy!" She cried so hard she could barely get it out, the little girl's words causing her mother to simply start sobbing.

'Oh Mulder.' She thought, pressing her hand deeper into her emptying middle as she winced once more. 'How could you? For our kids, how could you?'

…..

September 2015

"Wow." Molly Mulder whispered, her little eyes growing wide with an odd mix of amazement and trepidation as she explored the long, futuristic-looking corridor.

Mulder and Scully's little girl had never seen anything quite like this place. Everything was sleek, and so unusually bright that it was nearly translucent. Yet, the lights were somehow eerily dimmed. It was something the human eye couldn't quite calculate, an almost otherworldly glow that was at once both gorgeous and so unnatural that it gave her very soul pause. Molly's tender gaze shifted upward, catching a glimpse of the sparkling night's sky, notting now that the ceiling was open to the heavens above.

"Daddy would love this." She considered out loud, not realizing that her little eyes met not with the normal night's sky she gazed upon with her father, but with open space itself. "Huh?" She asked, her ears perking up when she heard violent coughing down the hall.

Curious and far too brave, she tiptoed down the corridor, toward the source of the hacking cough, after a few moments, coming to realize that it was William. She furrowed her brow in concern, her little steps picking up pace, when suddenly —

"Molly, what are you doing up at this hour?"

"Ha!" She gasped, her heart starting to thunder the instant she heard his voice.

Molly gulped as she turned around, terrified to see the Smoking Man standing there, staring down at her with humored disapproval, a slight smirk on his aged face. She took a moment to consider her options, knowing she'd loose power if she showed her Grandfather any sense of fear. Scared or not she'd have to play her cards just right.

"I…" She still didn't quite know what to say. "Your ship is pretty." She lied simply, feigning innocence.

"Esmerelda put you to bed, over an hour ago…" He almost teased.

Molly had been too young to find it creepy that the Smoking Man had a room, a maid, and perfectly fitted pajamas all prepared for her when she'd arrived that evening, but it was. Tremendously so.

"William?" She asked, pointing toward her coughing brother's room.
"Molly my cherub." He sighed almost kindly. "Your brother is … Ill." The Smoking Man paused awkwardly, listening to his grandson cough his brains out in the other room.

"Will he be alright?"

The Cigarette Smoking Man paused in consideration, deciding, as always, to gloss over the truth. Kind of. "He cannot serve the purpose he was created for. I had made other plans, upon finding out he was ill." He shrugged, recalling Scully's miscarriage. "But they ended prematurely."

Molly turned around, still staring sadly in her brother's direction. She jumped, unable to hide it this time when she felt a hand on her cheek, her grandfather forcing her to look up at him.

"And now, that's where you come in. Cherub."

Molly's eyes went wide.

….

"Where the hell are we going?" Scully asked as Mulder drove madly into the night, putting his foot on the gas as if attempting to outrun a raging fire. "We don't even know what took her, or if…"

"A top secret military base in Georgia, Democrat Hot Springs, Georgia." He said, the car speeding so fast it practically landed with a 'thud' as they drove off the main road and onto a gravel one.

"Where William was born…" She considered.

"Scene of the crime." He winked. "I'm sure it's where she's being taken."

"By whom….?"

Mulder sighed harshly, as if it were too much to explain.

"By who Mulder!"

He still said nothing.

"Tell me what you're thinking, otherwise I'm going to jump out of this car and run back in the other —"

"Look I think this is all connected to William's kidnapping." He said quickly.

"HIS WHAT?! What happened to his parents?" Scully could barely finish the phrase, finding it painful to call those people his parents. She gulped, swallowing the bile in her throat.

"Scully. I didn't want to tell you this way…"

"Tell me what." She pressed angrily.

"William is…"

Mulder wasn't sure which bomb to drop first, or which she'd take harder: the one about his being ill, or the one about the true reason for his existence. Both had been the reason he'd left home almost a year prior, and both were the reason he'd come to collect his family. He didn't want to say it now, feeling that a speeding car was not the best place to deliver devastating news about their son.

"Tell me!"

"Scully, first off. William was taken because he's sick."

"Sick?" Scully winced, reacting to the world like a slap in the face. "Sick like what like …"

Mulder shot her a cold stare, not wanting to spell it out for Maggie's sake. "Emily." He mouthed.

Scully's heart dropped and her throat ran dry, the number of implications over this flooding to her mind, her eyes filling with pain. Scully whimpered in stunned, crushed silence, the memory of her baby boy moving his own mobile flashing before her. She turned quickly, looking back at her sleeping daughter in panic.

"What else?" She gulped, pressing him. "What about Molly? Why did they want my little girl!"

Scully jumped again, a sudden, vivid memory of her own abduction invading her senses, not like a memory: like a flash of something she could simply step into and experience.

"What do they want with my baby!" She shouted.

"A replacement."

"A replacement?"

"William cannot meet the expectations he was … created for Scully."

"Created for?" She furrowed her brow.

"Scully…"

"Damn it Mulder!" Scully cried, hitting the dashboard. She turned to him with dagger eyes, hissing. "Damn you!"

"They're both safe! Kind of …. I know for sure they're with him. No harm will come to them. I promise. We'll get there in time."

"Mulder…" Scully cautioned, her concern piquing, knowing who the 'him' was right away "Think about the things he did to me!"

"The Smoking Man?" Maggie asked groggily as she emerged from her place in the backseat, rubbing her head which she'd hit many times as her father sped down the road.

Mulder and Scully exchanged confused glances, baffled that she knew that name.

"Y-you know the Smoking Man?" Scully asked.

"They may've met a couple of times." Mulder muttered under his breath, Scully's eyes widened in fury.

"That guy's our grandpa, right?" Maggie continued, rubbing her head. "He's your real dad, right dad?"

"I…" Mulder was almost at a loss for words.

"He used to come and watch me at soccer."

"What?!" Mulder and Scully cried.

"Yeah. He'd always waive and everything, and tell people he was my grandfather… But then root for the other team against me."

"Yeah." Mulder said, an air of sarcasm in his tone. "Sounds like dad."

…..

"I don't understand." Molly complained as the Smoking Man ushered her back down the hall, William still coughing in the distance.

"Well. All in due time." He considered.

The powerful man laughed almost blithe-fully, completely dismissing the child's concern for her sibling.

"Is that why you said he was in-inf-"

"Inferior? No, no, no. William's illness is a whole separate matter from his inferiority." He said, as if humored by this as well.

Molly and the Smoking Man paused, both glancing back awkwardly toward William's quarters, where the teen could be heard wheezing now.

"My mommy's a doctor." She said suddenly. "We should get mommy. She'll know how to help. And plus she's his mom. Right?"

The Smoking Man didn't reply and simply continued to pull the child down the hall.

"Right?" She asked again.

"Time for bed, child."

….

"Mommy." Molly whispered.

The little girl lie in bed, staring straight up at the open ceiling, the room pitch black save for the glistening stars above. She twiddled her fingers, nervously, finding herself too upset to even attempt sleep. She hiccuped, failing to hold back tears that, try as she might, now slid down her little red cheeks.

The Smoking Man had put her to bed, tucking in her in with surprising, tender care that made Molly wonder if he'd done this before. The Cigarette Smoking Man followed this ritual with a rather cautionary bedtime story. Molly had been delighted when he'd offered her story, but her heart sank when he began to tell her the tale of Bambi, the story of a little deer whose mother had died because he went out where he wasn't supposed to. Molly gulped at the thought, unable to help but pine for her mother anyhow, now fully realizing she was in trouble.

"Mommy find me. Please find me." She almost mouthed rather than said.

….

"Find me." Scully said softly, Molly's whisper echoing in her heart.

"What?" Mulder questioned.

Scully closed her eyes, listening intently as the car sped along.

"Find me."

"Scully?"

"No Mulder, turn around!"

"What?"

"I can hear her she's calling me, turn around!"

In that instant, the car went dead, screeching to a halt, skidding off the road then stopping flat when engulfed in bright, white, otherworldly light.