95: Resting Places
Title: Resting Places
Spoilers: "Per Manum"
Words: 6365
Rating: PG
Summary: An X-File raises suspicions about Agent Scully's own experiences and Stark sees a little too closely through the eyes of her colleague, causing her to wonder about her own life choices.
"Are we supposed to be looking at this?" Stark glanced up from the file in her hands, giving her partner a confused, vaguely pointed look. "This stuff seems pretty personal," she continued. They were standing in the far corner of the basement office, where they had been all morning, going over files. He'd asked her to look at them with her, without offering much of an explanation, and now she was getting a little bit uncomfortable.
John looked back at her, standing on the other side of the filing cabinet reading something else. "If it's an X-File, it's our job," he replied, "and if it is what this guy says it is? We owe it to Agent Scully to be thorough."
She nodded slightly, dropping her eyes back to the file in her hands. "When is this guy supposed to be here?"
He glanced at his watch. "About an hour," he replied. "Hopefully he'll be in and out before she gets here. I don't want to upset her if this turns out to be nothing," he admitted. "You got anything over there?"
"Just some old correspondence between this guy and Agent Mulder." She passed it over to him so he could see it. "I know this is creepy but shouldn't this be something she should do?"
John arched an eyebrow. "If it were you, would you really want to be looking into it?"
Stark fell silent then. Point well taken. As if there was any chance of it ever being her; she hadn't been in a relationship of any sort since 1997, and was of the belief that children came after she was married. Which, the only thing she was married to was her job.
They did what research they could over the next half-hour, but she stayed fairly quiet, letting her partner take the lead in the interview when Haskell finally arrived. It was the same rhythm they'd always had: he was the strong one, the male, the alpha personality, and he took the first crack. She kept quiet, observing, taking mental notes, playing the wallflower. Until, of course, she opened her mouth.
But they never got to that point. From where she was sitting on the edge of her partner's desk, at his elbow, Stark swallowed as she watched Dana Scully enter the office. So much for getting Haskell out before she came in.
"Agent Doggett..." Scully said warily, looking between them both.
"Hi," he replied, playing everything as nonchalantly as possible. Stark had to admire her partner: he'd always had a cool head under any kind of pressure. Must have been those years in the Marines.
Scully just looked confused, especially when Haskell looked at her like he'd just seen God walk through the door. "I'm sorry, Agent Doggett, I didn't realize that you had an appointment," she said, sizing the man up as if he were insane.
"This is Duffy Haskell," John explained. "He says he knows you or you know him."
"I'm sorry. I don't remember," she admitted, moving around toward her desk. But she shook his hand anyway.
"I contacted you about my wife. About eight years ago. Because she was an alien abductee."
"That was before my time here. But is there something I can help you with?"
"She's dead," he replied, blurting it out like he couldn't hold it in any longer. "My wife is dead now. They killed her. Kath...my wife."
Wanting to calm things down before Haskell got too wound, Doggett interjected. "We checked the files," he told Scully. "Mr. Haskell wrote several letters to Agent Mulder describing his wife's abduction experiences."
"My wife gave birth to an alien."
Scully blinked. "I...I thought you said your wife was murdered."
"That's the reason they did it."
"Okay, Mr. Haskell." Her skepticism was obvious now, as was the fact that her patience was wearing thin. "Why don't you start from the beginning?"
She settled at her desk, the man having turned his attention to her. In the small size of the basement there wasn't far that Stark could move, and she and her partner just stayed where they were. He leaned back slightly, observing the whole thing as she shifted so she was sitting on the other half of the desk and not obstructing his view. It was sort of amusing how they knew each other so well that they knew how to do that, but she wasn't paying attention, just trying to follow along with something she wasn't really sure was their business.
Haskell elaborated: "Kath was a multiple abductee. The aliens did these procedures on her. Tests and whatnot. One procedure would give her cancer while another one would cure her. Stuff like that. For years, you see. And then, this year, they came right into our bedroom and implanted an alien embryo in Kath."
"I don't suppose that you have any, uh, medical proof of this," Scully said, looking visibly uncomfortable. Now Stark was seeing why John hadn't wanted her to know about this case.
He passed across an envelope. "I have an ultrasound here. Anyone with a trained eye can see that is a bizarre pregnancy. Especially for a woman who was never supposed to be able to conceive. I doubt you'd ever get the doctors to cop to any of that."
"What doctors?"
"We've been through three sets. They're all in on it. They're all in cahoots."
"So you're...saying that it was the doctors that killed your wife?"
"And stole the alien baby. That ultrasound is proof."
The discomfort and annoyance on Scully's face was painfully obvious now, and she turned her attention to the two of them, sitting on the other side of the room. Though she seemed nonjudgmental Stark wouldn't have blamed her if she were holding her tongue. "Do you have all the information and numbers and a way that we can reach Mr. Haskell?" she asked them. Her partner nodded, holding up his notepad, and she turned to their guest. "We'll be in touch."
No sooner had he left than the displeasure on her face was evident to both her fellow agents. It wasn't hard to guess whose idea that had been. "Thank you, Agent Doggett. I'm sure the rest of my afternoon can't possibly be so amusing."
He straightened in the chair slightly, eyeing her as his partner climbed uncomfortably to her feet. "I thought you'd find it interesting, actually," he replied, toying with the pencil in his fingertips.
"Interesting? As in preposterous and outrageous?"
"Well, unless I'm mistaken you already knew that man's story." He gave her a slightly challenging look. "The abduction, the tests, a bout with cancer, then a remission."
"What exactly are you getting at?"
"That's your story, Agent Scully. I'd say right down to a T." He held her gaze, letting that sink in as she stared at him. "I mean, except for the pregnancy. It's all right there in the X-Files."
Scully's gaze turned toward the filing cabinets. Feeling the thick tension in the air, Stark somehow felt compelled to speak up and at least not leave her partner out on a limb alone. "I think what John is trying to say," she said, quietly and warily, "is that we saw certain parallels and became interested if only for what those parallels might mean."
The older woman turned her glance on her. "I see," she said, and her tone was cold and distant. She turned her attention back to the person she held ultimately responsible. "Well, I appreciate your thoroughness, Agent Doggett, and your familiarity with the X-Files cases in those cabinets, but my personal files are my personal files. Okay?"
He looked chagrined and frustrated. There was no mistaking her tone, how unsettled she had been. They had crossed a line, like Stark had warned him about. "Sure," he said quietly, looking down at the desk for a moment before he glanced up at her. "Of course."
They merely watched as Scully picked up the ultrasound and walked from the office. As she left, he exhaled a tight breath, throwing the pencil down on his desk in frustration. Stark put a hand on her partner's back trying to reassure him. "You were just trying to look out for her, John," she said softly. "To do what you felt was best. No one can fault you for that."
"Really?" he said sarcastically, glancing at her. "Because I don't think Agent Scully got that memo."
"You didn't expect her to take this well, or you wouldn't have been trying to figure this out before she got here," she pointed out.
"Okay," he said, accepting the point, "so what do we do now? You gotta admit, this is weird. Way too close to home."
"I think we'd probably better let her decide that."
He nodded, more to himself. "I'm gonna go see if I can find her," he said, and stood, leaving her to sit on his desk, eye the filing cabinets and wonder how many more unpleasant surprises were in there. She could only imagine what Scully had gone through and as much as she admired the woman? She didn't want to go through that.
Her partner was heading for the elevator when it opened in front of him and there was Scully, looking like she wasn't even in the same zip code. "Agent Scully?" he asked. "What are you doing?"
She blinked. "Um, I don't know. I guess I just forgot to push the button," she did, and leaned over to do so.
He paused and grabbed the doors before they could close. "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 nodded, and let the doors close.
He didn't believe that for a second. Not when he'd seen the ultrasound she'd been holding in her hand. The one she'd walked out with just minutes before.
As he walked back into the office, Stark glanced up at him, with a prompting expression on her face...especially after seeing the expression on his face, which looked like he'd just busted someone. Which, to an extent, he had. "What?" she said.
"She says there's nothing to do," he says. "And then she walks out of here with Haskell's ultrasound."
Stark hadn't even noticed it was missing. She glanced at the desk where it had been left, then back at her partner, chewing her lower lip. "What do you want to do?"
"If she wants us to drop this case, we'll drop it," he said. "Doesn't stop us from going over the work we've already done."
Stark's specialty was background investigations. As a fugitive squad detective, she had been routinely used to digging through someone's entire life to find where they might be hiding. She had brought that with her to the FBI, and grown to use it even more so on the X-Files, where if she didn't know what the hell was going on, at least she knew how to look someone up or run a cross-check.
This was where she pulled her weight on the X-Files.
She handed him the stack of files she'd just been about to put away, and grabbed a pen off the desk. It might be a long rest of the afternoon.
****
They elected to call it an early day at work. There was only so much background work they could do, and in their mutual gut instinct, they both knew that without Scully, they weren't going to get anywhere on this case. It was her story, and her case.
"So what are you going to do with the rest of your day?" he asked her as they walked through the parking garage together.
She shrugged. "I don't know. I just bought a new book on the history of ESPN. I'll probably do some reading. What about you?"
"I don't know. This is going to bother me." He fingered the keys to his truck, shaking his head.
That made Stark hesitate then. "You did the right thing, John," she said softly. "You're just trying to look out for her. I know you'd do the same thing for me." She gave him a reassuring smile. "I'm proud of you, if that means anything. And call me if you need me."
"I will." He smiled slightly at her before he turned to unlock his truck. He knew something wasn't right, and he wasn't going to be able to relax until he figured out what.
****
Stark was unsurprised to find her partner had beaten her to work the next morning.
"How was the book?" he asked.
"It was good, actually." She set her backpack down and handed him his morning coffee. "Let me guess, this is actually at least your second cup."
"You know me too well," he admitted, rubbing a hand over the back of his neck as she pulled up a chair. "Haven't found anything else yet," he added because he knew she would ask.
She snorted. "I thought patience was one of your strong suits."
He arched an eyebrow, glancing at her as if to ask her what she meant by that, but he never got the words out as the phone rang. Snatching it, his mind immediately went to other things. As Scully walked in a few minutes later, he was just finishing the call. "Okay, got it. Thanks," he said, and as he set the phone down, he gave her a deliberate look. "Agent Scully, I just got a call from a Dr. Parenti's office. About an ultrasound you left there this morning," he said, clearly daring her to explain that one.
She looked defensive, heading for her desk instead. "Dr. Parenti is my doctor," she replied simply.
"Come on, Agent Scully," he retorted.
"You don't believe me?"
"That ultrasound is the one Duffy Haskell left here yesterday. Dr. Parenti is one of the doctors he consulted with during the course of that pregnancy," he replied pointedly.
She stopped and looked at him. "Excuse me, Agent Doggett, but are you investigating me?"
"No," he said. "We were doing a background check on Mr. and Mrs. Haskell before I dropped the case like you asked me to do."
"No, I didn't ask you to drop the case. I said there was nothing to do."
He gave her another skeptical look. "Well, if there's nothing to do, then why are you investigating?"
"You are jumping to conclusions."
Now he was getting irritated, and he let it show. "No, I'm just trying to do my job, only it gets hard to do if the person you're working with is keeping secrets and telling lies."
Scully stared at him a moment. He was angry and she knew it. Maybe it came from being used to working with a woman who clearly told him literally everything - she had a feeling he knew his partner's brother's middle name and other such minutiae - but not everyone was as trusting and open as Agent Patrick could be. "I am not investigating these people, Agent Doggett," she retorted. "Parenti is my doctor. Is that so strange? Is there something about him I don't know?"
"No. But Duffy Haskell is a piece of work. I'll tell you that much." He held out another piece of paper. "Guess what else we found while we were taking a look. It's time to put the screws to this guy."
****
Half an hour later, Stark was standing beside her partner, hand settled defensively on her hip as she quietly observed Duffy Haskell. Still as edgy, but now a lot more defensive. As usual it was her job to sit there and see what she could pick up on. Her partner glanced at her and she nodded almost imperceptibly, confirming exactly what he thought: this guy had something to hide.
But they wouldn't be doing the interrogating. They'd taken their information straight to the Assistant Director and now Skinner was in complete control of the situation. "As president of the Ohio Mutual UFO Network, you sent Agent Mulder a series of very threatening letters which he passed on to me, Mr. Haskell. Something of a habit with you, sir. Writing letters...threatening letters. Isn't it?" he said pointedly.
"No one will believe me," the man muttered.
"They tend not to want to when you threaten them with violence," Stark pointed out acerbically.
As if to provide an example, her partner continued, "You wrote a letter to a Dr. Lev saying you would kill him if he hurt your wife."
"Dr. Lev killed my wife. He stole the alien baby out of her womb."
"Well, we can't find any documentation that the two of you were even married, Mr. Haskell. Let alone any history or evidence of foul play. Dr. Lev is a serious physician, a leader in the field of birth defects. His peers hold him in the highest regard. Why would he ever kill your wife?"
"That's why I came to you."
"Mr. Haskell, allegations aside, it's a crime to threaten anyone," Skinner reminded him.
Haskell shifted in his seat, turning and looking at Scully. "You believe me, don't you?" he asked, but she didn't answer him. Stark wondered why, for a split second, he was looking to her, but then dismissed it out of hand as her being the only person who hadn't tried to contradict or challenge him yet.
Skinner interjected again. "Mr. Haskell, we're sorry for your loss, but if you persist in these threats and in disseminating these stories we're going to have to enter your name in the federal system as a dangerous individual."
"I'm alone now because of them. They took everything from me," Haskell insisted. He took one more cold look at Scully. "And there are other women out there just like Kath."
As soon as he'd walked out of the office, all three of the other agents in the room were looking at Dana Scully. Stark exhaled and decided to say what they were all thinking. "Any particular reason he keeps trying to appeal to you?" she said. "That last sentence there certainly sounded ominous, Dana."
"I don't know," Scully said honestly. "Maybe he thinks he knows me more than you. Maybe he's noticed my pregnancy and he's trying to make an emotional appeal. I don't know."
Doggett shrugged. "What we do know is the man's a whack job," he said, and that seemed to speak for all of them.
****
Arlington, Virginia
Late that night
Normally, if Stark was going to be woken up at an odd hour, it was her partner that would deliver the news. But when her cell phone rang at eleven-thirty that night, it wasn't to the sound of "Because You Loved Me" by Celine Dion. No, this was an unassigned ringtone, and she eyed it warily.
Assistant Director Skinner.
She grabbed the phone and snapped it to her ear. "Yes, sir."
"Agent Patrick, I'm sorry to wake you at this hour," her boss informed her. "But we need to meet. There's something you need to know."
Stark sat up in bed. "I understand, sir. Tell me where and I'm on my way," she said. If anything, the X-Files were making her used to being woken up and sent somewhere on a whim. It had happened at least four or five times already.
No sooner had she ended the call with Skinner than Celine Dion did start playing; she didn't even look at the caller ID, just opened the phone again. "John?"
"Yeah. Did you hear from A.D. Skinner? Wants to see us both right now."
"Yeah, I just got off the phone with him. Do you know what's going on?"
"Not a clue. I'll pick you up in fifteen minutes?"
She smiled at that. Even in the middle of the night, her partner was always so considerate of her. "I'll be ready," she said, and clicked off the phone so that she could very quickly get dressed. Jeans, a T-shirt and a jacket would have to do.
When his truck pulled up in her driveway she was ready to go. Skinner had given them directions to a diner in Georgetown, and Scully's car was there when they arrived. He pulled up just in front of it and the two of them headed inside, joining the Assistant Director and their colleague at a table.
"Thanks for getting down here," Skinner said.
"Don't mention it," she replied.
"Yeah," her partner agreed. After the events of the last few days he looked directly at Scully, who didn't exactly look happy to be there. "You going somewhere?"
"Yes," she said flatly.
It was impossible not to feel like the rug was being pulled out from under them. As if they had been at odds ever since this case started. John didn't even bother trying to hide his surprise. "Am I missing something here?" he said almost rhetorically.
Skinner was obviously there to mediate things. "Agent Doggett," he said slowly and calmly, "as Assistant Director in charge of your assignment, Agent Scully has come to me and asked to take a leave of absence."
Doggett didn't even bother to hide his sarcasm. "Hey, great," he said. "Can I ask why?"
"No," Scully informed him, still in that flat tone.
"So we're the X-Files now?" he continued, getting edgy. "Just us?"
"Agent Scully isn't quitting the FBI. She's just going away."
Stark exhaled. "If I can be honest, sir, this really isn't the best time..." she said, trying to defuse the tension in the room and be honest about her feelings. She knew Scully was the senior agent and the most experienced, and knew they needed her on this case.
But her partner cut her off. "Don't bother talking about it, Stark, I don't think it matters." He was upset now. Scully wouldn't look him in the eye and it was just one more time she'd given him the slip. He turned his gaze to the Assistant Director. "Thanks for getting us out of bed to give us the news," he said, standing. He stood from the table, staring at Scully again. "Drop me a line if you get a chance."
Angrily, he turned and walked off. Stark felt uncomfortable, but she had no choice but to follow her partner. She didn't like seeing him in that kind of a mood but it wasn't as if she could blame him. What was she even supposed to say? Tell him to back off? He had every right to feel burned. Instead, she just put a hand on his back as he went to unlock the truck. "John..."
But before he could answer her, Scully had come out of the diner and called his name. They both turned to look at her. "I want you to understand," she told him.
"What is it you want me to understand, Agent Scully? The secrets or the lies?" he retorted.
"I told you, I'm not doing anything behind your back."
"You're supposed to watch my back, Agent Scully. Mine and my partner's."
"If I was putting you at risk in any way you can be sure that I wouldn't let you down. I hope you know that. I only know what you tell me." She paused, hesitating as Skinner emerged behind her. "I gotta go," she said abruptly, got into her car, and pulled away in a matter of just a minute or two, leaving the two of them standing there with the Assistant Director.
John arched an eyebrow. "Who's that? In Agent Scully's car."
Skinner pursed his lips. "That I don't know, Agent Doggett."
Stark swallowed. "What do we do now?" she asked.
Her partner finally looked at her. "I don't think there's anything else we can do."
****
That didn't stop him from thinking about it. Stark knew her partner very well, but she didn't have to be a rocket scientist to know he was in a bad place. Scully hadn't been straight with him, he knew it, and now she was gone, leaving them mired in a case that might not even be much of a case at all.
"Are you just going to stare at that thing all night, John?" she asked, standing behind him as he sat in the relative darkness examining the ultrasound on the office light board.
"Not like I have anything better to do. You should go home." He turned to look at her and saw that they weren't alone in the office. Another agent had entered the front room. "Agent Farah."
The other man turned at the sound of his voice and walked over to them. "I didn't see you in here, John. What are you doing in the dark?"
He smirked slightly. "I'm in the dark pretty much most of my time on the X-Files, Joe."
"Got a little something you may want to shine a light on," the other agent replied, holding up a file. They moved to get a better look as he continued, "You had me run this guy Duffy Haskell's prints, right?"
"I hate to say that case is closed now, Joe."
Farah looked at both of them. "From what I found, it's been closed since 1970. When David Haskell, same prints, was buried in a Virginia cemetery. USMC honor guard ceremony."
Doggett shifted his jaw. "You're kidding."
"I kid you not. Looks like you got yourself a real spook."
He took the file from the other agent warily. "Or a snake in the grass," he said, moving back to get the lights. Now they did have something they could do.
"Thanks, Joe," Stark said honestly as she set her coffee down on the corner of her partner's desk and waited for him to join her. They shared a look. "What are you thinking?" she prompted.
"I'm thinking that it's time to call in a favor at the State Department." He reached for the phone, ignoring her eyeroll. "If this guy is a spook? There's one person I know who can tell us."
That was how the next morning they ended up on Capitol Hill. Stark was unsurprised; she wasn't a fan of Knowle Rohrer to begin with. A former colleague of her partner's from his Marine days, he enjoyed making comments about her height and she wasn't so sure he even took her seriously. But John trusted him, and it wasn't as if they had anywhere else to go for information.
The dislike was mutual when Knowle saw the two of them approach him. "What are you two doing here?"
Stark held her tongue and let her partner take the lead. "Your assistant said you were going to get right back to me about this David Haskell fingerprint," he explained.
"I've got a day job, John. The government gets suspicious if I work at too fast a pace."
"It can't wait, Knowle. Is it the same guy or not?"
Knowle hesitated. Actually hesitated. And if an arrogant bastard like that was worried, Stark's stomach dropped out from under her. "How about we all take a walk?" he said, and drew them both away from the government building. He waited until they were in the business park nearby before he spoke again. "How'd you hook up with this guy, anyway?"
"The man was in our office, Knowle. Military records show he died in 1970. What the hell's the story?"
"Possible he's intelligence."
"Doing what? Working for who?"
"What did he say he wanted?"
"He wanted us to investigate the murder of his wife. He claims she was an alien abductee." Doggett saw the 'yeah, right' look on his old friend's face and sighed. "Look... I don't buy this crap, but if the guy's CIA he wasn't just in our office killing time."
"Why go to the trouble at all?"
He exhaled. It was obvious that he didn't like what he was about to say but it had been all they'd been able to come up with. "All I can think is that there must be documentation in our files of a conspiracy to hide the truth."
Stark exhaled. "That there's something in there he wants, maybe always has wanted. Maybe it exists, maybe it doesn't, but he wants to find out."
Knowle gave her a patronizing look and she gave him one right back. "About what, extraterrestrials?" he replied. "Is that what you're doing now? The good looks not getting you quite so far?"
"Hey."
"Knowle," John snapped slightly. He exhaled. "Look, it's not my work. It's the woman we work with. An Agent Scully."
"John, there's no conspiracy. You and I go back a long time. You know I'll do anything I can for you. Just give me a little more time to find out who this Haskell guy is, okay? By the end of the day." He clapped his old friend on the shoulder, and looked over at Stark. "And, um. Sorry for the comment."
"Yeah, sure," she said dismissively, watching him go. "Well, that was creepy."
"I don't understand why you two don't get along." But her partner's gaze was also transfixed on the man walking away from him, like he, too, didn't buy it.
"He likes to make fun of me for being short," Stark replied. Not that she wasn't. Her partner was just under six feet tall, and standing at five-four, she was seven and a half inches shorter than he was. At six-four, Knowle was a full foot taller than her. "You get the feeling that everyone's in on the joke but us?"
"Starting to look that way," he admitted, and turned his gaze back to her. They needed to think fast or Agent Scully was going to be in a world of trouble.
****
"Look, it's not about what we know," Stark said much later, pacing the basement officer. "It's about what we don't know. We don't know who this guy is, we don't know what he really wants. Is that enough to say that Agent Scully might be in danger?"
"I think Scully knows a lot more about what he wants, or at least what he's involved in, than she's letting on. I think she was holding out on us," he replied, leaning back in his chair.
"I wouldn't doubt that. But it's not like we can ask her." She exhaled. "You know me. I'd say err on the side of caution."
He exhaled, running a hand through his hair. It was obvious that he was worried about their colleague. She had obviously already been through enough. "Just because she doesn't trust us doesn't mean I want anything to happen to her," he remarked absently. He sat up straight then. "We've gotta warn her."
Stark nodded her agreement. "But how are we supposed to do that?"
"My guess is there's one person she probably told." He moved from the chair, grabbed her firmly by the hand, and pulled her with him whether she wanted to go or not.
"Where are we going?" she said, once they'd gotten into the elevator.
"I'm hoping she was smart enough to talk to the Assistant Director. And I'm really hoping he's still here." As the elevator dinged on the upper floor, the two of them hurried toward Skinner's office. They were just in time: the Assistant Director was on his way out. And looked a little bit alarmed by the worried looks on their faces.
"What is it?" he asked.
"Scully...do you know where she is? How to alert her right away?"
"To what?"
Doggett exhaled. "I think she's been misled. We all have by this man Haskell."
"You think or you know?" the A.D. asked.
"I can't get a straight answer on that," he admitted. "Which leads me to believe that this was a setup from the start. Tthat this guy Haskell came to us with his story to get Agent Scully to go wherever she's gone."
"I can tell you that she's in a safe place, Agent Doggett. A hospital."
"What hospital?" It was obvious now that Scully had confided in Skinner and when the Assistant Director was reluctant to answer, he pressed harder. "Look, this involves doctors. Doctors who may have killed pregnant women. Now, a hospital could be the worst place in the world for her. Tell me where Scully is."
Skinner exhaled. "Walden-Freedman Army Hospital."
"Get on the phone to security there," Doggett advised. "Tell them everything I told you. Stark, come on."
"John." Stark fell into step with her partner, biting her lip. "That's not near here. I don't know if we'll make it in time."
He eyed her uneasily, and reached for his phone. "Here's hoping somebody else can," he said.
****
There was nothing else that they could do. It went without saying that this was more than frustrating for the both of them, but Knowle had advised them to stay out of the way and wait for him to call them. They decided, between the two of them, to sit and wait.
"Would it be weird to say this is making me think?" Stark admitted, stretched out on her partner's couch, staring at the ceiling.
"Think about what?" he said, leaning forward in his chair, nursing his beer.
She exhaled. "I'm not getting any younger. Thinking about me and kids and..." She waved a dismissive hand.
He arched an eyebrow. "I didn't think you wanted kids."
"I don't. And I'm certainly not having any before I get married, which isn't going to happen because I can't get a date." She chuckled dryly at that, sharing a small smile with her partner, who aside from her brother was pretty much the only man in her life. "But it makes you think. About what we've got in our lives and what we leave behind."
He nodded slightly. "For what it's worth?" he said, nursing his beer. "I think you'd be a good mother."
She smiled. "Thanks, John."
They got the call in the middle of the night: Agent Scully was okay. So was the woman she was with. Both were in good condition, back at the army hospital and resting. Maybe everything had worked out after all.
****
Scully was still sleeping when they arrived at the hospital. As her partner pulled up the chair by her bedside, Stark leaned against the wall behind him. While they might not all be on the same page just yet Agent Scully was a colleague, and furthermore the only one who seemed to have half a clue what happened around them on a daily basis. She was more than relieved to know the other woman was okay.
She straightened as the other woman came to. "Agent Doggett?" she said blearily. "Agent Patrick?"
"Agent Scully," her partner said, relieved.
Scully tried almost immediately to sit up. "What are you doing here? What am I doing back in this place?"
"Lie down, Agent Scully," he cautioned gently but firmly, helping her back to the bed. "You're not taking any more chances."
"What happened to me?"
"You're okay. You're fine. And your baby's fine." He smiled slightly as she visibly relaxed, then sobered. "But you're very, very lucky."
"What about Ms. Hendershot?"
"She's resting fine too."
"What about her baby?"
"Six pounds, eight ounces," he confided. "A boy."
But as it dawned on Scully, Stark knew the other woman suspected more than what they'd been told in their debriefing once they had arrived at the hospital. The same things that had begun to hit them as they sat up and waited to know if she would survive. "Oh, my God. They switched it," she insisted. "Agent Doggett, they switched it on her."
He let out a slow breath. "It's over, Agent Scully."
"No, it's not," Scully insisted. "We can prove this."
"We can't prove anything," he admitted. "They say you overreacted to everything. They say you overreacted to fears you had about Ms. Hendershot's pregnancy, to the fears you had about your own."
"They showed me a tape of another woman's womb."
"They say it's your baby, just taped onto an old cassette."
"Well, then who were those men?"
That made him hesitate. He looked down for a moment, clearly frustrated and embarrassed. Stark bit her lip, hating to see her partner that way as he met Scully's eyes. "They acted off information that came from me," he admitted softly. "They say they saved your life. How can I question that, sitting here?"
But Scully didn't rebuke him. Instead she was seeing the big picture fall into place. "It was all planned. You know that. From the moment that man walked into our office. we were used to get at Ms. Hendershot's baby. And now we are being used to cover it up," she said. "Oh, my God."
"At least you're okay," he pointed out. "Why didn't you tell us?"
"I was afraid," she admitted. And then she began to crack in front of them. The cold exterior melted in a heartbeat and she was on the verge of tears, voice breaking. "Afraid that they'd use it against me to take me off the X-Files. So that I couldn't find Mulder."
He reached over and squeezed her shoulder reassuringly. "I told you we'd help you," he said. "I said we'd find him."
It went without saying that it was time for them to go. Quietly, he stood, and Stark followed him out of the hospital room into the hallway. He stood there for a moment, running a hand through his hair, looking frustrated at not only the whole affair but how he'd been manipulated just trying to keep a colleague safe.
"Hey," she said softly. "You did the best you could. Nobody can doubt that."
He looked at her for a long moment. "All I wanted was for her to be okay."
"And she is." She looked at him gently. "Now what about you?"
When he didn't answer, she just reached over and took his hand. They both felt frustrated and confused. That was basically their entire life now, chasing things they couldn't figure out. But at least they were still together. That would be something that they would always know to be true.
Spoilers: "Per Manum"
Words: 6365
Rating: PG
Summary: An X-File raises suspicions about Agent Scully's own experiences and Stark sees a little too closely through the eyes of her colleague, causing her to wonder about her own life choices.
"Are we supposed to be looking at this?" Stark glanced up from the file in her hands, giving her partner a confused, vaguely pointed look. "This stuff seems pretty personal," she continued. They were standing in the far corner of the basement office, where they had been all morning, going over files. He'd asked her to look at them with her, without offering much of an explanation, and now she was getting a little bit uncomfortable.
John looked back at her, standing on the other side of the filing cabinet reading something else. "If it's an X-File, it's our job," he replied, "and if it is what this guy says it is? We owe it to Agent Scully to be thorough."
She nodded slightly, dropping her eyes back to the file in her hands. "When is this guy supposed to be here?"
He glanced at his watch. "About an hour," he replied. "Hopefully he'll be in and out before she gets here. I don't want to upset her if this turns out to be nothing," he admitted. "You got anything over there?"
"Just some old correspondence between this guy and Agent Mulder." She passed it over to him so he could see it. "I know this is creepy but shouldn't this be something she should do?"
John arched an eyebrow. "If it were you, would you really want to be looking into it?"
Stark fell silent then. Point well taken. As if there was any chance of it ever being her; she hadn't been in a relationship of any sort since 1997, and was of the belief that children came after she was married. Which, the only thing she was married to was her job.
They did what research they could over the next half-hour, but she stayed fairly quiet, letting her partner take the lead in the interview when Haskell finally arrived. It was the same rhythm they'd always had: he was the strong one, the male, the alpha personality, and he took the first crack. She kept quiet, observing, taking mental notes, playing the wallflower. Until, of course, she opened her mouth.
But they never got to that point. From where she was sitting on the edge of her partner's desk, at his elbow, Stark swallowed as she watched Dana Scully enter the office. So much for getting Haskell out before she came in.
"Agent Doggett..." Scully said warily, looking between them both.
"Hi," he replied, playing everything as nonchalantly as possible. Stark had to admire her partner: he'd always had a cool head under any kind of pressure. Must have been those years in the Marines.
Scully just looked confused, especially when Haskell looked at her like he'd just seen God walk through the door. "I'm sorry, Agent Doggett, I didn't realize that you had an appointment," she said, sizing the man up as if he were insane.
"This is Duffy Haskell," John explained. "He says he knows you or you know him."
"I'm sorry. I don't remember," she admitted, moving around toward her desk. But she shook his hand anyway.
"I contacted you about my wife. About eight years ago. Because she was an alien abductee."
"That was before my time here. But is there something I can help you with?"
"She's dead," he replied, blurting it out like he couldn't hold it in any longer. "My wife is dead now. They killed her. Kath...my wife."
Wanting to calm things down before Haskell got too wound, Doggett interjected. "We checked the files," he told Scully. "Mr. Haskell wrote several letters to Agent Mulder describing his wife's abduction experiences."
"My wife gave birth to an alien."
Scully blinked. "I...I thought you said your wife was murdered."
"That's the reason they did it."
"Okay, Mr. Haskell." Her skepticism was obvious now, as was the fact that her patience was wearing thin. "Why don't you start from the beginning?"
She settled at her desk, the man having turned his attention to her. In the small size of the basement there wasn't far that Stark could move, and she and her partner just stayed where they were. He leaned back slightly, observing the whole thing as she shifted so she was sitting on the other half of the desk and not obstructing his view. It was sort of amusing how they knew each other so well that they knew how to do that, but she wasn't paying attention, just trying to follow along with something she wasn't really sure was their business.
Haskell elaborated: "Kath was a multiple abductee. The aliens did these procedures on her. Tests and whatnot. One procedure would give her cancer while another one would cure her. Stuff like that. For years, you see. And then, this year, they came right into our bedroom and implanted an alien embryo in Kath."
"I don't suppose that you have any, uh, medical proof of this," Scully said, looking visibly uncomfortable. Now Stark was seeing why John hadn't wanted her to know about this case.
He passed across an envelope. "I have an ultrasound here. Anyone with a trained eye can see that is a bizarre pregnancy. Especially for a woman who was never supposed to be able to conceive. I doubt you'd ever get the doctors to cop to any of that."
"What doctors?"
"We've been through three sets. They're all in on it. They're all in cahoots."
"So you're...saying that it was the doctors that killed your wife?"
"And stole the alien baby. That ultrasound is proof."
The discomfort and annoyance on Scully's face was painfully obvious now, and she turned her attention to the two of them, sitting on the other side of the room. Though she seemed nonjudgmental Stark wouldn't have blamed her if she were holding her tongue. "Do you have all the information and numbers and a way that we can reach Mr. Haskell?" she asked them. Her partner nodded, holding up his notepad, and she turned to their guest. "We'll be in touch."
No sooner had he left than the displeasure on her face was evident to both her fellow agents. It wasn't hard to guess whose idea that had been. "Thank you, Agent Doggett. I'm sure the rest of my afternoon can't possibly be so amusing."
He straightened in the chair slightly, eyeing her as his partner climbed uncomfortably to her feet. "I thought you'd find it interesting, actually," he replied, toying with the pencil in his fingertips.
"Interesting? As in preposterous and outrageous?"
"Well, unless I'm mistaken you already knew that man's story." He gave her a slightly challenging look. "The abduction, the tests, a bout with cancer, then a remission."
"What exactly are you getting at?"
"That's your story, Agent Scully. I'd say right down to a T." He held her gaze, letting that sink in as she stared at him. "I mean, except for the pregnancy. It's all right there in the X-Files."
Scully's gaze turned toward the filing cabinets. Feeling the thick tension in the air, Stark somehow felt compelled to speak up and at least not leave her partner out on a limb alone. "I think what John is trying to say," she said, quietly and warily, "is that we saw certain parallels and became interested if only for what those parallels might mean."
The older woman turned her glance on her. "I see," she said, and her tone was cold and distant. She turned her attention back to the person she held ultimately responsible. "Well, I appreciate your thoroughness, Agent Doggett, and your familiarity with the X-Files cases in those cabinets, but my personal files are my personal files. Okay?"
He looked chagrined and frustrated. There was no mistaking her tone, how unsettled she had been. They had crossed a line, like Stark had warned him about. "Sure," he said quietly, looking down at the desk for a moment before he glanced up at her. "Of course."
They merely watched as Scully picked up the ultrasound and walked from the office. As she left, he exhaled a tight breath, throwing the pencil down on his desk in frustration. Stark put a hand on her partner's back trying to reassure him. "You were just trying to look out for her, John," she said softly. "To do what you felt was best. No one can fault you for that."
"Really?" he said sarcastically, glancing at her. "Because I don't think Agent Scully got that memo."
"You didn't expect her to take this well, or you wouldn't have been trying to figure this out before she got here," she pointed out.
"Okay," he said, accepting the point, "so what do we do now? You gotta admit, this is weird. Way too close to home."
"I think we'd probably better let her decide that."
He nodded, more to himself. "I'm gonna go see if I can find her," he said, and stood, leaving her to sit on his desk, eye the filing cabinets and wonder how many more unpleasant surprises were in there. She could only imagine what Scully had gone through and as much as she admired the woman? She didn't want to go through that.
Her partner was heading for the elevator when it opened in front of him and there was Scully, looking like she wasn't even in the same zip code. "Agent Scully?" he asked. "What are you doing?"
She blinked. "Um, I don't know. I guess I just forgot to push the button," she did, and leaned over to do so.
He paused and grabbed the doors before they could close. "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 nodded, and let the doors close.
He didn't believe that for a second. Not when he'd seen the ultrasound she'd been holding in her hand. The one she'd walked out with just minutes before.
As he walked back into the office, Stark glanced up at him, with a prompting expression on her face...especially after seeing the expression on his face, which looked like he'd just busted someone. Which, to an extent, he had. "What?" she said.
"She says there's nothing to do," he says. "And then she walks out of here with Haskell's ultrasound."
Stark hadn't even noticed it was missing. She glanced at the desk where it had been left, then back at her partner, chewing her lower lip. "What do you want to do?"
"If she wants us to drop this case, we'll drop it," he said. "Doesn't stop us from going over the work we've already done."
Stark's specialty was background investigations. As a fugitive squad detective, she had been routinely used to digging through someone's entire life to find where they might be hiding. She had brought that with her to the FBI, and grown to use it even more so on the X-Files, where if she didn't know what the hell was going on, at least she knew how to look someone up or run a cross-check.
This was where she pulled her weight on the X-Files.
She handed him the stack of files she'd just been about to put away, and grabbed a pen off the desk. It might be a long rest of the afternoon.
****
They elected to call it an early day at work. There was only so much background work they could do, and in their mutual gut instinct, they both knew that without Scully, they weren't going to get anywhere on this case. It was her story, and her case.
"So what are you going to do with the rest of your day?" he asked her as they walked through the parking garage together.
She shrugged. "I don't know. I just bought a new book on the history of ESPN. I'll probably do some reading. What about you?"
"I don't know. This is going to bother me." He fingered the keys to his truck, shaking his head.
That made Stark hesitate then. "You did the right thing, John," she said softly. "You're just trying to look out for her. I know you'd do the same thing for me." She gave him a reassuring smile. "I'm proud of you, if that means anything. And call me if you need me."
"I will." He smiled slightly at her before he turned to unlock his truck. He knew something wasn't right, and he wasn't going to be able to relax until he figured out what.
****
Stark was unsurprised to find her partner had beaten her to work the next morning.
"How was the book?" he asked.
"It was good, actually." She set her backpack down and handed him his morning coffee. "Let me guess, this is actually at least your second cup."
"You know me too well," he admitted, rubbing a hand over the back of his neck as she pulled up a chair. "Haven't found anything else yet," he added because he knew she would ask.
She snorted. "I thought patience was one of your strong suits."
He arched an eyebrow, glancing at her as if to ask her what she meant by that, but he never got the words out as the phone rang. Snatching it, his mind immediately went to other things. As Scully walked in a few minutes later, he was just finishing the call. "Okay, got it. Thanks," he said, and as he set the phone down, he gave her a deliberate look. "Agent Scully, I just got a call from a Dr. Parenti's office. About an ultrasound you left there this morning," he said, clearly daring her to explain that one.
She looked defensive, heading for her desk instead. "Dr. Parenti is my doctor," she replied simply.
"Come on, Agent Scully," he retorted.
"You don't believe me?"
"That ultrasound is the one Duffy Haskell left here yesterday. Dr. Parenti is one of the doctors he consulted with during the course of that pregnancy," he replied pointedly.
She stopped and looked at him. "Excuse me, Agent Doggett, but are you investigating me?"
"No," he said. "We were doing a background check on Mr. and Mrs. Haskell before I dropped the case like you asked me to do."
"No, I didn't ask you to drop the case. I said there was nothing to do."
He gave her another skeptical look. "Well, if there's nothing to do, then why are you investigating?"
"You are jumping to conclusions."
Now he was getting irritated, and he let it show. "No, I'm just trying to do my job, only it gets hard to do if the person you're working with is keeping secrets and telling lies."
Scully stared at him a moment. He was angry and she knew it. Maybe it came from being used to working with a woman who clearly told him literally everything - she had a feeling he knew his partner's brother's middle name and other such minutiae - but not everyone was as trusting and open as Agent Patrick could be. "I am not investigating these people, Agent Doggett," she retorted. "Parenti is my doctor. Is that so strange? Is there something about him I don't know?"
"No. But Duffy Haskell is a piece of work. I'll tell you that much." He held out another piece of paper. "Guess what else we found while we were taking a look. It's time to put the screws to this guy."
****
Half an hour later, Stark was standing beside her partner, hand settled defensively on her hip as she quietly observed Duffy Haskell. Still as edgy, but now a lot more defensive. As usual it was her job to sit there and see what she could pick up on. Her partner glanced at her and she nodded almost imperceptibly, confirming exactly what he thought: this guy had something to hide.
But they wouldn't be doing the interrogating. They'd taken their information straight to the Assistant Director and now Skinner was in complete control of the situation. "As president of the Ohio Mutual UFO Network, you sent Agent Mulder a series of very threatening letters which he passed on to me, Mr. Haskell. Something of a habit with you, sir. Writing letters...threatening letters. Isn't it?" he said pointedly.
"No one will believe me," the man muttered.
"They tend not to want to when you threaten them with violence," Stark pointed out acerbically.
As if to provide an example, her partner continued, "You wrote a letter to a Dr. Lev saying you would kill him if he hurt your wife."
"Dr. Lev killed my wife. He stole the alien baby out of her womb."
"Well, we can't find any documentation that the two of you were even married, Mr. Haskell. Let alone any history or evidence of foul play. Dr. Lev is a serious physician, a leader in the field of birth defects. His peers hold him in the highest regard. Why would he ever kill your wife?"
"That's why I came to you."
"Mr. Haskell, allegations aside, it's a crime to threaten anyone," Skinner reminded him.
Haskell shifted in his seat, turning and looking at Scully. "You believe me, don't you?" he asked, but she didn't answer him. Stark wondered why, for a split second, he was looking to her, but then dismissed it out of hand as her being the only person who hadn't tried to contradict or challenge him yet.
Skinner interjected again. "Mr. Haskell, we're sorry for your loss, but if you persist in these threats and in disseminating these stories we're going to have to enter your name in the federal system as a dangerous individual."
"I'm alone now because of them. They took everything from me," Haskell insisted. He took one more cold look at Scully. "And there are other women out there just like Kath."
As soon as he'd walked out of the office, all three of the other agents in the room were looking at Dana Scully. Stark exhaled and decided to say what they were all thinking. "Any particular reason he keeps trying to appeal to you?" she said. "That last sentence there certainly sounded ominous, Dana."
"I don't know," Scully said honestly. "Maybe he thinks he knows me more than you. Maybe he's noticed my pregnancy and he's trying to make an emotional appeal. I don't know."
Doggett shrugged. "What we do know is the man's a whack job," he said, and that seemed to speak for all of them.
****
Arlington, Virginia
Late that night
Normally, if Stark was going to be woken up at an odd hour, it was her partner that would deliver the news. But when her cell phone rang at eleven-thirty that night, it wasn't to the sound of "Because You Loved Me" by Celine Dion. No, this was an unassigned ringtone, and she eyed it warily.
Assistant Director Skinner.
She grabbed the phone and snapped it to her ear. "Yes, sir."
"Agent Patrick, I'm sorry to wake you at this hour," her boss informed her. "But we need to meet. There's something you need to know."
Stark sat up in bed. "I understand, sir. Tell me where and I'm on my way," she said. If anything, the X-Files were making her used to being woken up and sent somewhere on a whim. It had happened at least four or five times already.
No sooner had she ended the call with Skinner than Celine Dion did start playing; she didn't even look at the caller ID, just opened the phone again. "John?"
"Yeah. Did you hear from A.D. Skinner? Wants to see us both right now."
"Yeah, I just got off the phone with him. Do you know what's going on?"
"Not a clue. I'll pick you up in fifteen minutes?"
She smiled at that. Even in the middle of the night, her partner was always so considerate of her. "I'll be ready," she said, and clicked off the phone so that she could very quickly get dressed. Jeans, a T-shirt and a jacket would have to do.
When his truck pulled up in her driveway she was ready to go. Skinner had given them directions to a diner in Georgetown, and Scully's car was there when they arrived. He pulled up just in front of it and the two of them headed inside, joining the Assistant Director and their colleague at a table.
"Thanks for getting down here," Skinner said.
"Don't mention it," she replied.
"Yeah," her partner agreed. After the events of the last few days he looked directly at Scully, who didn't exactly look happy to be there. "You going somewhere?"
"Yes," she said flatly.
It was impossible not to feel like the rug was being pulled out from under them. As if they had been at odds ever since this case started. John didn't even bother trying to hide his surprise. "Am I missing something here?" he said almost rhetorically.
Skinner was obviously there to mediate things. "Agent Doggett," he said slowly and calmly, "as Assistant Director in charge of your assignment, Agent Scully has come to me and asked to take a leave of absence."
Doggett didn't even bother to hide his sarcasm. "Hey, great," he said. "Can I ask why?"
"No," Scully informed him, still in that flat tone.
"So we're the X-Files now?" he continued, getting edgy. "Just us?"
"Agent Scully isn't quitting the FBI. She's just going away."
Stark exhaled. "If I can be honest, sir, this really isn't the best time..." she said, trying to defuse the tension in the room and be honest about her feelings. She knew Scully was the senior agent and the most experienced, and knew they needed her on this case.
But her partner cut her off. "Don't bother talking about it, Stark, I don't think it matters." He was upset now. Scully wouldn't look him in the eye and it was just one more time she'd given him the slip. He turned his gaze to the Assistant Director. "Thanks for getting us out of bed to give us the news," he said, standing. He stood from the table, staring at Scully again. "Drop me a line if you get a chance."
Angrily, he turned and walked off. Stark felt uncomfortable, but she had no choice but to follow her partner. She didn't like seeing him in that kind of a mood but it wasn't as if she could blame him. What was she even supposed to say? Tell him to back off? He had every right to feel burned. Instead, she just put a hand on his back as he went to unlock the truck. "John..."
But before he could answer her, Scully had come out of the diner and called his name. They both turned to look at her. "I want you to understand," she told him.
"What is it you want me to understand, Agent Scully? The secrets or the lies?" he retorted.
"I told you, I'm not doing anything behind your back."
"You're supposed to watch my back, Agent Scully. Mine and my partner's."
"If I was putting you at risk in any way you can be sure that I wouldn't let you down. I hope you know that. I only know what you tell me." She paused, hesitating as Skinner emerged behind her. "I gotta go," she said abruptly, got into her car, and pulled away in a matter of just a minute or two, leaving the two of them standing there with the Assistant Director.
John arched an eyebrow. "Who's that? In Agent Scully's car."
Skinner pursed his lips. "That I don't know, Agent Doggett."
Stark swallowed. "What do we do now?" she asked.
Her partner finally looked at her. "I don't think there's anything else we can do."
****
That didn't stop him from thinking about it. Stark knew her partner very well, but she didn't have to be a rocket scientist to know he was in a bad place. Scully hadn't been straight with him, he knew it, and now she was gone, leaving them mired in a case that might not even be much of a case at all.
"Are you just going to stare at that thing all night, John?" she asked, standing behind him as he sat in the relative darkness examining the ultrasound on the office light board.
"Not like I have anything better to do. You should go home." He turned to look at her and saw that they weren't alone in the office. Another agent had entered the front room. "Agent Farah."
The other man turned at the sound of his voice and walked over to them. "I didn't see you in here, John. What are you doing in the dark?"
He smirked slightly. "I'm in the dark pretty much most of my time on the X-Files, Joe."
"Got a little something you may want to shine a light on," the other agent replied, holding up a file. They moved to get a better look as he continued, "You had me run this guy Duffy Haskell's prints, right?"
"I hate to say that case is closed now, Joe."
Farah looked at both of them. "From what I found, it's been closed since 1970. When David Haskell, same prints, was buried in a Virginia cemetery. USMC honor guard ceremony."
Doggett shifted his jaw. "You're kidding."
"I kid you not. Looks like you got yourself a real spook."
He took the file from the other agent warily. "Or a snake in the grass," he said, moving back to get the lights. Now they did have something they could do.
"Thanks, Joe," Stark said honestly as she set her coffee down on the corner of her partner's desk and waited for him to join her. They shared a look. "What are you thinking?" she prompted.
"I'm thinking that it's time to call in a favor at the State Department." He reached for the phone, ignoring her eyeroll. "If this guy is a spook? There's one person I know who can tell us."
That was how the next morning they ended up on Capitol Hill. Stark was unsurprised; she wasn't a fan of Knowle Rohrer to begin with. A former colleague of her partner's from his Marine days, he enjoyed making comments about her height and she wasn't so sure he even took her seriously. But John trusted him, and it wasn't as if they had anywhere else to go for information.
The dislike was mutual when Knowle saw the two of them approach him. "What are you two doing here?"
Stark held her tongue and let her partner take the lead. "Your assistant said you were going to get right back to me about this David Haskell fingerprint," he explained.
"I've got a day job, John. The government gets suspicious if I work at too fast a pace."
"It can't wait, Knowle. Is it the same guy or not?"
Knowle hesitated. Actually hesitated. And if an arrogant bastard like that was worried, Stark's stomach dropped out from under her. "How about we all take a walk?" he said, and drew them both away from the government building. He waited until they were in the business park nearby before he spoke again. "How'd you hook up with this guy, anyway?"
"The man was in our office, Knowle. Military records show he died in 1970. What the hell's the story?"
"Possible he's intelligence."
"Doing what? Working for who?"
"What did he say he wanted?"
"He wanted us to investigate the murder of his wife. He claims she was an alien abductee." Doggett saw the 'yeah, right' look on his old friend's face and sighed. "Look... I don't buy this crap, but if the guy's CIA he wasn't just in our office killing time."
"Why go to the trouble at all?"
He exhaled. It was obvious that he didn't like what he was about to say but it had been all they'd been able to come up with. "All I can think is that there must be documentation in our files of a conspiracy to hide the truth."
Stark exhaled. "That there's something in there he wants, maybe always has wanted. Maybe it exists, maybe it doesn't, but he wants to find out."
Knowle gave her a patronizing look and she gave him one right back. "About what, extraterrestrials?" he replied. "Is that what you're doing now? The good looks not getting you quite so far?"
"Hey."
"Knowle," John snapped slightly. He exhaled. "Look, it's not my work. It's the woman we work with. An Agent Scully."
"John, there's no conspiracy. You and I go back a long time. You know I'll do anything I can for you. Just give me a little more time to find out who this Haskell guy is, okay? By the end of the day." He clapped his old friend on the shoulder, and looked over at Stark. "And, um. Sorry for the comment."
"Yeah, sure," she said dismissively, watching him go. "Well, that was creepy."
"I don't understand why you two don't get along." But her partner's gaze was also transfixed on the man walking away from him, like he, too, didn't buy it.
"He likes to make fun of me for being short," Stark replied. Not that she wasn't. Her partner was just under six feet tall, and standing at five-four, she was seven and a half inches shorter than he was. At six-four, Knowle was a full foot taller than her. "You get the feeling that everyone's in on the joke but us?"
"Starting to look that way," he admitted, and turned his gaze back to her. They needed to think fast or Agent Scully was going to be in a world of trouble.
****
"Look, it's not about what we know," Stark said much later, pacing the basement officer. "It's about what we don't know. We don't know who this guy is, we don't know what he really wants. Is that enough to say that Agent Scully might be in danger?"
"I think Scully knows a lot more about what he wants, or at least what he's involved in, than she's letting on. I think she was holding out on us," he replied, leaning back in his chair.
"I wouldn't doubt that. But it's not like we can ask her." She exhaled. "You know me. I'd say err on the side of caution."
He exhaled, running a hand through his hair. It was obvious that he was worried about their colleague. She had obviously already been through enough. "Just because she doesn't trust us doesn't mean I want anything to happen to her," he remarked absently. He sat up straight then. "We've gotta warn her."
Stark nodded her agreement. "But how are we supposed to do that?"
"My guess is there's one person she probably told." He moved from the chair, grabbed her firmly by the hand, and pulled her with him whether she wanted to go or not.
"Where are we going?" she said, once they'd gotten into the elevator.
"I'm hoping she was smart enough to talk to the Assistant Director. And I'm really hoping he's still here." As the elevator dinged on the upper floor, the two of them hurried toward Skinner's office. They were just in time: the Assistant Director was on his way out. And looked a little bit alarmed by the worried looks on their faces.
"What is it?" he asked.
"Scully...do you know where she is? How to alert her right away?"
"To what?"
Doggett exhaled. "I think she's been misled. We all have by this man Haskell."
"You think or you know?" the A.D. asked.
"I can't get a straight answer on that," he admitted. "Which leads me to believe that this was a setup from the start. Tthat this guy Haskell came to us with his story to get Agent Scully to go wherever she's gone."
"I can tell you that she's in a safe place, Agent Doggett. A hospital."
"What hospital?" It was obvious now that Scully had confided in Skinner and when the Assistant Director was reluctant to answer, he pressed harder. "Look, this involves doctors. Doctors who may have killed pregnant women. Now, a hospital could be the worst place in the world for her. Tell me where Scully is."
Skinner exhaled. "Walden-Freedman Army Hospital."
"Get on the phone to security there," Doggett advised. "Tell them everything I told you. Stark, come on."
"John." Stark fell into step with her partner, biting her lip. "That's not near here. I don't know if we'll make it in time."
He eyed her uneasily, and reached for his phone. "Here's hoping somebody else can," he said.
****
There was nothing else that they could do. It went without saying that this was more than frustrating for the both of them, but Knowle had advised them to stay out of the way and wait for him to call them. They decided, between the two of them, to sit and wait.
"Would it be weird to say this is making me think?" Stark admitted, stretched out on her partner's couch, staring at the ceiling.
"Think about what?" he said, leaning forward in his chair, nursing his beer.
She exhaled. "I'm not getting any younger. Thinking about me and kids and..." She waved a dismissive hand.
He arched an eyebrow. "I didn't think you wanted kids."
"I don't. And I'm certainly not having any before I get married, which isn't going to happen because I can't get a date." She chuckled dryly at that, sharing a small smile with her partner, who aside from her brother was pretty much the only man in her life. "But it makes you think. About what we've got in our lives and what we leave behind."
He nodded slightly. "For what it's worth?" he said, nursing his beer. "I think you'd be a good mother."
She smiled. "Thanks, John."
They got the call in the middle of the night: Agent Scully was okay. So was the woman she was with. Both were in good condition, back at the army hospital and resting. Maybe everything had worked out after all.
****
Scully was still sleeping when they arrived at the hospital. As her partner pulled up the chair by her bedside, Stark leaned against the wall behind him. While they might not all be on the same page just yet Agent Scully was a colleague, and furthermore the only one who seemed to have half a clue what happened around them on a daily basis. She was more than relieved to know the other woman was okay.
She straightened as the other woman came to. "Agent Doggett?" she said blearily. "Agent Patrick?"
"Agent Scully," her partner said, relieved.
Scully tried almost immediately to sit up. "What are you doing here? What am I doing back in this place?"
"Lie down, Agent Scully," he cautioned gently but firmly, helping her back to the bed. "You're not taking any more chances."
"What happened to me?"
"You're okay. You're fine. And your baby's fine." He smiled slightly as she visibly relaxed, then sobered. "But you're very, very lucky."
"What about Ms. Hendershot?"
"She's resting fine too."
"What about her baby?"
"Six pounds, eight ounces," he confided. "A boy."
But as it dawned on Scully, Stark knew the other woman suspected more than what they'd been told in their debriefing once they had arrived at the hospital. The same things that had begun to hit them as they sat up and waited to know if she would survive. "Oh, my God. They switched it," she insisted. "Agent Doggett, they switched it on her."
He let out a slow breath. "It's over, Agent Scully."
"No, it's not," Scully insisted. "We can prove this."
"We can't prove anything," he admitted. "They say you overreacted to everything. They say you overreacted to fears you had about Ms. Hendershot's pregnancy, to the fears you had about your own."
"They showed me a tape of another woman's womb."
"They say it's your baby, just taped onto an old cassette."
"Well, then who were those men?"
That made him hesitate. He looked down for a moment, clearly frustrated and embarrassed. Stark bit her lip, hating to see her partner that way as he met Scully's eyes. "They acted off information that came from me," he admitted softly. "They say they saved your life. How can I question that, sitting here?"
But Scully didn't rebuke him. Instead she was seeing the big picture fall into place. "It was all planned. You know that. From the moment that man walked into our office. we were used to get at Ms. Hendershot's baby. And now we are being used to cover it up," she said. "Oh, my God."
"At least you're okay," he pointed out. "Why didn't you tell us?"
"I was afraid," she admitted. And then she began to crack in front of them. The cold exterior melted in a heartbeat and she was on the verge of tears, voice breaking. "Afraid that they'd use it against me to take me off the X-Files. So that I couldn't find Mulder."
He reached over and squeezed her shoulder reassuringly. "I told you we'd help you," he said. "I said we'd find him."
It went without saying that it was time for them to go. Quietly, he stood, and Stark followed him out of the hospital room into the hallway. He stood there for a moment, running a hand through his hair, looking frustrated at not only the whole affair but how he'd been manipulated just trying to keep a colleague safe.
"Hey," she said softly. "You did the best you could. Nobody can doubt that."
He looked at her for a long moment. "All I wanted was for her to be okay."
"And she is." She looked at him gently. "Now what about you?"
When he didn't answer, she just reached over and took his hand. They both felt frustrated and confused. That was basically their entire life now, chasing things they couldn't figure out. But at least they were still together. That would be something that they would always know to be true.