A/N: Ahhh...MSR, one of my topics during recreational dissociation. This is my first foray into actually writing and publishing my head canon for The X-Files and tbh you all scare me a little bit. You are guys are like the fandom of all fandoms. Thanks for reading and please be kind lol.
Mulder was concentrating on all the wrong things. The White House shooter, the doomsday prophet, the evidence locker, Kersh, Agent Doggett. Scully tried to rationalize it all to herself. He's been through a terrible ordeal. He's had no time to adjust. He came back against all the odds and everything's different. He's had to jump straight from trauma to crisis with no time to recalibrate. But for every excuse, there was a competing rant. How could you, Mulder? Why are you picking fights with anyone who's trying to help you? What are you so damn angry about? Did what we have - had - mean something, anything to you at all? Between her opposing, racing thoughts and stress and pace of the ongoing investigation on top of her own reduced energy and increased exhaustion, Scully was nearing the end of her patience.
She thought she saw a flash of something that looked like understanding at the mention of a "certain blessed event" when they'd met with the Gunmen, but he'd even managed to brush that off. Turn it all back to business, turn it all on her. Level her with his anything-but-subtle accusations that she was undermining his work, undoing his X-Files, when for the last several months she'd been doing everything but. As she searched. As she worried. As she grieved. And as her body changed and her skin stretched and her belly grew and her baby kicked, each day becoming a more and more prominent reminder of everything she'd lost. And now she was running around, nearly nine months pregnant, chasing down leads on yet another case with more twists and turns than a bad B-list movie, desperate to both prove to Mulder that he was wrong and pull him enough back from the edge to force him to talk. Or listen. Or something, anything that would stop this terrible dance.
Scully wasn't stupid enough to expect that Mulder would recover and go home with her and forget the abduction or the X-Files or the fight for the truth. But she'd expected, hoped, wished, that she would at least get an hour, or even a few minutes, to clear the air, say her piece, break the news that she'd had months to process and he still very clearly could not or would not face. It seemed like a cruel irony. Against all the odds, Mulder had been returned to her, literally rose from the dead, lived to tell the tale, only to be thrown headfirst back into the quest for the truth with all of their own personal truths hanging between them in the balance.
And so she sat in her car, her fury with Mulder and the X-Files and her whole damn life increasing with each second that Mulder and Doggett got closer and closer to safety. And when she'd gotten final confirmation that both of them had gotten out, she'd sighed with the expected relief even as her lips tightened and her hands clenched. She'd driven like that all the way to a rendezvous point where Doggett had deposited a defensive yet slightly sorry Mulder into her car and then set out for home. Mulder's apartment, rather. Her sort of adopted home at this point, although Mulder seemed to be none the wiser. She really could strangle him, pregnant or not. Had he really not known? Had he really looked around his apartment and not put the pieces together? That she'd kept vigil for him? Waited for him? Grieved for him? That she had been utterly unwilling to let any of it go, even down to the last X-rated magazine in the nightstand and worn t-shirt in the dresser?
"Out," she ordered as she parked in front of his building, a bit pleased when Mulder looked at her blankly. "You heard me." She threw open her own door in response and hauled herself out of the driver's seat as smoothly as she could these days.
"Scully, you don't have to walk me up. I'm fine and you've had enough, I mean, especially in your condition…"
Scully whirled around. "Don't you talk to me about my condition," she hissed fiercely, and it was so unexpected that Mulder actually took a step back in surprise. "You have no right. You didn't seem to give a damn about that tonight, or yesterday, or any time at all over the past few days as you've marched around ignoring nearly everything I've told you and belittling all the rest."
Mulder at least had the decency to look ashamed. Confusion or not, resentment or not, Scully was still his partner and she was still pregnant. She didn't deserve to be tossed around like a ragdoll at his whim as he tried to get a bearing on everything. "Scully," he began.
"No," she insisted, standing her ground. "Not here. We're not doing this out on the sidewalk in the middle of the night. You're going up, and I'm going up. Not negotiable."
Mulder held up his hands in defeat and followed Scully through his lobby, into the elevator, and finally down his hallway and through his door. For the life of him, he couldn't think of anything to say.
-M-S-
Mulder winced as Scully banged around his kitchen, intent on making him eat. He'd tested the waters by insisting that she needed to as well and took it as a small step forward that she'd only nodded in agreement before ordering him out of the way. He also realized, really realized, after seeing his full fridge and clean floors that someone had clearly been taking care of things around here. Of course it was her. It was always her.
He was startled out of his thoughts when a familiar hand shoved a plate under his nose and eased a water glass into his grip with slightly less force. Before he could ask, Scully was back and forth from his kitchen, such as it was, one more time with her own plate and glass in hand. "Grilled cheese," she offered, the first words in hours that didn't seem to be laced with animosity. "My current favorite food. Or someone's, anyway."
Mulder tried to smile, he really did, but he knew that it came out more like a grimace. He stuffed his sandwich into his face in an attempt to cover it up, knowing that he wasn't fooling Scully for a minute. She picked at her own sandwich quietly and sipped at her water, her hair obscuring the side of her face as Mulder ate his own sandwich as slowly as he could manage, studying his partner as he chewed.
In some ways, little had changed. Her eyes were still the brightest blue, her skin smooth and milky white. The freckles across her nose, the little mole on her upper lip, all present and accounted for. Her copper hair was striking and shiny, like always, and he was sure that it would be just as soft as he remembered if he was brave enough to reach over and run his fingers through it. It was a little longer now, naturally, but it framed her face in a way that was quite lovely. But he knew that her eyes were also carrying months worth of grief, her mouth was tight with apprehension and worry, and her pretty face was tired, even in all of its loveliness, from carrying his cross for him.
And maybe that would have been enough to break the spell, to shock him out of his self-sabotage and antagonistic stupor, if it wasn't for the changes that met him as his eyes glanced lower. The swell of her breasts, unnoticeable, he hoped, to anyone else but him, wasn't unwelcome, He could even enjoy the soft new curves of her hips. But he struggled over the roundness of her belly, the physical proof and constant reminder that nothing now was how it had been when he was taken, And even though he wished to never go back to such a place, to such pain and suffering, he found that he almost longed for the memories that he'd locked away, that sustained him when he was in that other place. The memories of what were, not the new reality of what was and what was to be.
Scully turned to meet his gaze, and Mulder realized that she hadn't been so oblivious nor he so subtle afterall. He shifted his eyes downward but looked up again at the sound of a telltale sniffle, so uncharacteristic of Scully, his Scully, but also so soul-crushing that he couldn't look away.
"Does it really disgust you that much, Mulder," she asked, a vulnerability in her voice that he'd never before.
"You could never disgust me, Scully. Not ever." He abandoned the sarcasm and the attitude and the resentment and everything else he'd thrown at her since his release from the hospital in some attempt to broker peace. And he meant it. Confuse him, yes. Disgust him, never.
"That's what your words say," Scully countered, looking at him full on, forcing him to look back. "But your eyes...your eyes say something different. And your eyes, Mulder. Your eyes always told me the truth more than anything else."
He saw her tears then and the old instincts kicked in. Of all the things he did and didn't and succeeded and failed at over their partnership, he never once wanted to cause her pain. "Scully, I don't know what to say."
"Then try." The exhaustion was evident in her voice. "Start somewhere. Give me something to work with, because I've got nothing."
"That doesn't seem quite accurate though," he countered, instantly prickly. "You got me back, and that's what you keep saying you wanted. Except now here I am and I have no idea where I fit or what you want or what any of this means."
Scully looked at him incredulously. "Mulder," she said, painfully slowly. "I spent months trying to find you. In every way I knew how. And then when I did, you were dead. I had to watch them put you in the ground. And now, you're alive and you're healthy, against all of the odds, and you're going to sit here and tell me that you don't know what I want? That you don't know what any of this means?" Her voice rose to a level that he'd never heard directed at him before. Had they ever argued like this? But now was the time, wasn't it? It was all coming out, whether he liked it or not.
"I feel like there's a part here that you're wanting me to play. But try as I might, I just can't figure out how." He met her eyes, desperate to make her understand, and found confusion looking back at him.
"It's not a part, Mulder. It's your life. It's our life." Scully's voice shook just slightly, and clearly what she said meant something to her. But why didn't it to him? What was he missing?
"But that's the thing, Scully. I don't even know what that is. What that means. I told you before that I'm trying to figure out how I fit in here. And I just can't wrap my head around it. I just don't know."
"What is it you need to know?"
"Everything." He couldn't think of a better answer. Mulder needed it all. The details and the harrowing tales and every minute piece of the story. He needed it all on a video that he could play back like a movie and study it, attempting to assimilate it into his psyche to make up for the time that was lost.
"Everything," Scully repeated, a sort of warning in her tone. "How am I supposed to start when I don't even know what you remember, what was significant for you, where we left off?"
"Where we left off?" Mulder was suddenly furious, turning to face his partner with a red hot anger that he hadn't felt in all the time that he'd been back. Even going after Doggett hadn't been fueled by this level of anger. "Where we left off was that we were something, Scully. We were together. And I never said it, but I loved you. And I'm pretty sure you loved me." It was out. He could see the flash of something that looked like triumph and relief in her eyes before it was overridden by something more complicated: pure, unadulterated pain that even his words couldn't dull.
"And now?" Her voice was deadly, a silent kill to his bloody murder, an internal rage to his outer destruction. "And what now?"
"I don't know," he nearly bellowed. "You tell me. I'm alive and you're here and you've been praying for this but you have this new partner that you defend to the death and a new life and baby on the way and I feel like I'm just this miracle that reappeared but now no one knows what to do with. The FBI doesn't want me. Everyone's walking in wide circles around me. And you...you say that you're happy but how could you be?"
Scully stood up then and wheeled to face him, and from his still-seated position on the couch, he had no choice but to stare up at her, to take in the white hot rage in her face and her pregnant form, a stark reminder of everything he'd missed. "How are you not understanding this," she said hotly, but the tears on her cheeks cut through the fierceness of her tone. "I love you. I never stopped loving you. I searched and searched for you. All I wanted was for you to come home. And when you did, it was in a damn body bag."
"And then what? You moved on." Mulder felt the accusation that had been sitting in his throat all this time finally explode into the air around them.
"How the fuck," Scully whispered in disbelief. "Do you think I did that? Mulder, I could barely get out of bed. I spent three months searching for you and three months grieving you...while pregnant. How exactly do you think I moved on? Moving on was never what I wanted to do. But I had to pick myself up, because it wasn't just about me." Her hand drifted to her belly, Mulder watching as she stroked carefully, almost as if to shield her child from the words being thrown around outside her womb.
Mulder felt the pieces start to come together and watched them connect and attach in his mind, almost as if from outside himself, but couldn't bring himself to speak. He stared at Scully, mouth agape, willing her to go on without being able to express the words to do so.
"You asked me what part I want you to play," Scully said, a little calmer now as she took a seat again beside him. "I don't want you to 'play' any part."
"Scully…"
"No," she interrupted forcefully. "You need to hear this. Playing a part implies acting, and acting isn't real. I'm not asking you to play a part. It was never about asking you to play a part. It was wanting you to keep being everything you were before, maybe with one more thing thrown in."
Mulder's mouth was dry. "Such as?"
Scully reached for his hand, the relief in her eyes apparent when he let her. "You are my partner," she said firmly. "And my friend. And...whatever else it was that we were that we never named. You are those things. You never stopped being those things to me."
"But Doggett...and the X-Files."
"Doggett is a good man," she explained gently now, stroking his fingers. "He's been a good partner. But he isn't you. He's a good agent and a good investigator, and despite the not-so-innocent reasons they put him in the X-Files, he's been good to me. Trustworthy, Aboveboard. But he could never be you. And he certainly never tried to be. And I couldn't be either, even though I tried my damnest. The Files...they've always been yours. And I've honored them and protected them and defended them and fought for them, even as I've known that you're their true champion and nothing that I would do would ever compare."
"You sell yourself short," he mumbled, mollified. He reached for her face then, holding her cheek in his palm like he hadn't for so long. Her blue eyes, shiny and full of emotion, gazed back at him. He could see a final trace of hesitation and felt a wave of apprehension.
"And," he prompted.
"And," she countered, a little breathless and more than a bit incredulous. "Mulder, really?" Scully met his eyes, blue on brown, before intentionally looking down at her belly, willing his gaze to follow. And Mulder finally, finally just did what she asked, even scooting a bit closer so that their knees touched, and as he did so, he felt some of the pieces shifting into place.
"Scully," he began, eyes still on her belly, mind whirling. "I...you said I was missing for three months and then dead for three months. And...Skinner said you're going on maternity leave in six weeks." He looked up to find her hanging hungrily on every word. "I'm trying, I really am. I just can't make it make sense. When are you...? When did you…?"
Scully opened her mouth to finally put him out of his misery, and maybe drag herself out of her own, too. "I found out that I was pregnant," she said softly but clearly, eyes locked onto his as she read into his desperation, his desire to finally put it all together. "Right before I found out that you had been taken." And she watched as it arched over him then, the realization, as it lighted his face and made even the fading scars of his ordeal seem completely invisible. She nearly wept with relief and something bordering on joy when he reached for her, pulling her into his arms, seemingly unbothered by the feel of her belly pressing gently against him.
"You were pregnant in Oregon," Mulder marveled, the pieces finally sliding into place. "That's why you were sick and not yourself." He hugged her as tightly as he dared, now extra cognizant of her changed body. "You...you were pregnant this whole time. The whole time I was gone." The full impact of what she had been through and what she had carried - mentally, physically, emotionally - while he had been gone hit him full on, and he let his head bury into his shoulder as his own tears ran free. Scully only nodded against him, holding him tighter as she felt his tears dampen her shirt.
"Mulder," she said once he seemed to have gotten it all out. "Mulder, what on Earth did you think?"
"I don't know," he said honestly, pulling back a little so that she could see the truth in his eyes. "I didn't really think you'd been with someone else, but I just...I didn't know. I couldn't tell how far along you were or put together when it all started. I wondered if you'd used a donor."
"I would never," Scully tried to keep the indignation out of her voice. "I was grieving. All I wanted was you. This baby...I didn't even get a chance to tell you. This baby was along for the ride every step of the way."
"That must have been terrible for you," Mulder marveled, then backtracked. "Not...the baby. That's...that's a miracle. But having to worry about the life inside of you while you looked for me and worried for me and grieved for me...Scully."
"We're both okay," Scully soothed, picking up on his train of thought. "It hasn't been easy. And there were a few moments that I was terrified that I was going to end up losing you both. But somehow, here we are."
Mulder hugged her again, feeling some of the old familiarity creeping back in. "Do you know how long I waited for this," he heard her murmur into the crook of his neck. "Or how badly I wanted to find you, to tell you. All I wanted was your arms around me, just like this."
No answer he could give her would ever be enough, so he settled for a small truth and hoped it would suffice for now. "You have to keep reminding me," he said gently but insistently into her hair. "It doesn't seem real yet."
Scully eased back a little, her face damp but infinitely more relaxed. "It didn't feel real to me for a long time," she confessed, playing a little with his hand. "It took me four months to be able to finally admit it to Doggett, and by the time I did, he...sort of knew anyway, based on the circumstances." She watched his eyes as she brought his hand to her belly, guiding his fingers up and down the pronounced curve. Scully wished desperately that she could hold his hand flush to her and feel his palm pressed against her, against their baby. She had ached for that for so long as she had started to show, but Scully was loathe to rush him. So when his fingers began to stroke and soothe, explore and press lightly all on his own, she felt another wave of relief crash over her as her eyes filled once again.
"That's part of it," Mulder said, and Scully had to think for a moment as she returned to their conversation, so distracted was she by the gentle motions on her tummy. "But not all."
"What do you mean?"
"I have flashes sometimes," Mulder explained, looking from Scully's belly to her eyes. "Flashes where I don't know where I am for a split second, or what's real and what isn't, and where everything fits in the timeline. And even when it comes back, it still takes me a moment to...reset."
"But you do reset," Scully asked, the uneasiness evident in her voice. "Eventually?"
"Eventually," he agreed. "But lately, it seems, I don't reset quick enough to stop my mouth or my head or the rest of me before I end up doing or saying something completely wrong. And hurting you."
Scully ducked her head a little, but Mulder's hand came gently to her face and lifted her chin even as the other stayed pressed against her. "I won't deny that," she said honestly.
"And I won't deny that it might happen again, even though I'll try my best that it doesn't. But, please, help me. Remind me, or try to, or just know that it's going to get better. The flashes...I come out them feeling like I don't fit. So, please, whatever you do, don't let me keep doing things that add to it."
"I can do that," Scully whispered, her voice thick with the emotion of it all. "I can help you. But Mulder, you have to try to. You have to try to help yourself. To remind yourself that you do fit, in every way. With the X-Files, with the Bureau. And with me and...this baby. Not just my baby, either."
Mulder leaned closer to kiss her forehead and tug her more securely into his arms, feeling her tummy suspended between them, anchoring them both. "I'll help myself, Scully. I promise you I will."
