Title: Touch of love
Summary: When Scully & Mulder find two small children after their parents have been murdered, Scully decides to adopt. But Scully is a single, unmarried career-woman, so she turns to Mulder for some help.
Spoilers: Set season six after Arcadia/Aqua Mala, so anything before that is fair game.
Notes: I'm totally on a total fluff, ship, romance binge. This fic is purely reflective of that fact. There's very little X File here, and very much Moose & Squirrel and "twu wuv".
And yes, this fic is a hopeless cliché. So sue me. I happen to like fluff and romance and cliché.
1.
Dana Scully was no stranger to violence and death. During her time with the X Files, she'd seen more murders, mutilations and acts of evilness than she cared to think about. Which is why, when she received a phone call from Mulder early one Saturday morning detailing a murder scene in the suburbs, she simply got dressed and drove to the location he gave her.
"How is it, Mulder?" she asked, stepping out her car. Mulder was standing on the sidewalk, an umbrella in hand. He held it over her head and slipped his hand into its usual place at the small of his back. Scully had long ago stopped feeling confused and concerned by his continual invasion of her personal space – it was simply the way Mulder was, and Scully accepted that easily. Sometimes she even found herself enjoying his closeness, and recently she'd started to initiate that closeness herself, much to her surprise.
"It's bad, Scully," Mulder said quietly, helping her up the neat steps of the porch.
"Details, Mulder?" Scully asked as they stepped into the house.
It was a nice house; a coat stand with coats was tucked in a corner, and next to it was a shelf with three pairs of boots neatly lined up on it. Mother, father, and son, Scully guessed, glancing at the boots.
"It looks like a murder-suicide," Mulder explained. "But it's not."
"How do you know?" Scully asked, examining the entry foyer where they were still standing. She felt detached; as though she wasn't really standing in the hallway of a house where the family had just been murdered.
"Normally, if a father is going to commit a murder suicide, he kills the children first and then the mother."
"But?"
"There's no sign of the children, Scully."
A trickle of relief warmed Scully's spine – she hadn't wanted to see more murdered children. Children were precious, and she took it personally if someone hurt them. "Where are they?"
Mulder shrugged. "I don't know. The family was the Logans – Anne and Paul Logan were the mother and father of two children – Lucy and Jacob."
"There's no sign of kidnapping?" Scully asked, pulling a glove out of her pocket. They'd stopped in front of a door, oak with blackwood trimming. A strange combination, Scully thought, as they stepped into the room.
There was blood, Scully realised. Far too much blood. "Oh," she whispered, looking around.
Mulder nodded. "From what I can see it wasn't a professional job. It's sloppy and hurried. A lot of anger – I think we're looking at a personal vendetta."
Scully nodded, agreeing, trying not to wince as her eyes landed on the figure of Anne Logan slumped against what was once a clean yellow wall. A trail of blood was smeared down the wall, as though Anne had slid down it after being shot. Scully shivered; Anne Logan was small and fine, a size similar to Scully. While her hair was brown, the scene looked eerily familiar to Scully as she remembered her own bullet wound. Photos of the crime scene had shown her a similar dark, streaky smudge against the wall where she had fallen. Too close for comfort, she thought darkly.
"So why were we called in?" Scully asked, looking away from the grisly scene and turning to Mulder.
"We have to find the children," Mulder said quietly. "I told you, there's no sign or indication of kidnapping, and seeing how messy this job was that's contradictory."
"What do you think?" Scully asked.
Mulder shrugged. "I think they could have called other people in first, Scully, and ascertained the kids weren't here when the crime was committed. For all we know, they are staying at their grandmother's house to give their parents a night of privacy."
Some night it turned out to be, Scully thought, unable to stop herself glancing across at Anne Logan again. She tried desperately to ignore the slashes in the victim's arms – post mortem, her analytical self supplied – and the crudely painted images and words on the walls around the room.
"Skinner said he wanted us to ease back into it."
Scully couldn't help quirking her lips in a smile – ease back into it? They'd already been to Florida hunting a sea monster, not to mention the whole escapade with the planned community and their undercover stint. Easing into things indeed, she thought wryly. If this was easing into things, she believed in Santa Claus again.
"Let's go look at the children's rooms," Scully said, wanting to get away from the coppery smell of blood clinging to the air.
Mulder nodded. "Okay. Jacob Logan, from what we can see, is four years old, Scully. That, I think, is a photo of him." Mulder pointed to a picture on the wall of a cute little boy with sandy brown hair and bright blue eyes. He was grinning happily into the camera from his position on a man's shoulder. Scully recognised the man as the late Paul Logan, and hoped to God that the little boy was okay.
"And Lucy is about 11 months old, I think. We found hospital records, she turns one early November."
Mulder pushed open a door that led into a sunny room with white lacy curtains and simple decorations. Obviously the girl's room, Scully thought, noticing the small baby monitor perched next to the empty cradle. She studied the empty cradle, frowning. "The baby was here, Mulder," she said. "Her pacifier is still here, and the blankets look like she was taken out in a hurry."
"If she was taken, Scully, wouldn't they take the pacifier and some other stuff to keep her quiet and looked after until they got her wherever they wanted her?" Mulder responded, pointing at various baby essentials scattered through the room.
"Let's go look at Jacob's room; we can come back and examine the details in a minute," Scully decided with a last look around the room.
Jacob's room was, by Scully's standards, a mess. There were toys scattered over the floor, and his bed was unmade. Scully stared at the bed. "Mulder, do you notice anything strange about the bed?"
He looked at it. "It's not made? It's usually not made if someone slept in it, Scully," Mulder pointed out reasonably.
"No, Mulder, there's no comforter on his bed."
"Is that significant, Scully?" Mulder asked, moving to the bed. "I don't always use one either, you know."
"It's not exactly warm at the moment, Mulder. I don't think a sheet is enough for a little boy."
Mulder's brow narrowed in thought, and he looked at Scully. A small, hesitant smile touched her lips. "Are you thinking what I'm thinking Mulder?" she asked almost lightly.
If she was right, then things weren't as sinister as they had first appeared. A small bubble of hope grew in Scully's chest, and she felt a little lighter than she had several minutes before.
"If you are right, Scully, where would they be? We've been through the house already, and we didn't find them anywhere."
"Attic?" Scully suggested.
"I know they had a look, but there wasn't any sign that the struggle went up that far. All the evidence appears to be in the sitting room, so they've been concentrating their efforts down there."
"Let's go look," Scully suggest calmly, nodding.
The attic was neater than Scully was used to attics being, but other than that there was nothing exceptional about it. She looked around the room quickly, spying a large dresser jutting out from one wall. She touched Mulder's sleeve silently and moved toward it.
"Jacob?" she called out gently, flicking on her flashlight. Even with the lights on, it was dim and dark in the grey light of a wet dawn, and the shadows were still dark. "Jacob, honey, are you here?"
She strained her ears, listening. There was silence.
"Jacob, my name is Dana, if you're here I need you to tell me, honey. We need to know you're okay."
Again, nothing.
The dresser was large and solid; Scully squeezed between it and several large boxes, and discovered what was obviously a small 'den' created specifically for the little boy to treat as a cubby. She heard something like a faint rustle of cloth, and paused, listening.
"Jacob?"
The silence wasn't as empty as it was before, Scully thought, running her torch over the walls. The small beam of light glinted over an unexpected shape, and Scully turned it back, playing it over an almost concealed door. A smile of relief washed over her face; the house was older than the average house in the suburbs, constructed with a tiered roof. In order to get to the wiring and actual inside of the roofing of the lower floors, small doors had been built into the attic walls which allowed builders and electricians to crawl through into the inner spaces.
Scully tapped on the door softly. "Jacob, honey? Are you and Lucy in there?"
A definite sound, similar to the mewling of a hungry baby reached Scully's ears. Carefully, slowly, Scully opened the small door and peered inside. It was pitch black. Once more, Scully turned her flashlight on and let the beam play into the dark. It traced beams and trimmings and finally came to settle on the huddled figure of a little boy with a terrified, tear streaked face clutching a wriggling bundle to his chest with frantic fingers.
"It's okay," Scully whispered, dropping to her knees. "It's okay. I'm here, Jacob, and everything's going to be okay now."
A strangled sound, like a cross between a hiccup and a sob, was torn from the boy's throat, and as though it was a sign that she could be noisy, the baby started up a soft, weak cry.
Without a second thought for her stockings, and ignoring the fact that Mulder was probably going to get a nice view of her ass, Scully kicked off her heels, dropped to her knees and crawled into the small, dark hole.
Jacob was cold and stiff, reluctant to let Scully cuddle him, but after a few minutes of fighting his tears, the damn broke loose and he clutched at her desperately, his little finger digging into her skin with enough pressure to leave bruises.
Scully rocked him in her arms, making sure she cradled the baby too, and pressed gentle kisses to his head as she crooned in his ear. He cried for a long, long time, until his body went limp against her and his breathing became even.
Only then did Scully pull the baby out of his arms and pass the still crying infant out to Mulder.
---
You know you want to review. Really, really you do.