Set between NIHT2 and Daemonicus. Originally published in @msrfanzine
***
Maggie Scully has made a point of visiting her daughter and new grandson nearly every day since they came home from the hospital. Each time, Fox has made himself scarce, stepping out for an errand or going who-knows-where. She appreciated it at first, relishing the opportunity to have Dana and sweet baby William all to herself, but it is beginning to weigh on her that she hasn’t had a chance to clear the air with him after their unpleasant phone conversation the night of William’s birth. She is not sorry for the things she said, but forgiveness is just as necessary as it is difficult. He is, after all, in his own unconventional way, family now.
Whether she likes it or not.
“Now Dana,” she says, as she hugs her daughter goodbye after another lovely visit, “I want you to tell Fox not to run away tomorrow when I stop by. It’s time for him to stop avoiding me.”
At the slightly ashen look on Dana’s face, she continues, “Oh, you don’t need to worry. I’m not going to read him the riot act. We’re just going to talk. I want to thank him for taking such good care of you since you’ve been home.”
“Mom, I…” Dana looks down, almost as if she is ashamed, and Maggie’s heart sinks. If that man has let down my little girl again, so help me…
“I haven’t been completely honest with you.” Dana directs her words at her mother’s feet, the same way she did whenever she was scolded as a child. “Mulder’s not… he had to go away for a while.”
Seemingly contradictory though it may be, Maggie finds herself equally disappointed and relieved. She has had a bad feeling about things ever since Fox “came back from the dead.” She has prayed and prayed over it, trying to view it as the miracle Dana said it was. She has wrestled with guilt over having such misgivings when her daughter believed her prayers had been answered. Yet no amount of prayer or guilt has allowed her to completely shed the feeling in her gut that something about his return was wrong, and she has spent the past month or so just waiting for the other shoe to drop.
It seems, perhaps, that now it has.
“Dana,” she says tightly. “Did you and Fox have a fight? Did he make you feel unsafe?”
“No, nothing like that.” Dana looks up then, and the sadness in her eyes is heartbreaking. “Neither of us wanted him to go. Everything was wonderful, and then… and then I…”
She drops her gaze again, and Maggie pulls her in for another hug. They stand that way for a minute, Dana wordlessly clinging to her while Maggie strokes her hair.
“Can you tell me what happened?”
Dana shakes her head. “It doesn’t matter.”
“But of course it does. If he’s abandoned you, abandoned his son , how can you say that it doesn’t matter?”
“He didn’t abandon us, Mom. I made him go. And not because I was afraid of him. I was afraid for him.”
Maggie frowns, confused. “Dana, I don’t understand.”
“I know,” Dana says with a sigh. “And I’m sorry I can’t… explain everything to you. The point is that he’s gone, and I’m the one who convinced him to go, and now I don’t know if that was the right choice, or if he’s even okay, or…”
“When did this happen?”
“Twelve days ago.”
Confusion gives way rapidly to dismay.
“Twelve da-- Dana! Are you telling me that you have been on your own with a baby for almost two weeks, and I am only now hearing about it?”
After they buried Fox, Dana had leaned on her. Had let herself be tended to and taken care of. Had let Maggie feel like her mother again, damn it all. After his return, she went right back to closing herself off and keeping secrets. Maggie thought, after William’s birth, they were getting back to a place of closeness in their relationship, a place where Dana trusted her enough to open up about her struggles and her worries. It seems, however, that she was wrong.
“I’m fine, Mom. We’re fine. I didn’t want to worry you.”
“This is not fine. I cannot believe you kept me in the dark. Again!”
“Mom, please. You’ll wake the baby.”
Maggie clamps her mouth shut against the words threatening to escape, dark words propelled by the anger and hurt roiling in her chest. She wants to rage and scream, to throw things, to take her daughter by the shoulders and shake her until she understands.
“I am your mother,” she says at last, her voice strained. “I have seen you through cancer and heartbreak and one tragedy after another. It is not up to you to decide what information I can or cannot handle. Do you understand me?”
“And what about what I can handle?” Dana snaps, and there is a sharpness to her words that knocks Maggie back a little. “Look, I am sorry that it has taken me this long to tell you about Mulder being gone, but part of why I didn’t is because it was nice, for just a few hours a day, to pretend that he really has just gone to the store. That we are a normal family, and I am having a normal visit with my mom. I am sorry if that was selfish. But if you think the only reason I didn’t tell you was because I thought you couldn’t handle it, then you are very much mistaken.”
And just like that, Maggie feels the fight go out of her. The hurt is still there, but the anger drains away. "Oh, sweetheart. I am so sorry."
However complicated her own feelings about Fox might be, there is no denying how much her daughter loves that man. Maggie may not understand anything about why he’s apparently had to leave, but she certainly knows a thing or two about what it’s like to sit at home with a baby, wondering if this will be the deployment from which her husband doesn’t return. How many times did she put on a brave face with the children, or stay up late into the night finding ways to keep herself busy with household chores, all to avoid succumbing to the worry that inevitably rose to the surface the moment she let her guard down? The pained look on Dana’s face right now is the same one she has seen countless times on the faces of the other Navy wives in her social circle, and on her own face in the mirror.
It is, she realizes, the same look she also saw on Dana’s face last year, when Fox went missing. But that time he disappeared without warning; this time, it sounds like her daughter asked him to go. She was scared for him, she said, and sent him away in an effort to protect him. Protect him from what?
“Are you and William in danger?” she asks quietly.
Dana shakes her head. “I don’t think so. The threat was directed at Mulder, and… and it looks like he has drawn it away.”
“But who would threaten--?”
“I can’t,” Dana says firmly. “I’m sorry, Mom. I know this is hard to understand. Please just trust me that I would tell you if I could. But for your sake, and for mine, and William’s, I just can’t.”
Asking for trust is a pretty big request, given the circumstances, and Maggie purses her lips in frustration. “I don’t know how to help you if you won’t confide in me.”
“But you have been. Your visits, making me lunch and watching William and just sitting here talking to me… it helps. More than I can say.”
It is not the response she wants, but knowing her stubborn daughter, it is likely the best she is going to get, at least for now. She sighs, resigned.
“All right. But you have to promise me that you’ll let me know when there is more I can do. And I don’t just mean fixing meals and looking after the baby. It isn’t healthy to bottle everything up and try to hold all of your worries inside all the time. Believe me, I did that for years and had the ulcers to prove it.” She puts a hand on Dana’s shoulder and squeezes gently. “I am here for you no matter what. So promise me you’ll talk to me, when you’re ready?”
After a pause, her daughter nods. “I will.”
It is, however, not lost on her that Dana doesn’t meet her eyes as she says it.
In the week after the explosion on the ship, Scully barely sleeps. When her fears about William aren’t keeping her awake, she is bolting upright at every little sound coming from the hallway outside her apartment. When she does sleep, her dreams are a parade of one calamity after another befalling Mulder, out there on his own.
Oddly, she takes some comfort in the fact that these dreams are always different; she still can’t explain the dreams she had when he was missing before, the ones Mulder quietly confirmed were somehow representative of what he had endured, but they were always the same. This time around, it is possible to convince herself that these are normal nightmares, mere products of stress and worry, nothing more.
She forces herself to leave the apartment, once a day, to check her anonymous email account from an internet cafe in Georgetown. Her stomach knots tighter and tighter each time she accesses an inbox that is as empty as it was the day before. Sometimes, if William is asleep in the stroller, she finds herself ducking into the church on the way home, praying that tomorrow will be the day she finally hears from him.
It takes two and a half weeks for those prayers to be answered.
Her heart leaps to her throat at the sight of the bolded You have 1 new message notification. Tears of relief and longing spring to her eyes as she reads the single line of text within.
“Safe for now, though I can confirm the threat was genuine. Are you safe?”
She doesn’t know how to answer that. Between the incident with the mobile, what she found (and didn’t find) on the Navy ship, and everything that Shannon McMahon claimed, two weeks ago she had serious doubts about whether she and William were safe. However, looking over her shoulder constantly since then has revealed no indication of an imminent threat. That doesn’t mean there isn’t one, but if she shares her worries with him, he might try to return prematurely, and it is clear from his message that that would be a dangerous mistake.
Her fingers tremble as she taps out a reply.
“I cannot tell you what a relief it is to read your words. Not hearing from you for so long, I feared the worst. Please keep yourself safe, and do not worry about us. I miss you very much, but I am thankful beyond measure that you are alive.
Yours, D”
That night, for the first time since he left, her sleep is deep and dreamless.
***
Two months pass.
They manage to establish a delicate correspondence; there is no pattern or regularity to it, and each time she hears from him is a gift she does not take for granted. The ability to maintain this link with him, however tenuous, affords her a measure of strength through their separation that she might not otherwise have had. Life moves on in a way that could almost pass for normal.
As her maternity leave nears its end, she finds herself feeling conflicted about returning to work. She misses it, without question, but she also knows too well the dangers that exist out in the field, and the thought of one day not making it home to William is utterly terrifying. (Never mind that the X-Files unit really only requires two agents, and she has no wish to displace Monica, who seems to be thriving in the assignment.) It comes as an unexpected relief, then, when AD Skinner hesitantly suggests, as though he’s afraid of offending her, that she might consider taking a position at Quantico.
***
“Where are you going, Monica?”
“This man Kobold can help us, John. I’m going to prove it to you.”
Monica stalks out of the autopsy bay, and after a pause, John heaves a frustrated sigh and starts to follow.
“Agent Doggett?” comes a quiet voice from behind him when his hand is on the door.
He looks back over his shoulder. “Yeah?”
Agent Scully’s tongue touches the corner of her mouth, an obvious tell that she’s nervous about saying whatever she’s about to say. “I know you’re frustrated. That you feel like… like the answer here is obvious, only no one can seem to see it but you.”
“Gee, can’t imagine why I’d feel like that.” He releases the door, turning fully and crossing his arms over his chest. “Look, if you’re gonna try and tell me that I should ignore evidence, ignore what my gut is saying on this guy Kobold--”
“I’m not. I’m not suggesting that at all.”
“Well what, then?”
He can see her choosing her words carefully, and it irks him. He doesn’t need to be patronized, least of all by her. Once upon a time, they were comfortable enough with each other to forego all this dancing around and careful tending of egos.
“The cases in the X-Files… you know as well as I do that they often require… a different approach than a standard investigation.”
“The hell they do. I’ve been at this for almost a year and a half, and not once has a case required me to believe in voodoo, or demonic curses, or aliens in order to solve it.”
“That’s not what I mean, exactly.”
Well now he’s confused. “Okay. Well, what do you mean?”
“When I worked with-- When you and I worked together, we didn’t always share the same theories about whatever we were trying to solve.”
It’s not lost on him that she was about to start with a Mulder story and then course-corrected.
“Right…” he says, not entirely sure where she’s going with this.
“And very often, those differing theories and perspectives were what kept the investigation moving forward, when it otherwise might have stalled out. In fact, that’s exactly why many of the cases became X-Files in the first place. The standard approach wasn’t enough to solve them.”
“Come on, I don’t buy that. Just because local LEOs, or even some other agent in the Bureau, couldn’t get the job done, doesn’t mean the approach is wrong.”
“Doesn’t it, though?” She’s giving him the full, earnest, Dana Scully Serious Face and goddamnit if his heart doesn’t skip a beat. “How many times did we get a break in a case just because one of us was looking in a direction the other one didn’t think of? Even if the final result was something completely ordinary.”
She’s not wrong. But…
“Yeah, and how many times did we waste days or even weeks barking up the wrong tree?”
“I guess my point, Agent Doggett, is that you get better results when you… bark up as many different trees as possible.”
“Even when I’m damned sure my tree is the right one?”
“Yes. Even then.”
He sighs. “You can’t ask me to ignore the fact that Monica is being led around by her nose on this case. Being manipulated by someone who is definitely out of his mind and very possibly also a murderer.”
“Don’t ignore it, no. And keep watching her back. But don’t stop her from pursuing her own line of inquiry, either, even if whatever she’s pursuing doesn’t make sense to you right now.”
“I don’t like it,” he says with a scowl, shaking his head. “But all right. I’ll try to give her some room to do her thing. But if I think she’s putting us in danger listening to this guy, I’m pulling the plug.”
