Thy Mother's Glass - Chapter Three (Star Wars/X-Files)
Chapter Three
”If you’re going through hell, keep going.”
--Winston Churchill
STAY AND SAVE MOTEL
HOUSTON, TEXAS
November 12, 2019
4:13 A.M.
Millions of lightyears away, Dana Scully sat up in bed, gasping.
Mulder was awake instantly, his arms curving around her back and steadying her as her hand drifted to her chest.
"You okay, Scully?"
She took a deep breath and nodded once. "An odd dream, that's all."
"Anything you want to talk about?"
She shook her head. "No, it was nothing," Scully checked the clock. "We had better get up anyway."
The clock on the bedside read '5:04 AM'. Scully blinked the sleep from her eyes and made her way towards the shower, feeling her way along the wall until she found the bathroom door.
They'd had a rather uneventful plane ride over, but they'd had a hell of a time trying to find a hotel room. It seemed like his speech about 'reliving the good old days' had been a priori, as they were now stuffed together in the only available room at Houston's dirtiest motel. At least they could share a bed, now--without Mulder beside her, Scully thought, the Stay and Save would have no redeeming qualities whatsoever.
As the hot water lulled her into consciousness, Scully's ever-analytical mind began to dissect her dream. She'd dreamed of hers and Williams' only Christmas together, years and years ago, when Mulder had been in hiding. She'd left William napping while she baked cookies and he'd woken to find himself alone and begun crying.
Somewhere, in the cold, dark of space, William was alone, and Scully's arms ached to hold him again. She knew herself well enough for that to make sense. But who was the other woman in the dream?
At first, Scully thought she'd been handing William over to herself, but then the lights from the Christmas tree had spilled over her face, and the eyes in her face were green instead of blue.
Melissa had been her first thought. The woman could have been Melissa, but Melissa was dead, and handing her baby over to Melissa would mean...
No. She wouldn't allow herself to think of it.
Scully rinsed her hair, letting the water trail down her shoulders and breathed a deep sigh. Honestly, it was just a dream. It was nothing but her brain attempting to process what she'd been through the day before--and she'd been through a lot. That didn't mean that her dream was precognitive in any way.
Since when did I become Mulder? she asked herself, laughing. Interpreting dreams...what was next?
Scully chuckled to herself as she stepped out and reached for a towel, drying off and wrapping the towel around her head when she was finished. Really, it was nothing, wasn't it? She was experiencing a myriad of emotions--fear for William, relief that he had survived this far, determination to get to him, and a sharp ache that resonated deep in her chest when her mind tried to reconcile William, the young man, and William, the baby.
She had missed so much.
Scully considered waiting to get dressed until she got out of the bathroom--the floor was scattered with small puddles, and she hated getting the hem of her trousers wet. She decided against it, however when she realized that, things to do or not, they'd never leave the hotel in time if she went out there in nothing but a towel. Mulder just didn't have that kind of resolve.
In the end, Scully managed to struggle into her suit pants without getting the hem wet, slipped on a button-up shirt and a jacket, and fastened her cross around her neck. She dried her hair, which needed a cut, but probably wouldn't get one--Mulder liked it long--and put on her makeup. When she emerged from the bathroom, Mulder, who hadn't worn a suit in years due to his change in profession, was dressed to kill in his Armani best, gun and all. She smiled and walked over to him, sliding an arm around his waist.
"Ready, Agent Mulder?"
"Always, Agent Scully."
***
HOUSTON SPACE CENTER
7:00 AM
"I need to speak to Michelle Bridges."
The assistant behind the desk blinked, hard. He stared at them blankly for a moment, and then stood up and popped his shoulder a bit. He looked extremely tired.
"I'm sorry...what?"
Scully smiled a bit, and Mulder chuckled. "I'm with you," he said, glancing at the young man's nametag. "John. It's too early to be alive. Unfortunately, this can't wait."
Scully got out her ID and showed it to John. "I'm Assistant Director Dana Mulder of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and this is my partner. We're responding to a letter sent to us by a Mrs. Michelle Bridges."
About ten minutes later, Mulder and Scully were seated in Michelle's office. She had aged well; there was only a touch of gray at her temples and some well-defined laugh lines at her eyes and mouth. She spoke to Mulder and Scully with a firm, sad voice that spoke of the determination she had to get her husband and son back.
Scully knew how she felt.
“I’m sorry I don’t have more to offer you, Agents. I’ve tried everything I know how, and I’m still getting nothing. I’ve been petitioning every agency and organization I can think of with no result. The government is shutting up tighter than clams.”
“The media?” asked Scully.
“The media doesn’t even know this is going on. The government is pretending this never happened.”
“How surprising,” said Mulder dryly. “A cover-up. I wonder where we’ve seen this one before.”
“There are lots of reasons the government wouldn’t want the press to know about this, Mulder. They’ve been trying to rebuild NASA’s reputation since the war ended. If news got out that they lost over thirty people, most of them minors, it could very well be the end of the program.”
“But what took them, Scully? Don’t you think it’s a little strange that they won’t even talk to the parents? Or what’s more...they won’t even talk to Michelle, and she’s one of their own. What are they hiding? It’s the same-old, same-old. You can buy an old dog a new collar but you can’t teach it new tricks. That’s how the government works-plausible deniability is the rule.”
"They might not even be withholding information. Maybe they're not saying anything because they don't know anything."
Mulder rolled her eyes in a way that said ‘Surely you don't buy that.’
Scully sighed and crossed her arms over her chest. Her first instinct had been to counter Mulder’s suggestion of a government cover-up-he was, after all, the most suspicious sentient being in the galaxy, and had the ability to find conspiracies in anything from rising gas prices to a sale on yard gnomes at the local Nursery Barn. She had to admit--though, to herself, and not to Mulder--that the lack of information from the government was disturbing.
"I've exhausted proper channels," said Michelle. "There is simply no more information I can get with my access."
"Is there anyone else we can talk--"
Michelle's phone rang, and she reached across the desk to pick it up. "Bridges,"
She listened intently for a moment, and then Scully tensed as she saw Michelle's shoulders straighten and her eyes go wide. From somewhere underneath the desk, Michelle pulled a remote control and flipped the TV on to a local news station.
"Well, I'll be damned," Michelle breathed, as a woman's voice narrated a series of pictures on the television set.
When the parents of Adam Bridges and Mallorie Way put their children on board the NASA Space Camp flight 224, they expected to receive their children back home safe and sound, flush with excitement about all the things they'd learned and the friends they'd made. Instead, Mallorie, Adam, and over two dozen children just like them are experiencing a horror unlike anything any adult in this world has ever known.
"They're probably stuck up there," says one anonymous source from inside NASA. "Computer contact was lost days ago for reasons unknown."
Our source has chosen to remain anonymous, but reveals that the most likely explanation for the mysterious disappearance is the interaction of a poisonous exhaust with the computer circuitry.
"We've had problems with it before," says our source. "But we thought we'd cleared it up. If that exhaust has reached the computer circuitry, it's probably in the main air vents by now. Those children don't have a chance of survival."
"That's impossible," snapped Michelle. "That malfunction was cleared up nearly two years ago. The source of the poison was the fuel source we were using, and it was only released under certain temperatures in certain conditions. It's all powered electronically now. That can't happen any more."
The reporter on the screen continued with her story, pausing several times to show clips of rather tactless interviews with parents. The reporter interviewed one mother of an eight-year-old boy, asking, "How do you feel, knowing that your son may never return to you at all?"
Scully was shaking with fury as the woman burst into tears and buried her head in her husband's shirt. She barely had herself under control when the interview ended and an achingly familiar face stared back at her from the television screen.
Perhaps the most saddening loss in this tragic event is that of Field Commander William F. Van De Kamp. Van De Kamp was something of a local war hero, having lost his parents during the war and joined the Armada at the tender age of fifteen. Even at this early age he showed a great aptitude for leadership, and by age sixteen he was the commander of his own squadron of snubfighters. Van De Kamp's squadron, the Roswell Twelve, were in part responsible for many victories during the war against colonization.
After the war was over, Van De Kamp came to reside as an in-house Counselor for the Space Camp program. For the past few months he was involved only in ground training for the missions, but early last week Van De Kamp signed on as Mission Field Commander and lifted off with the other twenty-nine passengers aboard the Defiant.
As the reporter spoke, pictures of William filtered across the screen. There had been no picture with the medical file, and as she watched the screen, Scully was afforded with the first glimpse she'd had of her son in seventeen years.
Sweet Heaven, but he was Mulder's son. In the beginning, those around them, even their friends, had doubted the origins of Scully's pregnancy, but there was certainly no denying whose child William was, now. The long nose, that beautiful smile, and even Mulder's mercurial eyes were staring back at her from the television screen. Scully felt her hands tense into fists, and across from her Mulder sniffled.
Michelle's eyes widened in recognition as her gaze shifted from the television screen to Mulder. "I knew he was adopted," she said softly. "I was friends with his mother. He was a good boy, always so helpful--but I never made the connection. What--?"
But Michelle never finished her question. Perhaps she noticed that neither of the other two were listening, or perhaps she had noticed the tears stinging violently in Scully's eyes were threatening to overflow, and that Mulder had already given up the battle with his.
"Poor kid," said Mulder roughly. "Got the old man's nose, didn't he?"
Scully moved to stand and grabbed Mulder's hand to pull him to his feet. He looked down at her, stricken.
"He's not gone," Scully said, and even saying the words eased the grief a little. A desperate ache to do something, anything, was re-forming in her abdomen, and her eyes skitted across the room as if looking for the answer somewhere in Michelle's tiny office.
Her gaze landed on a great glass window that was spread out behind them.
Michelle's office faced the shipyard. Through the great pane of glass Scully could see spacecraft of all sizes--from small, economic-looking ships to giant, gleaming things with graceful curves that brought to mind giant sea-creatures. In the distance she could see men and women scurrying from ship to ship, performing maintenance and managing stock that was loaded on and off of the cargo crafts.
It really was amazing, how many there were. So many, in fact, that if one were to go missing...
Scully's head snapped towards Mulder. "Scully, what...?"
"Come on," Scully said, grabbing his hand.
***
NASA SHIPYARD
Scully's heart was pounding in her chest. Mulder was babbling something incoherently behind her, but she wasn't paying attention...she was waiting for just the right moment.
They were in the shipyard, and Scully was dragging Mulder through the least populated area with the smallest ships she could see. She sighed heavily. Which one would be the easiest to get into, she wondered?
As a rule, Dana Katherine Scully, M.D., did not do impulsive things. It just wasn't in her nature. Because of this unnaturalness, she was finding it very hard to do what she planned on doing next--possibly the second most impulsive thing she'd ever done in her life, right underneath giving Mulder that kiss after she'd nearly been killed by Phillip Padgett's psychic surgeon.
"Scully, what are we doing?"
"Haven't you figured it out, Mulder? We're stealing a spaceship."
He stopped short, pulling her in close to him. "What? Scully, we can't just--"
"The hell we can't. William is alive, Mulder, and neither one of us are naive enough to think that the government is going to do anything about this. We have to go and get him ourselves."
"But Scully--"
"No buts, Mulder. For once in your life, just follow my example, okay?"
Mulder looked at her for a moment, eyes narrowing the way they always did when he was profiling. She could see the imbalance in his eyes--her impulsiveness had thrown him off, upset the usual cadence of their relationship. He was just as desperate to find William, but he didn't know how to go about it.
His hand passed over her hair, caressed her cheek, and settled on her shoulder. "I trust you, Scully."
She nodded, and took the hand on her shoulder in hers, tugging on it. "Let's go get our baby, Mulder."
***
"You think you can fly this thing?"
It was one of the smaller ships resting unguarded in the back corner of the shipyard. Getting in hadn't been easy, but they'd done it, and now Scully had strapped herself into the pilot's seat. She eyed the control panel with some degree of familiarity.
"It's a bit bigger than anything I've handled before, but I should be able to do it. Monitors show that a pre-flight check has been run in the past twelve hours, so we don't have to worry with that--and this," she flipped a blue switch. "Is the ignition."
"Where'd you learn this again?"
"Skinner ordered training for everyone during the war. When he rehired me, it was one of the first things I did."
"And where was I?"
"Around that time you holed up in your mother's summer house, writing a book. Probably biting your nails over whether or not I'd say yes when you proposed."
"Hey! That was scary."
"But it turned out well, didn't it?"
Mulder squeezed her shoulder. "Best question I ever asked."
Slowly, surely, they lifted off from the ground. Scully maneuvered their ship towards the sky, and pressed a button to her left. Within moments they'd left the atmosphere of Earth behind them.
***
MISSION CONTROL COMMAND CENTER
On the ground, Mission Control was less than pleased.
"Unidentified ship, you are not cleared for takeoff. Repeat, you are not cleared for takeoff. "
A door opened in the back, and a woman walked in.
"Commander, we've got a runaway making it's way into orbit. Should we send in a squadron?"
"No," Michelle Bridges shook her head. "Let it go."
”If you’re going through hell, keep going.”
--Winston Churchill
STAY AND SAVE MOTEL
HOUSTON, TEXAS
November 12, 2019
4:13 A.M.
Millions of lightyears away, Dana Scully sat up in bed, gasping.
Mulder was awake instantly, his arms curving around her back and steadying her as her hand drifted to her chest.
"You okay, Scully?"
She took a deep breath and nodded once. "An odd dream, that's all."
"Anything you want to talk about?"
She shook her head. "No, it was nothing," Scully checked the clock. "We had better get up anyway."
The clock on the bedside read '5:04 AM'. Scully blinked the sleep from her eyes and made her way towards the shower, feeling her way along the wall until she found the bathroom door.
They'd had a rather uneventful plane ride over, but they'd had a hell of a time trying to find a hotel room. It seemed like his speech about 'reliving the good old days' had been a priori, as they were now stuffed together in the only available room at Houston's dirtiest motel. At least they could share a bed, now--without Mulder beside her, Scully thought, the Stay and Save would have no redeeming qualities whatsoever.
As the hot water lulled her into consciousness, Scully's ever-analytical mind began to dissect her dream. She'd dreamed of hers and Williams' only Christmas together, years and years ago, when Mulder had been in hiding. She'd left William napping while she baked cookies and he'd woken to find himself alone and begun crying.
Somewhere, in the cold, dark of space, William was alone, and Scully's arms ached to hold him again. She knew herself well enough for that to make sense. But who was the other woman in the dream?
At first, Scully thought she'd been handing William over to herself, but then the lights from the Christmas tree had spilled over her face, and the eyes in her face were green instead of blue.
Melissa had been her first thought. The woman could have been Melissa, but Melissa was dead, and handing her baby over to Melissa would mean...
No. She wouldn't allow herself to think of it.
Scully rinsed her hair, letting the water trail down her shoulders and breathed a deep sigh. Honestly, it was just a dream. It was nothing but her brain attempting to process what she'd been through the day before--and she'd been through a lot. That didn't mean that her dream was precognitive in any way.
Since when did I become Mulder? she asked herself, laughing. Interpreting dreams...what was next?
Scully chuckled to herself as she stepped out and reached for a towel, drying off and wrapping the towel around her head when she was finished. Really, it was nothing, wasn't it? She was experiencing a myriad of emotions--fear for William, relief that he had survived this far, determination to get to him, and a sharp ache that resonated deep in her chest when her mind tried to reconcile William, the young man, and William, the baby.
She had missed so much.
Scully considered waiting to get dressed until she got out of the bathroom--the floor was scattered with small puddles, and she hated getting the hem of her trousers wet. She decided against it, however when she realized that, things to do or not, they'd never leave the hotel in time if she went out there in nothing but a towel. Mulder just didn't have that kind of resolve.
In the end, Scully managed to struggle into her suit pants without getting the hem wet, slipped on a button-up shirt and a jacket, and fastened her cross around her neck. She dried her hair, which needed a cut, but probably wouldn't get one--Mulder liked it long--and put on her makeup. When she emerged from the bathroom, Mulder, who hadn't worn a suit in years due to his change in profession, was dressed to kill in his Armani best, gun and all. She smiled and walked over to him, sliding an arm around his waist.
"Ready, Agent Mulder?"
"Always, Agent Scully."
***
HOUSTON SPACE CENTER
7:00 AM
"I need to speak to Michelle Bridges."
The assistant behind the desk blinked, hard. He stared at them blankly for a moment, and then stood up and popped his shoulder a bit. He looked extremely tired.
"I'm sorry...what?"
Scully smiled a bit, and Mulder chuckled. "I'm with you," he said, glancing at the young man's nametag. "John. It's too early to be alive. Unfortunately, this can't wait."
Scully got out her ID and showed it to John. "I'm Assistant Director Dana Mulder of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and this is my partner. We're responding to a letter sent to us by a Mrs. Michelle Bridges."
About ten minutes later, Mulder and Scully were seated in Michelle's office. She had aged well; there was only a touch of gray at her temples and some well-defined laugh lines at her eyes and mouth. She spoke to Mulder and Scully with a firm, sad voice that spoke of the determination she had to get her husband and son back.
Scully knew how she felt.
“I’m sorry I don’t have more to offer you, Agents. I’ve tried everything I know how, and I’m still getting nothing. I’ve been petitioning every agency and organization I can think of with no result. The government is shutting up tighter than clams.”
“The media?” asked Scully.
“The media doesn’t even know this is going on. The government is pretending this never happened.”
“How surprising,” said Mulder dryly. “A cover-up. I wonder where we’ve seen this one before.”
“There are lots of reasons the government wouldn’t want the press to know about this, Mulder. They’ve been trying to rebuild NASA’s reputation since the war ended. If news got out that they lost over thirty people, most of them minors, it could very well be the end of the program.”
“But what took them, Scully? Don’t you think it’s a little strange that they won’t even talk to the parents? Or what’s more...they won’t even talk to Michelle, and she’s one of their own. What are they hiding? It’s the same-old, same-old. You can buy an old dog a new collar but you can’t teach it new tricks. That’s how the government works-plausible deniability is the rule.”
"They might not even be withholding information. Maybe they're not saying anything because they don't know anything."
Mulder rolled her eyes in a way that said ‘Surely you don't buy that.’
Scully sighed and crossed her arms over her chest. Her first instinct had been to counter Mulder’s suggestion of a government cover-up-he was, after all, the most suspicious sentient being in the galaxy, and had the ability to find conspiracies in anything from rising gas prices to a sale on yard gnomes at the local Nursery Barn. She had to admit--though, to herself, and not to Mulder--that the lack of information from the government was disturbing.
"I've exhausted proper channels," said Michelle. "There is simply no more information I can get with my access."
"Is there anyone else we can talk--"
Michelle's phone rang, and she reached across the desk to pick it up. "Bridges,"
She listened intently for a moment, and then Scully tensed as she saw Michelle's shoulders straighten and her eyes go wide. From somewhere underneath the desk, Michelle pulled a remote control and flipped the TV on to a local news station.
"Well, I'll be damned," Michelle breathed, as a woman's voice narrated a series of pictures on the television set.
When the parents of Adam Bridges and Mallorie Way put their children on board the NASA Space Camp flight 224, they expected to receive their children back home safe and sound, flush with excitement about all the things they'd learned and the friends they'd made. Instead, Mallorie, Adam, and over two dozen children just like them are experiencing a horror unlike anything any adult in this world has ever known.
"They're probably stuck up there," says one anonymous source from inside NASA. "Computer contact was lost days ago for reasons unknown."
Our source has chosen to remain anonymous, but reveals that the most likely explanation for the mysterious disappearance is the interaction of a poisonous exhaust with the computer circuitry.
"We've had problems with it before," says our source. "But we thought we'd cleared it up. If that exhaust has reached the computer circuitry, it's probably in the main air vents by now. Those children don't have a chance of survival."
"That's impossible," snapped Michelle. "That malfunction was cleared up nearly two years ago. The source of the poison was the fuel source we were using, and it was only released under certain temperatures in certain conditions. It's all powered electronically now. That can't happen any more."
The reporter on the screen continued with her story, pausing several times to show clips of rather tactless interviews with parents. The reporter interviewed one mother of an eight-year-old boy, asking, "How do you feel, knowing that your son may never return to you at all?"
Scully was shaking with fury as the woman burst into tears and buried her head in her husband's shirt. She barely had herself under control when the interview ended and an achingly familiar face stared back at her from the television screen.
Perhaps the most saddening loss in this tragic event is that of Field Commander William F. Van De Kamp. Van De Kamp was something of a local war hero, having lost his parents during the war and joined the Armada at the tender age of fifteen. Even at this early age he showed a great aptitude for leadership, and by age sixteen he was the commander of his own squadron of snubfighters. Van De Kamp's squadron, the Roswell Twelve, were in part responsible for many victories during the war against colonization.
After the war was over, Van De Kamp came to reside as an in-house Counselor for the Space Camp program. For the past few months he was involved only in ground training for the missions, but early last week Van De Kamp signed on as Mission Field Commander and lifted off with the other twenty-nine passengers aboard the Defiant.
As the reporter spoke, pictures of William filtered across the screen. There had been no picture with the medical file, and as she watched the screen, Scully was afforded with the first glimpse she'd had of her son in seventeen years.
Sweet Heaven, but he was Mulder's son. In the beginning, those around them, even their friends, had doubted the origins of Scully's pregnancy, but there was certainly no denying whose child William was, now. The long nose, that beautiful smile, and even Mulder's mercurial eyes were staring back at her from the television screen. Scully felt her hands tense into fists, and across from her Mulder sniffled.
Michelle's eyes widened in recognition as her gaze shifted from the television screen to Mulder. "I knew he was adopted," she said softly. "I was friends with his mother. He was a good boy, always so helpful--but I never made the connection. What--?"
But Michelle never finished her question. Perhaps she noticed that neither of the other two were listening, or perhaps she had noticed the tears stinging violently in Scully's eyes were threatening to overflow, and that Mulder had already given up the battle with his.
"Poor kid," said Mulder roughly. "Got the old man's nose, didn't he?"
Scully moved to stand and grabbed Mulder's hand to pull him to his feet. He looked down at her, stricken.
"He's not gone," Scully said, and even saying the words eased the grief a little. A desperate ache to do something, anything, was re-forming in her abdomen, and her eyes skitted across the room as if looking for the answer somewhere in Michelle's tiny office.
Her gaze landed on a great glass window that was spread out behind them.
Michelle's office faced the shipyard. Through the great pane of glass Scully could see spacecraft of all sizes--from small, economic-looking ships to giant, gleaming things with graceful curves that brought to mind giant sea-creatures. In the distance she could see men and women scurrying from ship to ship, performing maintenance and managing stock that was loaded on and off of the cargo crafts.
It really was amazing, how many there were. So many, in fact, that if one were to go missing...
Scully's head snapped towards Mulder. "Scully, what...?"
"Come on," Scully said, grabbing his hand.
***
NASA SHIPYARD
Scully's heart was pounding in her chest. Mulder was babbling something incoherently behind her, but she wasn't paying attention...she was waiting for just the right moment.
They were in the shipyard, and Scully was dragging Mulder through the least populated area with the smallest ships she could see. She sighed heavily. Which one would be the easiest to get into, she wondered?
As a rule, Dana Katherine Scully, M.D., did not do impulsive things. It just wasn't in her nature. Because of this unnaturalness, she was finding it very hard to do what she planned on doing next--possibly the second most impulsive thing she'd ever done in her life, right underneath giving Mulder that kiss after she'd nearly been killed by Phillip Padgett's psychic surgeon.
"Scully, what are we doing?"
"Haven't you figured it out, Mulder? We're stealing a spaceship."
He stopped short, pulling her in close to him. "What? Scully, we can't just--"
"The hell we can't. William is alive, Mulder, and neither one of us are naive enough to think that the government is going to do anything about this. We have to go and get him ourselves."
"But Scully--"
"No buts, Mulder. For once in your life, just follow my example, okay?"
Mulder looked at her for a moment, eyes narrowing the way they always did when he was profiling. She could see the imbalance in his eyes--her impulsiveness had thrown him off, upset the usual cadence of their relationship. He was just as desperate to find William, but he didn't know how to go about it.
His hand passed over her hair, caressed her cheek, and settled on her shoulder. "I trust you, Scully."
She nodded, and took the hand on her shoulder in hers, tugging on it. "Let's go get our baby, Mulder."
***
"You think you can fly this thing?"
It was one of the smaller ships resting unguarded in the back corner of the shipyard. Getting in hadn't been easy, but they'd done it, and now Scully had strapped herself into the pilot's seat. She eyed the control panel with some degree of familiarity.
"It's a bit bigger than anything I've handled before, but I should be able to do it. Monitors show that a pre-flight check has been run in the past twelve hours, so we don't have to worry with that--and this," she flipped a blue switch. "Is the ignition."
"Where'd you learn this again?"
"Skinner ordered training for everyone during the war. When he rehired me, it was one of the first things I did."
"And where was I?"
"Around that time you holed up in your mother's summer house, writing a book. Probably biting your nails over whether or not I'd say yes when you proposed."
"Hey! That was scary."
"But it turned out well, didn't it?"
Mulder squeezed her shoulder. "Best question I ever asked."
Slowly, surely, they lifted off from the ground. Scully maneuvered their ship towards the sky, and pressed a button to her left. Within moments they'd left the atmosphere of Earth behind them.
***
MISSION CONTROL COMMAND CENTER
On the ground, Mission Control was less than pleased.
"Unidentified ship, you are not cleared for takeoff. Repeat, you are not cleared for takeoff. "
A door opened in the back, and a woman walked in.
"Commander, we've got a runaway making it's way into orbit. Should we send in a squadron?"
"No," Michelle Bridges shook her head. "Let it go."