CHAPTER 7
"Ok . . . where to start, where to start?" Mulder was staring at the grass, with a faraway look in his eyes.
"At the beginning. I heard you were in Chicago. How did you get there?" Dana asked.
"Well, I kept working on the X-Files for about a year after you left. They gave me a new partner, but it just wasn't the same. She refused to believe in anything we saw. Her reports were what closed down the X-Files. They transferred me to a Detroit field office. I spent several months there, profiling drug dealers, murderers, rapists, and then there was the whole terrorist scare. It wasn't what I wanted to do, but I knew I had to bide my time. I just kept hoping that something would happen, and the X-Files would be reopened. Then I got the big break I had been hoping for. My boss got a call from the Chicago office. They had found an abandoned warehouse that they had thought was part of a drug trafficking ring. Boy, were they surprised. That warehouse had a lot more than drugs. It was the site of one of the hybridization experiments, but the whole thing had gone wrong. The hybrids had started dying. Some mutant virus had swept through the place. Luckily the Chicago boys had had enough sense to bio-contain the place. We still aren't sure if the virus was a hazard to humans, but we suspect it might have been. Anyways, it was basically gone by the time we got in there. So this place is a mess. They just completely pulled out of the project and left everything. The dead hybrids were still there and there were files everywhere. We think they took all vital files and just ran. So we took the rest of the files and took pictures of everything. It's a good thing we did too, because the place burned to the ground that night. The files that were left were just lists of names of people associated with the project. Whole pages were blacked out. So we went after the people who weren't. Many of them were dead before we got there. Some had had 'accidents,' others had died of an unexplained illness. We think that was from the alien virus, but we can't be sure. A bunch of the men from the top of the list had just disappeared. No sign of them ever having been at the addresses on the list. We never found any of them. We think they were the higher ups who ran to save their own asses. There were only about 15 to 20 names left to investigate after all that. One of the names I got was Spencer Case. So I go to this ritzy apartment building in one of the richest neighborhoods in Chicago. A woman answers the door. She's pretty - long, dark hair, really blue eyes, tall. I introduce myself as Special Agent Fox Mulder of the FBI, and she faints dead away. When she came too, she was petrified of me. She kept asking me who I was, so I showed her all the ID I had. She started crying then. I asked her what was wrong. She said that she had had a brother named Fox Mulder. Her name was Samantha Case. Samantha, Scully. She was my sister."
"Oh my God, Mulder. What . . . how?"
"She said that she had been born Samantha Mulder. When she was five, she moved in with her uncle, a man by the name of Robert Stark, supposedly. Stark told her that her entire family had died in a car accident. She remembered me from when we were little. They didn't try to keep information about the family from here. They told her all about me and our parents. I'm not really sure why, but they even showed here pictures. And wait, Scully, before you say anything about what I wanted to believe and everything, I had tests run, and she was a hundred percent human, and she was my sister. We spent several hours together that day, just talking about everything there was to talk about. Her husband Spencer, he had been working on the project. He showed up dead later that week, shot in the back of the head. The authorities called it a mugging, but I knew. Sam just accepted that explanation. She was so trusting. She accepted some story he had told her about what he did for a living. Shortly after Spencer's death, I was pulled from the case. We all were. Some explanation came out of nowhere for what we had seen in that warehouse, for what the pictures showed. Convenient, huh?"
She nodded knowingly.
"So I put in a request to be moved to the Chicago office. I got an apartment and Sam and her daughter moved in with me. I figured, oh, I don't know, that I would be able to protect them better if they were with me. The three of us got to be really close, really fast. Her daughter, Sierra, was ten when they moved in with me, so I tried to give them a normal life. There was no trace of the Consortium or the conspiracy in our lives. Then Sam got sick. I had finally found my sister, and I lost her again after a year. She died on the one year anniversary of her husband's death. It was cancer."
He paused and took a deep breath. His eyes got misty.
"She had left everything to me in her will. Including her daughter. So it was just the two of us for a bout a month, when, out of nowhere, my claim to guardianship was contested. It was Spencer's brother, Kenneth Case. Because he was married, the court gave him custody right off the bat. Then his wife left him. And all this stuff came out about his connections to the Consortium. But you know that doesn't hold up in the courts. So, legally, we were on an even ground. I appealed. My lawyer used the fact that Sie had lived with me for a year before her mother's death, and Ken hadn't even shown up on her life until now. So they hit back with some interesting little facts from my past. They brought in all this stuff from the X-Files, tried to make me look crazy. Your notes in the case files really helped. Thanks. You made me look less like Spooky Mulder."
He looked right into her eyes then, and she felt his gratitude.
"Skinner even came down to testify on my behalf. My lawyer wanted to bring you out there, but I wouldn't let them bring you into it. The trial went on, back and forth like that for six months. Sierra got to stay with me the whole time, because I lived in her school district, and the judge ruled that it would be better for her that way. In the end, the ruling was that Sierra would get to stay with me for a six month trial period, and if a psychologist says that she is well-adjusted and doing good at the end of it, she gets to stay with me. Then I got a call from Skinner. They're reopening the X-Files. I knew that with Sierra with me now, I couldn't just be taking off and running halfway across the country to investigate aliens and monsters and conspiracies. And I told him that. We worked something out that satisfied both of us, so I went to the judge and asked if I could move Sierra to DC. The only way it could happen would be if she was completely ok with it. She had a meeting with a child psychologist and they decided that she would actually be better off there. She said that Chicago reminded her too much of her parents and that she was depressed there. So here I am. Sierra is pretty well settled in at school, and I am just happy to have her with me. She reminds me so much of Sam. I think that this is my second chance. I only got a year with my sister, but now I get a lifetime with her daughter. It's kind of weird though, I went from having no kids at all to having a 12 year old girl. I'm afraid I won't be able to give her everything she needs."
"Oh, Mulder, you'll be good for her. I know she's much better off with you than with some guy she doesn't know who has ties to that cigarette smoking bastard."
"Thank you Scully. Knowing you have faith in me means a lot to me. You mean a lot to me. I've missed you."
"I've missed you too. I wish . . . I wish things could have been different."
"I know. Me too. I could have used your support during the trial."
"You know, Mulder, I would have been there in a heartbeat if I had known you needed me. And I would have loved to have someone by my side the times I was alone. When Patrick was in trouble."
"You were my best friend, Scully. I don't know how I let you slip away."
Neither of them said anything after that. They each had their own reasons for letting the other out of their life, and neither wanted to think about that.
"Mulder, you said you worked something out with Skinner. What's the deal?"
"I am going to be a kind of consultant for the X-Files. I'm going to help them find and train new agents and consult with them on cases. I'm also going to be teaching profiling at Quantico. I'm surprised you haven't heard anything there. Some people are a little upset about me coming on. My reputation still speaks for itself."
"Oh, I took a leave at Quantico after Patrick died. I've been off since. I'm not sure when I'm going back. Hell, I'm not sure if I am going back. I need to get my kids settled, find a new house, and then see where I am. That's more important. I think my kids need their mother more than I need to be working at this point in time."
"Scully, can we talk about . . ." He trailed off.
"What Mulder?"
"Well, that one night. We never talked about it. I just . . . I don't know what I am trying to say." Dana couldn't believe that he had brought it up. She had known that it would come up, that they would have to talk about it, but now?
"Mulder, I don't know what to say." When she said those words, she knew that she would have to tell him. And if she didn't do it now, she never would. "There's something I need to tell you, but I don't know how." He was staring at her now. She knew he was trying to figure out what she was hiding. Before either of them could say anything, however, the sliding door slid open. Neither turned to look. They were to busy staring into each other's eyes. Then Emma came running over and threw herself into her mother's lap.
The connection was broken.
A/N: Sorry again about it taking so long. The next part is written, I just need to type it up, but the semester is coming to a close, and I have a lot of work due very soon. I'll try to be prompt. Thanks for reading. PLEASE review!!!
"Ok . . . where to start, where to start?" Mulder was staring at the grass, with a faraway look in his eyes.
"At the beginning. I heard you were in Chicago. How did you get there?" Dana asked.
"Well, I kept working on the X-Files for about a year after you left. They gave me a new partner, but it just wasn't the same. She refused to believe in anything we saw. Her reports were what closed down the X-Files. They transferred me to a Detroit field office. I spent several months there, profiling drug dealers, murderers, rapists, and then there was the whole terrorist scare. It wasn't what I wanted to do, but I knew I had to bide my time. I just kept hoping that something would happen, and the X-Files would be reopened. Then I got the big break I had been hoping for. My boss got a call from the Chicago office. They had found an abandoned warehouse that they had thought was part of a drug trafficking ring. Boy, were they surprised. That warehouse had a lot more than drugs. It was the site of one of the hybridization experiments, but the whole thing had gone wrong. The hybrids had started dying. Some mutant virus had swept through the place. Luckily the Chicago boys had had enough sense to bio-contain the place. We still aren't sure if the virus was a hazard to humans, but we suspect it might have been. Anyways, it was basically gone by the time we got in there. So this place is a mess. They just completely pulled out of the project and left everything. The dead hybrids were still there and there were files everywhere. We think they took all vital files and just ran. So we took the rest of the files and took pictures of everything. It's a good thing we did too, because the place burned to the ground that night. The files that were left were just lists of names of people associated with the project. Whole pages were blacked out. So we went after the people who weren't. Many of them were dead before we got there. Some had had 'accidents,' others had died of an unexplained illness. We think that was from the alien virus, but we can't be sure. A bunch of the men from the top of the list had just disappeared. No sign of them ever having been at the addresses on the list. We never found any of them. We think they were the higher ups who ran to save their own asses. There were only about 15 to 20 names left to investigate after all that. One of the names I got was Spencer Case. So I go to this ritzy apartment building in one of the richest neighborhoods in Chicago. A woman answers the door. She's pretty - long, dark hair, really blue eyes, tall. I introduce myself as Special Agent Fox Mulder of the FBI, and she faints dead away. When she came too, she was petrified of me. She kept asking me who I was, so I showed her all the ID I had. She started crying then. I asked her what was wrong. She said that she had had a brother named Fox Mulder. Her name was Samantha Case. Samantha, Scully. She was my sister."
"Oh my God, Mulder. What . . . how?"
"She said that she had been born Samantha Mulder. When she was five, she moved in with her uncle, a man by the name of Robert Stark, supposedly. Stark told her that her entire family had died in a car accident. She remembered me from when we were little. They didn't try to keep information about the family from here. They told her all about me and our parents. I'm not really sure why, but they even showed here pictures. And wait, Scully, before you say anything about what I wanted to believe and everything, I had tests run, and she was a hundred percent human, and she was my sister. We spent several hours together that day, just talking about everything there was to talk about. Her husband Spencer, he had been working on the project. He showed up dead later that week, shot in the back of the head. The authorities called it a mugging, but I knew. Sam just accepted that explanation. She was so trusting. She accepted some story he had told her about what he did for a living. Shortly after Spencer's death, I was pulled from the case. We all were. Some explanation came out of nowhere for what we had seen in that warehouse, for what the pictures showed. Convenient, huh?"
She nodded knowingly.
"So I put in a request to be moved to the Chicago office. I got an apartment and Sam and her daughter moved in with me. I figured, oh, I don't know, that I would be able to protect them better if they were with me. The three of us got to be really close, really fast. Her daughter, Sierra, was ten when they moved in with me, so I tried to give them a normal life. There was no trace of the Consortium or the conspiracy in our lives. Then Sam got sick. I had finally found my sister, and I lost her again after a year. She died on the one year anniversary of her husband's death. It was cancer."
He paused and took a deep breath. His eyes got misty.
"She had left everything to me in her will. Including her daughter. So it was just the two of us for a bout a month, when, out of nowhere, my claim to guardianship was contested. It was Spencer's brother, Kenneth Case. Because he was married, the court gave him custody right off the bat. Then his wife left him. And all this stuff came out about his connections to the Consortium. But you know that doesn't hold up in the courts. So, legally, we were on an even ground. I appealed. My lawyer used the fact that Sie had lived with me for a year before her mother's death, and Ken hadn't even shown up on her life until now. So they hit back with some interesting little facts from my past. They brought in all this stuff from the X-Files, tried to make me look crazy. Your notes in the case files really helped. Thanks. You made me look less like Spooky Mulder."
He looked right into her eyes then, and she felt his gratitude.
"Skinner even came down to testify on my behalf. My lawyer wanted to bring you out there, but I wouldn't let them bring you into it. The trial went on, back and forth like that for six months. Sierra got to stay with me the whole time, because I lived in her school district, and the judge ruled that it would be better for her that way. In the end, the ruling was that Sierra would get to stay with me for a six month trial period, and if a psychologist says that she is well-adjusted and doing good at the end of it, she gets to stay with me. Then I got a call from Skinner. They're reopening the X-Files. I knew that with Sierra with me now, I couldn't just be taking off and running halfway across the country to investigate aliens and monsters and conspiracies. And I told him that. We worked something out that satisfied both of us, so I went to the judge and asked if I could move Sierra to DC. The only way it could happen would be if she was completely ok with it. She had a meeting with a child psychologist and they decided that she would actually be better off there. She said that Chicago reminded her too much of her parents and that she was depressed there. So here I am. Sierra is pretty well settled in at school, and I am just happy to have her with me. She reminds me so much of Sam. I think that this is my second chance. I only got a year with my sister, but now I get a lifetime with her daughter. It's kind of weird though, I went from having no kids at all to having a 12 year old girl. I'm afraid I won't be able to give her everything she needs."
"Oh, Mulder, you'll be good for her. I know she's much better off with you than with some guy she doesn't know who has ties to that cigarette smoking bastard."
"Thank you Scully. Knowing you have faith in me means a lot to me. You mean a lot to me. I've missed you."
"I've missed you too. I wish . . . I wish things could have been different."
"I know. Me too. I could have used your support during the trial."
"You know, Mulder, I would have been there in a heartbeat if I had known you needed me. And I would have loved to have someone by my side the times I was alone. When Patrick was in trouble."
"You were my best friend, Scully. I don't know how I let you slip away."
Neither of them said anything after that. They each had their own reasons for letting the other out of their life, and neither wanted to think about that.
"Mulder, you said you worked something out with Skinner. What's the deal?"
"I am going to be a kind of consultant for the X-Files. I'm going to help them find and train new agents and consult with them on cases. I'm also going to be teaching profiling at Quantico. I'm surprised you haven't heard anything there. Some people are a little upset about me coming on. My reputation still speaks for itself."
"Oh, I took a leave at Quantico after Patrick died. I've been off since. I'm not sure when I'm going back. Hell, I'm not sure if I am going back. I need to get my kids settled, find a new house, and then see where I am. That's more important. I think my kids need their mother more than I need to be working at this point in time."
"Scully, can we talk about . . ." He trailed off.
"What Mulder?"
"Well, that one night. We never talked about it. I just . . . I don't know what I am trying to say." Dana couldn't believe that he had brought it up. She had known that it would come up, that they would have to talk about it, but now?
"Mulder, I don't know what to say." When she said those words, she knew that she would have to tell him. And if she didn't do it now, she never would. "There's something I need to tell you, but I don't know how." He was staring at her now. She knew he was trying to figure out what she was hiding. Before either of them could say anything, however, the sliding door slid open. Neither turned to look. They were to busy staring into each other's eyes. Then Emma came running over and threw herself into her mother's lap.
The connection was broken.
A/N: Sorry again about it taking so long. The next part is written, I just need to type it up, but the semester is coming to a close, and I have a lot of work due very soon. I'll try to be prompt. Thanks for reading. PLEASE review!!!