AN: I had a few hits on this recently which kickstarted my brain in regards to this fic. I am so sorry that I have left it so long, I didn't realise that much time had managed to pass me by. The last edit on this document was logged on my computer three weeks to the year. A whole year. I'll try not to let it happen again. Please keep your support strong, and your patience in your pocket. I really appreciate it. As I've said many times before, Danica is a massive part of me. Rewriting her has been a huge project. I have nothing after this chapter so I am in desperate need to get my head back in her game.


Burning Snowflakes
… Part 9 …

She wondered when the response had started, reaching for the phone the second it rang, before she herself had woken completely. There was no thought to it anymore, only action to the sound. A conditioned response. Her thumb pressed accept before her wrist dropped the receiver to her ear.

Mulder's voice echoed her name, slightly off, down the line. Worried tickled at the back of her head as her groggy mind tried to place the time. He didn't know the answer to her mumbled question. Shifting Scully sought out the time, blaring at her in bright red numbers. 'It's almost 5:00am.' Mulder's breath stuttered down the line. 'Is something wrong?' his behaviour was uncharacteristic, docile enough to finally ignite worry in the forefront of her mind. 'Where are you?' her voice shot out, her hand pushing the heavy duvet off her body after he whimpered a pathetic; 'I think so.'

'I think I'm in a … a motel room in Providence, but …'

'Where?' She snapped, one hand holding the phone to her ear in a white knuckle grip while the other yanked a pair of jeans up her legs.

'Rhode Island.'

She was prepared to leave before her mind had already caught up. Jeans on, shirt buttoned, keys in hand. Scully wasn't sure what he had done or was doing, but she knew she had to get there. 'What are you doing there?'

The confusion was evident, a little fear biting the tips of his words. 'I don't know. There's … t - there's blood all over me.' Her heart skipped ahead, holding itself momentarily.

'Are you hurt, Mulder?' Scully asked on bated breath.

He didn't respond, his breath heavy on the other end of the line. '… I don't think it's my blood.' He whispered, partially winded. Scully exhaled heavily, her heart still pounding in her chest.

'Mulder,' she breathed, 'Mulder, I need you to focus for a second.' He hummed, practically lucid. 'Mulder, where's Danica?' He hummed a question in the noise. 'Is she there?' Scully couldn't help the panic that rose in her voice.

'I - I don't think so.' She slammed her hand against the kitchen counter, not quite ready to hang up on him until she knew both he and the girl were safe.

'Where is she?' he mumbled something, half groan. 'Mulder, where the hell is Danica? She's two-years-old, where is she?'

'I don't - I don't know, Scully. I'm alone.' Her response was rushed, a forced reassurance that she would be there as fast as she could. Scully ended the call, dropped the phone to the counter and cursed long and hard. Mulder getting into trouble was not unusual, however, his dragging Danica into it was not only unacceptable but unforgivable if the girl was harmed.

Scully was half delirious as she drove in a panic across the coast. The signs for Greenwich, Connecticut reached out to her as she careened down the highway, her heart still pounding as adrenaline rushed through her veins. The detour was slight, leading her to a house that was only familiar in words and not sight. She knocked on the door, hands clenched together in fear that the woman was not here, not at this home. Footsteps echoed from inside, helping Scully to relax just slightly.

'Miss Scully,' Teena Mulder breathed, partially confused at the sight of her son's partner on the doorstep.

Teena's mouth frowned at the sight of the young woman, eyes wide with controlled panic. 'Is she here? Is Danica here?' Scully shook her tone pleading with the woman, pleading with Mulder that he had left Danica somewhere safe before doing something reckless.

Teena continued to frown, confused. 'She's here,' Teena nodded slowly. Scully's body sagged, one weight slipping off her shoulders as she sighed heavily.

'Can I, can I come in and see her?'

'What do you want with my granddaughter?' Teena was cautious, accusatory as she stared down her son's partner. She had her suspicions when she first met Danica, Fox not telling her much of where the child came from. Teena was promised that Danica would be safe, never taken from them. And yet, there stood Dana Scully half stunned with panic on her doorstep, begging to see the little girl.

'I just, I need to see her. Please, I'll be quiet. I just need to know what she's okay.'

'Of course, she's okay! Where's Fox?' It was Teena's turn to switch on the worry, although a little less than Scully's.

'He's in Rhode Island.' She didn't feed his mother any more information than strictly necessary. 'I'll be quick. I just need to see her.' Teena sighed, still sizing the woman in front of her up. Teena Mulder had not had the distinct privilege to interact with Dana Scully on more than three occasions. Although she recognised care for her son, and certainly care for her newly found granddaughter, she was suspicious, completely, on the beautiful young woman's motive.

'She's sleeping upstairs,' she waved her in, pointing towards the stairs and signalling to the left. She followed the small woman, cautiously, watching as she climbed the stairs and pushed Danica's bedroom door open gently. The hinges didn't squeak, nor the door creak as Dana Scully tiptoed into the sleeping child's bedroom, her partner's mother watching her carefully.

Scully stopped breathing once she reached Danica's bedside, finding the girl, as her grandmother had said. Carefully, Scully extended her hand, gently gracing her fingertips over Danica's soft cheek. The girl's chest hitched on a sigh before she tucked Schatz tighter under her arm and pressed further into her pillow. 'Sleep tight, Liebling' She whispered, her lips grazing the girl's tiny knuckles before Scully stood to step out of the room.

'What is your relationship with my granddaughter?' Teena Mulder asked, following Scully down the stairs and to the door. Scully tried to fight off the soft pink flush she felt flare against her cheeks. The bond was inexplicable.

Reaching for the door, Scully turned to Teena with a soft smile. 'I watch her for Mulder on occasion. Thank you for letting me see her.' Her voice was friendly, cool, calm, pleased while anger bubbled in her chest, fury and rage directed solely at this woman's son. It was only just reaching her now, adrenaline slowed, panic subsided. Mulder has potentially gotten himself into a bad situation and in the process not remembered where he had left the girl. Scully was only happy that he had the clear thought to take Danica to his mother. But forgetting that she was there, risking her life on whatever intrepid shenanigan had found him this week; her control was faltering.

'Is everything all right, Dana?' Scully half imagined she was as stunned with Teena's concern as much as Mulder had been. So much in one morning, clearly the woman was on a path of change reverting to the days in which she loved and cared for her children.

Scully gave a short, curt nod. 'I just didn't know where she was, is all.' Teena nodded accepting the excuse without completely believing it.

She was at odds and ends with Fox, not quite knowing where walls began and his real self-ended. Her steps were cautious, calculated, almost unforgiving as she feared stepping into the quicksand she created. Her own son would swallow her whole in a world full of regrets and wrong choices. She had always made the wrong choices. Married the right man with the wrong connections, conceived, twice to the wrong man with the worse ideas. She paid once for her daughter, grief took her son. The inability to reach out to him, to forgive herself first, to not see his sister's tiny face, or the guilt in his eyes. She had lost the ability to question his motives, to judge his actions. Instead, she left him be, breathing and growing like mould on the ceiling. She set him free the day he went to England, closed off the wall between them and said their goodbyes. The boat at the harbour had not been completely freed, rope still anchored him to the docks, long enough that he did not notice, not as long as forever.

His work on The X-Files drew him back to her on occasion, like the earth orbiting the sun, a buoy dancing in the ocean. He drew near to her, demanding with clenched fists the answers to questions she had long forgotten could be asked. So deep her grief she had become comatose, ignorant to it all, almost forgetful of her pain. It took Dana Scully a couple of years to find him, centre him, remove his gravitation, reset his pull. Samantha always rearranged that, dragging the raging man back to his mother's home, her doorstep, never quite making it in. Sometimes she wasn't there, sometimes she was. He would sit on the stoop and blame himself or rehearse the questions he wanted to ask. They never left his lips. He would go home, return to his apartment, the gravitational pull of Dana Scully would have him calling her in the brand new hours of a still rising morning, she would listen to the nonsense he rambled, importance hidden behind the supernatural. She questioned his sanity but never his integrity.

Teena worried that just like her guilt had drowned her, his unnerving search for the Truth of his sister's disappearance would destroy him. Scully hadn't changed that, he would still go down guns blazing, even if the petite woman had asked him not too. People, even FBI agents, we subject to change in circumstance. Danica had become their circumstance, slowly implementing change in their lives, actions and choices. Teena new neither adult enough to trust the theory but had seen enough in both Mulder and Scully's eyes to understand change was well due.

[...]

She had seen Mulder in various variations of ups and downs, low points and high. The limbering stock of a man, cowering in a steaming shower as he shivered, teeth rattling, was not one she was looking to add to the list. He couldn't get warm. Immediate diagnosis was shock.

'Do you know what day it is?' She asked, Mulder sitting on the hotel room bed wrapped in a blanket and a towel. He shook his head slowly, tilting it, confused. She watched him almost go cross-eyed trying to figure out the answer to her simple question. 'It's Sunday,' She told him once he gave in. 'What's the las thing that you remember?' She bit down on her tongue, watching his hazel eyes as she refrained from prompting him.

'I was in my apartment. I talked to you on the phone.'

Scully sighed, 'That was Friday.' Panic flared in his eyes as he scanned the room for some kind of answer, half groggy. Had he been there since Friday? 'I could guess as much, Mulder. You packed a bag. There's a change of clothes in there. You dropped Danica off at your mothers. Do you feel any pain? Did you receive a blow to the head?' He didn't notice the silver trails of tears on her cheeks, because yes, she had cried after leaving Connecticut and felt the fresh sting again. She wasn't a crier, she did not break down in front of her partner. She, however, was scared for the life of a little girl whom had already been saved frodemonsns. He was jeopardising her life, her safety, her security.

Mulder obediently shook his head at her questions. He didn't feel any pain, he didn't his head. He had not taken any medication medicinal or otherwise, the blood was certainly not his. 'Where's your weapon?' she asked, headache forming behind her eyes.

He looked like a scared child when she asked that question, responding meekly with an; 'I don't know'. She inspected his gun, finding it laying on top of his travel bag. Two rounds had been fired. 'I don't remember that,' He said as though the conviction in his voice could prove it didn't happen.

Scully sighed heavily, giving into the headache as it inched across her skull, burying itself in her temples. 'I thought you were seeing the light, Mulder. No more wasted weekends.' Scully dropped to the chair opposite the foot of the bed, her head in her hands, fingers wound through her hair. 'You're supposed to be spending time with your daughter.' She hissed the word, lifting her eyes to meet his. Mulder chose that option, wanted to play father, not run off into the night chasing whatever monster called his name.

She understood that his sister haunted him, the mysteries behind her disappearance so bizarre he had no other logical reasoning. She understood his desire to find her. To stop at nothing in order to do so. But there was a line. Drilling holes in his head, by a doctor who shouldn't even be a doctor was not the answer to Samantha Mulder's disappearance. It only opened the doors of heartache on longing, the steel closed for so long he crashed and burned each time they were shimmied open.

Mulder never quite bounced back the same after each ordeal, each inch closer to his sister's truth. Scully forced and extra night under the hospital's watchful eye, as she took the day from work and collected Danica from Connecticut. Teena was less than pleased at the sight of Scully's return after Fox had stormed into her home, demanding the truth on the legitimacy of his person. Child born within a marriage. Not to the married man. She relinquished Danica at Scully's request, the little girl already wrapped around her torso, Schatz pressed against her chest.

[...]

She was asleep by the time they reached D.C., Georgetown quiet with the lull between the end of the work day and the beginning of the night life. Scully nestled Danica onto the couch gently. The girl woke seconds after her carer stepped back, kiss on her cheek still floating between them, 'Papa?' she enquired to the silent room, eyes scanning through the soft lamplight.

'Not tonight,' Scully soothed, pushing damp hair away from the girl's sweaty forehead. 'Just me and you,' She tapped the girl on the cheek softly before moving to stand. 'Stay here, I'll go get your milk.' Danica's eyes fluttered closed as Scully stepped away, leaving her to rummage through Danica's bag for her favoured drink cup.

Scully hummed to herself in the kitchen quietly, thinking only of the tired little girl in her living room. The rest of her worries slipped away as she deliberated the ins and outs of preparing the girl's pre-bed bottle. She was possibly too big for the comfort, but in establishing a routine with Danica, Mulder made sure she had warm milk every night. She had intended to call her brother, Charles, in order for inquiry to his own two-year-old's antics; the comforts Leo sought and the acceptable measures for the age group. The time difference between D.C. and Australia had kept her from doing so.

'Mama,' A tiny voice called out as she daydreamed about the good fortune of having enough in the carton for Danica's milk, and hopefully something wholesome for breakfast. The voice made her jump, the little girl it came from stood in the doorway, Schatz dangling from one hand as she rubbed at her face with the other. Scully's heart hammered in her chest, shock and fear making it pound faster than the thudding hooves of a winning race horse.

Scully ignored the word, swallowing down the feeling of burning hope and ice cold dread. It settled uneasily in her stomach as she picked the girl up and hoisted her onto her hip. 'I thought I told you to stay put, Liebling.' She poked Danica's belly teasingly, the racing horse inside her chest, slowing to a smooth canter.

Danica dropped her head to Scully's shoulder, her cheek flush against her neck. 'Time for bed?' She asked, handing Danica her bottle, as the girl shook her head sharply. Scully chuckled at the girl's drooping eyes, knowing defeat was only steps away. She collected Danica's bag from the living room, before carrying the girl to her bedroom and setting her on the bed. 'These are new,' Scully commented, pulling a pair of pyjamas out of Danica's bag. She hadn't seen them before, moss green with white polka-dots and a pink trim. She didn't know every item in Danica's small wardrobe but, Scully was confident to know what Mulder had or had not purchased in the short weeks that had quickly turned into a little over a month.

Danica wiggled as Scully changed her clothes, playing with the buttons on her shirt with tiny little fingers. 'Oma,' She told the woman, watching the top of Scully's head as she did up the buttons for her.

'Oma,' Scully beamed, 'That's right, Liebling. Teena's your Oma.' She kissed Danica's cheeks, wrapping the girl in a fierce hug as she covered her face in gentle kisses. Her chest tightened with pride at Danica's clear observation with the world, no matter the language barrier.

'Papa?' She asked again, this time with a soft curiosity, head tilted a little to the left. Scully's smile faltered, only a little, enough to notice but barely enough to comment. She was withholding Danica. Without right, although Mulder didn't fight her when she suggested it. In fact, he insisted. Scully had wanted to punish him for his recklessness that weekend, for the costly behaviour that would have lost him Danica if it went any further. Mulder only saw it as just, insisting Scully be the one to take Nika home, to tuck her into the guest bedroom in her apartment and kiss her goodnight. He didn't deserve that simple luxury after he chased another wild lead on his endeavour to uncover the truth of Samantha.