“None? Really?”
“Really. I’m lucky to even have that one, given my credentials. Think about it: I went to Quantico right out of med school, without any time in a hospital in between. Eight years of little more experience than autopsies, and hiring panels aren’t exactly impressed with work on people who can’t say ‘ow’ after the first year of med school--“
“Eight years of…Scully, you saved my life countless times. You saved victims’ lives countless times too.”
“Not on paper, Mulder. How much of that would really look good on a resume? 1995: I shot my partner in the shoulder, and then artfully removed the bullet.” Sarcasm dripped from each word.
“Yeah. I still haven’t fully paid you back for so generously contributing to the ‘Mulder Scar Collection.’”
“Mulder! You would have shot Krycek.”
“He ended up shot eventually. Who cares who did it?” Mulder wheedled.
Scully raised her eyebrows, and Mulder raised his back at her, but slowly both of their expressions shifted, and they burst out laughing. Their past could be so ridiculous to recount at times, that it was best to let bygones be bygones.
Scully continued her train of thought, “and after that, we did our damndest to disappear off the radar. Assumed names and anonymous motels for over a year do not a sellable resume make.”
Mulder hesitated, his memory of that past year obviously fonder than hers, despite the fact that indeed the motels were anonymous, seedy, and several large steps down from where they had grown accustomed to staying during cases. First to up the fondness quotient was the jaw dropping realization that she would actually drop everything for him: a sorry son of a bitch. Push literally came to shove, and she never even hesitated. That still had the power to render him speechless. It always would. Also, the variety of assumed names: how many translations for ‘Mr. and Mrs. Spooky’ did they find? Countless. The spice of dyed hair, and how easy it was to come off as a married couple, and lots and *lots* of motel sex. There were years to make up for, and very little else to do…as if they needed an excuse. Which they didn’t.
“With all those points against you,” Mulder finally responded, “I wonder if there’s something wrong with them, to be interested in you, from your resume. I mean, something other than the hospital’s name, of course.” He inwardly winced at the tactlessness of the question, and was relieved when Scully wasn't offended.
Scully shrugged. “I guess I’ll find out.”
Mulder raised his eyebrows imploringly, “do you think you could be happy there?”
Scully hesitated. The answer, ‘I could be happy digging ditches if it got me back into the real world and interacting with others again,’ popped into her head, but she rejected it as mean-spirited.
“Yes.” She simply answered.
Mulder nodded resolutely. “Well then, go be a doctor Scully.”
Scully shivered at the ghosts of memories that response raised in her, and whispered, “lady of sorrows,” before she knew what she was going to say.
Mulder’s expression became grim, and he nodded once. “Lady of sorrows,” he echoed. “Fitting?”
Scully instantly bristled, her lips pursing. “What are you asking, exactly?”
Mulder hesitated a beat, and then another, his resoluteness faltering. Something had travelled with them, to every anonymous motel room they stayed in. Something dark and oppressive. Something that dampened Scully’s smiles and Mulder’s too. Mulder couldn’t raise it in that situation. Topics had to remain light when 24/7 forced togetherness was required. This made life feel like tiptoeing through a minefield at times, but it was better than possibly exploding one of the bombs: too dangerous when you couldn’t get away from each other long enough for things to blow over. Now though, with a house of their own, a home base they’d already settled into over the past couple months, a car as an escape route, and Scully able to come and go as she pleased, even if Mulder still couldn’t, according to the status reports from Skinner. This felt like a safer time to hash it out.
“William.” That was all he needed to say.
Scully took two steps back across the creaky floorboards of the porch, the look in her eyes warning him that more steps most likely were coming.
“What about William?” Her voice was brittle.
“No Scully. I’m asking you that. He’s always been there. He’s always with us.”
Scully shook her head wordlessly. Her lips pressed painfully together, so her mouth was a white line. ‘No he’s not,’ her mind screamed. ‘That’s just it.’
“What about William?” he pressed, his heart racing, adrenaline pumping through him, screaming ‘fight of flight’, but he stayed firm.
“He…” Scully’s voice cracked and died. She blinked quickly, but felt the inevitable tears building. They wouldn’t be the first, or the last. She knew Mulder had heard her crying in each and every motel bathroom. Knew that when she would join him in bed, to initiate and lead their love making, he would search her red eyes in the darkness, trying to discover her reasoning behind sex that felt like anesthesia: a way to forget, a way to not feel. At least temporarily. But he was too afraid to ask, and she was too fragile to offer. Maybe it was time to try.
“I screwed up Mulder. I did it, and couldn’t undo it. I took our baby, gave him up for adoption, and we could have kept him safe. We could have done it.” Her voice sounded like the howls of a tortured animal. Her mind offered up that analogy, and it seemed incredibly apt. “We kept you safe. We hid well enough, deeply enough, that we weren’t discovered. And he could have fucking been with us all that time! He has to be walking and talking now. He’s calling some other couple ‘mama’ and ‘dada’, and it should be us!”
Mulder’s heart was broken, Scully’s was too, and he tried to reform them by bridging the gap between them, and scooping her up into his arms, into a hug so tight that he lifted her up off her feet, but she just hung limp in his arms, repeating over and over in a broken mumble, “I screwed up. I screwed it all up.”
“You did what you thought you had to do. You did it to keep him safe.” He whispered roughly.
“We could have kept him safe. It could have been us all this time.” Scully gasped.
“I don’t blame you.” He told her firmly.
Scully laughed a little crazily. “I blame myself. I blame myself enough for the both of us.”
Mulder held her as they cried together. There were no words he could find that would fix her. No cure for her pain and guilt.
After some time he set her down, and she stepped back.
“The job I was hired for?”
Mulder nodded, although not quite understanding her conversation shift.
“It’s to be a pediatrician.”
The expression in her eyes was uncertain, as if she was asking him to convince her to turn it down.
“Scully!” he cried. “That feels a little too much like--“
“Torture?” she suggested wryly.
“I was going to say penance, but yeah.” He said softly.
Scully smiled unhappily. “Maybe it is. Maybe it’s both. But it feels right somehow.”
They gazed at each other assessingly for a moment, and then she shrugged, and turned toward the door, to go inside.
“Scully?” Mulder’s voice stopped her. “Is there any way to--“
“Get him back?” Scully asked.
Mulder nodded.
Scully shook her head sadly. “No. I made sure of it. I thought it would keep him safer. Even if they tortured me, I wouldn’t be able to tell them where to find him, wouldn’t know where he was.”
“We could track him down, and…take him.”
Scully stared at him silently. “And then what?”
“Disappear deeper. If 2012 is correct, who the fuck cares, anyway? We would be together.”
Scully stared at him silently again, her brow slowly furrowing. “I’ll think about it,” she whispered.
Mulder nodded, and Scully escaped inside.
He walked to the porch railing, leaned against it, with straight stiff arms, and let his head droop down, chin to chest. They both travelled with their guilt, unable to outrun it, and now, despite their hopes, it had moved in with them. Scully’s guilt about William, and Mulder’s guilt about…everything. Every moment of his lady’s sorrows ran through his mind in a well-rehearsed litany. He had been doing it to himself since she was abducted, since Melissa was killed, since her cancer, since Emily, since William, since everything. Everything was his fault. He was in awe that she had dropped everything for him, to run away with him, but he was angry with her too. Why? Why? Why? He never could come up with an answer. She was a smart woman. Why wasn’t she too smart to put up with it all? Now he knew: she didn’t blame him. She blamed herself, but she *should* blame him. She should slap him silly, and then leave. Run away, for her own good.
Mulder didn’t know how long his thoughts continued down this path, but he was torn from them by the sounds travelling through the open front door. He followed them into the bedroom to find that Scully was crying in her sleep. The odd whimpering moans that she made ripped him into even smaller pieces. He sat down on the edge of the bed, and called her name until she woke. He pulled her into his lap as she began to cry in earnest.
“What is it Scully?” he asked, even though he had a guess.
“I dreamt that William was abducted.” She sobbed.
He shook his head, and stroked her back. “He’s safe Scully. He’s fine. You made sure of that.”
Scully raised her haunted eyes to his face. “No, Mulder. Don’t you see? We were the aliens. We abducted him from his family. We were as bad as the men who took Samantha.”
A shudder ran through his body, and he clutched her closer to him.
“I can’t do it.” She whispered after a pause. “I just can’t.”
“I know Scully.” He said, and kissed the top of her head. “I know.” He kissed her forehead and both of her cheeks.
“It’s going to be okay.” He told both of them.
~~~
*End note* I fumbled my way through this. My original goal only being to write something that takes place before the movie, having to do with William, and also Scully’s choice of career. It wrote itself easily enough, but I didn’t know how to end it. I left it with Mulder standing on the porch, right after Scully went in. It turns out the problem was that I wrote this before I even really knew what I was writing about: my purpose and message still unclear. I went to sleep feeling unresolved, and when I woke up it was with the feeling of a final puzzle piece falling into place. Everyone I talked to about the movie said the same thing: it was good, it was what fans were waiting for, but how did Scully’s story relate to the main story of the movie? Everyone felt that it didn’t tie in, and was a throwaway. I too didn’t really see the link, but I disagreed with her story being a throwaway. I loved how she was still dealing, in a realistic way, with giving up William, the fact that he’s always with her, emotionally. When those parents say to her, “if you were a mother, you would understand,” I ached for Scully. They had no idea what she had given up. What lengths she had gone to. And when I woke up the morning after writing this, I got what the link was. What lengths do you go to for the one you love, and, related, where is the line drawn between life saving medicine, and Dr. Frankenstein? Scully looking down at the scar on Christian’s head, trying to figure out where the line was. The Russian man going to extraordinary, shocking, lengths to save his partner’s life, the line lost completely. Scully, who gave up her son to keep him safe. Scully trying to decide how far to follow Mulder, where her line is drawn, even though Mulder’s line is somewhere else. (Ends up, despite how much I love Mulder, it really is Scully’s movie, isn’t it?) And that’s when I realized I had written this story to suss that idea out, before I even knew I had the idea. From there, the ending came to me, sad as it is, because I knew you couldn’t make a decision so drastic without having doubts, regrets, and second thoughts. But in the end, you have to stick with what you think is right.