Title: Lies Once Told, Love Once Given: Part Three
Author: Gillian Leigh
Summary: A teenage girl's world falls apart, and her mother's begins to fall back together.
Disclaimer: I'm just borrowing them for the duration... using them as puppets to act out my insane plots... Please don't sue!!!
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"She found her birth certificate, Dave," Dana said over the phone as she paced the floor of her living room.
"How?" her ex-husband questioned, feeling a tightness in his chest.
"She was looking for a pair of shoes in my closet and she stumbled across the box. She saw Mulder's name on the certificate..." she replied, sniffling back tears. "I've really screwed up."
"Is she angry?" he asked, knowing what the answer would be.
"She's furious with me. She didn't even give me a chance to explain the circumstances," Dana replied, nervously playing with the crucifix that hung around her neck.
"I don't know how much happier she'll be once she learns the truth. Especially when she finds out that Mulder doesn't know that she exists. But you need to tell her, Dana. We both owe it to her to tell her the truth," Dave said. His rationality almost made her angry. He was always calm and level-headed when a problem presented itself... well a problem outside their relationship with one another. Relationship problems were something else entirely.
"I know that, David. It's not like I can just walk into her room and say, 'Oh by the way, Liv, your real father was almost married to someone else when I got pregnant with you...'" She heard a door slam upstairs, and her daughter hurried down the staircase. "Liv, where are you going?" Dana asked, stepping toward the front door. Liv froze, and her hand rested on the doorknob.
"To see Grandma. Is that a problem?" she quipped coldly.
"No," her mother replied quietly. "Dinner's at seven."
"I'm eating at Katie's," Olivia replied, her crystal blue eyes sparking. Dana only nodded, and her daughter stepped out onto the porch, slamming the door hard enough to knock a framed picture of the two of them off the wall. Pressing the phone between her ear and shoulder, Dana padded softly over to the picture and lifted it from the floor, noticing the crack in the glass which seemed to pass through the middle of the picture, effectively separating them. She sighed. How symbolic this was of the rift that had formed between the two people who were once each other's best friends.
"Dana? Dana are you still there?" Dave asked.
"Yeah," she replied, tiredly. "I'm still here."
"Was that Liv?"
"You bet. She's going to see my mother," Dana said. "I'm sorry, Dave. I have to go." She hung up the phone before he finished saying goodbye, and then slammed it down on the counter. Running her hand over her face, she tried to calm her racing heart as the memories of the past started to creep in.
~*~
Maggie Skinner stood in the kitchen, her mind other places as she waited for the tap to run cold so she could fill Olivia's glass of water. She had always known the time would come when Liv would learn of her father, but she had hoped it would not happen this way. She had hoped that one night Dana and Dave would sit Liv down and explain the situation to her in a rational matter, and that though she would be upset at first, she would understand that everything happened for a reason. She wasn't expecting this. She could still remember the day that her daughter came to her with the news that she was pregnant.
Dana opened the door to her apartment and welcomed her mother inside. Maggie smiled at her and gave her a quick hug. Though she would never admit it, the first thing she noticed about her daughter was that she had gained weight. Her face looked heavier than it had the last time she'd seen her.
"Do you need any help with dinner?" she asked.
Dana offered her a smile and said, "No thanks, Mom. It's all done. I just have to put it on the table." She disappeared into the kitchen and returned carrying a plate of chicken cutlets and a bowl of green beans. After setting them down on the table, she returned with a bowl of mashed potatoes. Maggie's eyes widened at the sight of all of the food being set before her.
"My goodness, Dana...so much food... who else is joining us for dinner?" she asked. Her daughter blushed.
"Um... no one, Mom. It's just us this evening," she replied, sinking gracefully into her chair across from her mother.
"The food looks wonderful, sweetheart," Maggie said, sensing the silence becoming awkward. Dana mumbled her thanks and then took a deep breath.
"Mom, I'm pregnant," she said quickly. Maggie looked up quickly from her plate, and was so taken by surprise that she dropped her fork.
"Oh my," she said, unable to gather her thoughts at first. "That's wonderful news!" She beamed at her daughter, and Dana managed a smile back. "But I didn't think you were seeing anyone?" Her daughter's smile disappeared.
"Not any longer," she replied quietly, silently praying that she wouldn't cry.
"Oh," Maggie said, looking down at her plate. "Well when are you due?" she queried, raising her gaze to study her daughter again. Dana kept her eyes on her plate and pushed her food around as she spoke.
"February 2nd... I'm three months along." Thinking back to three months prior, Maggie's eyes widened.
"Does Fox know?" Her daughter's head snapped up, and her eyes were wide with shock and full of unshed tears.
"How did you...?"
"It's written all over your face, sweetheart... and that was around the last time I saw you two together..." Maggie replied gently.
"Yes, the baby is Mulder's..." her daughter conceded. "But he doesn't know."
"Do you mind if I ask why you haven't told him?" Dana actually did mind, but she knew that her mother wanted an answer.
"We were arguing a lot before he left. He started seeing someone else." Maggie couldn't keep the shock out of her expression. "Don't look so shocked, Mom. Mulder and I had been getting more and more distant, and when Skinner closed the X-Files it was the final nudge needed to send our ships in opposite directions, and his ship took him to England..."
"Grandma?" The sound of Olivia's voice brought Maggie back to the present.
"Just a second, Livvy," she said quietly. Filling the glass with a significant amount of water, she shut off the tap and returned to the living room, walking through the wispy remains of her memories.
"What do you know about him, Grandma? About my real dad?" Liv asked, sipping her water. Where do you want me to start? Maggie thought.
"What would you like me to tell you?" she asked, studying her daughter's daughter... her only granddaughter.
"I don't know... um... is he nice? Do I look like him at all? Was he good to my mom?" Olivia asked, taking a sip of her water.
"I haven't spoken to him in some time, but he was such a wonderful person. He cared so much for your mother; he would've sacrificed anything for her," Maggie said, smiling as a feeling of nostalgia overtook her. "I knew they loved each other before either of them could admit it. It was in the way they looked at one another; the way they acted; the simple touches. It was all there, but it took a near-death experience for them to realize how much they loved one another." Liv's eyebrow went up--an inherited Scully trait.
"A near-death experience?" she queried, setting her glass down and leaning closer to her grandmother.
"I don't know if you know this, but they worked together at the FBI..." Maggie began.
"Mom said something about working with 'Mulder' once, but then she stopped, like she'd said too much... I had wondered why it bothered her so much then, but now I understand why..." Liv said, a tear appearing in the corner of her eye. Her grandmother gently squeezed her hand.
"Well, they had worked together for almost six years when it happened, with nothing resembling a sane admission of love from one to the other," Maggie paused, smiling at her granddaughter. "Your mother's line of work in the FBI was really rather bizarre. She worked in a division called the 'X-Files', which Fox founded. They investigated the paranormal. Your mother was assigned to work with him initially to use her science to debunk his work, but her science actually ended up reinforcing his findings rather than damning him.
"Their work forced them to spend a lot of time together, and they bonded as they did. I remember once that your mother told me that she and Fox were best friends, and nothing more. But like I said before, it was in the way they looked at one another. But back to their near-death experience....
"Your fa-- Fox," she quickly corrected herself. "... He believed that he had discovered a conspiracy involving the government, and some lethal substance, which they referred to as the 'black oil'. I'm still fuzzy on the details, because even though your mother, Fox and your Grandfather all explained the situation to me, I have a hard time understanding how it's possible. But to make a very long story short, your mother was kicked off the X-Files and reassigned to Salt Lake City, Utah. She went to see your father to tell him that she was quitting the Bureau rather than accepting the transfer, and he told her all the ways that she had been good for him, and that she had saved him. He told her how much she meant to him, and what she would tell me what that there were some tears shed, and that they almost kissed when she got stung by a bee carrying an alien virus..."
"A bee... carrying... an alien virus?" Liv queried, her eyes as big as saucers.
"Yes," Maggie said with a sigh. "You heard me correctly. The bees were carrying a version of the lethal virus in the 'black oil', and had a reaction that shut her body down. Fox called for an ambulance, but the call was intercepted by men working against him, and they transported her body to another facility, but not before shooting him in the side of the head and leaving him for dead in the street." Liv's eyes grew wider still.
"The real ambulance came and found him, transporting him to a nearby hospital, where he awoke and insisted on going after your mom. He took your Uncle John's clothes and snuck out with Ringo and Mel. He somehow got a vaccine and a location where your mother was being held... in Antarctica. He flew there immediately and his Snow-Cat ran out of gas, so he went off on foot in search of her.
"He found her inside what looked like a research facility but was actually an alien craft. After injecting her with the vaccine, he dressed her in his coat and snow pants and brought her up to the surface. And then their two stories differ a little bit. You see, Fox says that he saw the craft rise up out of the snow, and fly away, and he insists that your mother saw it too, but she insists that she was unconscious." Liv smiled at that. Her mother was skeptical about everything, and she could imagine her denying something of that nature. "Skinner sent a search team out for them, and brought them back to the States. Your mom woke up first, and insisted on seeing him. They wheeled her into his room, and she sat beside his bed until he woke up, and when he was coherent, she used all of her strength to get up out of her wheel chair and I walked into the room just as she said something about 'finishing what was started in the hallway' and then she kissed him.
"They finally admitted that they loved one another after that," Maggie said.
"Does she still love him?" Liv asked.
"I don't know, sweetheart. I would think that she might... it hurt her so badly when he left," she replied, looking down at her hands.
"I can't believe she kept so much from me," Liv said, her voice permeated with quiet anger. "Everything I knew is a lie."
"Livvy, you can't think of it that way. Your mother only kept these things from your because she didn't want you to be hurt by the truth, or ashamed of it."
"Do I look like him?" Liv asked looking at her grandmother, almost ignoring the woman's last statement.
"You do. You've got his nose, and he's the reason your hair is so dark... I have a picture of him if you'd like to see it," she said, already rising off the couch. Olivia only nodded, feeling her palms grow sweaty. She was nervous. In a matter of moments, she would see a picture of her father-- someone she hadn't know existed until this afternoon. Her grandmother disappeared and then reappeared a few moments later holding a photograph. Without a word she handed it to Liv. The teenager, who was still feeling shell-shocked, accepted the photo and studied it. She was surprised at first to see her mother in the photo with him... she expected for it to be a single shot of her father. She was even more surprised to see her mother wearing a smile-- a truly genuine one. Studying her father, Liv was astonished. He was nothing like she imagined, except for the nose. In the photo, her father had her mother in his arms. She was looking up at him and smiling, and he was laughing as he cradled her effortlessly. He was wearing a sky blue dress shirt and matching tie with black dress pants, and her mother had on a lavender dress and was holding a bouquet of roses.
"Your Uncle Charlie took that picture," Maggie said, anticipating Liv's impending questions. "It was taken the day your grandfather and I got married, at the reception. Your mother caught the bouquet, and Fox got the garter. He decided that since they were, in theory, the next ones to be married, he would practice carrying her over the threshold."
"What happened between them?" Liv asked, looking into her grandmother's eyes.
"That's not for me to say, sweetheart," Maggie said.
"Where is he now?" Liv asked.
"Teaching in England-- at Oxford."
"Thanks, Grandma. I-um-I'm gonna go talk to my mom..."
"Okay, Livvy. Oh, and keep the photo," she said, embracing Liv tightly.
She buttoned her jacket against the February chill as she bounded down the front steps, nearly colliding with her grandfather in the process.
"Hi Liv," Walter Skinner said, smiling at his rambunctious granddaughter as she flew past him.
"Hi Grandpa," she replied. "Bye Grandpa!" He shook his head as he watched her climb the steps of her own porch just next door, taking them in twos. He never would understand teenagers.
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Author's Note: Teehee, the end of the Scully/Other. :-D