warning: darkness and tears ahead
"Dana!" Megan exclaimed once she saw her walking through the door early. Mulder was right behind her. Scully caught the little girl and hoisted her up into her arms, but she was less than excited about what her mother had told her she would be walking into. Megan briefly wondered why the two adults looked anxious and upset, but she felt better once Mulder leaned over to brush his hand through her hair and kissed her cheek.
"What are you doing home?" Zach asked from the living room where he had been tinkering with an Erector set. Maggie sat on the couch nervously, tears already threatening to spill from her eyes.
"Uhh," Mulder began, knowing he couldn't admit the real reason they had come home.
"Lunch," Scully chimed in at just the right time, even though it was well past 2:00.
"Oh, we already had lunch," Megan said sadly, "but it's okay because you can have a snack with us."
"Thank you pumpkin," Scully tried to smile, but she couldn't.
Mulder knew he needed to get his partner and her mother in the same room together so that they could talk about why Maggie had called. But it wasn't going to be easy. Megan had been unusually attached to Scully lately, and Zach would know something was up. They needed a reason to get out of the house alone.
"Umm, Scully, I'd really like some ice cream, do we have any?" he asked, and she immediately picked up on the fact that he was trying to discreetly get Megan away from her.
"Check in the freezer. Oh, maybe Zach and Megan would like some too." Megan nodded enthusiastically and even Zach's interests were piqued.
"Oh no, Scully, we only have chocolate," it became clearer what he was trying to do.
"What kind would you like?"
"Chocolate chip."
She gave him a look that said, you couldn't have done any better than chocolate chip? Mulder shrugged.
"Well I guess I'll have to go get some. Mom, do you want to come with me to the store?" Scully asked.
"Yes, let me get my purse," Maggie agreed, still visibly upset.
"I wanna go Dana!" Megan made herself known.
"No, I want you to stay here with Mulder."
"No, I wanna go with you."
"I'm sorry, honey, you can't."
"Why?"
"Because we don't need you to go."
The hurt look on Megan's face devastated Scully. And then the tears came.
"I wanna go," she whined. Scully handed her to Mulder.
"Meg, Dana and Mrs. Scully will be right back," Mulder tried to assure her.
"Don't go without me Dana," were the last words Scully heard from the girl as she reluctantly made her way out the door with her mom. Even after they started walking, her cries carried out into the hallway and made it difficult for either woman to think of anything else.
They walked to the end of the hall and were in the stairwell before Maggie started talking.
"Dana, I think Megan has suffered more abuse than just emotional," she confessed, and began to state her reasons for believing so.
XXX
Getting Mulder to agree to go to the hospital was difficult. He didn't want to believe what Maggie had told her daughter. Yet, all the signs were there. Even he had to admit that.
"She needs to be examined, Mulder. If we have any hope to help her, we have to figure out what is wrong with her," Scully explained that night after dinner. The kids were tucked into bed, but Maggie had stuck around, wanting to support her daughter with the hard decisions she would have to be making.
"Can't we do it here, Scully? You're a doctor. What more do we need?"
"We need other professionals here with us. We can't just go into a hospital stating that she's been sexually abused and expect them to listen to us just because we've been their primary caregivers for the past few weeks. If we want to hold out any hope that we can have even a little control over the situation, we're going to have to do this at a hospital."
"There has to be some other way. Some way that doesn't involve her going to a large unfamiliar place with a bunch of strangers asking her question after question and… examining her."
"I wish there were, Mulder. If I thought that we could do this here by ourselves, I would."
Mulder ran his hands over his face, wishing the little girl would never have to know the grave injustice that had been done to her. But Scully was right, this was the only way they could help her.
"Fox, I'm so sorry that this is happening," Maggie offered. She'd felt especially guilty the whole day, having been the one to raise concerns about the extreme fear Megan had of strange people bathing her once she'd discovered she had wet the bed during her afternoon nap. As if that hadn't been enough for the woman to worry, Zach had informed her about one of their mother's… contacts, a person both could only identify as "scary dog man," who had liked to bathe Megan a "special way" when he was over. It had almost made her sick as she relayed the information to her daughter, but there was no way Maggie wasn't going to raise concerns as to what she'd come to know that day.
"I should be thanking you, Mrs. Scully. For catching this as soon as you did. We could have gone months without knowing, all while she got worse."
"She's such a sweet little girl, I would take all of her pain away from her in a moment if I could," Maggie revealed. At this, Scully leaned in to her mother's embrace. It was astonishing to see just how close her mom had gotten to Zach and Megan in the short time she'd known them. Then again, it wasn't. They were good kids, so easy to love, and Scully knew her own feelings toward them were that of a mother.
"So what's the plan, Scully?" Mulder asked. He knew about the clinical, professional details about gathering evidence in a child molestation case. But he couldn't imagine applying them to his own flesh and blood. He needed his partner's guidance.
"We'll let her get a good night's sleep. All of us should get some. Tomorrow is going to be… difficult."
The three adults were all in the process of agreeing when Megan decided that she had another idea.
Usually, Mulder and Scully had learned from experience, if Megan were having a nightmare, they had about a two minute window of whimpering to get her calmed down before she started screaming. Not that night. Her piercing screams could be heard, Scully was sure, throughout her apartment building.
Mulder got to the bedroom first, just in time to peel Megan off Zach, gladly taking the hits she was giving her brother for himself. Closed fists collided with Mulder's chest as he tried to wake the girl from whatever flashback she was having.
"LEAVE ME ALONE! LEAVE ME ALONE! STOP!" Megan screamed with all her might. Ignoring Megan's strikes and her apparent accident, Mulder rushed her out to the bathroom, determined to get her in the light. As soon as he sat her down on the counter, Megan had balled herself up as much as she could and was covering her ears, still crying in earnest.
"Meg? Megan? Meg, everything is okay. Everything is fine. It's Mulder. You're safe," he tried desperately to soothe her, running a wet washcloth over her face and through her hair. But once she felt the coolness of the rag, Megan freaked out in a different way.
"No! I don't want another bath! NO!" she screamed. Mulder didn't know what kept him from crying in that moment, but he felt like the weight of the world was on his shoulders. He felt so useless for not being able to take Megan's problem away. Or for even being able to recognize it in the first place. Why had it taken Maggie Scully to bring up suspicions that she had been sexually abused?
"Meg…" Mulder sniffled, discarding the rag and pushing her hair back with his fingers. He just wanted her to wake up. Anything to wake her up.
A shiver ran through the little girl, and that was how Mulder knew she had woken up. Instead of terrified screams, she started emitting embarrassed sobs. He couldn't help himself. Mulder threw his arms around her and started rocking.
"Nobody is ever going to hurt you ever again. We're going to make it all better," he promised her. At that moment, Scully walked into the bathroom, a crying Zach in her arms, and they both knew. They would be spending the night in the hospital.
XXX
"How do you like this room sweetheart?" Mulder asked Megan the next morning as they entered a room in the children's psychology ward at the hospital. It was full of toys and art supplies, all of which would be used to further investigate the allegations that Megan had been inappropriately handled by men while in her mother's care. He'd refused to leave her side since the bathroom incident, which had made it a little difficult for Scully to convince him to allow herself and another doctor to examine her. Unfortunately, it hadn't been difficult to ascertain whether or not Megan had undergone sexual abuse. When examined, she'd been almost a textbook case. Scully felt she would need to step aside and vomit into a garbage bag more than once during the event, but she'd stayed in the room the whole time just like she promised Megan and Mulder she would. Thankfully, the doctor in the ER hadn't had any hesitations about Scully's recommendation to give the little girl something to relax her during the process. None of them had wanted her to endure more trauma than she already had.
"I jus' wanna go home," Megan slurred with sleep and as a side-effect of the lorazepam.
"We'll be able to go home soon. We just have to talk to some more people." Under no circumstances was Mulder going to use the word "cops."
"I don't wanna talk to anyone anymore."
"Hey, look at that dollhouse over there," Mulder tried to distract the five-year-old, whose patience was quickly wearing thin. Good thing Megan seemed interested in the toy.
"Do you like that dollhouse? Do you want to play?"
Though she hesitated, Megan slowly got down from Mulder's lap and went over to the dollhouse in question.
"Do you wanna be the daddy doll Mulder?" she asked him sweetly. From behind the one-way glass, Scully managed a smile as Mulder nodded and took the doll. If when she had first met him seven years ago somebody would have told her that everything they'd been through together would lead to that day, she wouldn't have believed them for a minute. The Mulder playing dolls with a little girl had little in common with the shadowy man who'd called himself "The FBI's Most Unwanted."
"Zach never wants to be the daddy doll," Megan informed him.
"Some boys don't like to play dolls. They don't know what they're missing."
Tucking the dolls into bed, Megan decided to tell Mulder something that had been on her mind for a while.
"If you're the daddy doll, then the mommy doll can be Dana."
"Oh yeah?" Mulder didn't really know how to broach that subject.
"Yeah. And you can sleep in the same bed. Do you sleep in bed with Dana?"
Taking a deep breath, Mulder was too tired to be anything but truthful. "Sometimes."
"Do you love Dana?"
Before he got a chance to answer, or even configure a plan for avoiding the question altogether, the two detectives who would be questioning Megan let themselves in the room. They were pleased to see that Mulder had already gotten the girl to start playing.
Twenty minutes later, Mulder excused himself to go to the bathroom. At least that was what Megan thought. He would really be watching her every move from behind the same glass that Scully had been standing behind while the detectives asked her a few questions. She was shy at first, but eventually opened up and told them everything that they needed to know.
Mulder and Scully clutched each other as she said the dreaded words.