Title: Bad Enough 
Author: Mindy J.
Rating: Not Rated
Category: SAR
Spoilers: Requiem
Keywords: angst, romance

Summary: I should feel anxious... I should feel anything.
But I'm still and quiet and I know before they even put me
on the stretcher, the baby has died.

= =

X X X

= =

"In Beadohild's breast her brother's death was not so sore a
weight as her own condition, when she could clearly see that
she grew great with child. Nor could she consider with
unflinching mind what was to come of that. That passed by;
this can, too."

From "Deor"

= =
Failed
=

Emily. I've been so unfair to you - while you were living,
when I needed to act as your mother, needed to see love for
me in your eyes. When you died and I mourned a daughter. All
the thoughts and feelings I've ascribed to you over the
years. As I've imagined love and resentment and hate and
sorrow for me. And I was just a stranger to you, wasn't I,
Emily? Just a nice stranger who helped look after you when
your Mommy died.

So unjust, Emily. Even now I burden your little spirit with
my problems as though you're a kind angel hearing my
confession, the same way I used you to help myself set that
disabled girl free. It's so easy to believe that you were a
message from God, so easy to trick myself into believing
that you didn't really suffer...

I'm sorry, Emily. There I go again. In many ways I'm kinder
to the kidnapping victims my partner and I have tried to
find.

Emily, Emily, Emily. I've deified you. Blame your wise
little eyes. "The child she couldn't raise." Am I so wrong
to ask you to help me? I should pray to God or Mary. But the
Virgin Mary isn't =real= - is an expression of faith that I
don't have. Likewise a God that would allow... these
things... to happen. But you, Emily - I have to believe in
life after death. I have to believe you're in Heaven. And so
I speak to you, believing that you can hear me.

My daughter, Emily. Not you - a daughter that Mulder and I
made. Died, Emily, right in my womb. Five months, Emily,
enough to see a bulge in my stomach. A miscarriage.

I failed. Nine small months, and my body quit after five.
I've failed him, Emily. The only daughter Mulder and I will
ever have. Mulder's only daughter, his only flesh and blood,
the only genetic evidence of =him=. Unless he's found and he
concieves more children. But, Emily, Emily, he won't be
found.

His daughter, Emily. Mulder's daughter, and I killed her. I
saw her, Emily, before they...cremated her. She would have
looked like him.

Shouldn't I end it all? Right here, right now. But that's
what a 'weak woman' would do, and I =can't=, I can't let him
know how weak I am. I lost him. I lost his daughter. And
then to take the easy way out, when he lasted all those
years with his sorrows. Not to even wait for him, Emily.

I feel like I did when I had my cancer - the same
hopelessness. Once again, death is close and welcome and
inevitable. What's left to live for? I can't save Mulder. If
it weren't for me... Oh, God, if it weren't for me, he might
have quit years ago. Why did he keep going, blind to all
danger? Why couldn't he have had a worthier partner? I
couldn't find him. I couldn't even support the life of our
daughter in my womb. What good am I?

Emily, take me to you. Be the salvation I couldn't be to
you. Or maybe I did save you. Remember, Emily? Mulder asked
me, asked me if I wanted to save you. I chose not to save my
poor Emily. I knew that you'd be a test subject for them, a
lab rat - not have any kind of life at all. I spared you,
Emily. Remember? Have pity, Emily, and spare me, too.

It was all for him. All for him. God, I don't want to live
any more.

=X=X=X

A hospital. He smells the aroma of sedatives and antiseptic
and bolts straight up, pulling against the restraints around
his wrists and ankles. Funny. They've never allowed him this
much mobility before.

"No! No! No tests! Scully!" His voice is a croak and than a
whisper... Talking, for the first time in months. He opens
his eyes for the first time and sees =humans=, doctors and
nurses and... a short person, with a worried expression,
brown hair... face too fuzzy to make out.

"...Scully?" The face comes closer. "Mrs. Scully."

"Fox. Thank God you're all right." The skin around her eyes
crinkles and tears spring to the corners. She quickly turns
away and struggles to gain control of herself. "Fox," she
murmurs from behind her handkerchief, "you've been gone a
long time."

"How long?" he asks, his voice hoarse and gravelly and
insistent. "Mrs. Scully, where's Dana?"

"The doctor should come check you out, Fox," she says
through her slow tears. "You've been in a coma."

"Mrs. Scully, where's Dana?"

"I'll talk to you some more after the doctor sees you." She
doesn't look at him, but goes out of his room and closes the
door behind her.

=X=X=X

He's been in the hospital for a week. He came out of his
coma the day before, slept for several more hours, then woke
up.

And he really doesn't give a damn about any of that,
becoming more and more angry as the doctors and nurses do
the typical thing by ignoring most of his questions. It
makes him so God Damn frustrated. As soon as he has some
more ice chips melting in his throat, he begins
interrogating his doctor again.

"A red-haired woman about thirty-five. Dr. Dana Scully. She
hasn't been hanging around?"

"No, Mr. Mulder."

"=Any= red-haired woman. She might be using an assumed
name."

"=No=, Mr. Mulder."

"And a Dana Scully hasn't been admitted to the hospital
recently?" They don't notice the hesitation, the tears
creeping to his eyes.

"I don't think so, Mr. Mulder, but really, this is a big
hospital. I can't be sure. Now it's time for you to take
your medication..."

And no Mrs. Scully since that first minute when he woke up.
No Skinner. No anybody, but a phone call from the gunmen and
an assurance that they'd be there soon, the only evidence he
has to convince himself that Mrs. Scully wasn't a dream,
that he really and truly is out of the... Place. No more
restraints. Freedom so easy, but he is sick and weak and his
brain tells him that a doctor's care right now is a good
thing.

As the drugs take effect, he comforts himself with that
image that had become a nightly ritual. Bright red hair,
wide, white smile. Red lips... He whispers a name, the
prayer that had given him hope through the very worst of his
ordeal in the place. "Scully..."

=X=X=X

"Doctor Dana Scully." Of course he knew who she was. He had
gone to medical school with the woman, hadn't he? Dr. Adams
wipes a tear from his eye. Just thank the heavens he can lie
as well as he can. That poor, poor man. It's unlikely that
the police will ever find Dana, unless her body washes up on
the bank of a river somewhere.

He had stopped in to see her when she'd had her miscarriage.
She was sleeping, and she looked... well, she looked like
the living dead. The story was going around the whole floor.
She was an FBI agent. Yeah, he remembered when she accepted
the recruitment from Quantico - had been damn disappointed
that he wouldn't be seeing her on a daily basis any more. A
miscarriage; can you believe it? No, not married - the baby
was her partner's - bad enough. Her partner had been
kidnapped three months ago and was presumed dead - fucking
terrible. Who would blame her if she did go jump into a
river and end her miseries? And he had known that girl in
college. Unbelievable.

Then the visit from Mrs. Scully. The woman actually
remembered him from all those years ago. Had he heard of Fox
Mulder? No. Oh, was he the man who was Dana's partner? Oh
I'm so sorry, Mrs. Scully. Would you tell Dana... Did he
know that Mulder had been found two days ago and was
currently a patient in his hospital? No! But I thought...
He's in danger... people who want to kill him... And that
was that. Mrs. Scully wanted someone trusted working on
Mulder.

And now the poor bastard had gone and woken up. Jesus
Christ. Over ten years of bedside manners and Adams was just
barely holding on to to his control, when he really wanted
to scream and tear his hair out. Your baby's dead! You
girlfriend committed suicide! You were fucking kidnapped,
for Christ's sake! But no, it's -

"Dr. Dana Scully? You sure you don't mean Margaret Scully?
It's a big hospital, Mr. Mulder. Hmm. You seem a bit
distraught. Nurse, is this patient's dose. . . Yes? Never
mind then, Jenny. Well, Mr. Mulder, I guess I'll see you in
about two hours. Have a good rest."

=X=X=X

"Guys, what happened to Scully?" He wants to go on asking
and being a pain in the ass until they assure him over and
over again that she's all right, assuring him if only so
that he'll shut up.

They simply look at each other, though. God, they =look= at
each other, Langly biting his lip, Byers so God damn grave,
and Frohicke... Mulder's fear cuts through him and leaves
him with no words in his throat.

He didn't want to be right. Why the hell had he been right?

"Guys? What happened to her?" It's all he can get out.

"Boys," Frohicke murmurs, "I think I should tell him." They
nod and no, no, no! Byers and Langly get up and leave the
room. And Frohicke is suddenly standing right next to the
head of the bed, leaning close.

"We don't know where Scully is," he says, choking on the
words.

Mulder sighs in relief.

"Why didn't you tell me, Frohicke; I thought she was-"

A wave of the gnome man's hand shuts him up.

There's more of course there's more but at least she's not -
and what could be worse but oh no it's something worse an
accident brain damage rape she's been raped why isn't she
here at least she's not dead but no it's worse look at his
face it's worse...

He's like a child afraid of the dark, afraid of monsters, as
Frohicke tells him, the older man having to pause at times
to stop crying. And some how something in the little man's
voice communicates part of the sorrow and the depression and
the desperation through the shock and relief and no-she's-
not-dead-but-she-might-have-committed-suicide. And oh-Jesus-
Christ-a-daughter-I-might-have-had-a-daughter.

=X=X=X

"Mrs. Scully, I have to get out."

"Of course, Fox."

You knew all along, didn't you, Mrs. Scully? Knew I'd look
for your daughter. All this time I thought you cared about
me, the mother I never had. But no, I guess loosing Dana
does things to a mother. You blame me. Your eyes could be
purple-gray, Mrs. Scully, and your hair white and taller and
broader and Teena Mulder, but no, stupid to think about that
now. And of course you blame me.

His clothes are two sizes too big. Fevers strike him at odd
times, but by God it feels good to be out of white rooms,
and Scully. Scully, Scully, Scully, wait for me. Tell me I'm
not too late. Plane fare right away and what do you know?
His FBI credentials still work. Scully, be there. Wait for
me. I'm coming as fast as I can.

=X=X=X

He finds her kneeling in the graveyard, her hair and trench
coat soaking wet - it rained a little over twenty minutes
ago and since then the sun hasn't come out.

"Emily Sims."

Mulder leans forward, just past Scully, and places the dozen
white carnations at the base of the headstone. Scully
doesn't flinch, doesn't acknowledge the presence of another
human being.

How long has she been kneeling there? My God, she's as still
as death.

"Scully!" He resists the urge to wrench her around violently
so that he can the quicker peer into her face. Instead he
shakes her shoulder gently. She's stiff, but not cold. She
turns her head a little toward him, her mouth open, nothing
but unbearable sadness in her eyes. She's a million times
thinner than he remembers her. She's paler and worn and he's
never seen a more welcome, beautiful thing than her eyes,
alive and present and =alive=. She's not dead; she hasn't
bled to death from a gunshot wound in her temple or drowned
in a river. She's frozen and sad and starving and so so
miserable, but she's alive.

I'm here, Scully.

"Scully." He falls to his knees next to her and wraps her
small, stiff body in his arms. "Scully." And he holds her as
she begins to cry.

===
End
===