Title: Visions of Significance Author: PGMT Rating: PG-13 (There are some *F* words, I most warn you) Spoilers: Pretty much everything, placed on Requiem, though there is a small S8 and S9 cameo. This was written as a response to a Haven challenge. Disclaimer: Not mine. Archive: Anywhere, though an e-mail would be nice. Summary: Mulder and Scully get more than one piece of life-altering news. Note: Though I am a writter in my own language this is the first English fic I've written. Please let me know is you see anything wrong. Thanks to anna. Visions of Significance A Bunty Hunter/Billy Miles/A torture chair/ Three months/ A grave/ Where do I fit in?/Your baby is fine/ Do you have something with the pizza man I should know about?/ Alex Krycek/ The truth we both know/ Go and hide/Dearest Dana/ I gave up our son/ Won't accept the truth/Where do I fit in?/ Won't accept the truth/Run!/Where do I fit in?/ Won't accept the truth... "Mulder!" Skinner shook his arm. "Mulder, that is our call, we need to get going, not doze off." His waking was neither abrupt nor gradual. His waking was the waking of someone who is not only doing it in the physical sense. For some reason he remembered Albert Hosteen and the desert. "I won't go." "What?" "I said I won't go, I have nothing to do in Oregon, not anymore, don't ask me why now but I've just realized that...that this thing needs to stop. That's what I told...what I promised Scully. And now I know, I just know that nothing guarantees me that it will stop here. On the contrary, if experience is worth anything, whenever I thought I've at last come to the final answer, to the final truth, it turned out to be just a tiny, hardly visible other door, an other door that lead to a larger even more confusing, intricate room that the one I was in before. I told her I wouldn't risk...Let's just go, Skinman." Skinner didn't move. He only looked at him. He was probably pondering if this was yet another sign of a brilliant but usually unstable man, or something deeper, something like a true revelation, the kind you have when you are wrapped in a black bag ready to be sent out in the luggage area of a ship so your mother may bury you, for example. He didn't have time to decide, though, because Mulder, to his not that big surprise, was already walking out of the boarding gate. He would have followed if not for the cell phone ringing. "Skinner." "Is Mulder with you? We couldn't reach him on his cell." "He was, just a moment ago. What is it, Byers?" "He must not board that plane." Skinner contained a sigh. "Old news." "What do you mean?" "He isn't on the plane. He actually should be on his way back to the Hoover building." "What?!" There was a long pause "Why?" "Your guess is as good as mine." "Well then...if you are able to reach him tell him not to go there, we're on our way to the hospital." Now it was Skinner who was thrown out of balance. But Byers didn't give him the time to ask what was going on. "It's Scully, she passed out on us." The hanging up of the phone was so quick that Byers couldn't even hear the "sh" in Skinner's exclamation of "shit!" ** Scully had had a vision of a Buddist Temple. But what exactly is a vision? "Where to?" asked the taxi driver. "The Hoover building, please." Of course it is something you see...but not quite. He thought about the most important events in his life: the abduction of his sister, the discovery of the x-files, the pairing up with Scully, the murder of his father...All of this he remembered it through images, short films that switched from first to third point of view alternatingly. He then thought about the meaningfulness of those same events. How abstract is that? Meaning. There is no way to know what a meaning looks like: a meaning doesn't move, doesn't stand up o sit down. If you could extract colors, objects, people, places, time, if you could extract all you were able to perceive from any event and keep the sole and only meaning of it, there you would have your vision: every vision is a vision of Significance. He then thought about second chances, how many second changes are we aware or not aware of having in a lifetime? Like that girl, who had to live a Monday over an over again, until she had gotten it right, even if getting it right meant tragedy for her, she got what was supposed to be, none the less. Right? Come to think of it, maybe that is how fate, nature or God managed the world, by going backwards whenever it was necessary. After all, how many times has the world been close, so close, of total breakdown? How close was Hitler? How close where those Russian ships from not turning back from Cuba? And who knows what else, how many major viral threads, environmental disasters, crazy wakos, apocalyptic zombies the world has escaped by inches, just inches. How lucky can one get? Not that lucky. Something bigger must be going on... No more than two hours left alone without Scully and he was already losing it. It is amazing how safe one may feel doing spiral ramblings when you have the voice of reason next to you, to net you up, in case something goes wrong with that double vertical metaphysical jump you just did. As it was he better would wait for Scully to do the ponderings. He couldn't quite point out why else he was so eager to see her. In any case he was already close so he was happy with looking through the window for the time being. He didn't know how much time had passed when the driver said "we are here", he also didn't know much time it took him from getting to Skinner's office, then to the basement, then to Skinner's office back again only to find that second time the person he was last expecting to see: Skinner himself. "Let me guess, you ran out of gas or your battery went dead." "Where's Scully?" Skinner made a note to make a new New Year's resolution for 2001. Then, heroically containing his desire to punch or shout at Mulder, took a deep breath and calmly responded: "In the hospital...Don't run off!" Mulder stopped short. "We'll go together this time." ** Only because her father had not been an evil warlock but a gentle, if perhaps a little dominating, sailor was she sure that a big curse was not put on her when she told him she was quitting the medicine career, something like: "As thou turn away from hospitals, hospitals shall always haunt thee, they will lure thee like magnet, trap thee like ivy, and thou shall never find rest or comfort in any single one of them." She could already picture him on black robes, floating on air, with the arm extended, the finger pointed in accusation...she was also sure she shouldn't have agreed to stay with the Gunmen last week to review those files, at least not while they were playing Dungeons and Dragons. As it was, there she was...again, with her good old IV friend. The brighter side of things was that she could ponder about this constancy because the other great terrible constancy in her life, the Mulder in mortal danger constancy, was contained this time by no other than Mulder himself. Now, that was a turn of events. As relived as she felt when Byers told her he hadn't taken that plane, she couldn't help but being intrigued by this sudden change of decision. "Dana Scully?" Good. She liked chubby, graying doctors. "Yes?" "I've just reviewed your symptoms, it's easy to see that you are a doctor too, by the way." "I have tried to be as accurate as possible." "But you still hadn't come up with a reasonable guess which, given your education, quite surprises me. All of this is clearly pointing at..." "I cannot get pregnant." "You're sure?" "Positive." "Well, all kinds of tests that are procedural. I don't think it is anything to worry about, though." She didn't believe that and she would have told him so, if a tall lanky man hadn't open the door a second after the doctor had reassured her. "Hi," he quietly said. The doctor turned a second when he appeared, and then finished: "The results should be ready tomorrow morning, but I recommend you spend the night here, just to be sure and because is already late." He nodded at Mulder as he walked out. "Hey you." "What is it Scully?" "Nothing serious, really, I fainted and the guys brought me here." He looked at her as if her words had had the opposite effect she was trying to convey. "Mulder I would know, ok? I would just know if it was that." She didn't need to mention what "that" stood for. "Anyway, you heard, we shall be free of doubt tomorrow, I probably caught something in Oregon, maybe some infection and that's it." He didn't take his eyes from her, but the look he gave was calmer. "Now, you being here, that's something interesting." With that he finally smiled. He moved a chair to sit next to her bed. "I...I didn't see any good reason to go." "What?" She raised both eyebrows. "I'm having a hard time explaining it myself. Maybe it's another twist on my stubborn personality, you know, like when I say quit it's just quit, and that's it. No second guesses, to turning back. Like a new determination...maybe?" "That's scary." "In what way is it scary?" "In the you-wanting-to-settle-down way." "Be careful what you wish for Miss Scully." "Have I ever wished that for you?" He looked at her with mischievous incredulity. "Mulder?" "Scully, it's one of your top five recurrent speeches. It's probably number two, with the 'Mulder, why are we here?' variations unbeatably spotting the number one position. Well, I hope you haven't also started listening to me." Now it was Mulder's eyebrows that were raised, accompanied by a broad smile. "You would then finally believe beyond doubt in the existence of extraterrestrials, right Scully?" "Not only that, Mulder, maybe I would even state my case on Jerry Springer, you know, something like..." "The Aliens took my partner and turned him into a milquetoast." With that she laughed out loud. "But we are not there yet Mulder," she said, still giggly. "No, we are not." If someone from the outside could be looking through the door window, he would state that these two were a goofy-looking, probably newly committed couple. ** The one person who did look through the door window the next morning curse to himself as he saw the man from last night curled up on a chair next to Dr Scully's bed. This wouldn't have troubled Dr. Milton at all had he come with some other news, but the surprise-you-are-pregnant news to single woman are always better told when the woman in question is alone, if only to spare the woman, the boyfriend, the friend, the relatives or whomever else might be put into a possible awkward situation. He could wait for the man to leave, but something told him that if he had uncomfortably spent the night there for no more reason than to be with her, he would also stick himself there for no reason until she was told what the diagnosis was. In any case she herself would be asking for the results as soon as she was awake. With that he remembered the look in her eyes when she told him she couldn't get pregnant: it was a look of sad omniscience, of wise but melancholic resignation to the fates already carved in stone...She would be happy; she would like to see for herself. There came the idea, they were both still asleep: he could leave the chart over the bedside table. With some luck she would wake up first and see the results. They would only showed hormone levels anyway, so it was improbable someone would know what those numbers meant if he was not a doctor. Then she would decide for herself who to tell, what to tell and how to tell it. ** Contrary to the doctor's prognosis it was Mulder who woke up first, concordant with them Mulder couldn't make the first thing out of that chart; completely out of consideration: Mulder would not put it to rest until he figured out what it all meant... but of course, he wouldn't wake up Scully. He quietly got up the chair, opened the door and closed it behind him. Not so quietly he started to stroll down the hallway looking, chart in hand, for a suitable white coat. He found her walking out of another's patient room. "Excuse me." "Yes." "I wonder if you could explain these results to me." He handed her the chart. She started flipping through the pages. "Well, I'm sure these are not yours..." "Yeah, well, I don't look like a Dana Scully." "What?" She lifted her head to look at him. "No, I mean...where did you get this?" He then realized the bizarreness of the situation. "They're...my partner's, but she is asleep, they were left on her bedside table." "And why is it that you took them?" He sighed. "Look, I'm concerned, ok? I don't know if it's stated there but she had cancer and now she is supposed to be on remission. I just want to be sure that it's not coming back or something." With that she closed the chart. "Oh, no. Nothing to worry about." He took a relieved breath and closed his eyes for a second then he continued in a calmer tone: "Well what is it, then?" Authentic concern was in his gaze. Still, she didn't know if it was for her to tell. "I don't know if it is any of your business." That startled him again. "What do you mean?" She had the feeling she wouldn't be left alone until she told him, and the man really seemed very close to that patient, what harm could be done? Now she sighed and gave in. "This woman has a very high level of what is known as the pregnancy hormone." He didn't even flinch; he only nodded as if expecting the doctor to finish. When she didn't, he pushed. "Well, what would cause that besides pregnancy, doctor?" Go figure, this man looked rather intelligent at first impression. "A tumor yes..." he gasped. "...if other things were not on track. But everything else seems fine and all the other hormones indicate that this is indeed a pregnancy, Mr...?" He gulped his name. "Mr. Mulder. This hormone is a placenta related one, ergo it can only be produced when the embryo has already placed itself in the uterus. Actually, from the look of it, she should be about a month along." He didn't move an inch but his eyes were too wide. "I can see you are taken aback by this?" Against all probability he was recovering the ability of speech. Hmm...talk about miracles. "She can't get pregnant." "And why is that?" "She has no ova left." The doctor looked at him with sardonic skepticism. "Well pregnant she is. Anyway when *she* is told *she* should ask for a pelvic ultrasound, in case *she* has any doubts, though in my opinion I don't think it's necessary." She handed him the chart, he only nodded and walk away. ** Pregnant. That was nice, being pregnant, having a baby inside your belly and all. Being pregnant was a very, very nice thing, he almost lamented he couldn't try it himself... Fucking pregnant!...Pregnant! But was she? He had two possible scenarios here, whether: 1. Something, anything, had gone wrong: a test tube got bad labeled, someone messed up with the computer, the blood got overheated or overcooled or overblooded or... Or... 2. That was it. She was indeed pregnant. fucking. pregnant. He didn't want to see Scully's expectations rising up to the Empire State only to have them sunk again at .05 seconds of free falling. He had had enough of that from last year. On the other hand, if a barren woman suddenly becomes pregnant you have other possibilities: it could be she was not barren after all and, well, it could also be a miracle...or it could be (and this option was only for those who live in the world they lived in) someone had messed up with her, big time... Oh shit... "Come all you not faint of heart! To Smokey's Dangerous Escapades. Magical mystical terrifying tours, you may not get out of there alive, but so didn't the curious cat. And we are all like that cat. Aren't we? Aren't we?" But that was months ago, and Scully, if he was going to believe that doctor, was only four weeks pregnant. What if the bastard did wanted to make out for his sins? What if he had found out the cure for Scully's type of infertility? What if he always had had it? The son of a bitch loved holding power in his hands more than anything in the world actually, and there was the antecedent that he perhaps provided the cure for her cancer.(After infecting her with it of course, the fucker) Anyway, that incident was the only one where he or they (if there were still a *they*) could have gotten their filthy hands on her. Scully hadn't suddenly disappeared, lost time, been held against her will, or anything in the like for the past three or four months. As a matter of fact things had gone pretty smooth at work and between them since that fiasco. So it was highly improbable Scully was holding Alf's baby in her womb, and highly probable she was holding the baby of someone almost as weird and just as cranky... And here he finally indulged himself with a smile; he had already done some of his due worry-time after all. Miracle or smoke screen, you needed two for making it finally happen. And...what the heck! What the heck? Really.For the time being...Why not? For the time being...unless the contrary, anything contrary, was proven... <> <> --------------------------DRUMS---------------- <> He was drunk with all the music and confetti. ** Skinner found no one in the room. Not Scully, not Mulder, and not a freaking nurse. He tried to recall at what point in his delegation he had stopped being their boss to become their Jiminy Cricket. "Where is Scully?" Oh well, here was at least one of them. If he had ever wondered; he now knew why when Saint Frays was portrayed on Byzantine icons he was always painted bald. "Hi Mulder, good morning. And go figure, I was asking myself the same thing, I thought she was with you." "No. I left her here sleeping a little while ago, I...needed a walk." "What you got there?" Skinner pointed at the chart. "Are those results? Is she ok?" Mulder didn't answer immediately. Actually, he seemed to be thinking out the question. "Yes, she is. She is just fine. Nothing wrong with her." Was he going to bother himself this time with the "are you hiding me something"? "Excuse me" And now he had the nurse! Things were turning out well all things considered. "Yes," said the Assistant Director. "Are you Fox Mulder?" "I am," Mulder agreed. The nurse first looked at him then down at what he was still holding. "I am going to need that, please." And by the tone of her voice she could have easily substituted that "please" for "you idiot". "Why...yes of course, I'm sorry." He handled it to her, and the nurse would have been out as fast as she had been in, if only..."Do you happen to know where she is?" The look on the nurse's face made Skinner felt not so lonely anymore. "When she woke up she called out for Dr. Milton, he then took her to the technology division." Mulder wanted to speak but she continued, "They are running some scans on her so you cannot come up and see her now." Mulder wanted to speak again, but, "I'm sure she will let you know when she is done." Then Mulder couldn't speak anymore because she was gone. "What is this all about Mulder?" Skinner asked. Mulder looked down at the floor and then finally exhaled. "Have you had breakfast yet, Skinman?" Skinner was definitely not going to bother this time with the "don't call me that". "No, actually, no." "Como on then," he said extending an arm to Skinner's back. "Let's wait for her at the cafeteria." ** "So they are not closing down the X-Files." "You sound almost disappointed." Was he? "No, it's just...I didn't expect it. All these years they didn't lose a single opportunity to shut us down, and now they had the perfect...the freaking perfectly appropriate excuse: money." "To whom are you referring to by 'they,' Mulder?" He reflected for a second. "Well, don't you find it hard to believe that they are just gone? Dead or about to die, for that matter. That the only thing that's left of them is Alex Krycek and maybe some guy in Tunisia? Do you honestly thing that the alien doesn't plan?" Skinner would have raised his eyebrows at that had Mulder not stopped him with a "don't give me that bullshit" look. "That alien plans for colonization aren't going to be realized just because they had no men left to help them on with their agenda?" "Well, I don't get it then. If that's so, you should be just happy to be able to continue. How else would you keep on looking into those agendas?" Oh crap! He realized with that what a confused mess he was. Well, it would have been very naive to thing you could turn into a Buddhist pacifist in twelve hours after being a restless mindless freak hunter for the better part of your life. Maybe he would understand himself better if he tried to explain it to Skinner. "The truth is I...I am getting tired of it. I am a little exhausted actually, and Scully may say the same thing." Guilt. Yep, somewhere between his throat and his stomach he felt it: guilt coming on. Skinner, on the other hand, was sympathetically looking back at him. "It's good you bring that up, there's something I have been wanting to talk to you about, it was one of the reasons they decided to not shut down the X-Files actually. Well to not exactly shoot them down, if I may be precise now..." But Skinner stopped the now intriguing conversation because of the ringing of his cell phone. "Skinner." He nodded to Mulder's silent question about the identity of the caller. "Yes, he is here with me, we are at the cafeteria. Ok then.She's on her way," he said after hanging up. A gulp took the guilt back to the bottom of Mulder's stomach. ** How hard can it be to take a few steps to a cafeteria? Just a few steps left. Come on Dana, you need to move...move! No, this isn't working. This was silly, Mulder probably knew already. Well, that was the issue, wasn't it? But he had already decided to be the father of her child, hadn't he? This definitely was very, very silly...Come please, Super Dana Scully in charge to rescue! And Super Dana Scully opened the door, looked around the tables, spotted them, and...Oh, come on! One step at a time, One step at a time, One step at a... "Hi." She didn't sit; she didn't even look at Skinner. "Hi," he said. "You took my chart." With that she meant <> "Yes..." With that he meant <> "...was everything fine with the check-up?" ala <> "Yes" i.e. << yes, it is true>> There, she could sit down and acknowledge Skinner's presence now. God bless the benefits of mastering eye conversation. "I was telling Mulder about the new status of the x-files," Skinner said, unaware of their wordless conversational asides. "Really? Well what is it?" "They are not shutting us down Scully, but Skinner seems to have something else upon his sleeve." When she'd sat down, her knee had come in contact with Mulder's hand, which didn't seem to want to go anywhere else now. If she concentrated enough she could also decipher the exact message from it...something like: <> She felt very warm... What? The X-Files, yes. They are not closing them down. Skinner... "Well Sir, tell us." But Skinner was interrupted yet again, this time not by his cell phone, but by the waiter noticing Scully's presence. "Would you like something, Ma'am?" ...Yes, coffee. No, not coffee...Not coffee! Wow. "Orange juice and a fruit salad, please." Poor Skinner. He really seemed to want to say whatever he wanted was still on his mind. "I'll bring them to you immediately," the waiter said. "Thank you." She expectantly looked back at Skinner who cleared his throat and started, "These are new times, agents. The people who are getting out of the academy nowadays there are people who went to collage during the Clinton administration. These are open times. Everybody is more willing to explore extreme possibilities, just look at what we see on film today, ID4, MIB..." On very few occasions Skinner had seen such disbelief on Mulder's face, but nothing new about Scully's. "...or at least that's the explanations I have given to myself." "What do you mean?" "Well, Mulder, it seems your reputation is changing, at least amongst the younger generations. A quite significant number of promising agents from all over the country have been requesting entrance or transfer to what they call 'the X-Files division'." "Division! How long has this been going on?" "Well, last year I received about thirty requests." "Thirty?!" Scully yelped. "And the numbers are rising. You two seem to be becoming legends now, who knows? Maybe that Lazarus Bowl movie is also having something to do with it..." Skinner shouldn't have said that last thing while Mulder was drinking. "Sir, excuse me, but..." Scully started as she turned for a moment to see Mulder cleaning himself up "...why are you telling us this now? And what made you keep this information from us before?" Skinner didn't seem so eager to have reached this point of the conversation. "Well I didn't consider it serious at first..." That was greeted by harsh looks from them both. "And I didn't wanted it to get into Mulder's head." That look was even harsher. "Then I was told about the audit they were planning on doing, a month ago, actually..." "Skinner!" "...and then is when I decided to bring this up to the council. Some people were truly surprised, some others were, well, happy about it." And Skinner had thought those eyes couldn't be wider. "You do have friends at the FBI, agents." "Sometimes it is more comfortable to be treated as the underdogs." Skinner ignored that last bit. "You also have a higher success rate than most of the departments, and as I told you, people are being more open, the use of psychics for solving cases is getting more and more common..." "Could you get to the point, Sir?" "Yes Agent Scully, that's exactly where I was heading now. Given the eagerness of so many good agents to be part of your team the council has come up with the idea to, er... *expand* the x-files investigations." "Why do I get the feeling that *expand* doesn't mean a bigger office?" Mulder said with a smirk. "Oh but it does, actually, it also means you would be dealing with more cases, any cases the Bureau may be having a hard time solving, actually." "That doesn't' sound like the x-files to me," replied Mulder. "Well, no, not exactly, it would be the newly formed Exceptional Cases Unit. A unit you both would be in charge of." "Exceptional Cases Unit?!" That squawk came from both of them. "It sounds important and ambiguous enough. Anyway that name will look better on the expenses record." "What about the paranormal? The main reason for the existence of the X-Files." "You would also continue with that line of investigation provided you don't put way too many people out in the field looking out for bigfoot." "This is bull shit Skinner, they are trying to make a bargain for Scully's talent and mine." Skinner didn't respond. So Scully decided to intervene "You have been thinking about this... pulling this through for a long time, right Sir? For way more than a month." Skinner just nodded. "And Mulder and I, our main task would be to assign the cases and supervise the agents?" "Yes..." said Skinner, now happier considering Scully's attitude. Smiling he continued "...like a mom and dad." Mulder and Scully froze. Mulder's fork, with which he had been playing during the conversation made a lout clank as it hit the plate. Could it be she almost forgot...? She then turned her head to her partner who looked almost immediately back. It was a quiet secret smile, if ever such a thing existed. "We'll think about it, Sir," Mulder snapped as he turned back to Skinner. Skinner didn't seemed to appreciate Mulder finally calling him "Sir" that day, but only because he couldn't figure what just had happened between his agents. "Shall we get going?" Scully finally said enigmatically as she and Mulder were already rising from the table. ** Maybe on that bench. Their bench. He would call her up there. She would ask is the sit was taken. He would smile. Only if you want to spent the rest of your life with me... "Mulder?" He twisted his head a little to look at the woman lying on his chest. "Hmm?" "What are you laughing at?" "Why...No, nothing. Nothing really." She looked at him with suspicion but then resettled her head on him. Well, if he would be going that way he would better go the whole nine yards. Kneeling. An obnoxiously big, ridiculous diamond ring...And fireworks! Fireworks forming letters! Fireworks forming a <>! <> Or, let's just have the whole picture <> With "Wind Beneath my Wings" in the background...Yeah that's right...proposition *a la quatre fromages*... "Mulder!" "What?!" "My mother told me not to trust people who laugh by themselves." "Scully?" "Yeah?" "Did you ever know that you are my hero?" That made her crack up. "Go to sleep Mulder," she said when she finished laughing and had made herself again comfortable against his chest. Not a minute has passed when... "Scully?" "Hmm." "Before we started to sleep together...what is it that we did to cope with our emotions?" "Hmm, well..." Now *she* twisted her head a little. "we...hugged a lot and...of course there was this, this thing we did with our foreheads..." "Ah the foreheads...yes. That was always effective." "Yes, yes it was." Mulder nodded and smiled but Scully didn't return to lay on him this time. Instead she lifted herself up a little so she would be level with his eyes. "So." "So," Mulder said softly. "Have you *coped* with your emotions?" He playfully looked at her. "Yeah, I guess." "Well?" "Well I don't know you, but I think this is going to be a one step at a time thing, you know? First we check everything is ok with the kiddo, then we figure out what there is to be done about work or about the...Exceptional Cases Unit," she said with a helpless smile. "The Exceptional Cases Unit, yes. Perhaps we do a little research on the possibilities of all this. But in a very discreet way of course, and..." "And?" "And if ever there is any thread, any menace, any danger...heck if anyone wants as much as to touch a hair on your head or the baby's we get the fuck out of here and raise the kid on the Maldives." "Sounds like a plan," she said calmly. "Sounds like a plan," he smoothly repeated. And with that Scully finally went to sleep, so Mulder could keep on dreaming.