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Title: Small Hostage
Friday, June 21, 1996 Dana Scully stopped just inside the basement office, the hair on the back of her neck rippling with alarm. The usual dimness of the room had been eclipsed by cool light from the television monitor. The TV was on, its blank cerulean screen shimmering like a huge blue eye in the darkness. Scully drew her gun and pressed her back against the wall, listening for sounds of an intruder. But there was only dead silence. She went through the office and the outer rooms, her movements slow and wary. Only when she had assured herself that she was alone did she return her gun to her hip holster and turn her attention to the glowing television. The VCR was turned on. A little yellow indicator informed her that there was a tape in the machine. Scully picked up the remote control lying atop the machine and pushed play. If this is one of Mulder's stupid pranks, he's a dead man, she thought. The blue screen disappeared, replaced by a flicker of movement. A little girl's face, unknown yet somehow familiar. A shock of red curls and hazel-gray eyes, tiny white teeth bared in a silly child's grin. Scully sank into the chair and stared at the screen.
Fox Mulder stopped in the doorway of the office, surprised to find that Scully had beaten him there. He prided himself on being the first one in--it fed his self-concept, he supposed, the idea that he was the most dedicated to their search for the truth. Despite the fact that his existence before Scully had become his partner had been a cold, solitary hell, he liked to delude himself from time to time that if circumstances required, he could go it alone again. Delusions that seldom lasted past the first cup of coffee, despite his recent concerted efforts to the contrary. He opened his mouth to comment on her early arrival when he realized she hadn't even turned her head at his entrance. She sat in his chair, staring at the television. On screen was a little girl sitting at a nondescript table in an even more nondescript room. He spared the picture half a glance before he turned his attention to his partner, whose current activity was far more interesting and disturbing. Scully was weeping. She sat very still, her hand pressed to her trembling lips, watching the video of the child in rapt, horrified attention. Fat tears trickled down her cheeks, stained blue by the light from the television. "Scully?" She didn't turn at the sound of his voice. But she lifted her hand away from her mouth to wipe away the tears tracking her cheeks. "What's wrong?" He crossed to his desk, his hands clenched at his side. He thought about touching her--wanted to touch her in a way he hadn't wanted to in a while. But over the past year, things between them had changed so much--for the better, he'd tried to convince himself as a fine line of tension had begun to spring up between them, inexorably widening. The tension helped them focus on their work more--but had also created a distance that hadn't been there before, not even at the shaky beginning of their partnership. And while he had told himself that was probably a good thing, dispelling the dangerous thoughts he'd begun to indulge in, now he knew that it was a bad thing, too. Because for the first time in years, he didn't feel anything from Scully. Not her fear, her trust, not even her anger. He felt nothing, and it scared the hell out of him. Scully drew a slow, shaky breath and pushed the stop button on the VCR remote. She depressed the rewind button and the VCR began to whir softly. Then she looked up at him, her eyes red with tears. "This tape was in the machine when I got here. The television was on." He tried to read her expression, but she wore a mask marred only by her tears. "Was the door open? She shook her head. "Locked." He took the remote control from her hand and pushed play. A couple of seconds later, he saw the little freckled face he'd glimpsed earlier. She giggled at somebody off screen. He moved a little closer to the television, his stomach coiling slightly. Those eyes, he thought. That mouth. The smile. Samantha.... But it wasn't Samantha. This little girl was no more than two years old, and the clothes she wore were current in style. She had bright red curls and a straight little nose. Skin the color of fresh milk and freckles like sprinkles of cinnamon across the bridge of her nose. Scully.... "ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ!" The child raced through the alphabet triumphantly, lisping a little. Mulder stared, trying to process all the information. He couldn't make things fit into any understandable category, although he knew he HAD to make it make sense. It was utterly necessary to make things make sense before he completely lost his mind. Because right now, his mind was screaming that this was Scully's child. Scully's and his.
A ripple of pain shot through Scully's heart as she saw the swift flash of recognition in Mulder's eyes. It had taken him several seconds longer than it had taken her to understand, but then, this was one possibility she'd always been more open to than he. She had no illusions about Mulder's attitude toward her. Not quite sisterly, not quite friendly, not even quite partnerly these days. But never, even in the deepest secret places inside her, places she only visited in the darkest part of night, did she imagine he thought of her as a lover. That little bit of madness was her domain. That was why she had taken a single look at the little girl on the screen and knew, with the emotional instinct of a mother and a lover and the clinical knowledge of a doctor, that this child was the biological combination of her ovum and Mulder's sperm. She didn't know how, she didn't know why, but she and Mulder had a daughter. A leap in logic worthy of Mulder himself--but she knew it was true. "What are we looking at?" Mulder turned to look at her. The expression on his face was almost pleading, and she read his mind with ease. He wanted her to tell him he was wrong, that he wasn't really seeing what he thought he was seeing. But this time, the skeptic was comatose. The believer shook her head and looked back at the screen. The little girl was laughing at her unseen, unheard interviewer. "I got a puppy, his name is Dooley and he likes to eat sunfly seeds jus' like me." Mulder dropped against his desk with a thud, his hip banging against his desk chair, sending a jolt down Scully's spine. "Oh, it gets better." She clenched her jaws, waiting for the kicker. The little girl disappeared, replaced by a black screen. Words appeared, stark and white against the blackness. "We know where she is. We can get to her whenever we want. Remember that. Walk away now and never look back." The screen went blank. The silence was deafening. Scully closed her eyes and waited, painfully aware that she had no idea what her partner was going to say. That was not a new sensation--the last year had shaken their alliance to the core. Losses and unspoken resentments, as much her fault as his, had created a chasm that had grown by the minute. She felt as if she were standing at the edge of that chasm, staring at Mulder across a divide too wide and treacherous to cross. Still, she was willing to take the risk. But she was no longer certain that Mulder was. "They're messing with our heads," he muttered. She released a soft, pent-up breath. "I think that goes without saying." "It's a trick to make us back off this investigation." So much for the true believer, she thought. "Maybe so." "But you don't think so." No, she didn't. But she didn't have the words to explain to him why. She just knew. Like any mother knows her own child. "This is another way to stop us from pursuing the truth--" "What truth is that?" Scully dug her fingernails into her palm, suddenly, swiftly furious. "Your truth, Mulder? Everything's always about YOUR truth!" "Scully--" She shook her head, hating him in that moment. Hating his obsessions and his self-delusions and most of all hating him for making her love him beyond any hope or reason. She bit back the hard, angry words she felt tearing at her gut and rose from the chair. "There's a folder on my desk. I found it after I watched the tape the first time--but I didn't need to see it to know the truth. I don't know how or when, but that's my child. And I think she's yours, too--believe it or not. But I suppose that's another decision you'll just have to make on your own. You're getting good at that." She pushed past him, needing to get out of that dank basement and into the air and light. She slammed the door open and raced for the stairs, needing the movement, the exertion to dispell the rage and pain ripping her heart into a thousand bleeding pieces. She didn't stop until she reached the street. Then she groped for a lamp post, desperate for some sort of steady support as her legs threatened to collapse beneath her. She ignored the straggling pedestrians who crossed to and fro behind her, her mind filled with one image, her ears with one soft, childish voice. Oh, my God, she thought, they took my baby.
Mulder replayed the tape, searching for glitches, skips, jumps--anything that would be proof of image manipulation. He saw nothing blantant. Nothing but the obvious resemblance between himself and this mysterious little girl. Between Scully and this little girl. No, he thought, shaking his head at the television. It's not possible. Scully and I never-- Of course, his rational mind interrupted, sexual intercourse is no longer the only means of procreation in this day and age. But it wasn't like he'd donated to his neighborhood sperm bank. And he doubted Scully had made a deposit at the Ova Savings and Loan, either. At least, not intentionally. But there were those three missing months.... Stop, he commanded himself. He shut off the tape, trying to shut the image of the little girl from his mind. He crossed to Scully's desk and picked up her discarded latex gloves lying by the manila folder on the blotter. Trust Scully to keep her head even in a situation like this, he thought. He slipped on the gloves and opened the folder. Three sheets of paper lay inside. Test results of some sort, he saw with a quick glance. He studied them more closely and realized he was looking at DNA test results. He looked for names at the tops of each sheet but there was nothing but the most cursory biographical information--blood type, DNA crossmatches, hair and eye color, height, weight, birth dates. But names weren't necessary. He recognized his own vital statistics, his blood type, his birthday. He recognized Scully's. And he recognized what the crossmatches told him about the third test subject, a two-year-old red-haired, hazel eyed girl. If this is for real, he thought, then that little girl is my daughter.
Scully pushed away from the lamppost and turned back toward the office, planning to return only long enough to retrieve her purse. But before she'd taken a step, she saw Fox Mulder striding toward her, his lean body hunched slightly forward with the air of a man on a mission. In his left hand he held a large manila envelope. It bulged, leaving her with little doubt of what lay inside. He halted, his eyes swimming into focus. "I thought you'd left." "I was about to." He shook his head. "No, I think you should come with me. We have to get a handle on what's going on here." At least he's not scoffing outright, she thought. She was a little afraid to allow herself even that small bit of comfort. Better to just accept the inevitable rift and get ready for life without Fox Mulder. She'd been gearing up to that for months now, hadn't she? She'd known that it couldn't go on much longer. It had already gone on for a year too long. But she still didn' t have the power to deny him anything he wanted. "Where are we going?" "I don't think we can trust the FBI lab guys on this one, Scully. But we have to get some information about this tape and these papers." She nodded. "My purse is in the office, so you'll have to drive." He pulled out his car keys and tucked the manila envelope under his arm. With his free hand, he cupped her elbow and steered her toward the agency parking lot. His touch was urgent and warm, reminding her of the not really so distant past, a time when she could still believe in possibilities.
Offices of THE LONE GUNMAN Langly spoke first. "Looks like you should be passing out cigars, Mulder." Mulder shot a glare at the long-haired man before daring a quick glance at Scully. She sat in the corner of the LONE GUNMAN lair, her arms wrapped defensively around her small waist. When had she become so thin? he wondered. So pale? While he'd stopped looking? "These DNA test results conform to standards," Byers stated from his seat in front of his computer. "But they're hardly solid proof. There's no way to validate the chain of evidence." "But if the tests were authentic?" Mulder prodded. "If we had a way to verify the tests, and that the male and female adults shown here are indeed you and Agent Scully--" Byers drew a deep breath, fingering his neat beard. "Then I'd say that the child is definitely biologically the combination of your DNA with that of Agent Scully." "How?" "You disappoint me, Mulder," Frohike muttered. Mulder glared at the little gnome. He was in no mood for Frohike's brand of humor. "Cut it out, Frohike. Scully and I never--" "She's two years old, according to the test results and our own observations." Scully spoke for the first time since they'd arrived. "I was abducted in August almost three years ago. If my ova were harvested at that time and fertilized by a sperm sample from Mulder, the resulting child would be two years old now." "Well, where the hell did they get the sperm?" Mulder asked. She looked at him with cold, dead eyes, and he thought he was going to throw up. "Any number of ways, Mulder. A lover, a one-night stand--" She shrugged. "I don't make a habit of having unprotected sex, Scully." He didn't add that he hadn't made a habit of having any kind of sex in quite some time. His list of sexual encounters over the past three years consisted of one ill-advised night with Kristin Kilar and the brief, horrible liaison with Agent Allyssa Copeland that had been another nail in the coffin of his friendship with Scully. And neither of those incidents had happened in time to provide the sperm sample to fertilize Scully's egg. "Trust me when I say there's no way they got a sample of my semen from a sexual encounter." Scully's gaze never moved from his face. But he couldn't tell what she was thinking. The realization haunted him. "Um, there was that incident in Idaho, Mulder." Byer's low voice broke the tense silence in the room. Mulder looked at him. "Incident--?" "When you were incarcerated at the Yellow Base." For the first time he heard a spark of life in Scully's voice. He looked at her and found a hint of the old Scully in her glittering blue eyes. "I should've thought of that. You were missing for over twenty-four hours, Mulder, and you still don't know what happened during that time period. We know they did something to you to wipe the memories. What if they did something else?" It was possible, he had to concede. His body had felt battered and probed when he finally came back to himself just in time for Scully to come to his rescue. Could they have procured a sperm sample? But why? Had they been planning something like this even then? Or had they just used a fortuitous circumstance? "I know that sperm can be frozen and kept, but for how long before it loses it's motility?" He asked the question of Scully, who was the doctor. But it was Frohike who answered. "Frozen sperm is kept in liquid nitrogen and won't really go bad unless the temperature varies, so ostensibly you could be having children for years to come if you're half the man you think you are, Mulder." He raked his fingers through his hair, horrified at the thought. When he looked at Scully, he thought he saw a glimmer of sympathy in her eyes. The once-familiar but now rare moment of warmth from her hit him like a freight train. He gripped the edge of the desk where he perched to steady himself. "That answers the how," Langly said, "but more baffling is the why." "To control us," Scully said. "But why now?" Byers asked. "Why not when the child was born?" "Because before, they had other methods of punishing us when we were getting too close. Methods that don't work anymore," Scully answered. Mulder felt her gaze stab him before her eyes lowered to her hands. He remembered how "they" had controlled him once before, tearing her out of his life when he'd needed her most. How they had tried to control her by killing him in that burning boxcar in New Mexico. But now they no longer believe that method will work. So I guess that means I won, Mulder thought. His two years of trying to distance himself from her had paid off--they wouldn't try to separate Scully from him anymore because he'd accomplished that nasty little task all by himself. Hurray. But trust the bastards to have the last laugh. Now he'd not only lost Scully, he may well have lost his only child. His and Scully's. "There's no proof of any of this." He pressed his lips together, knowing he'd said the wrong thing as soon as he let his eyes rest on Scully's stricken face. Rationality may be what she needed right now, but it was the last thing she wanted. Despite the horror and the implications, Scully wanted desperately to believe that this child was hers. Why? She'd never expressed the desire to be a mother. She pushed away from the corner desk she leaned against and walked over to the VCR. She put on a pair of latex gloves and withdrew the tape. "We've been careful handling this, so maybe there's still hope of getting some sort of fingerprint or fiber evidence." She slipped it in the manila envelope. Mulder tried to take some comfort in her logical suggestion. But the world was sadly lacking in comfort for him these days. Besides, he doubted there'd be any sort of trace evidence to be found. The bastards had been too good at what they did for way too long to slip up. But she was right. They had to follow procedure, just in case. "I'm not sure I trust a Bureau techie with this." "I know someone. A friend from the Academy who's more sympathetic to our work than most," Scully said. "He'll be glad to do the tests off site." "Are you sure you can trust him?" Mulder moved closer to her, lowering his voice. Her steely stare chased the breath from his lungs. "I'm not sure who I can trust anymore, Mulder. But Ben is as close as I get these days." She might as well have stabbed him in the heart, for surely the sucking, burning pain must be the same. "Okay, if that's what you think you should do." She looked at him a moment longer, then retrieved the DNA test results from Byers and added them to the envelope. Without another word, she walked out of the office. "It's gotten bad between you two these days, Mulder," Frohike murmured. "And that ain't good." Tell me about it, Mulder thought. "There's one more thing to think about, Mulder." Byers looked up from his computer, his beard not hiding his concerned expression. "In vitro fertilization never utilizes just one egg and one sperm. If this little girl is a product of in vitro, there's a good possibility there are other embryos." Mulder clutched the door frame, the thought shaking him to the core. We could find her, he realized, and still not know if there was another one, out there somewhere....
Mulder was too quiet, Scully thought. Not a sulky quiet or even his patented, I'm-a-selfish-bastard-and-I'm-too-damned- self-absorbed-to-worry-about-you quiet. This was something more dangerous. Something too reminiscent of the old Fox Mulder who sometimes deigned to let her in from the cold. A Mulder she missed way too much for her own good. "If you don't want to pursue this Mulder, I need to know." He snapped his head toward her, his eyes dark and pained. "I can't turn my back on this one." "Of course you can. You've gotten good at it." "Damn it, Scully--" She cut him short with a hard glare. She'd gotten good at THAT, she thought. Turn on the freezer, kill him with cold. Only she was dying, too, one frozen cell at a time. How did we come to this? Because of what we lost? Or what we were afraid to lose? She didn't blame Mulder for anything that happened to her. Not the abduction, not the stagnation of her career in the FBI, not Missy's death, not the other horrors she'd never even told Mulder about--none of it. The only thing she blamed him for was betraying her trust in him. She'd trusted him to respect her, to value her thoughts and opinions. But he didn't. He resented her. Sometimes she thought he even despised her. "What do YOU want?" he asked. The question surprised her. Fox Mulder, wanting to know what SHE wanted? "I want to know if she's my child." "And then what? If it's true, what?" She hadn't gotten that far in rational thought. But her gut instinct was stronger than reason, anyway. "I want her." "You want to bring home a two-year-old you never knew existed? You want to go through the hell of being a single mother, trying to work and rear your child, all on the basis of one highly suspect videotape and some papers that could be pure fiction? Why?" Because she's something beautiful that you and I created together, even if we didn't know about it. Because when I look at her, I see what might have been. What can never be. Not now. Scully looked down at her hands twisting like pale snakes in her lap. Mulder's deep sigh whispered through the quiet car. "What do you want to do next?" "Not here." She glanced at him. "We don't know who might be listening." He nodded. "Where?" She pulled her notebook from her suit pocket and jotted an address. His dark brows rose when he recognized the rather seedy area a few miles out of town, but he nodded. They drove in silence the rest of the way.
Bright Star Motel Mulder opened the door to the motel room, still a little red-faced from the scene at the manager's office, when Scully tersely asked for one room for an hour. The manager had handed over the key, looking at them with a mixture of boredom and knowing cynicism. Scully might not believe it, but he'd never been to a no-tell motel, never rented a room by the hour in his life, and he was a bit disconcerted by just how sleazy it made him feel. Scully strode past him and sat on the single bed in the middle of the cramped little room. "You're braver than I," he muttered. He didn't want to touch anything. No telling who--or what--had been here last. She met his questioning gaze with impatience and got right to the point. "Mulder, I want you to help me on this, but I don't need you to. So if you want to back out, that's fine. But do it now." He shook his head. "No." "Are you sure?" "Yes." "Okay." She took a deep breath, as if preparing herself for her next words. "As far as I can see, there are a few possibilities. The most obvious one is that this is a hoax. We can't rule that out, and I'm not. But I also can't blindly accept that theory without a lot more information." Neither could he. "I agree." A brief flash of surprise in her eyes shot guilt through him. He'd really screwed up things with Scully--more than he'd ever meant to. All he'd wanted to do was put some distance between them. He'd let her get too close, become too essential to him and his work. That kind of dependency scared the hell out of him, and he was pretty sure it scared her, too. After the Pfaster case, after Melissa's murder, after his loss of control on the Lucy Householder case and her complete 180 degree turn during the Kevin Crider case, they'd just stopped communicating. They'd started keeping secrets, keeping their own counsel. He really couldn't say if it was more his own doing than hers. Had he stopped listening to her because she'd stopped talking? Or had she stopped talking because he'd stopped listening? All he knew was that it had gone much further than he wanted it to. He'd never meant to drive her out of his life. But now she was so far away, he didn't know if he could ever get her back. Scully leaned forward, pushing a stray lock of hair back from her pale face. "There's a distinct possibility that only part of this information is true. The child on the tape looks a lot like I did when I was a child, so she may be mine-- but not yours." "She also looks like Samantha except for her coloring and the shape of her nose," Mulder said. "She's got the Mulder mouth and my eyes. So maybe she's mine but not yours." "Or maybe what we're seeing on that tape and in those papers is the truth. Maybe she IS ours." For the first time since he'd walked into the office this morning, Mulder let that idea sink into him. Ours, he thought. Mine and Scully's. Something that would link them together no matter what else happened in their lives, no matter who tried to hurt one or both of them. If that little girl was their child, there would always be a Scully/Mulder partnership, as long as she lived. And maybe generations beyond, if she had children of her own. Like a flash of lightning, realization rocked him. That's why Scully wants to believe. She wanted that link to him. She may have given up on their partnership, but she hadn't given up on him. Not completely. Oh, God, he thought with a mixture of fear and hope. Maybe there's still a chance to make things right again. Scully continued. "I guess the first question is, where do we start? I'll get with Ben and start the evidence search part of this, but I'm not sure that will move very quickly or provide us much information, Mulder. I think we need help." "X?" he asked doubtfully. She shook her head. "He's lied to us far too often." "I don't trust him, either, Scully, but we're short on options." She nibbled her lower lip, lost in thought. He watched, remembering a time when that thoughtless little gesture used to drive him wild. A little frisson of awareness rippled through him now--weak, tentative, but there for the first time in a while. It was a good feeling, he realized. It didn't frighten him. She looked up at him. "What about Skinner?" "I don't think he would betray us, but I'm not sure he'll be willing to put his ass on the line to help us, either." "We can ask." He nodded. "Okay." "I think we should put the guys at the LONE GUNMAN to work gathering information on infertility research facilities. What we're considering here is simple in-vitro fertilization. My eggs fertilized by your sperm and implanted into a surrogate mother. The concept of ethics in this particular case is non-existent, but the technology exists. And I think somebody in the Consortium has to be behind it." "Aren't they always?" Mulder had no trouble envisioning Cancer Man puffing away on his Morleys, watching this damned videotape and scheming how to stop Fox Mulder for good this time. Damn the black-lunged son of a bitch! Mulder's jaw tightened painfully as he bit back a roar of frustration. There was never any such thing as a fair fight where the Consortium was concerned. And especially not with Cancer Man as their enforcer. "Do you think they planned this from the time you were abducted?" Once again, she betrayed her surprise, and he realized his words had echoed her own conviction that the mystery child might truly be their daughter. Maybe I want to believe it as much as Scully does. "Assuming that she was delivered in a conventional manner at full term, which is forty weeks, in order for her to be born in mid-May as the DNA crossmatch indicates, she would have been conceived the third week of August almost three years ago. I was abducted by Duane Barry in August of that year, and I don't remember anything concrete beyond that point. So it's well within the realm of possibility." "I wonder if they had this planned from the beginning." Mulder looked around for a chair, but the shabby hotel offered no extra amenities. He finally sat on the edge of the bed a few safe inches away from Scully. "I've often wondered why they sent you to work with me. I had assumed they expected you to be their spy, but anyone who'd done their homework on you would've figured out that they couldn't control you that way." She turned her head to look at him. For the first time in a long time, he got a glimpse of the old Scully, inquisitive and open. A warm ache of familiarity washed over him, threatening to rip open some old wounds he thought had healed already. "So you think their real purpose was to use me to control you?" "Maybe they knew how important you were going to become to me and my work. Maybe that's what they planned all along." A little frown marred her smooth white brow. "You don't still think I was part of that agenda?" It wasn't a frivolous question, he had to admit. As recently as this morning, he might have seriously considered the possibility. But not now. He couldn't say what had happened or how circumstances had changed, but for the first time in a long, long time, he felt a resurgence of faith. In Scully. In their work. In himself. He shook his head. "No, Scully, I don't." She released a little sigh. Relief? he wondered. "I've always assumed they just made a serious miscalculation in teaming us together," Scully noted. "But maybe they were more clever than we gave them credit for." "I wonder if they thought we would become lovers." Scully's head jerked around, her gaze meeting his. "I wonder if they assumed we were." "Maybe." He couldn't look away from her intense gaze, trapped in memories. How many times had that stray thought crossed his mind? Once? Twice? A thousand times? Fear and self-doubt more than any sense of professionalism had squelched his attraction to her. He had lousy luck in romance, and he'd had no intention of fouling up the one really good relationship in his life, no matter how tempting the idea had seemed deep in the night when he couldn't sleep. "I think Krycek was sent to make a judgment on how our relationship was progressing." "But to keep us apart or to bring us closer together?" He didn't know. The one thing he'd never understood was why Cancer Man had let her be returned to him. The man said it was because he liked them both, but Mulder wasn't that big a fool. There had to have been an ulterior motive. He'd always thought that maybe she'd been returned so that he could watch her die in front of his eyes. Nobody had expected her to live. Nobody but I, he amended silently. He hadn't given up on her until that last bleak morning when all hope had seemed to spill between his outstretched fingers. And then Scully, as usual, came to his rescue by choosing life. Choosing to return to him. Without Scully, nothing could ever be right in his life. But it had taken losing her to understand. Had that been what "they" wanted all along? Not to torment him but to ensure that she was essential to him? So that whenever he got too close to uncovering their dirty little secrets, they could yank his chain by threatening her? Isn't that why you've been systematically cutting her out of your life for the past two years, Mulder? he thought. Haven't you suspected that all along? He sighed. "They've used you to keep me in line, Scully." Scully's soft, husky voice broke the silence. "Or maybe they're pulling an end around. Maybe they knew that the one thing we feared more than losing each other was not being able to get along without each other." "So--what? They arranged for us to go on certain cases, knowing they would either strengthen or threaten our partnership, depending on what results they desired at the time?" Mulder shook his head. "Are we so easily manipulated?" "They've been yanking our chain a long time. And let's face it, we're both creatures of pretty distinctive habits and opinions." Scully sighed. "We can't blame this past year on anyone but ourselves, Mulder. The Consortium didn't build the walls between us. We did." Mulder looked at her, eyes narrowing as snippets of understanding beginning to weave together into a more recognizable pattern. "But they gave us the bricks, Scully." She looked up at him, silently asking for an explanation. "Since the deaths of my father and your sister, things haven't been the same between us. I'm pretty sure that Melissa's death was a mistake, but I'm just as sure they've been using it to drive a wedge between us. Knowing that you couldn't help blaming me--" "I don't blame you, Mulder." He shook his head. "Of course you do. You couldn't be human and not blame me." "Cardinal shot her--" "Trying to kill you, Scully. And he'd never have been trying to hurt you if it weren't for me. None of the horrible things you've been through over the past few years would've happened to you if it weren't for me." Her smile surprised him, both because he hadn't seen it for a while and because it seemed so oddly timed. "You're right, Mulder. They do know how to yank your chain. It's not my resentment about Melissa that's causing the problem; it's your own guilt. Everyone in the world knows that you habitually take the blame for anything bad that happens around you. I'll admit, I went through a few weeks of hating you for dragging me into your nightmare. Then I got over it and put it behind me. But you never have." "I'm a walking curse." "You're a good man who's had a raw deal in life, Mulder, but you're not a curse. You bring so much of your own grief on yourself because you don't know how to love yourself the way other people love you." "I always drive away the people who give a damn." "Not everybody." "I drove you away." She placed her hand on his arm. "I'm still here, Mulder." "For how much longer?" She squeezed his arm, then dropped her hand back into her lap. "I guess that's up to you. I know I'm not ready to chuck it all and head back to Quantico yet." "But you're close." She sighed. "You can butt your head against a wall for only so long before you either kill yourself or come to your senses and stop." "And what are you doing, Scully?" She glanced at him. "Still butting the wall. Am I getting anywhere?" The smile bubbled up from the depths of his soul, and he realized it was the first real pleasure he'd felt in a long time. "Tell me we can fix things, Scully." "We can try." She put her hand over his briefly, then pulled it back again. "But first, Mulder, we've got some decisions to make. If we're going to find out the truth about this child, we can't go it alone. We don't have the resources to find her. We're going to have to surround ourselves with a network of contacts we can trust." "I trust only you." For a second, he thought he saw tears glimmering in her eyes. Then she blinked and looked down at her hands. "There are other people we can trust besides ourselves, Mulder. Byers, Langly and Frohike may be pretty 'out there,' but they have contacts all over the country who can keep an eye out for our--for the little girl." "We could capture a photo of the girl off the videotape and circulate it through THE LONE GUNMAN." He shot her a crooked grin. "Mailed to all fifty states and many parts of Canada." "I think Skinner will help us. At least, as much as he can." He nodded. "And your mother." She frowned. "I don't know if I want Mom involved." "If she has a granddaughter, don't you think she has a right to know?" "So we involve your mother, too?" Scully returned. "No. I'm not sure we can trust her. She's too close to the Consortium. They spent time at our house. They knew her." He shook his head. "I don't believe she'd deliberately hurt us, Scully, but she could be tricked." It hurt him deeply to admit these things about his own mother, but he wasn't going to lie to Scully anymore, even if the truth stung. "But your mother--I trust your mother. We'll keep her out of danger." "I don't have a good track record of keeping my family out of danger," Scully murmured. "Now who's blaming herself?" Mulder pressed his hand against her back for a moment, then dropped his hand back to his side. "I think it's time we blame the real culprit for your sister's death, Scully--Cardinal, Krycek and the sons of bitches who sent them to kill you." She nodded slowly. "Fair enough." "I think our first move is to make a plan. Figure out where we're going and how we want to get there." Scully pulled her notebook and pen from her jacket pocket. "Okay, where do we start?" "Together." He met her gaze, venturing a half-smile. Her lips curved slightly--not quite a smile, but it was a start.
Flagstaff, Arizona Sarah Chandler rubbed her aching back as she lowered herself into the chair in front of the two-way mirror. Beyond the glass, she saw the door open and former FBI Agent Alyssa Copeland walked into the small playroom-cum- laboratory. Next to her, chubby fingers curled around the slender brunette's forefinger, two-year-old Katie toddled, flashing a bright grin to the older man seated at the table. "Hi, Dr. Peeker!" Sarah rubbed her swollen belly, smiling with a pride she seldom had the opportunity to display. She knew she was only an incubator, that the child in the room and the child in her womb were the genetic offspring of two strangers. At least, that's what they wanted her to think. "And have you learned something new today, Miss Katie?" Rob Peeker smiled at the little girl with real affection. He knew only what the Consortium wanted him to know. He knew nothing of them or their agenda. He thought he was working on a government project studying the early development of gifted children. He thought Katie was an orphan, currently being reared by Alyssa, who'd been the little girl's foster mother for almost three months, ever since the dark-haired double agent had fled from Washington after her cover was blown. Peeker believed Sarah was an observer, a psychologist there to monitor the emotional effects of the ambitious teaching project on Katie Copeland. He had no idea that Katie had emerged from Sarah's womb just over two years earlier. In less than a year, if the little boy in Sarah's belly was anything like his sister Katie, Dr. Peeker might be studying him as well. And, perhaps, Alyssa would be his foster mother, too. Unless Sarah's plan worked. They should have the tape now. The Consortium had decided that Mulder needed another reason to squirm. Sarah had heard rumors that previous methods we no longer effective, and Katie was the new tool in their toolbox. They'd supplied the tape, supplied the DNA crossmatch information. But what they didn't know was that they'd also sent a tape with Sarah Chandler's fingerprint on it. Sarah was counting on Katie's biological parents to do their jobs. Check for prints, run a match. It was essential. It would ensure their search--even if they weren't convinced Katie was really their little girl. Maybe they would find Katie before the Consortium grew tired of this phase of the testing and went onto something else. Something not quite-- --human-- Inside Sarah's womb, the baby shifted, all elbows and knees. She soothed him with a gentle rub over her distended belly, whispered the name she wanted to give him. They'd let her name Katie, surprised that she'd choose Katherine Melissa. As she'd pointed out, it was only fair. They'd taken Dana Scully's child. Shouldn't the little girl at least have some connection with her biological mother, however small? Somehow, though, she didn't think she'd get away with the name she wanted for the little boy. William Fox. Too obvious. Maybe she could talk them into William, though. William Charles? After Dana's father and brother. She nodded to herself. Maybe. She rubbed her stomach again. But to me, little one, you'll always be Fox. She smiled as the faint buzz of recollections danced at her edges of her mind. The memories had been returning, bits and pieces at a time, for almost three years now. Memories of a house on an island, a board game, a bright light. A boy, calling her name. Her real name. The memory wipe was supposed to be complete, but Sarah's wasn't. Maybe because she had a photographic memory. Just like her big brother Fox. THE END
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