Reyes wasn't quite ready when Mulder knocked softly on her motel door to leave for the day. She hadn't slept well through the night after talking with Doggett, and then hearing about Gibson and his message, it had been a long night and now all she wanted to do was sleep. But as she opened her door claiming she'd be just a minute she knew that she couldn't give up now, she had come this far.
Mulder waited patiently for Reyes and sat on the edge of her bed. He hadn't slept at all but somehow he always worked better on less sleep than if he had had a full nights worth. All he wanted now was to talk to Reyes' aunt and get home to Scully and their son. He was missing them terribly and was frustrated by Gibson's sudden arrival in DC, he knew that the trip wasn't going to be completely worth while but his main goal was to see Gibson, no chance of that now.
When Reyes was finally ready they went down to the car and Mulder threw the car keys over to her and she only just managed to catch them.
"Well caught."
"Thanks. I guess I'm driving then?"
"Lead the way Agent Reyes."
"Sure thing Fox." Mulder smiled and for a second actually felt as if he could have been talking to a sibling, teasing banter with names, and then Reyes smiled at him and he knew that he couldn't allow himself to bask in the rare moments when he could enjoy his family until his family were safe.
When they arrived at Reyes' aunts house they stood patiently waiting for someone to answer after knocking several times, but nobody came. They exchanged concerned looks and then Reyes took out her gun as Mulder reached out and opened the unlocked door. As they walked inside they both felt uneasy, not only because they had just broken into someone's home without probable cause, but because something felt off about the whole situation.
They explored the rooms of the house separately, Mulder took upstairs whilst Reyes carried on through to the kitchen praying that they'd find something and nothing, that the woman she had known for such a short amount of time was putting out some washing to dry or was on the telephone and too busy to answer the door. But when Mulder's voice called out her name and told her to call an ambulance she knew that they were too late.
Reyes found Mulder in the main bedroom; Sophia Courtez was lying on the ground holding Mulder's hand.
"I'm sorry Monica, I think she's had a heart attack, she's in and out of consciousness. She said she knew me, that she knew who I was..." Reyes knew that Sophia was about to die, but there was something else, something about the situation that she had a strange gut feeling about.
"No, wait." Reyes sat down beside Mulder and took Sophia's hand from him to place in her own. Sophia looked at her and smiled. She was weak and could barely keep her eyes open to speak to Reyes.
"Monica... I'm so glad I got to see you again before I went... I'll be sure to tell your mama how beautiful you are and how proud of you she can be..."
"Sophia what happened?"
"I just collapsed... no big mystery... it was just my time... there's a package in the other bedroom for you, I put together all I could find for you about the first four years of your life... I'm so sorry that our family never got to know you and be with you Monica... but I knew that some day I would meet you and I would be the one to make Maria feel at peace with losing you..."
"Sophia listen to me very carefully, did anybody come to the house before you collapsed? Anybody at all?"
"No... I don't think... oh wait there was that young man this morning... he was selling insurance, he came inside for a chat... I told him I was putting a package together for my niece at the FBI and he asked if he could see it... we talked for a while..."
"Sophia? Sophia no! Wait, just hold on!" Reyes held tighter to Sophia's hand but it was no use, she was getting weaker and at the end of the day Sophia was ready to go, she had been ready to die for a long time, to be with her sister and brothers. But Reyes was not ready to lose her, not just to ask her questions but to get to know her. She was family. Mulder disappeared into the other room and came back with a box that had Reyes' name on it, he nodded his head to confirm that it was full of papers and photographs, she nodded back and looked back down at Sophia.
"She's here Monica... she's here now... she's the one coming for me, I knew she would be... take care my darling... be happy, and your mother says good luck with the baby..." Reyes didn't understand what the hell was going on, baby? But it didn't really matter. Not right now. Sophia was gone.
Reyes didn't move from the bedroom waiting for the ambulance. Then the coroner. Then when the room was empty and the medical examiner asked for next of kin Reyes didn't know what to say. She answered to being Sophia's niece and signed the required forms as she showed him to the door. When just she and Mulder were left in the house she looked at him and he had a sympathetic puppy dog look in his eyes. What now?
"I'm so sorry Monica."
"I know, but it's not as if I knew her all that well. I just, I don't know what I'm supposed to do now, she had relatives all over the country, am I supposed to contact them? I mean what would I say? Hi I'm Monica Reyes your long lost relative; by the way Sophia is dead? She has a daughter in L.A. I just don't know that it's right for me to do this." Mulder stood up from the table he was sat at and couldn't stop his instincts telling him to be supportive, so he placed an arm around Reyes and to his surprise she turned and hugged him as he offered her the kind of support he had only ever dreamed of being able to offer a sister.
"Call Sophia's daughter, you don't have to tell her who you are, just tell her what's happened and then leave it at that. You don't have to tell them anything you don't want to."
"I know." Reyes pulled back from the hug and laughed. "I'm sorry."
"What are big brother's for?" This time they both smiled and then they turned to the box of things that Mulder had been sifting through on the table.
"So what's in there?"
"It's mostly photographs, the names of the people are written on the back of them all, most of them are your mother... But there are some papers too, your birth certificate, some medical history from when you were a baby, there's a photocopy of the police report into the search for you when you disappeared... There's a lot to go through, but you wanna get out of here?"
"Yes I do." Mulder nodded his head.
"Yeah, me too." He placed a supportive hand on her back and lead Reyes out of the house with the box under his arm. It was going to be a long day.
As they sat in a small café eating lunch it was the most surreal experience of Reyes' life. She had just watched her aunt die with her half brother. How the hell did she ever get to this point in her life? She had a brand new alien force out to see her to her death because of who her birth father was, and she was supposed to be looking after William and being a grown up as well as living a normal life. It was overwhelming and sometimes a little daunting to think about waking up to face another day.
"I do have a question for you though..."
"What?"
"What did Sophia mean when she told you your mother said 'good luck with the baby'?" Reyes shook her head forcefully and felt the colour drain from her face.
"I have no idea, I'm not pregnant... I'm sure of it... I don't know what she was talking about, and right now I have more important things to worry about."
"Point taken, but if it was me I'd want to know."
"If it were you we'd all like to know, some secret love child, maybe it runs in the family."
"Ha! Scully'd kill me! My God, I'd be horrified if some kid turned up on my doorstep claiming to be my child..." Mulder subconsciously bit his tongue and looked at Reyes' forced smile.
"Monica..."
"It's ok. I know you didn't mean me, but you're the one who started all of this, don't ever forget that. If it weren't for you I wouldn't have known about any of this."
"And Sophia would have died alone." Reyes nodded her head feeling a sadness she'd never dealt with much through her life. Grief, bereavement. It was all new to her, her adoptive parents were both alive and well, and it was then that she felt guilty about being in Mexico and them not knowing.
"How much longer do you think we'll be here for?"
"There's no real reason to stay any longer at all. We can take the things that Sophia gave you back to DC to look into them, it's not important to be here now. I spoke to Scully again this morning and she said that John had taken Gibson to get to his next 'safe' hiding place. So I wont get to talk to him, but he had a message for me and I don't know if I like what it means."
"Why what did he say?" Mulder paused and looked at Reyes with a sparkle in his eyes that she had never seen before, she had always thought that he'd have that kind of look about him when he was excited about a case or made a break in an x-file. She had often wondered what he had been like before his time on the x-files had made him the man he was now.
"Gibson told me that I have to fight from the inside."
"Fight from the inside?"
"It's the only way we can win this. I have to get back into the FBI. I have to be working on the x-files again."
