For I WIll Bless Her And Give Her A Son
AN: This is the end of the thrill ride that has been Season Seven. For those of you who have hung with me through seven seasons and five years, how amazingly rockstar are you? You all have made me smile just by reading my little bit of fanfic, something that is still a fun hobby for me. I will move on to the last two seasons, likely combined in one story, (and what to call it, because I unimaginatively called these stories “Seasons”, and yeah...sort of painted myself into a corner here). I admit to not being the worlds biggest fan of those two seasons, and because my focus is on Scully, I feel that this sort of leaves her out of a lot. But we will muddle on as best we can.
Skinner's appearance that afternoon was in many ways anti-climactic on Scully's part.
He understandably hadn't expected her to say she was pregnant.
He had known she was barren. She'd had to explain to him about San Diego and Emily, her involvement in the case. The first word out of his mouth was the very first question everyone asked. "How?"
What do you say when "I don't know" isn't enough?
Tears ran past the wobbly smile, and she found herself wrapping arms around the dull, unending ache in her middle. "I am honestly at a loss myself, sir."
He nodded, faintly, pressing lips in a hard line, looking like a man who had simply had too much thrown at him too fast and was unable to cope. How could he? He'd seen evidence of the truth he'd always read about for years but secretly didn't believe in, he'd lost the one agent who could explain it all in the process, and now he was presented with a miraculous conception. Somewhere under the heartache and loss lay a kernel of sympathy for Skinner, the man who had carefully kept himself neutral and outside of it all for so long. Now he was involved. Like Scully, he couldn't deny the uncomfortable truth.
Skinner sighed, a long stream of frustration and grief as he contemplated the end of the bed she lay in. "Did he know," he asked quietly.
Fresh tears, hot and painful, welled in eyes she would have long since thought dry, the physical evidence of the splintered shattering within her. "No," she managed on a grieving, aching sob, the utter injustice of it all clawing at her. This was to have been a moment she shared with him, their miracle, longed hoped for. And he was the one person who didn't know now. And it wasn't fair.
"He didn't know," she finally managed after long moments, trying desperately to pull herself together, to maintain some dignity. "I...I just found out. All my symptoms, they had nothing to do with the spacecraft. I was just...pregnant. And it never occurred to me that I could be, because...well..."
She trailed off, twisting her fingers in the ugly, scratchy blanket. Her admission perhaps revealed more than she had ever intended about the nature of her personal life to Skinner. He was at least a gentleman enough to not ask the questions she knew he wanted to. Perhaps he already knew the answers, or at least suspected.
Skinner moved slowly to the chair on the other side. He settled in slowly, and it occurred how exhausted he looked. Had he been out all night? Had he even slept on the plane? She doubted he had even gone home, like as not had come straight there. She knew that there would be questions, many of them, and uncomfortable answers. Skinner, the man who had a career to think of, putting his entire reputation on the line for a couple of misfits like the pair of them.
"You said your symptoms had nothing to do with the spacecraft," Skinner leaned back, weariness in his dark eyes. "Why did you think they did?"
"Because of what was done to me." It took Scully a moment to remember that Skinner, unlike Mulder, didn't know all the complex threads that wove through the long history they had in the X-files, the many pieces of information that seemed so unrelated and only now began to make a pattern. "I was exposed twice to a virus known as Purity. Some say it's alien in nature. I don't know much about it except that it appears to not be terrestrial and it mutates...quickly. I've seen it most often appear as a black, oily substance. It infects a host and can either lie dormant or take over functions, causing a patient to enter into a comatose state. But then, in Dallas, something changed."
"The bomb." Skinner remembered and well he should. They'd been kicked off the X-files again after that one.
"The bomb was to hide the evidence of bodies, ones that had been infected with a virulent strain of the Purity virus, a strain that was using the human body as to reproduce."
"Into more of the virus?"
"No," Scully whispered. Skinner's expression tightened as he realized what she meant.
"You said you were exposed to this virus?"
"Yes," Scully admitted, absently picking at her blanket, wishing she understood all of this more, that she could feel less a fool in trying to explain.
"And how did you survive?"
"As far as I know the first time, just luck. Perhaps the virus was weak enough, perhaps they inoculated me while I was gone, I don't know. The second time, Mulder was given a anti-virus. It managed to stop the spread, I guess. It makes sense, something about what we are dealing with has to do with a virus. I don't understand it, I can't wrap my head around it, but there it is."
"So everything, all these secrets, lies...all over a virus?" For Skinner, the ex-Marine, the man of action, this all had to sound outlandish, science fiction. These backroom deals and agreements, men in dark, smoke filled rooms, redacted files and classified information, all of this for a type of organism that could also cause the common cold?
"You think about it sir, the deadliest weapon anyone can have in their arsenal isn't a bullet or a bomb, it's a bug, a disease. Expose a few people to it, and it can spread like wildfire. What else would you need to conquer a civilization...or a world."
The pieces fell into place for Skinner then. It finally all became as painfully clear for him as it had for Mulder and herself already. "This isn't about simple experiments."
"Not if that cigarette smoking man we both know is to be believed, no." She wondered vaguely if Krycek already knew Mulder's fate and had told Spender, and if this had all been a set up by the old bastard to finally rid himself of the son who could never be his. "That's why he told Krycek to find that ship. He hoped to have access to it, to hold it as ransom and threaten to expose the truth, so he could have a chip to play in the game again. Spender knew that ship was out there, cleaning up the evidence of what had been happening, hiding the truth of all the experiments over the years. If Spender had that, he could restore the program, to try and revive the efforts. Krycek simply used Mulder in the hopes of exposing it before Spender got the chance."
Skinner snorted in mild disgust, scrubbing at his face, tipping his rimless glasses onto the top of his bald head. "All these games, and what was it all for?"
"Honestly?" Scully shrugged, realizing she'd asked herself that same question now for years with no clear answer. "Perhaps the best of intentions? Perhaps not? I don't know."
It was cold comfort to Skinner, she knew that. "Why take Mulder?"
Cole bile threatened to rise up her throat. She couldn't tell if it was morning sickness or despair causing it. "Mulder had believed that they were taking abductees, hiding the evidence of their experiments. And they are, but not the ones he was thinking of. What Mulder didn't know, and what I only found out after looking at the medical files of the victims, is that they all had suffered from acute encephalitis in the last year. They had all been exposed to the same virus I had, even Mulder. For whatever reason in him it was dormant. Until he was exposed to that artifact from the ship in West Africa."
"His brain was going haywire," Skinner recalled, remembering his own desperate action to save Mulder's life.
"When we first met Billy Miles, the boy in Bellefleur, he too was in a similar, vegetative state." It was only now Scully was making the connections to that case so long ago. "Like Mulder, he couldn't communicate. He perhaps was suffering the same thing then, only no one understood it. He only came out of it after being exposed to another UFO incident. I think that whatever they did to Billy Miles, that's what happened to Mulder as well, and now they are collecting everyone that had that reaction."
"For what purpose?"
Skinner voiced the very question Scully herself was asking. "I wish I knew, sir. If I did, we could find him."
Her voice sounded so small saying that. As if it lacked the conviction she wanted to feel in that moment. Mulder...gone. It hadn't been her they had wanted, it had been him. For what purpose? And would they give him back?
Skinner was quiet for long, painful moments, processing everything she had literally just dumped into his lap. When he spoke, it was low and grave. "There are going to be questions, Scully. An agent missing to a UFO, I don't know many who are going to buy that. There will be some who may think something tragic happened to Mulder, most are going to likely assume he's probably finally lost it and has run off and is a threat. My guess is that the higher ups will cultivate that idea because it's convenient towards getting rid of a problem."
If they couldn't shut them down, Scully reasoned bitterly, they could make Mulder into something he wasn't...a traitor.
"And what will you tell them?"
"The truth," he said simply, pushing his smudged glasses back onto his face. "While out on an investigation in Oregon, Agent Mulder disappeared, and I witnessed what I believe to be an unidentified flying object rise into the sky above the spot I last saw him."
"You know they'll never believe you." It was a statement of fact. God knew, Scully had been there enough times herself.
"I know." Skinner replied honestly. "But it never stopped Mulder, did it?"
No, it never did.
Without preamble, Skinner rose, just as slow to get up as to sit down, straightening with effort. He shoved hands into his pockets, suddenly looking at a loss as to what to say. Inexplicably, Scully felt the need to comfort him in this moment.
"It will be okay, sir. We'll find him." She spoke with more confidence than she felt at the moment.
"You really believe that?"
What a funny question to ask the skeptic. "I have to sir. We have to."
He didn't need to ask the we. Automatically his gaze flickered to her middle, then back up, nodding resolutely.
"We do," he agreed, something pained flickering to life. "Scully...Dana. I am happy for you. I know how much this has meant to you. And Mulder would be thrilled if he were here."
Scully hoped he would be. Perhaps terrified would be a better word. "Thank you, sir."
He shuffled, looking strangely uncomfortable, a look she rarely saw on her composed supervisor. "I know that...well, I know how close you two were, and I know that in many ways I've been the hard ass, standing outside, holding you both accountable. It's not because I didn't believe in your work. I wouldn't have worked so hard to keep you where you were if I didn't. I'm not Mulder, but..."
He fumbled, and something of a flush turned his ears ruddy and his high cheekbones pink. He cleared his throat, hunching his shoulders like a schoolboy talking to a girl he liked. "Damn it, Scully, Mulder was lost on my watch. Let's be honest with ourselves, my guess is that however this pregnancy happened, it's all mixed up with all of this,UFOs, aliens, viruses, everything. And if Mulder were here, he would bust his ass trying to ensure that you were safe. I was the one who let him get away. Till he gets back, I'm the one who will watch your back, make sure you are safe...and that baby is safe."
It was such an unexpected declaration, Scully honestly didn't know what to say. A part of her wanted to deny it and say it wasn't necessary, that her partner was coming back. But she knew that would be foolish. It it were just her, perhaps, but now it was different. A motherly instinct she hadn't felt since Emily came roaring to the fore. She had a child to protect. She couldn't and shouldn't allow her pride to get in the way of that.
"Thank you, sir." She felt silly blushing at the gentlemanly gesture. For all that she and Mulder joked about Skinner having a crush on her, it was such a sweet and kind thing to do, one uncharacteristic in her often distance boss. It was an honorable side of him that she had only ever seen glimpses of before. And at this moment, bereft of the man she loved and the one person she trusted above all others, she needed more friends like these.
Skinner's nodded curtly, already out of his depth in all of this. "The hospital said you'll be released soon?"
"Yes, this afternoon."
"Do you need a ride?"
"I can take a cab."
That earned a severe frown. "Call me, Scully. I'll come and get you. I'll bring your car from the office and drop you off at home."
"Sir, I can get home..."
"Orders, Scully!" His tone was gruff, but there as compassion there as well. "You don't get a choice."
She sighed. He was going to take this role of protector seriously. "Yes, sir."
"Fine." Satisfied, he made to go. But he paused, looking uncomfortably at her lying her bed, pulling at a large hand to wrap one of her smaller ones.
"You aren't alone in this," he murmured, before pulling away. Scully didn't get to formulate a response before he was whipping out the door, his footsteps fading quickly down the hallway.
Despite Skinner's words, Scully realized, as she settled into her pillow drowsily, hand on her belly, she may not be alone. But at this moment, she certainly felt like it.