Fic: Six Times Someone Learns About William, Part 2
Title: Six Times Someone Learns About William, Part 2
Author: bugs
Rating: K
Genre: MSR, S, A
Word Count: 2,000
Spoilers: Through The Truth
Part 2:
Dana's tear-edged message makes Maggie snatch up her receiver to return the call, but she just gets her daughter's machine. A few frantic moments of digging finally finds the number to Dana's cellular phone, but there is only voicemail there was as well. Maggie leaves word that she's home and will be waiting to hear from Dana on both machines.
Next she tries Fox Mulder's numbers, but can only leave messages there too. He always contacts her when Dana is in trouble, but he could be equally endangered. Maggie settles in for the long wait for the return call. Since Dana became a field agent, these actions have become a sickening routine for her mother.
The phone finally rings. "Mom, it's me," says Dana.
"What's happened?"
"I can't talk--" Her daughter sounds distant, both from the cell phone's echo and emotionally. "I'm in Arizona right now, on a case. I'll come by as soon as I'm back."
"Honey, can't you just say--"
"I can't go into it on the phone." There are those tears in her voice again. Dana disconnects the call before her mother can protest any further.
Maggie considers calling Fox again, but she and her daughter's partner are always careful as to how often they team up against Dana's reticent moments. She can only go to that well so often.
Two days later, she receives another short call, telling Maggie that Dana is on her way over. Rain clouds are gathering, and she's irrationally afraid of Dana driving in this weather. She stays by the front window, watching for the car to appear.
When Maggie opens the door and sees her daughter's battered face and bleak eyes, she can't hold back her gasp.
"Mom, it's okay," Dana says, and brushes by to enter the house. "Come on inside and let's talk," she adds, as though inviting Maggie into her own home.
Perhaps Dana believes she must show her mother yet again the sort of place that she inhabits--not a house filled with chintz upholstered furniture or cabinets of Limoges porcelain. but of shadows and blank-faced evil. Locking the door behind them, Maggie follows to the living room.
She needs to remind her daughter who's the hostess here. "Would you like some tea?" she asks.
Pacing the Oriental rug, Dana shakes her head, then nods. Moving to the kitchen, she begins to automatically go through the motions for tea; filling the kettle, putting it on the stove, pulling down the tin and cups from the cabinets.
The storm clouds sink low and black over the house. Maggie turns on the lights against the dimness. "Honey, sit down," she orders, gently pushing her daughter to the kitchen table and taking over the tea-making duties.
The younger woman sinks into a chair. Maggie flinches as she gets a better look at the large abrasion and bruise on Dana's jaw. A cut is sutured closed on her forehead.
"How did you get hurt?" she asks, tense.
Dana combs her hair behind her ears. "It doesn't matter. I'm fine."
"Something was already wrong before this trip to Arizona," Maggie remembers, her fear mounting.
Dana licks her lips in slow motion, a nervous gesture that her mother knows denotes anxiety.
Maggie sits beside her and takes her hand. "Tell me."
Tears glistens in Dana's eyes but her voice is strong. "Mulder's been abducted. He's gone."
"You thought he was in Arizona?"
"Yes."
"But you didn't find him."
It's not a question. Dana shakes her head.
"Who has him?"
Dana looks away. "You can't know details--"
Maggie gently squeezes her daughter's slack fingers. "He's gone. That's what matters."
"I have to find him--"
As the kettle screams, Maggie reaches back to turn off the burner. "Of course," she says. The tea can wait.
Another lick of Dana's lips. "Because..."
Even as the clouds close in, darkening the windows, the room goes white and Maggie's body becomes weightless. Her only anchor is her daughter's suddenly strong fingers, holding on tight.
"...I'm going to have a baby."
"Thank you, our blessed Virgin, for hearing our prayers," Maggie says in a rush, the words on her tongue before her daughter can even finish.
"Oh, Mom," Dana says with a combination of affection and exasperation.
"Oh Mom, yourself," Maggie sobs, pulling her daughter into a hug. "You don't think you were the only one praying for this, do you?"
"Of course not," Dana grumbles in her mother's shoulder.
"The IVF worked? I thought your last treatment was over a year ago." Maggie disentangles herself and rises to quickly make two mugs of tea. When Dana doesn't reply, she looks over her shoulder. The younger woman is staring down at her twining hands. "Dana?"
Her daughter clears her throat. "The IVF didn't work."
"Oh, I see." Maggie puts the cups on the table and slides the sugar bowl closer. "So you really need to speak to Fox," she says archly.
"Yes. We need to investigate--"
"You don't need your combined doctorates to figure out how it happened," Maggie notes with an unlady-like snort, her joy bubbling up through her nose.
"Mom!"
Maggie raises her eyebrows. "Dana, you don't think I believed Fox's story that he was dropping off donuts when I came by to pick you up for early mass that morning, do you? A mother knows," she says smugly.
Dana hunches her shoulders. With determination, she tries to change the subject. "It was so nice to come back to the rain. It was over 110 degrees every day in Arizona--"
Ignoring her, Maggie probes a bit more. "We're both adults here--"
"Mom, I really don't want to have this conversation," Dana insists. "There's more important things to talk about--"
Her mother is relentless. "But I am talking about that! All I mean is, it wasn't an immaculate conception."
"It might as well be. I've seen the medical test results--"
"There are a power greater than any doctor's," Maggie notes firmly.
"I prayed, but for the IVF to work," Dana says, her voice low and pained. "I believed that the failure was my answer from God."
"I did more than pray." In her happiness, Maggie has dropped her guard.
Dana furrows her brow. "What do you mean?"
Maggie twitches a smile. "Nothing."
"Mom..." Dana is the inquisitor now, her gaze sharp.
Maggie finds the rain splattering on the kitchen window utterly fascinating. "You'll think it's silly..."
"I'm more worried it's something dangerous."
"I would never harm you or the baby!" Maggie protests.
"What did you do?" Dana asks with deadly calm.
"I...Do you remember me telling you that Donna Bolton went to France last fall?"
Dana clearly doesn't, but Maggie forges on. "She went to Lourdes..."
Dana jumps up from the table. "Mom!"
Maggie holds up her hand. "I asked her to bring back a bottle of the healing waters from the holy grotto--"
Collapsing back in her chair, Dana fights between a smile and tears. "Oh, Mom."
"What could it hurt?" Maggie points out.
"You slipped me some magic potion?"
"Actually, both you and Fox," admits Maggie. "Remember when the two of you came over for New Year's cookies? In the tea water." Maggie nods to her mother-in-law's Wedgwood teapot on the countertop.
Her daughter's mouth falls open. "Mulder?"
"You never know where the problem really is in these cases--"
"Yes, we do know, Mother," Dana lectures. "We had all the test results. My few preserved ova were barely viable, while he had excellent sperm mobility--" She stops. "I did not want to talk about this," she says to herself.
"It couldn't hurt," repeats her mother.
"I just can't believe you did something this desperate, Mom." Dana takes her mother's hand again.
"And spending months, thousands of dollars, and how many tears on the fertility treatments wasn't some leap of faith?" says Maggie, stung by her daughter's pity.
Dana drops her head. "Faith...If only I could believe this is how my pregnancy came about--"
"What else could it be?" Maggie asks practically.
"Mom..." Dana whispers, raising terrified, tear-filled eyes for Maggie to see.
She gathers her daughter in her arms, holding her close and fierce. She understands. "That's why you need to find Fox. You need his power to believe."
Dana nods frantically, leaving a train of mucus on her mother's neck. Maggie is suddenly reminded of such moments from thirty years ago. But this isn't a pain that a Bandaid and a kiss will fix.
Instead, she reaches for the box of Kleenex on the counter and both women blow their noses.
"I don't know what to believe, Mom," Dana says haltingly. "I've been shown medical tests...Results saying that Mulder was terminally ill--"
Maggie gasps, covering her mouth.
"The FBI is saying that he was desperate, had nothing to live for, and that's why he's gone--"
"He wouldn't have kept that from you," Maggie says definitely.
Dana gives another half-sob and leans against her mother's comforting shoulder. "They don't know him like I know him. He had everything to live for," she rasps. "Even if he didn't know about the baby yet, he wanted us--" Her words are choked off.
Maggie smooths her daughter's hair back from her hot forehead and makes low cooing sounds.
"We were so close to finally having some peace," Dana finishes.
"You do have peace, my love," her mother reassures her. "It is there, growing within you."
Dana gasps out a laugh. "I doubt that. I already have morning, afternoon and evening sickness."
"So until Fox gets back, you'll stay here during your leave of absence--" Maggie can be just as bossy as her daughter.
"What? No, I'll still be working on the X-files--" insists Dana, struggling loose from her mother's hold and going to the stove to refresh her tea.
"Why in the world?" asks Maggie.
Dana leans against the counter, cradling her mug. "First, I need the money--"
Maggie waves her off. "You can ask for a reassignment to a desk job--"
Her daughter licks her lips again, caught with her excuses. She puts the mug down with a clank on the tile countertop.
"And second...This is our section, Mom. And they've assigned some lackey to it, for the sole purpose of running it into the ground, just like when they gave the X-files to Fowley and Spender."
Mulder didn't stop working when I was abducted, and I won't either. If he was dying this past year, he still kept working. How can I--"
"You're pregnant, Dana," Maggie points out. "That's not the same. You have another life to protect."
"I am protecting my baby, Mom, when I try to find the truth--"
"Or try to find Fox," adds Maggie.
Dana stares out the window over the sink. The drip in the drainpipe sounds like a tolling bell. "I've got to find him," she says in tune with the thudding drops.
Maggie is afraid of the stark emotion that she hears in her daughter's voice. Dana has held herself apart from love for so many years, this flood may drown her, just as she needs to keep her head above water.
"You will," she says with nothing but her faith to back it up. "And you will have a beautiful baby."
"From your lips to God's ears," Dana says with no irony.
"Shall we pray?" her mother suggests, bowing her head before Dana can answer.
"Yes, please."
She comes back to the table to sit beside her mother and drops her own head with relief before lacing her hands together. They speak old, familiar words weighed with new meaning and urgency until their voices are raw.
"Amen," Maggie finally says softly . The two women cross themselves. Then she clasps hands with Dana. "Do you feel better, sweetie?"
"I do," her daughter says, speaking as if coming from a trance.
"That's what mothers are for." Maggie lays a warm palm on Dana's abdomen. "You'll see."
At her daughter's bright smile, she knows that she's said the right thing.
"I am going to be a mother, aren't I?" Dana says, as though the idea has suddenly come to her.
The answer is in the rhythm of the water in the drain, now a rush of excitement, all the heavens open.
~ end part 2
Author: bugs
Rating: K
Genre: MSR, S, A
Word Count: 2,000
Spoilers: Through The Truth
Part 2:
Dana's tear-edged message makes Maggie snatch up her receiver to return the call, but she just gets her daughter's machine. A few frantic moments of digging finally finds the number to Dana's cellular phone, but there is only voicemail there was as well. Maggie leaves word that she's home and will be waiting to hear from Dana on both machines.
Next she tries Fox Mulder's numbers, but can only leave messages there too. He always contacts her when Dana is in trouble, but he could be equally endangered. Maggie settles in for the long wait for the return call. Since Dana became a field agent, these actions have become a sickening routine for her mother.
The phone finally rings. "Mom, it's me," says Dana.
"What's happened?"
"I can't talk--" Her daughter sounds distant, both from the cell phone's echo and emotionally. "I'm in Arizona right now, on a case. I'll come by as soon as I'm back."
"Honey, can't you just say--"
"I can't go into it on the phone." There are those tears in her voice again. Dana disconnects the call before her mother can protest any further.
Maggie considers calling Fox again, but she and her daughter's partner are always careful as to how often they team up against Dana's reticent moments. She can only go to that well so often.
Two days later, she receives another short call, telling Maggie that Dana is on her way over. Rain clouds are gathering, and she's irrationally afraid of Dana driving in this weather. She stays by the front window, watching for the car to appear.
When Maggie opens the door and sees her daughter's battered face and bleak eyes, she can't hold back her gasp.
"Mom, it's okay," Dana says, and brushes by to enter the house. "Come on inside and let's talk," she adds, as though inviting Maggie into her own home.
Perhaps Dana believes she must show her mother yet again the sort of place that she inhabits--not a house filled with chintz upholstered furniture or cabinets of Limoges porcelain. but of shadows and blank-faced evil. Locking the door behind them, Maggie follows to the living room.
She needs to remind her daughter who's the hostess here. "Would you like some tea?" she asks.
Pacing the Oriental rug, Dana shakes her head, then nods. Moving to the kitchen, she begins to automatically go through the motions for tea; filling the kettle, putting it on the stove, pulling down the tin and cups from the cabinets.
The storm clouds sink low and black over the house. Maggie turns on the lights against the dimness. "Honey, sit down," she orders, gently pushing her daughter to the kitchen table and taking over the tea-making duties.
The younger woman sinks into a chair. Maggie flinches as she gets a better look at the large abrasion and bruise on Dana's jaw. A cut is sutured closed on her forehead.
"How did you get hurt?" she asks, tense.
Dana combs her hair behind her ears. "It doesn't matter. I'm fine."
"Something was already wrong before this trip to Arizona," Maggie remembers, her fear mounting.
Dana licks her lips in slow motion, a nervous gesture that her mother knows denotes anxiety.
Maggie sits beside her and takes her hand. "Tell me."
Tears glistens in Dana's eyes but her voice is strong. "Mulder's been abducted. He's gone."
"You thought he was in Arizona?"
"Yes."
"But you didn't find him."
It's not a question. Dana shakes her head.
"Who has him?"
Dana looks away. "You can't know details--"
Maggie gently squeezes her daughter's slack fingers. "He's gone. That's what matters."
"I have to find him--"
As the kettle screams, Maggie reaches back to turn off the burner. "Of course," she says. The tea can wait.
Another lick of Dana's lips. "Because..."
Even as the clouds close in, darkening the windows, the room goes white and Maggie's body becomes weightless. Her only anchor is her daughter's suddenly strong fingers, holding on tight.
"...I'm going to have a baby."
"Thank you, our blessed Virgin, for hearing our prayers," Maggie says in a rush, the words on her tongue before her daughter can even finish.
"Oh, Mom," Dana says with a combination of affection and exasperation.
"Oh Mom, yourself," Maggie sobs, pulling her daughter into a hug. "You don't think you were the only one praying for this, do you?"
"Of course not," Dana grumbles in her mother's shoulder.
"The IVF worked? I thought your last treatment was over a year ago." Maggie disentangles herself and rises to quickly make two mugs of tea. When Dana doesn't reply, she looks over her shoulder. The younger woman is staring down at her twining hands. "Dana?"
Her daughter clears her throat. "The IVF didn't work."
"Oh, I see." Maggie puts the cups on the table and slides the sugar bowl closer. "So you really need to speak to Fox," she says archly.
"Yes. We need to investigate--"
"You don't need your combined doctorates to figure out how it happened," Maggie notes with an unlady-like snort, her joy bubbling up through her nose.
"Mom!"
Maggie raises her eyebrows. "Dana, you don't think I believed Fox's story that he was dropping off donuts when I came by to pick you up for early mass that morning, do you? A mother knows," she says smugly.
Dana hunches her shoulders. With determination, she tries to change the subject. "It was so nice to come back to the rain. It was over 110 degrees every day in Arizona--"
Ignoring her, Maggie probes a bit more. "We're both adults here--"
"Mom, I really don't want to have this conversation," Dana insists. "There's more important things to talk about--"
Her mother is relentless. "But I am talking about that! All I mean is, it wasn't an immaculate conception."
"It might as well be. I've seen the medical test results--"
"There are a power greater than any doctor's," Maggie notes firmly.
"I prayed, but for the IVF to work," Dana says, her voice low and pained. "I believed that the failure was my answer from God."
"I did more than pray." In her happiness, Maggie has dropped her guard.
Dana furrows her brow. "What do you mean?"
Maggie twitches a smile. "Nothing."
"Mom..." Dana is the inquisitor now, her gaze sharp.
Maggie finds the rain splattering on the kitchen window utterly fascinating. "You'll think it's silly..."
"I'm more worried it's something dangerous."
"I would never harm you or the baby!" Maggie protests.
"What did you do?" Dana asks with deadly calm.
"I...Do you remember me telling you that Donna Bolton went to France last fall?"
Dana clearly doesn't, but Maggie forges on. "She went to Lourdes..."
Dana jumps up from the table. "Mom!"
Maggie holds up her hand. "I asked her to bring back a bottle of the healing waters from the holy grotto--"
Collapsing back in her chair, Dana fights between a smile and tears. "Oh, Mom."
"What could it hurt?" Maggie points out.
"You slipped me some magic potion?"
"Actually, both you and Fox," admits Maggie. "Remember when the two of you came over for New Year's cookies? In the tea water." Maggie nods to her mother-in-law's Wedgwood teapot on the countertop.
Her daughter's mouth falls open. "Mulder?"
"You never know where the problem really is in these cases--"
"Yes, we do know, Mother," Dana lectures. "We had all the test results. My few preserved ova were barely viable, while he had excellent sperm mobility--" She stops. "I did not want to talk about this," she says to herself.
"It couldn't hurt," repeats her mother.
"I just can't believe you did something this desperate, Mom." Dana takes her mother's hand again.
"And spending months, thousands of dollars, and how many tears on the fertility treatments wasn't some leap of faith?" says Maggie, stung by her daughter's pity.
Dana drops her head. "Faith...If only I could believe this is how my pregnancy came about--"
"What else could it be?" Maggie asks practically.
"Mom..." Dana whispers, raising terrified, tear-filled eyes for Maggie to see.
She gathers her daughter in her arms, holding her close and fierce. She understands. "That's why you need to find Fox. You need his power to believe."
Dana nods frantically, leaving a train of mucus on her mother's neck. Maggie is suddenly reminded of such moments from thirty years ago. But this isn't a pain that a Bandaid and a kiss will fix.
Instead, she reaches for the box of Kleenex on the counter and both women blow their noses.
"I don't know what to believe, Mom," Dana says haltingly. "I've been shown medical tests...Results saying that Mulder was terminally ill--"
Maggie gasps, covering her mouth.
"The FBI is saying that he was desperate, had nothing to live for, and that's why he's gone--"
"He wouldn't have kept that from you," Maggie says definitely.
Dana gives another half-sob and leans against her mother's comforting shoulder. "They don't know him like I know him. He had everything to live for," she rasps. "Even if he didn't know about the baby yet, he wanted us--" Her words are choked off.
Maggie smooths her daughter's hair back from her hot forehead and makes low cooing sounds.
"We were so close to finally having some peace," Dana finishes.
"You do have peace, my love," her mother reassures her. "It is there, growing within you."
Dana gasps out a laugh. "I doubt that. I already have morning, afternoon and evening sickness."
"So until Fox gets back, you'll stay here during your leave of absence--" Maggie can be just as bossy as her daughter.
"What? No, I'll still be working on the X-files--" insists Dana, struggling loose from her mother's hold and going to the stove to refresh her tea.
"Why in the world?" asks Maggie.
Dana leans against the counter, cradling her mug. "First, I need the money--"
Maggie waves her off. "You can ask for a reassignment to a desk job--"
Her daughter licks her lips again, caught with her excuses. She puts the mug down with a clank on the tile countertop.
"And second...This is our section, Mom. And they've assigned some lackey to it, for the sole purpose of running it into the ground, just like when they gave the X-files to Fowley and Spender."
Mulder didn't stop working when I was abducted, and I won't either. If he was dying this past year, he still kept working. How can I--"
"You're pregnant, Dana," Maggie points out. "That's not the same. You have another life to protect."
"I am protecting my baby, Mom, when I try to find the truth--"
"Or try to find Fox," adds Maggie.
Dana stares out the window over the sink. The drip in the drainpipe sounds like a tolling bell. "I've got to find him," she says in tune with the thudding drops.
Maggie is afraid of the stark emotion that she hears in her daughter's voice. Dana has held herself apart from love for so many years, this flood may drown her, just as she needs to keep her head above water.
"You will," she says with nothing but her faith to back it up. "And you will have a beautiful baby."
"From your lips to God's ears," Dana says with no irony.
"Shall we pray?" her mother suggests, bowing her head before Dana can answer.
"Yes, please."
She comes back to the table to sit beside her mother and drops her own head with relief before lacing her hands together. They speak old, familiar words weighed with new meaning and urgency until their voices are raw.
"Amen," Maggie finally says softly . The two women cross themselves. Then she clasps hands with Dana. "Do you feel better, sweetie?"
"I do," her daughter says, speaking as if coming from a trance.
"That's what mothers are for." Maggie lays a warm palm on Dana's abdomen. "You'll see."
At her daughter's bright smile, she knows that she's said the right thing.
"I am going to be a mother, aren't I?" Dana says, as though the idea has suddenly come to her.
The answer is in the rhythm of the water in the drain, now a rush of excitement, all the heavens open.
~ end part 2