Thanks to everyone who reviewed and those who have alerted and favorited.

Sorry it's a little bit late guys, and probably really disappointing content wise. I have been really busy and am kind of striking against this piece of technology. But the chapter is here.

Part 27

This is Happening

The darkness held her down, the pressure tightened on her throat as daemons stalked the edge of her sleep, prowling, and waiting for her to slip off the edge, to allow herself to be encompassed by it all.

The air was thick, the space small and to her Mutter it was like being buried alive above ground, in houses all in neat little rows on the dreary streets of suburbia. She could still remember how it all smelt of death and burning. She could still remember the sounds that filtered through brick and plaster, although she could no longer remember the translations, she remembered the fear.

She had been three at the time; so young and supposedly so innocent. But the things that were done to her even now, even three years later still held vivid images in her mind; the tools, the men, her own Mutter's silent mourning as she flinched but didn't dare speak when men removed the willing and curious, barely walking toddler. She let her go; she let her daughter go to an uncertain death, a death that would never come. Her mother had called her a curse and a blessing all in one go, her resilience to suffer through so much pain was bringing them trouble, but her little girl was alive and too Angelika Wolff that was enough.

There was so much she couldn't recall, but she could remember the musky air, how it felt as though every day you were walking through a thick fog. How she thought it must have been a visible melancholy hanging in wait, wanting to be seen by those who had missed the screams.

She could remember these things even though she didn't want to. She could remember even though she was too young to conjure those thoughts and yet, there she was, walking those streets again in her dreams no longer three, but six.

She walked the street uncertain, the cobblestone roads deadly silent. Her eyes looked up at the trees, the forest edge that ran along the villages' boarders. Her eyes were pleading with her memory so she could see her Papa.

Someone in her head echoed not to venture to far in German, a voice she had by now long forgotten but with the smallest sound of it she could easily recall. Her mind jumped to the tiny room they called a kitchen, merely a sink and bench to be shared between three grimy and starving families. But for now, it was just Danica and her Mutter. She was chastising her; telling her to be good, to be quiet, to keep warm and most importantly to keep out of sight from lurking eyes. No one was safe here, neighbor turned on neighbor, even families told on others in order to save themselves for just a little while longer.

She nodded her head, agreeing with the German woman in silence rather than with her shocked words. Angelika kissed her daughter's forehead as she pulled a pea green beanie over her noticeable orange hair. "neugierig, wie Alice und das Kaninchen-Loch." She reprimanded the child, who was at an age only dream Angelika Wolff could live to see. "Curious, just like Alice and the rabbit hole.' She chuckled at herself and the still silent child. "gehen." She urged her out the door and down the creaking stairs with a supportive shove on her shoulders. "Go. Be good my angel. Have adventures!" Her eyes burned with excitement and she shoved the troubled six-year-olds shoulder again. "Go!" She shoved for a third shove her voice hushed as she followed behind the girl and then pushed her out the door.

Then she was there, the somewhat warmth of the building leaving her body as the cold invaded completely ignoring the coat as she stood on the sidewalk. Looking back at the house Danica crinkled a brow, something that was very Dana Scully and she knew it. She tucked her hands into her pockets as she moved along the path that was covered in muddy snow. She exhaled; her breath appeared as stream in front of her face. She smiled at it for a moment, relaxing into life's simple wonders; the things that her father would call phenomena and her mother would calmly explain as science.

Her feet crunched against the sidewalk as she listened to the dead silence. Goose flesh trailed her spine, something was amiss. But there was nothing, no sound, no life on the streets; everyone was too busy being tucked up in the holes they called homes with people they had once never known as they all tried to avoid being the next few picked.

She continued to walk, the strangeness of the little village not bothering her. She had loved adventures, only when they were forbidden and Pozor always felt forbidden, for the village itself had been named with the Russian word for 'Disgrace'. The streets were empty now, the air damp, the whole place sounded like something that would be placed in a book. Danica carried on as she allowed her childish mind to make her feel as though she was the only girl in the world. Settling in to the airy street with her mind running off with some wild fancy the girl froze. Not because the weather was wet and snow was on the verge, but because the building's rumbled. The sound had nothing to do with the foundations for Danica had heard the noise before, it was the undistinguishable explosion of gunfire. Her hair stood on end as her feet remained rooted to against the snow. She couldn't breathe, not while her heart pounded.

Gulping down hair like it was a meal, her head flicked towards the forest, her whole body on fire. She was hoping beyond hope that she could see her Papa up there, he would save her. She knew he would. But she found no sign as her eyes scaled the trees. Her heart continued to pound while her lungs forgot how to function with every new shot that reached her delicate ears.

She brought her hand to her face as she covered the gasps that wanted to be screams. She counted the gunfire before she made a move, uncertain as to where the shots were coming from and when they would stop. She had counted to seven by the time her nerves could no longer take it, she turned on her heel and ran. She kept her eye on the forest as she moved, her breath was coming out in short puffs as the cold pierced and seized her lungs. The beanie her mother had pulled over her head flew off at the force of her run and Danica didn't have the nerve to turn around and fetch it when she noticed it gone.

She hid in an old cellar for hours, not emerging until the snow had started to fall, the concept of time had escaped her but even Danica knew it had been hours. The sky was getting darker and after whatever had happened the men had time to start fires, she could smell the burning flesh that was the thing that had roused her from her sleep on the cellar floor. When she stepped back out on street level Danica was faced with the fact that not everybody had been collected from the streets, this one in fact had been left until, whenever they were going to get to it. She stepped delicately around the rotting remains as she tried her best not to look or stand on them. She had heard these people die, she had cried when they screamed for pointless help and yet, she did nothing to save them. The least she could do was cause them any further disgrace.

Finding an empty street she stood still and stared at the forest edge. That was when she saw him, a man – her Papa - sitting on the mountain side, binoculars pressed to his eyes as he watched on, powerless. She stared. Her mind not believing that she had not created an oasis out of the man. She was living in the desert and he was her must needed water.

She felt it when the snowflakes started to tickle her skin, it had alarmed her when she saw the soot fell in front of her eyes but she had her savior, she now had no worries. Her heart was put at ease then suddenly ripped out. Light reflected off of something to her Papa's left, "Papa," she whispered with panic at the tip of her tongue and fear gripping at her throat. "Papa!" She screamed as she jumped on the spot and waved her arms in an attempt to grab his attention while she continually called his name. But it was too late, gunfire sounded this time in the mountain and his binoculars disappeared from sight.

She had not thought about what would happen if she drew attention to herself; it was not long before a soldier appeared in front of her. He clicked his tongue as he spoke to her, his words unknown to her All-American ears, but she knew enough about tone and portrayal to know that it was not good. She looked back up to where she had seen her Papa, she did not care about the soldier, she was too busy trying to figure out why he wasn't running down the mountain side to save her.

That was the last thought she held before a bullet ripped through her flesh. His name was on her lips as she continued to scream for the man who once saved her but was now no longer there to do so.

Danica thrashed in her sleep, something was holding her legs down and she was unable to get free. Finding the will to open her eyes again to regrettably face the dark street belonging to the Russian village that held her captive for so long the young child was shocked when she found herself to be in her bedroom located in Alexandria, Virginia. Her breathing was still rushed and her mind panicked, but when she recognized her surroundings the six-year-old was able to relax. She exhaled a deep breath when she felt the pressure of another hand holding her own, then her mother's blue eyes peering at her inquisitively; the now common worry line was still evident across Dana Scully's face as he thumb stroked the back of her daughter's hand.

The young girl gave her mother a brave smile as she wondered how much she had witnessed of her sleep. She had been trying so hard as to not let her pain show though, as not to show how much it killed her inside that her Papa's whereabouts were still, after three months, unknown. Danica knew that everyone thought he was dead, but her mother hadn't known that the young child had even thought that way.

"You okay?" Scully asked with a soft voice as she reached her hand out to stoke Danica's hair out of her face. The girl nodded as she wrestled with her blankets in order to free herself from the strangling grip. "What were you dreaming about?" Danica moved over, so she was closer to the wall allowing for her mother to have space to curl up on her bed like they always did on Saturday mornings, even though it wasn't Saturday. She ignored the question instead opting for silence as she watched her mother climb in next to her. "You have to tell me, Sweetheart. I could hear you calling out." Danica rested her head against her mother's shoulder as she heaved a heavy sigh.

"Papa didn't save me like he did, he wasn't there Mama and I looked for him. He wasn't there no more." Scully tightened her arm around the girl, both women were scared. Danica hadn't had a nightmare in three years, not since Mulder took her from Russia and now, now that he was gone the nightmares were coming back. "I'm scared." She whispered and Scully sensed she had done so around a thumb in her mouth.

Pressing a kiss to the orange hair Scully felt her heart want to give way. "Danica, your father will always protect you. No matter where he is. I promise. It was just a dream, I've got you, no one's going to take you away, okay?" The girl nodded as she sifted to better lie down, her head found residence on her mother's stomach.

"I can't hear Papa's voice anymore." She hiccupped, her voice turning back to its babyish mumble she had held when she was only three. Her bottom lip started to curl and tears burnt her eyes threatening to also crack her voice. "I miss him." She admitted in a voice that sounded far too much like a broken little girl for Scully's own liking.

Scully hugged the girl to her as best she could. "We all miss him." Her hands started to run through the girls' hair mechanically. "You know, I need Papa to come back because I have a secret for him." She tried for a somewhat playful note in order to tell the girl how much this was hurting her too.

"Papa can't keep secrets. Not the really good ones anyway, he does try but he can't keep 'em for very long." Scully laughed openly through the thick tears that had fallen while the child could not witness them.

"No, he can't. You're terribly right." Together they laughed, the tension of their lives releasing silently as they both forgot what they had been living through, Scully half expected her partner to walk in the room right then and defend himself while he found a place at the foot of the bed or tickling Danica until she took her words back.

As they sat there, the early morning ticking by Scully realized how much Danica had matured in only a few months. She had taken the role of emotional support rather than the child in hysterics who didn't understand. She was the rock Scully should have been, Danica was the rock her mother was trying so hard to be. It saddened her to think the little girl before her had grown up so quickly due to a horrible tragedy. But yet, Danica never once complained about the way things were happening; she never cried 'why me?' or threw a tantrum for that Scully was glad, but she was also surprised.

Danica never once said how she was feeling, not at all until that morning. Scully had wondered if she had been asking the girl the wrong questions, but it turned out that Danica was more like her than she would have liked to admit, she was bottling the emotion, dying silently inside while life continued to pass her by.

"Can I tell you my secret for Papa then?" Danica was yet to know about the baby and while a number of others had found out she couldn't tell the child. She didn't know how. Better yet, she couldn't deal with the thought of bringing joy to a devastated place such as their home had become. The girl nodded against her mother's stomach where she was yet to move from. "Well …" Scully drew out as she gave herself time. "You asked for a sibling once."

"A baby brother." She corrected making sure that her mother would remember.

Scully laughed, "Yes, you asked for a baby brother. Well, Papa and I gave it some thought and we couldn't see the harm in trying. But the thing with babies Danica is that you can't but in a ballot on what you want to get. It's a surprise." Danica sat up and looked at her mother for a moment her face blank before it split into a large smile.

She jumped up on her knees giving herself more leverage to bounce on her bed beside her mother. "I'm getting a baby brother!" She squealed.

Scully laughed at her daughter's response as she shook her head. "We won't know what the baby is until it's born. But yes, you're getting a sibling. Papa and I are having a baby." She told the girl softly once she calmed down and brushed the wild hair from her forehead. She felt the air rush from her lungs only momentarily as she finally said the words. It hadn't been the first time she spoke of her pregnancy, she had told Skinner and her mother, and although she hadn't been the one to tell John Doggett he too knew of her secret. But there was something about telling Danica, something about her connection with Mulder that made it seem all that more real. It was official now, whether she liked it or not.

Something about her daughter's crazed excitement caused tears to slip down her cheeks without a chance of stopping them. Danica sat down beside Scully softly as she brushed her mother's tears away with her thumbs softly. She didn't query, she didn't push instead she spoke lightly, "Papa needs to come back and finish my tree house." Her blue eyes were intense as she looked her mother directly in the eye. "Do I have to share it now?" She asked softly, her face contorting with displeasure.

Scully gave her daughter a watery smile and soft chuckle as she kissed her forehead. "Not for a little while." She kissed the girls' forehead again. "Thank you." There was subtext behind her words and the six-year-old understood the hidden meaning. "C'mon we better get ready otherwise we'll both be late." There was an extra bounce in her step as she moved out of the girls' room, Danica was changing back to her old self. The care free little girl who existed before her father's disappearance. She could not help but wonder if there was a change in her child would there be a change in her partner's known whereabouts.

She was looking forward to work that day, everything was starting off promising but by the end of the evening Dana Scully would have much preferred to return home on her own feet with the news for the six-year-old that Fox Mulder was still missing, not dead.

Scully had known that it was a bad idea to get her hopes up when they found Teresa Hoese alive and well again but she couldn't help it. Her mind was running rampant with the thought of bring Mulder home to Danica that night, of getting to hold him again and telling him about her pregnancy. She couldn't rid the images and they spurred her on for the rest of the day and well into the night.

But disappointment fell quickly and crushed easily. It wasn't long before she was standing in front of his grey, lifeless body. Her hope had soared only seconds ago but it had now plummeted to the point of denial. She couldn't believe it; she wouldn't, even though the evidence was right in front of her. She had dropped to the ground, her hands fluttering around his face as tears started to blur her vision. She could feel nausea climbing up the back of her thought as her fingertips ran over his cuts and bruises. She was willing him to breathe, begging to her God to let it not be true. She had been looking for months, they all had. But none of them, not a single one had to go home to his daughter and tell her what they had seen that day.

She remembered Jeremiah Smith, she knew what he could do and with a second she was up and off the ground and running through the woods. She had been too late, what had taken him she didn't dare speak off. It was enough to know for those who had been there, who had felt the ground shake and had seen the light. She didn't need to say it out loud.

John Doggett and the newly introduced Monica Reyes had taken her home that night, both not wanting to leave the woman to her own devices on transporting herself home. The rest of the night happened in a blur, Scully had decided not to tell Danica but the little girl managed to find out anyway. The rest turned into something of a crystal clear clarity.

She knew to expect a storm, something that had the force to tear the house and its foundations apart. But this storm wasn't a hurricane or thunder storm, it was not a large scale natural disaster. It happened to be a large scale tantrum from the tiny being of a six-year-old who had been put through so much in such a small amount of time. But even John Doggett looked surprised that someone so small was acting so violently. Four adults stood on the back deck, each one of them shocked as threw herself at the half built tree house Mulder had been in the midst of building before he disappeared. They all watched; Maggie Doggett, Monica and Dana each of them couldn't find the will to break the girl away from the wood she was pounding at as hard as she could the tears streaming freely down her face.

As the night grew darker Doggett and Reyes left leaving the small crumpled family to be by themselves. Scully managed to talk her mother into going home, claiming that all she and Danica needed was a night alone and that they would call if ever they needed anything.

Danica kept at it for another two hours after Maggie left, she had managed to pull down quite a bit of the half built structure. When she finally gave into exhaustion her mother was waiting on the steps her arms open and a knowing look on her face. "I don't want a little brother anymore." Danica muttered as she buried her face in her mother's neck. When she queried into why it only made her feel worse. "It's because of my brother that Papa isn't here." She wanted to think it true and for a moment Scully believed her daughters words. But the rift didn't want her, it spat her out, Mulder was destined to be taken.

She shook her head. "No it's not, Danica. Papa was taken for reasons even I can't explain. But it's okay, you've got me and I have you. We have this baby, who is going to be a part of Papa. We'll get through it." The girl sniffled in her head. "I promise, it'll get easier, liebechen. But, you need to tell me how you feel when you're upset. No more bottling up. Okay?" The little girl nodded.

"I can't hear Papa." It was the same conversation from that morning, but now Scully had devised a plan. Rubbing the girls' back she pulled her phone out of her pocket and dialed the number that in three years had started giving other people if they couldn't get her on her cell. She pressed the pone to the girl's ear and leaned in allowing for them both to listen to it, the cell rang through to their answering machine and the automatic message Mulder had set up.

"Hi, you've reached Fox and Danica Mulder and occasionally the delectable Miss Dana Scully. We're not home right now, but leave a message and we'll get back to you shortly."

It was short, but it was his voice. Danica smiled up at her mother and thanked her before getting up to go inside. Scully followed behind the girl quietly. She stopped at the answering machine to delete the message they had left. She didn't think there were any other messages left on the machine, she stopped when one started to play with the same dreadful date that Mulder went missing. It was time stamped for 6:30pm, he would have been back in Oregon so she had not expected the voice that filled the room when the message started to play;

"Scully, I know you're not home right now. My guess says you're still at the office trying to make sense of all of this." Danica appeared beside her, her eyes wide and tear filled as she stared at the machine. "I just, I wanted to call to let you know my phones dead and the Skin-man managed to leave his in D.C. And, um, I wanted to call just to say that I love you." He laughed over the phone and she could imagine he was running his hand through his hair. "It sounds pathetic, but I can't seem to say it enough. Making up for the past seven years, I guess." She could picture his goofy smile as though he were standing right in front of her and saying it. She let out a strangled laugh that very quickly turned itself into a sob. "You were saying that you had a bad feeling about us coming out to Oregon. I thought you were being all protective mama bear over Danni, because we both know you hate being away from her for too long. But, I ah, I think you're right. Don't enjoy that too much." He laughed again. "The Gunmen have been instructed to keep an eye on you, be nice to them and humor me will ya? Can you please go see a doctor after you drop Danni off in the morning? You're making me worry, Babe. Wait; don't kill me for calling you that. It slipped out." Her sobs continued to come as she listened to the message not caring that Danica was there to witness it. How had it managed to stay on the machine all this time and she hadn't notice? "I should be home tomorrow afternoon at the latest. Oh, and before I forget. I thought we could talk about adopting." She could hear his grin through the phone. "There are other ways we can do this and Danica still wants that baby brother. Okay, sorry Scully Skinner's waving at me like an idiot. I have to go. Give Danni a kiss goodnight from me when she goes to bed. Love you both."

They were catapulted into the silence when his message finished, Scully sat sobbing on the tile floor of the kitchen while Danica stood at her hip shell shocked and in more ruins than what she had been when she heard her father was dead. The silence was suffocating but neither knew what to do.

Dear pearlie - It doesn't count if it's cannon. You can't be disappointed. I call get-out-of-jail-free card or whatever works in this situation.

Until next week,

A