“Let me get some plates.”
“Plates! For crying out loud, who eats Polish sausage with plates?”
His cell phone trills in his pocket, and he digs it out, swallowing quickly before answering.
“John Doggett.”
“Where are you?” Brad Follmer barks in his ear.
“Sir?”
“We followed you to the alley, but you’re not here. Where did you go? Do you still have eyes on Lukesh?”
“Sir, I’m… afraid you mighta dialed the wrong number. This is Agent Doggett. I’m not on duty today.”
“Damn it, John, going vigilante isn’t going to solve anything. We will make him pay for what he did to her, but we have to do it the right way. Now tell me where you are!”
“I’m…” He flounders, walking toward the kitchen. Maybe Monica will have some idea what on God’s green earth Follmer is talking about?
The kitchen is empty. The hell? There’s only one doorway in and out, and he definitely saw her go in there.
“Monica?” he says, turning in a circle.
He only realizes he’s lowered the hand holding his phone once he registers the sound of Follmer yelling through the tinny speaker somewhere near his hip. He quickly brings the phone back to his ear.
“...isn’t going to bring her back! Do you hear me?! I am ordering you to stand down!”
“Sir, with all due respect, I don’t have any idea what you’re talking about. I’m at Agent Reyes’s apartment right now. The one she’s just moved into. If I can… she was here just a second ago.” Leaving the kitchen, he walks back into the front room, holding the phone away again briefly while he shouts. “Monica! Where’d you go?”
“How did you… Her new place in Georgetown? You expect me to believe you got all the way over to Georgetown on foot in five minutes?”
“I’m telling you, I don’t know where you think I was supposed to be this morning, but I’m not--”
He gets to the front door, which is not only closed now but locked, with the deadbolt engaged. He knows for a fact it was standing wide open when he got here.
“I’m… not…”
“Agent Doggett, listen to me. I think you might be in shock. Just tell me where you really are, and I’ll send someone to come get you.”
“Yeah, sir, I’m gonna have to call you back.”
“Wait! Joh--”
He hangs up the phone and hits the speed dial for Monica’s cell number. “Come on, come on, pick up,” he mutters as it rings, ignoring the interrupting beeps as Follmer tries to call him back, then cursing when it goes to voicemail. He hangs up again, and when his phone rings almost immediately -- still Follmer -- he shuts it off entirely, scowling.
The apartment is nice, but it isn’t huge, and he walks through every bit of it. She is nowhere to be found. On his second pass through the kitchen, he notices that the paper bag and the other sausage are both gone. None of this makes any sense. He was here the whole time, and he never saw her leave. It’s like she vanished into thin air, only that’s impossible.
Isn’t it?
***
He’d thought he was so clever, leaving his truck at the Hoover Building this morning and avoiding the nightmare that is Georgetown street parking on a Saturday; now he’s regretting that decision, big time, as he hoofs it the eight blocks to Agent Scully’s place. He hates to bother her on the weekend, but he honestly has no idea where else to go.
His jaw falls open when Mulder answers the door.
Bizarrely, Mulder looks equally surprised to see him. “Agent Doggett, I-- we just heard. Skinner called, and… I assumed you were at the hospital. Scully’s headed there now.”
Hospital? First he’s supposed to be in some alley with Follmer, and now a hospital? He holds up his hands.
“Look, I don’t know what in God’s name is going on here, but I haven’t understood one single word I’ve heard in the last half hour. First Follmer, and now you… and when the hell did you get back, anyway?”
Mulder frowns. "Back from where?"
"How the hell should I know? Agent Scully never said. Told me she had no idea where you went, either."
"And… when was that?"
"Come on, Mulder, cut the crap! You don’t get to just up and take off for five months and then play dumb about it!”
“No, I’m not-- Look, why don’t you come inside for a minute?” Mulder steps back, opening the door wider. “I’m not quite sure what’s going on here, but I’ll call Scully, and we can try to figure this out, all right?”
Doggett wants to argue, but it’s not like he’s got any better ideas at the moment. He walks past Mulder into the living room and immediately notices that it’s been rearranged since the last time he was here. Granted, that was a few weeks ago, but it looks really different, not just in terms of furniture placement but in the piles of papers on the coffee table and the second computer on the desk. It has the distinct look of cohabitation, and not just recent cohabitation, either.
“Wait, how long have you been back?” he asks, turning back toward Mulder. “I just talked to Agent Scully three days ago, and she never said one word about it. But from the looks of this place, I’d say you’ve been here at least a week. Maybe more.”
Mulder closes the front door and looks at him with concern. “You and Agent Reyes had dinner here last weekend. Are you saying you don’t remember that?”
“What are you talking about, dinner? I spent last weekend rebuilding my back deck. Only place I went was the hardware store.”
“That… doesn’t make any sense.”
“You’re telling me! Either I’m dreaming or I’m losing my mind, but not a damned thing is making sense to me right now.” He doesn’t like the careful, almost pitying look Mulder gives him in response. “You think I am losing my mind. I’m telling you, I’m just as sane as I was when I woke up this morning. It’s the whole rest of the world that’s gone nuts.”
“I think,” Mulder says gently, “that we can’t always expect how trauma will affect us.” He walks over to the phone, picks up the handset and starts dialing. “And I also think that Scully will know what to do. Why don’t you sit down?”
Doggett has no desire to sit down, but Mulder walks away before he can argue, going into the bedroom and closing the door. So he paces, instead, trying to put the pieces together from everything that has transpired since Monica left the room to get plates. That was the point where everything went off the rails.
Follmer said something about shock, and now Mulder’s talking about trauma, but it was a completely normal Saturday until Monica disappeared. Did he fall and hit his head? Is he lying unconscious on her floor right now with a brain aneurysm? Wouldn’t he remember something like that happening?
“She’s on her way,” Mulder says, emerging from the bedroom. “She wants me to ask what you remember about this morning. What happened before you came here?”
“I got up, drove into the city, and left my truck at the Hoover Building. Took a cab over to M Street, picked up a couple of Polish sausages from Stachowski’s, and walked to Monica’s new place. We talked for a minute, she went into the kitchen, and that’s when everything went haywire.”
Mulder frowns. “According to Skinner, you and Agent Reyes were on a stakeout this morning with AD Follmer. You don’t remember anything about that?”
“Why in the hell would we be on a stakeout? It’s a Saturday, and even if it weren’t, we don’t have any active cases right now, anyway.”
“But you remember driving to work,” Mulder points out.
“Only because I didn’t want to deal with parking over on this side of town!”
“All right.” Mulder holds up his hands. “So you said Agent Reyes went into the kitchen, and then everything went haywire. What do you mean by that?”
Doggett gives a frustrated sigh, then recounts the whole ridiculous series of events, between Follmer’s call and Monica’s disappearance and how the open front door was closed and deadbolted.
“And before you ask if maybe she went out a different way and I just didn’t see her leave, not a chance. There’s one doorway in and out of that kitchen, and I was standing in front of it the whole time.”
Hearing himself say everything out loud, he knows exactly how insane it all sounds. He’s beginning to have a healthy dose of sympathy for some of the people he’s dealt with during his time on the X-Files. To Mulder’s credit, he’s looking at him more thoughtfully than dismissively.
A faint cry from the other room causes both men to glance toward the bedroom door. Mulder looks at the clock on the wall and gives a wry smile, shaking his head.
“Right on schedule. Kid’s like a Swiss watch these days. Excuse me a minute.”
Resisting the urge to resume pacing, Doggett walks to the kitchen to get himself a glass of water. On the counter beside the coffee maker is a framed photo he’s never seen before; in it, Mulder is holding baby William, who looks to be a couple of months old.
“What the hell?” Doggett murmurs, picking up the frame.
He flips it over and takes the frame apart to extract the photograph, looking for the date printed on the back.
11 Jul 2001
How is that possible? Mulder had been gone, what, six weeks by then? He’s pretty sure Agent Scully, fearful though she was for Mulder’s safety, still would have mentioned it if he’d swung back through town for a visit.
He’s still holding the photograph when Mulder walks into the kitchen with the baby in his arms.
“Explain to me how this is possible,” Doggett says quietly. “How is there a photo of you from July when I am pretty damned sure you were nowhere near here?”
Mulder sets about making a bottle of formula. “You keep talking about my being gone, but the fact is, I never went anywhere.”
Doggett narrows his eyes. “What are you saying, you were just hiding here the whole time? You expect me to believe that?”
“I don’t expect you to believe much of anything,” Mulder says dryly. “But I’m starting to think that whatever’s going on here is more than just trauma-induced memory loss.”
“You know, that’s the second time you’ve mentioned trauma, but I’ve still got no idea what you could possibly mean. This morning has been weird, no question, but unless all of this is one big hallucination because I fell and hit my head or something--”
The front door opens, and he looks up to see Agent Scully walking in, her eyes wide and worried. “John,” she says as her gaze finds his. “How did you get here?”
Things must really be bad if she’s calling me John. “I walked.”
“From Dillon Park?” she asks, brow creased in confusion.
“What? No. From Monica’s apartment.” Exasperation threatens to completely overwhelm him. “Would somebody please start talking sense here? AD Follmer says I’m supposed to be in some alley, Mulder says I’m supposed to be at the hospital, and now you’re talking about Dillon Park. What the hell is going on with everyone today?! How is it possible that my partner disappearing into thin air is not the most confusing thing that’s happened in the last hour?!”
“Disappearing…” Scully looks pained. “John, Monica’s dead. She was killed trying to apprehend a suspect this morning near Dillon Park. You and AD Follmer were watching from the surveillance van.”
“What are you talking about?!” he explodes, and William starts to cry. He shoots an apologetic look over at Mulder, who bounces the baby gently to settle him, and then lowers his voice to continue. “I don’t know who told you that, but not one word of it is true.”
Scully shakes her head sadly. “I’m so sorry, but--”
“I believe you,” Mulder interrupts.
Doggett and Scully both look at him in surprise. “What?”
“Too much doesn’t add up,” he says. “How you got all the way across town so fast. Why you think I’ve been gone for five months.” He glances at Scully as he says this, and her eyes widen; Doggett watches an entire silent conversation pass between them in the course of a few seconds before Mulder turns his attention back to him. “What do you know about the theory of parallel dimensions?”
“Wow.” Doggett shakes his head, unable to even remotely believe any of what just came out of Mulder’s mouth. Parallel universes and rips in the time-space continuum and all manner of other sci-fi garbage. “Wherever you’ve been hiding out, you musta spent the whole time watching Star Trek.”
There’s that look again between Mulder and Scully, and then Scully clears her throat. “I know it sounds impossible, but the fact that you believe Mulder’s been away is the one thing that makes me think there might actually be some merit to this theory.”
Doggett frowns. “How do you mean?”
“Right after William was born, we received a warning that Mulder’s life was in danger. That he should leave, to protect himself and us.”
“I know,” Doggett says. “You told me that, and then Kersh told me he was the one who warned you. Said Mulder wouldn’t listen to him, but you did.”
“That’s the thing,” Mulder says. “Neither of us listened to Kersh. But then we got word from Gibson Praise, confirming the danger, and we all left.”
Doggett didn’t think it was possible to get even more confused, yet here he is. “What do you mean, you all left? A few minutes ago you were trying to tell me you never went anywhere. So which is it? And… what would Gibson Praise have to do with any of it?”
“We were only gone for a couple of weeks,” Scully says. “Gibson used his… abilities… to help us figure out how to deal with the men who were after both him and Mulder.”
“Gibson and Scully figured it out,” Mulder adds, looking at her with pride while he bounces a smiling William on his knee. “We’d probably still be out there if she hadn’t--” His expression sobers, and he gives a rueful sort of chuckle. “Well, I guess that’s why you haven’t seen the version of me in your universe for five months. If I went off on my own, without Scully… even if I did find Gibson, I don’t know how long it would’ve taken me to come up with a way to beat them.”
“You’re telling me all of you left. For two weeks. And this chess prodigy kid helped you figure out a way to take out the supersoldiers, and then, what, you all came back?” He shakes his head. “Maybe I am losing it, because I’ve got a whole different set of memories for the last five months.”
“Except it would all make perfect sense if you’re actually from a different dimension.” Doggett scoffs, and Mulder raises his eyebrows. “Give me another theory that fits.”
“Okay, maybe this is all a prank,” Doggett says with a shrug. “Be a pretty weird and elaborate prank, but…”
Mulder barks a laugh. “Yeah. I’d have to have gotten back, what, yesterday? No offense, Agent Doggett, but if I’d been away from these two for months, my first order of business would definitely not be spending half a day staging this apartment and faking photographs in order to pull a prank on you.”
He has to admit that’s fair. But damn it, if it’s not that…
“Well, then maybe this is all in my head. I mean, I feel like I’d remember passing out or falling down or something, but it would fit.”
Poor Monica. If he’s actually lying unconscious on her floor, she is probably freaking the hell out right now.
“Except that we’re real,” Mulder points out.
“Well, yeah, you would say that even if I were hallucinating though, wouldn’t you?” Actually, that reminds him of a case file he read, back when he first started on the X-Files. “Hey, didn’t you two run into some kinda… mushroom thing that made you see things that weren’t real?”
“Well, yes,” Scully says, “but--”
“And didn’t everyone tell you Mulder was dead? Just like everyone’s trying to tell me Monica’s dead?”
“Right, but--”
“So all I’ve gotta do is figure out what I got exposed to, and then wake myself up out of it. Like you did.”
“Think about what you’re suggesting,” Mulder says. “Given what you’ve told us about your day so far, that would mean you either have a massive carnivorous mushroom growing underneath your yard, or Stachowski’s is selling laced Polish sausages.”
“At least both of those things could really happen,” Doggett counters. “There’s precedent there. Unlike this crackpot theory of yours about parallel dimensions.”
“Come on, it’s a perfectly legitimate--”
“Realizing we were trapped underground was enough to get the illusion to break, temporarily,” Scully interrupts. “Look around. Unless you can see yellow digestive enzyme dripping from the walls, I think we can rule out the mushroom theory.”
Doggett blinks, frowning. “Well, no, I don’t see anything like that. But if it was something in the food…”
“Look, if you don’t believe any of this is real, then we aren’t going to get anywhere,” Mulder says. “You may as well just go back home and wait to wake up, because there’s nothing any of us can say or do to make a difference. But let me tell you something. The John Doggett I know wouldn’t be content to just walk away and wait it out. Hell, I don’t even know you that well and I still know that much. You’re not one to roll over and ignore something just because you can’t explain it right away.”
He’s not sure if this is some reverse psychology bullshit or if Fox Mulder actually just paid him something resembling a compliment.
“If nothing else,” Scully adds, “following up on Mulder’s theory won’t lose you anything. Worst case scenario, you’re right, and either you wake up at some point, or…”
“Or I croak. That is if I’m not dead already.” He narrows his eyes; that possibility doesn’t bear thinking too deeply about. “So what’s the best case scenario, then?”
“We figure out how you got here, and we find a way to send you home,” Mulder says.
Doggett laughs. “Well, I won’t hold my breath on that one. But all right. I’ll play along. Whadya got, where do we start?”
Mulder’s eyes blaze with a gleam familiar to anyone who’s spent a lot of time around investigators, that thrill of feeling like you’re on to something. “I have a feeling that the stakeout you were supposed to be on this morning has something to do with it. If indeed we’re looking at some sort of timeline divergence event, then it seems likely that the split occurred while you appeared to be in two places at once. We need to find out what you were doing over in Dillon Park.”
“Actually, I already know the answer to that,” Scully says, and they both turn to look at her. “Skinner told me you and Agent Reyes were investigating a man named Erwin Lukesh.”
“They’re telling us not to worry. They’re running some tests.”
Agent Mulder looks just about as comforted by those words as Doggett feels (which is to say, not comforted in the slightest), but there’s nothing more they can do right now except wait.
It’s still weird as hell, Mulder up and walking around after being dead and buried for months. Not that Doggett has much room to talk; he still doesn’t know what to believe about what may or may not have happened to him in Squamash, but there’s something different and undeniable about seeing with his own eyes what happened with Mulder.
It’s clear, also, that Mulder still doesn’t trust him, let alone like him. They seemed to come to a tentative understanding after the whole debacle at the FSC, but in the couple of weeks since then, they’ve hardly spoken. What few interactions they have had have been civil at best, if not more than a little chilly. Mulder’s not exactly made himself an easy guy to like. He’s cocky and abrasive, and yeah, AD Skinner has asked Doggett to keep in mind what Mulder’s been through, but at a certain point, he has to wonder how much blame can be put on the trauma and how much is just down to personality. Truth be told, he’s still not convinced the guy deserves the unfailing loyalty of someone as genuinely good-hearted as Agent Scully, but he supposes it’s not really his place to say.
“You gentlemen are going to have to clear the hallway,” pipes up a nurse at the desk behind Mulder. “There are chairs down that way where you can wait. The doctor will let you know when there are updates on your friend’s condition.”
Mulder’s jaw muscle bulges and his eyes narrow, and he looks for all the world like he’s going to make them physically drag him away. Doggett gets it -- he’s worried about Agent Scully, too, and has no intention of leaving until he knows she’s going to be okay -- but causing a big scene is only going to end up getting them both kicked out of the hospital altogether.
He is surprised, then, when Mulder turns on his heel without a word and walks in the direction that the nurse pointed.
Doggett hesitates. A month ago, he would’ve been the one anxiously standing guard over Agent Scully’s room; now he can’t help feeling like an intruder, and it stinks. Technically, he’s still her partner, and even if he weren’t, he’s no less her friend than he was before Mulder came back. He’s got every right to be here, to be worried about her, to want to stay and make sure she’s going to be all right.
He very much doubts Mulder will see it that way, though, and he’s got no desire to get into another confrontation with the guy. No way in hell is he leaving, but he’ll find someplace else to sit.
***
Walking into the hospital would have set him on edge even if he weren’t scared to death about Scully and the baby. (Their baby.) But he is scared to death, and between that and the sounds and the smells of this place, the physiological impulse to run away as fast as he can is both undeniable and deeply unhelpful. It’s a flight response held in check by an even stronger unwillingness to leave Scully’s side. Even being this far away from her, just down the hall, makes him anxious.
He leans forward in the chair, resting his elbows on his knees. The phone call from that agent in New Orleans comes to mind, and he seizes it as a momentary source of distraction.
Agent Reyes said she needed his help on a case that somehow involves Agent Doggett. If she had said almost literally anything else, he would have told her no, but this… this may well be the one thing that could possibly grab his attention.
Mulder doesn’t know what Doggett’s story is, but the man is definitely hiding something; of that he’s certain. It’s more than a little suspicious that Doggett ended up getting to the hospital right behind the ambulance. His supposed explanation requires a hell of a coincidence in timing, and what would he have been dropping off at Scully’s in the middle of the day, anyway? It’s not hard to imagine he was surveilling her apartment instead, keeping tabs on her, or maybe even that he’s been tailing Mulder. So if helping Agent Reyes with this case will allow him to find out more about Doggett or where his allegiances lie, it’s worth doing.
But only after the doctors tell him that Scully’s going to be okay.
He glances down the hall toward her room. What if she’s not okay? Before he can stop it, his mind tumbles down a rabbit hole of every possible negative scenario -- Scully pulling through but losing the baby, Scully and the baby both dying, an emergency delivery that she doesn’t survive and leaves him walking out of this hospital a single father. Fuck, he’s barely got a grip on caring for himself right now; how in the hell would he even begin to take care of an infant, all on his own?
He sits up and wipes his damp palms against his thighs, shaking his head and breathing out, hard. He absolutely cannot afford to think like that. She’s going to be okay. She has to be okay.
“Sir?”
Mulder jumps at the nurse’s voice; Jesus, she’s standing right in front of him and he didn’t even see her walk up. He starts to get to his feet.
“What’s happening, is she okay? What did the doctor say?”
The nurse holds out a hand. “They’re still running tests. We don’t know anything yet. I came to ask for your help filling out some forms, since you’re the one who brought her in.”
He wilts back into the chair. “Right, yeah. Okay.”
They’re the same standard intake questions he’s answered a thousand times before. (They really do end up in the hospital way too goddamned often.) Most of Scully’s information is already on file here anyway, so there isn’t much to add, but his heart starts pounding harder as he recounts the symptoms she was having in her apartment and on the ambulance ride. His mouth goes dry recalling how she went quiet and still on the gurney, overwhelmed by the pain or maybe the blood loss; he doesn’t know. God, there was so much blood. In what world is that not a terrible sign?
“We should know more before too long,” the nurse tells him, and he can’t help noticing how she didn’t actually answer the question. “Now, we have a Margaret Scully listed as the emergency contact on file, but we haven’t been able to reach her. Do you know if there’s another number we can try?”
Used to be my name and number on those forms. Guess she hasn’t updated things since I came back to life. If I hadn’t been with her when this happened, would I even know she was in trouble?
“Mrs. Scully is probably still on an airplane right now.” He already asked if Scully wanted him to call her mom while they were waiting for the ambulance, and she told him Maggie left this morning to go visit Bill and Tara out in California. “I don’t know when she’ll be available.”
“And there’s no husband?”
“No, but I’m the f--” he starts to say, and then hesitates. Scully has kept the paternity of this baby pretty close to the vest. The Gunmen obviously know, or guessed, but beyond them, he’s not sure who else is even in the loop. Unless, god forbid, something happens to her, it should probably be Scully’s decision whether to make his involvement in all of this a matter of public record.
“I’m her friend,” he finishes lamely. “But please, if you know anything--”
“As I’ve already told you, I will update you as soon as I have some answers. Okay? Now just sit tight, and I’ll be back with you in a bit.”
He watches her go and resists the urge to get up and pace.
***
Hours pass.
If there’s any word on Scully’s condition, Doggett hasn’t heard it. He wonders if the nurses have forgotten about him.
He’s about to get up and go find someone to ask when Mulder comes walking down the hall. Doggett jumps to his feet.
“How is she, did they let you in to see her?”
Mulder looks startled. “Agent Doggett, you… you’re still here.”
“Of course I’m still here.” Doggett frowns. If Mulder wasn’t coming to give him an update, then where the hell is he going? “Have they told you anything?”
“Yeah, they, uh… Doctor Speake said she’s stable, they got the contractions and the bleeding stopped, but they’re still working on figuring out for sure what happened. They wouldn’t let me see her, but… yeah, it seems like she’s gonna be okay, at least for now.”
“Well, that’s good news, right? I mean, ‘stable’ is always better than the alternative.”
“Yeah, I guess so. Listen, I, um, there’s something I need to do. Are you gonna stick around here, or--?”
“I can stay, sure. I’ll let you know if anything changes.”
Mulder nods, glancing distractedly over Doggett’s shoulder toward the door. He shifts his weight back and forth a few times, like he might change his mind about leaving. Like he can’t trust Doggett to hold down the fort here for however long it takes him to do what he’s got to do.
Doggett sighs. “Look, Mulder, I’m just as worried about her as you are. I promise I’ll call you if her condition changes in any way, all right?”
For a second it looks like Mulder’s about to argue, but he just nods again instead. He throws a curt, “I’ll be back as soon as I can,” over his shoulder as he continues on down the hall.
It’s a weird feeling, being simultaneously judgemental about the fact that Mulder apparently has more important things to do than wait around at the hospital and also profoundly relieved that he’s getting out of here for a little while. On one hand, it feels like things are back to normal, like Doggett’s no longer shoved to the periphery, his friendship and partnership with Agent Scully treated like an afterthought. On the other hand, “back to normal” also means he’s left picking up the pieces while Mulder’s off somewhere else.
Grimacing, he shakes his head. That’s unfair, and he knows it. For all he knows, the guy’s gone back to Scully’s place to bring a bag of her things. Doggett saw his face; he wasn’t thrilled about leaving, and he damn sure wasn’t just assuming Doggett would be there to take up the slack. If anything, his leaving is actually a good sign, an indication that he is willing to trust Doggett at least a little.
And Doggett won’t betray that trust. He turns to head toward the nurses’ station; better make sure they know where to find him in case there’s any news.
Could be worse, Doggett thinks as he kicks hard to stay afloat. Could be wearing full combat gear.
Of course, he was also a good 20 years younger the last time he had to do that.
The chopper circles back around after skirting away to avoid the blast from the rig. Between the spray and the spotlight, Doggett can barely see anything, but he's pretty sure Mulder's still keeping his head above water. He hopes so, anyway. The last thing he wants is to have to tell Agent Scully that he lost Mulder in the damned Gulf of Mexico.
He wonders how exactly they’re planning on trying to do this. That’s a charter helicopter up there, same one that brought him out here this morning. Evacuating from the rig itself would have been one thing, but there’s no way it’s equipped for an open water rescue.
The pilot’s saying something over the loudspeaker again, but hell if he can make out what it is. A shadow cuts through the spotlight, and then he feels more than hears the whump of something landing in the water nearby. Looks like a duffel bag, but it’s actually a raft, he realizes. Well, that’ll work. He kicks his way over to it, adrenaline and fatigue and cold making him unsteady as he fumbles for the pull rope to inflate the damned thing. Mulder gets to his side just as he finds it.
“Heads up!” he yells, though his words are swallowed by the noise from the rotors.
In seconds, the raft inflates, and he and Mulder haul themselves aboard. There’s some relief as the chopper pilot ascends a fair bit, keeping his spotlight on them as he circles but not flying so low as to keep buffeting them constantly with wind and spray. For a while, Doggett and Mulder just lie there, catching their breath.
Hell of a day at the office.
It doesn’t take too long for the Coast Guard to arrive. Long enough for Mulder to lose his lunch a couple of times over the side of the raft though, the poor bastard. Not that he can blame the guy; the water’s more than a little choppy. When the rescue basket drops, Mulder tries to tell him to go first, but he shakes his head. No way. Mulder may have been the one to get them both into this mess, but Doggett is the one getting them out, and that means making damn sure there is absolutely zero chance of Mulder getting left behind.
Only once they’re both aboard the chopper, blankets wrapped around them like, he supposes, the trauma survivors they are, does he finally let himself comprehend the full scope of what just happened. He won’t go so far as to say Mulder was right about all of it, but he also can’t deny what he saw. Oil coming out of the foreman’s eyes. What happened to Diego Garza. The way the workers conspired to trap them and destroy the rig.
And oh, Kersh is absolutely going to blow his stack when he finds out about that last part.
If Mulder was right about one thing, it’s that Kersh sent him out here with an agenda. And that agenda was not to simply uncover the truth about what happened to Simon de la Cruz. There’s something decidedly unsavory about the political nature of Kersh’s priorities in this case; not that Doggett doesn’t understand and appreciate the stakes involved here, but his job is to find answers, not protect some oil company’s bottom line. Being given orders, implicitly or not, that run counter to that job is never going to sit right with him.
Of course, that is far from the only thing that’s not sitting right with him about this case.
He saw the black oil. Doesn’t mean he thinks it’s alien, but it sure as hell wasn’t standard crude, either. What happened to the workers was… well, “unnerving” doesn’t even begin to cover it. He honestly has no idea what the implications might be if the stuff ever gets back to shore, if Galpex doesn’t give up on trying to drill that area. Or what might have happened if he’d skipped on this case like he wanted to, if Mulder hadn’t pushed and gone behind his back to get the Bureau involved.
Mulder. Doggett shakes his head. He probably owes the guy an apology for the crack he made about being able to find a conspiracy at a church picnic. Turns out Mulder’s paranoia wasn’t so completely baseless after all. Doesn’t make his behavior any less obnoxious, of course, nor does it mean every claim he made about aliens was the gospel truth, but his instincts were still good. Doggett doesn’t have to agree with all his wild theories to recognize that much.
Then again, Mulder definitely still owes him an apology for going behind his back repeatedly in this investigation, but he’s not going to hold his breath waiting for one. Nah, he can keep his own mouth shut and just call it even. If it weren’t for Scully, he wouldn’t bother trying to get along with Mulder at all. Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem like that’s an option. Be nice if Mulder could at least try to meet him halfway, though.
It’s a little less than an hour back to the Texas shore, and A.D. Skinner’s there waiting when they land. Better him than Kersh, Doggett supposes. Skinner looks like he can’t decide whether to be pissed or relieved, as they climb down out of the helicopter. (“Damn it, kids, you crashed the family car, but at least you made it home alive.”) Mulder seems all too comfortable in the role of petulant teenager; after they’ve thanked the Coasties for saving their asses, he stalks over to where their boss is waiting.
“I’m betting Kersh didn’t send you down here to throw us a ticker tape parade for saving the day.”
“Actually, I’m here at Agent Scully’s insistence. You don’t need me to tell you, you’ve got almost as much to answer for to her as you do to the Deputy Director.”
“Yeah, well at least she appreciates what was at stake. What’s still at stake if Galpex Petroleum keeps trying to drill that site.”
Skinner’s frown deepens. “All the men on board were infected?”
“All but one,” Doggett answers before Mulder can. He’s not interested in being shouldered out of this conversation altogether. “I promised I’d help him get home, but…” He shakes his head, remembering the sight of Diego Garza’s burns. “I can’t even begin to explain the condition of his body, same as what happened to Simon de la Cruz.”
“I can.”
He just manages to keep from scoffing. Yeah, I’m sure you can, Agent Mulder.
“In any event,” Skinner says pointedly, “I assume based on what I heard over the radio that we're no longer dealing with a quarantine situation.”
“That's correct, sir,” Doggett tells him, while Mulder says, “We'll need to confirm that,” at the same time.
This time he does scoff. “No way did anyone survive that explosion. We only barely made it out alive, ourselves.”
“I'll agree with you that it's unlikely any human could have survived.”
“Oh, come on, you've got to be kid--”
“All right, that's enough,” Skinner cuts him off. “Fire containment efforts will include a search for survivors, as part of routine procedure. I'll make sure the FBI stays in the loop if they find anyone.”
His phone rings, then, and he turns away to answer it.
“They find anyone alive out there, it’s gonna be a miracle,” Doggett mutters.
Mulder glares at him. Really leaning into the petulant teenager thing full-bore, isn’t he? “After everything you saw out there, how can you possibly still be this dismissive?”
“What I saw, Agent Mulder, was men behaving strangely. I saw oil do stuff I’ve never seen it do before. I saw no proof whatsoever of aliens. And even if I had, why would I assume an alien could survive an explosion any better than you or I could?”
“I don’t know. Maybe you could trust that if I was right about the oil, then I’m right about this, too. Maybe you could trust that I’ve seen these things. But I guess you’d also have to believe that I’m not crazy, and I suppose that’s just a bridge too far for you.”
“I don’t think you’re crazy,” Doggett says, and he means it. “But you told me yourself that you’ll believe just about anything. That you want to believe. Whether that’s in aliens or ghosts or monsters or what-have-you. And in my experience, if someone wants to believe in something bad enough, they tend to ignore all the evidence that might refute that belief.”
“Yeah, well the same can be said of someone who doesn’t want to believe. Only they’ll ignore all of the supporting evidence, denying even undeniable proof out of sheer bullheadedness.”
Skinner comes back before Doggett can respond, holding his phone out toward Mulder. “Agent Scully wants to talk to you. Make it quick, we’ve got a debrief with the Coast Guard in twenty minutes.”
Mulder takes the phone and walks away, and Skinner watches him go, shaking his head. “I know he sounds nuts, but there’s truth to what he says. I’ve seen enough to take his word on a lot of the things I haven’t seen first-hand.”
“All due respect, sir, I’ve seen some things in this job that I never would’ve believed a year ago. But I’m still not gonna compromise my integrity and objectivity by jumping on the alien bandwagon when there might be some other explanation we’re missing.”
“And that’s fine, just… just be careful not to spend so much time looking for another explanation that you miss the one right in front of you until it’s too late.”
Doggett nods. “I’ll do my best not to, sir.”
Mulder walks back over and hands Skinner back his phone. Skinner takes it with a curt nod. “Right. Let’s get this debrief over with so we can go grab a few hours’ sleep. We’re on the first flight back to Washington in the morning.”
“I might go stand in the shower for a few hours instead, if it’s all the same to you,” Mulder says wryly.
Despite himself, Doggett laughs. “You and I might not agree on much, Agent Mulder, but I think that sounds like a great idea.”
“Sir, immediate family only. You fellas just don't listen. You have to go now.”
Mulder's been gone for nearly an hour, and all Doggett wanted to do was check on Scully’s condition. When there was no one at the nurses’ desk, he thought he would just pop into her room for a second and see for himself.
It's hard to see her looking so pale and small in that bed, pregnant belly or no, but at least she's not hooked up to a ventilator. He doesn't know if she's unconscious or just asleep, but she's breathing on her own, so that has to be a good sign.
Still, it’s enough to trigger… whatever the hell that was from his overstressed brain just now. Luke was so pale and small, too.
“What part of ‘you have to go now’ was unclear?”
Great. He’s so wrapped up in his own head that he’s kept on standing here long enough for the nurse to come back.
“I just--”
“Right. Now. I don't care who you work for, if I catch you in here again, I'm calling security.”
He swallows his protest and turns to leave. “I'm going. All right?” In the doorway, though, he pauses. “But can you at least tell me how she's doing? If there’s been any improvement or--”
“Nothing has changed since the last time we spoke. She's stable. She needs to rest. She is in very good hands. And as visiting hours are now over, I suggest you go on home and get some rest, yourself. We will call you or the other gentleman if anything changes.”
Given how not forthcoming she has been this entire afternoon and evening, he very much doubts she will jump right on the phone if Scully were to start going downhill suddenly. And if she does call, and she calls Mulder first, he is not especially confident that Mulder will bother to pass along the message. No, better to stay and keep an eye on the situation, himself.
“Look, if it's all the same to you, I'd really rather just--”
His cell phone trills in his pocket, and from the look the nurse gives him, he may as well have just dumped a bucket of raw sewage in the hallway.
“Sorry, I… excuse me.” He hurries to answer and silence the damned thing, turning and walking quickly up the hall, back toward the waiting area. “John Doggett.”
“John, it's Mike. Do you have a minute?”
Michael Cameron, an old buddy of his, over at the Bureau. Not that he's seen much of him since getting assigned to the X-Files, but they used to grab beers after work and stuff like that, once upon a time. Hell of a time he picks to get back in touch, after months of radio silence.
“Mike, hey. Now's not a great time, actually, I'm kind of in the middle of--”
“This’ll only take a sec. I just thought you'd want to know.”
Doggett sighs. “Know what, Mike?”
“I was just passing by Records downstairs, and I overheard old Spooky down there talking with some other agent about… well, about your boy's case, John.”
He blinks. That can't be right…
“You're telling me Mulder's at the Hoover Building right now, and he's asking questions about Luke?”
“That’s right.”
“And you're sure it was him?”
“Positive. I took another pass after I heard him talking and poked my head in the room. Couldn’t see the other agent in there, but I definitely saw him. Not sure what’s up with the jeans and leather jacket. Does he even have his badge back after… whatever happened to him?”
And just like that, Doggett’s blood is boiling. This is what was so goddamned important, important enough to bail on Agent Scully while she’s sick? Here he was feeling bad about rushing to judgment, beating himself up over not giving Mulder a fair shake, and all along the guy was running around behind his back, trying to dig up dirt on him? Fox Mulder can go straight to hell. Who the fuck does he think he is?
“Thanks, Mike,” he says through clenched teeth. “I’ll take care of it.”
He jabs the “end” button and barely holds back from hurling the phone at the wall. Now Mulder’s bullshit is going to drag them both away from the hospital. Not for the first time, Doggett finds himself wishing he and Skinner really had found a dead man in that casket.
He fumes all the way to the office, his grip on the steering wheel turning his knuckles white while his thoughts swirl cold and dark.
***
“So, you’ve known Agent Doggett a while, then?” Mulder asks lightly, not looking up from the New Orleans police report.
“Going on four years,” Reyes says. “He’s really one of the good ones, you know?”
“What, uh, what do you mean by that?” He turns a page, and the sinking feeling that’s been building almost since he got here continues to grow.
“Well you know how it is in this line of work. You can tell who’s in it because they care and who’s just interested in climbing the ladder. John probably could run the whole Bureau someday, but not because he stepped all over everyone in his path, trying to get there. He’s a good agent, and he’s a good man.”
Indeed, it’s looking more and more like Mulder was completely wrong about Agent Doggett. By all appearances, the man really has no hidden agenda or questionable allegiances, and even though Mulder’s not ready to trust him completely, he does have to admit that it’s entirely possible his own insecurities and (okay, fine) jealousy have made him see things that aren’t there.
Which makes him feel doubly guilty about leaving the hospital to look into this case.
There’s a chance he can make things right, though. If Agent Reyes really is on to something about there being a connection between this recent case and that of Luke Doggett’s murder, then helping her catch the guy would be something like a peace offering. Right?
“Oh, hello,” he murmurs, half under his breath. He reaches for the older case file and flips it open, scanning until he finds what he was looking for.
“What? Did you find something?”
He sets the files down next to each other and points, one index finger on each, finally looking up to meet Reyes’s eyes. “Maybe a connection. What are the chances this is the same Bob Harvey in both reports?”
Walking down the hallway outside her hospital room, he feels in part as if a weight has been lifted. The truth is out, she knows that he knows, and hopefully now they will be able to just move past it and get back to normal. (Or as close to “normal” as it’s ever been, working on the X-Files.)
He shouldn’t be surprised that it all comes back to Mulder. All the secrecy, all the lies, all of it because she was afraid of losing access. Of losing the ability to keep looking for Mulder. He still thinks it’s nuts that she thought just telling him would put all that in jeopardy, like he couldn’t keep a secret or the “powers that be” would just magically find out, but he gets it. Fear can make you think all kinds of crazy things, and there’s no question that Agent Scully is more than a little bit afraid of never finding Fox Mulder.
It’s just that he told her he wasn’t gonna let that happen.
To be fair, despite the promises he’s made, he hasn’t really done a bang-up job so far of actually tracking the guy down. His only recent lead turned out to be a complete dead end. (Literally.) Without the full authority of an official FBI manhunt, there’s only so much he can do.
They need a break in this case so bad. Doggett’s not exactly the praying type -- he pretty much gave up on all of that after what happened with Luke -- but if he were, he’d be on his knees asking for anything at all to get them on the right track for solving this thing.
***
In her hospital bed, one hand on her abdomen, Scully closes her eyes and prays.
She gives thanks that her baby is safe. That their baby is safe. She asks forgiveness for putting Mary Hendershot in danger. Even though she thought she was doing the right thing, her instincts turned out to be all wrong this time, and it almost cost an innocent woman her life.
She pleads for Mulder’s return.
She has tried so hard to be strong, to have faith that he will come back to her. Though his lies about his health have left the residual sting of betrayal in the pit of her stomach, she has worked through her anger, and all that remains is longing. Keeping that longing contained, keeping it from eating her alive, has grown exhausting. And now, after everything she’s just been through, her reserves of strength are nearly depleted. She needs him back. Please, God, she needs him back.
She cannot fathom how she is going to cope if he never returns. Despite logic and reason telling her that she will find a way, in this moment she feels wholly incapable. How is she supposed to exist in a world that doesn’t have Mulder in it? She may have known how, once -- and even then he still existed, just outside her sphere -- but that knowledge has been lost to time, worn away by the years spent in his orbit.
Months ago, he held her and told her to never give up on a miracle. That very miracle now rests beneath her palm, and she wants more than anything to be able to show him he was right. He believed, even when she lost hope, that this could some day come to be, and against all odds he was right. Now she needs to find the strength of his beliefs and apply that faith to another miracle, that of his return.
Please bring him back to me. I’m so tired. I need him back. We need him. Please.
Doggett wakes in a cold sweat with the bed sheets in a tangle around his legs and the ghost of his son’s name on his lips. He struggles to sit upright and rubs his face, trying to breathe through the sob rising in his chest. God damn it, he hasn’t had a dream like that about Luke in years. Not to say he hasn’t dreamed about Luke at all, but it’s been long enough since the last horrible nightmare that he’d started to think he was past all that.
Apparently not.
In the wake of the dream, his grief feels raw and fresh, and at first all he can do is focus on his breathing, trying not to gulp the air. In, hold, out. In, hold, out. Slowly, bit by bit, he claws his way back from the edge and regains his bearings.
He glances at the clock, sighing when he sees that it’s not yet 3:30 in the morning. Getting back to sleep has always been out of the question after these nightmares. He knows from experience that the only way he can stay ahead of the sadness is to get moving and keep moving. With a groan, he disentangles himself from the sheets and stands, testing the steadiness in his legs. Convinced they won’t buckle, he tugs the t-shirt off over his head and tosses it into the basket in the corner. The cold air in the room hits his damp skin and he shivers, moving to the closet and dressing quickly.
He’s out the door and behind the wheel of his truck less than five minutes later. Going to work is a gamble -- there might be too much stillness there at this hour -- but he doesn’t know where else to go. He can always take a walk if it comes to that.
As it happens, his worries about insufficient distraction are completely unfounded. Not 30 seconds after he opens the office door, the phone on Agent Scully’s desk rings. Raising his eyebrows, he picks up the receiver.
“John Doggett.”
“Oh! Uh, hi. Sorry, I was expecting to get an answering machine. This is the, uh, X-Files division of the FBI?”
“Last I checked, yeah.”
“Wow, they got you guys working some weird hours, huh? Weird hours, weird cases.”
Doggett suppresses an exasperated sigh; this guy’s hardly the first person to ever crack wise about their typical case load. “Well, unless you’re calling me from overseas, I’d say you’re working some weird hours, too. What exactly can I do for you, mister…?”
“Jackson. Officer Shawn Jackson, Helena Police Department. I’m on the graveyard shift, see, but I always figured you feds were regular nine-to-fivers, you know?”
It is way too early in the morning for this crap. Yeah, he was hoping to keep busy, but he hasn’t had anything like enough sleep or enough caffeine for rambling 4am phone calls from local cops.
“Look, Officer Jackson, I don’t mean to be blunt, but is there a reason you’re calling me, or did you just want to chit chat about FBI work hours?”
“Uh, yeah. Well, we got a case tonight, and my sergeant gave me this number and said I ought to pass it along to you all. That you specialize in this sort of thing.”
“And what sort of thing would that be?”
“Woman turns up in a field, beaten to within an inch of her life, but the kid who found her swears up and down it was a flying saucer that dropped her there.”
Yeah, and the Easter Bunny delivers my mail. It’s sick what some people will do and say to try and cop an insanity plea after they’ve been caught.
“I don’t suppose you folks considered that the kid’s lying?”
“Of course we did. Not a very good lie, either, and we haven’t ruled him out as a suspect. But something came up when we started checking into his background. That’s the other reason I’m calling. He doesn’t have a criminal record, but there is a note in the system that he was involved in a federal case last year. My sergeant thinks you guys might have more information on him, anything that could help us figure out if he’s actually dangerous or just nuts.”
You might’ve lead with that. Doggett rubs his eyes. “All right, this kid got a name?”
“Yeah. Richard Szalay, S-Z-A-L-A-Y. Goes by Richie. Oh, and the, uh, the woman he supposedly found? Her name’s Teresa Hoe… Hoes? H-O-E-S-E.”
In an instant, Officer Shawn Jackson from the Helena Police Department has Doggett’s complete and undivided attention.
He has been through the case file on Mulder’s disappearance so many times, he could recite it forward and backward. Those two names may as well be a lightning bolt to the brain.
“Hoese? You’re telling me Teresa Hoese’s been found? Alive?”
“Y-yeah. I mean, technically. Like I said, she’s in really bad shape. They’re not sure she’s going to make it. Wait, you know who she is?”
“You could say that. Listen, Officer Jackson, I need you to give me a good number where I can reach you, and I’m gonna have to call you back.”
“Uh, sure. But do you think this Richie Szalay’s responsible for what happened to her?”
“At this point I have no reason to believe that, no. But tell him not to leave town.”
He grabs a pen and a Post-It from Scully’s desk and jots down the number Jackson gives him, then hangs up the phone and takes a shaky breath. After weeks of nothing, this could actually be a break. Holy hell, an honest-to-goodness break in the Mulder case.
Crossing quickly to his own desk, he sits and picks up his phone, punching the extension for the switch board. “Hey, it’s John Doggett. I need to reach A.D. Skinner at home... Yeah, it’s an emergency.”
As he waits for the call to ring through, Doggett considers the incredibly unlikely fact that he was here at all, at this hour, that he walked into the office at precisely the right moment to catch that ringing phone. He’s not the sort to believe in signs or messages from beyond the grave or anything like that, but he has to admit it’s a hell of a coincidence. If he hadn’t been woken up by that nightmare…
“Skinner.” His boss’s groggy voice snaps him out of his musing.
“Sir, it’s John Doggett. I’m sorry to disturb you at this hour. But I’ve just received some news I think you’re gonna want to hear.”
Quick A/N: I have 3 in-between scenes planned for this episode, but I trust you won’t mind if I post them as I finish them, instead of waiting for all 3 to be done. ;) Also, these will all be from the “present day” parts of this episode. I wrote ficlets for two of the flashback scenes and set them in Season 7. You can find them here and here. :)
“I wasn’t exactly clear on what you wanted to do about this guy Haskell. About his wife’s story.”
“There’s nothing to do.”
He stands there for a moment staring at the elevator doors. Nothing to do? When she’s running out of here like a spooked animal, not five minutes after arriving for the day, and carrying evidence off with her, to boot?
It just doesn’t make a damned bit of sense.
In all the time they’ve worked together, he’s never known Scully to be outright dismissive of a case. Analytical, yes. Varying degrees of skeptical, sure. But dismissive? This is a first, and it’s setting off all kinds of alarm bells in his head.
Hasn’t she been the one, since the beginning, always telling him to keep an open mind? Meanwhile she shut right down the moment Duffy Haskell mentioned doctors and pulled out that ultrasound photo, sending him away with what amounted to a “don’t call us, we’ll call you.” He’s never seen anything like it, not from her. It’s unsettling, to say the least.
And then there was the way she got upset that he knew her history. It’s not like he went up to HR and got her personnel file or anything. He told her almost from day one that he’s read just about every case file in the office. Only thing he can figure is that maybe she didn’t realize that was one of the ones that was restored after the fire, didn’t know he would have been able to read it at all. Still, even supposing all of that, it stings a little that she reacted the way she did. He knows they’re not best friends or anything, but he thought she at least…
He shakes his head and turns around to go back to the office. Even if she weren’t acting all squirrely, he wouldn’t feel right about just dropping this case without so much as a background check on Haskell. And because she is, well… a background check might be just the beginning.
***
It’s like someone turned down the volume on the world. Or maybe it’s like she’s moving through water. Either way, she can hardly hear anything over the pounding of her pulse in her ears.
Anyone with a trained eye can see that is a bizarre pregnancy.
The elevator doors open, and she moves on autopilot through the lobby to the second bank of elevators, which will take her down to the parking garage, all the while turning the last several minutes over and over in her mind. Keeping the panic at bay is a struggle. It’s not until she has unlocked her car and sat down behind the wheel that she takes several deep, full breaths. She fumbles for the dome light and pulls the ultrasound photo out of its envelope with barely-steady fingers.
Scully is no layperson, but neither does she have specialized training in reading ultrasonography. If she had been handed this image and told it was of her own baby, she wouldn’t have thought twice about it. So what is she missing? What about this is so egregiously irregular as to be classified “bizarre?” Is there really a chance she’s looking at a picture of an alien fetus? And if she is, how can she possibly know for sure that she’s not carrying something similar? Her pregnancy is feeling a lot less miraculous and a lot more terrifying with each passing moment.
God, I wish Mulder were here.
You and me both, he pipes up from a corner of her mind, and she takes another steadying breath.
Closing her eyes, she lets herself fall into the illusion, just for a minute. It’s already hard enough doing this without you and now… now I’m afraid, and I don’t know what to do or where to turn.
But you do know. You have to follow the evidence. Even if you’re afraid of where it might lead.
Zeus Genetics. As much as it terrifies her, it is absolutely true that the only logical course of action is to follow up there.
It could still turn out to be nothing. Duffy Haskell could just be a grieving widower who’s invented a story to help himself cope. The claim rings hollow even to her, but she needs something, anything, to hold on to right now.
Only one way to find out.
She opens her eyes again and looks at the address on the envelope. Germantown. Setting the envelope on the seat, she reaches across to grab the Thomas guide out of the passenger side door. It’s probably because her brain is already primed with thoughts of him, but the smell of the paper and ink in the guide catapults her into a memory of sitting in her car in the freezing cold Pentagon City Mall parking garage, thumbing through this very book to figure out how she was going to get to the place Mulder asked to meet her in Upper Marlsboro. She still doesn’t know what exactly happened that night they went ghost hunting, but she does know she would give just about anything to be doing that instead of whatever she’s about to embark on right now.
Amazing what you miss, huh?
I miss everything about you.
It doesn’t take long to find the location of Zeus Genetics and sort out her route. Setting the still-open guide beside her, she shuts off the dome light and starts the car.
