From: =?iso-8859-1?q?Magnhild=20Torske?= Date: Sat, 10 Mar 2001 20:42:04 +0100 (CET) Subject: Ours Source: direct OURS By Meg Torske megibp@yahoo.no SPOILERS: Requiem RATING: PG CLASSIFICATION: SR DISCLAIMER: The characters aren't mine, I don't make any money etc. etc. If CC & Co haven't sued any ff writers so far, I don't suppose he'll start now. SUMMARY: The whole Scully family gets together for Christmas. But nothing is the same anymore. Many stories are waiting to be told. REMARKS: I've lived abroad for almost two years, so I've missed the last two or three seasons of The X-Files. In fact, all I've seen is Requiem. I'm basing this story on spoilers, episode guides and fics I've read. Which means I might mess up the story line of the show from time to time. Please forgive me if/when that happens. I also stink at writing Actual X-Files. I've tried. It doesn't work. My strength as a writer (assuming I have any) is writing about people, so don't expect any aliens or mutants in this one. I hope it's not too sappy though. Well, here it goes. I hope you enjoy it. If you do, please drop me a line - feedback means the world to me. And if you don't like it, then drop me a line anyway. Constructive criticism is always useful. Sorry I'm posting this so late -- I wrote it before Christmas, but then I had two huge exams and... Feel free to submit this story to other fan fiction archives, but please drop me a line so I know where my story ends up. One last thing: I'm a lot more comfortable writing about "Mulder" and "Scully". It feels more right somehow. But since all the characters in this story basically could be called just "Scully", I don't really have any choice. The door bell. Dana turned towards her mother. "It's them." She smiled nervously. "You go and let them in. I'll take the cookies out of the oven." Margaret nodded, then ran towards the door, as their guests rang the door bell for the second time, more insistently this time. "Boys!" she laughed, and suddenly she found herself being thoroughly hugged by first one Scully son, then another, two daughters-in-law and four grandchildren. It seemed as if suddenly, the house was full of life again. It had been a long time. They were all talking, laughing and crying, helping each other with their luggage, overjoyed at seeing each other after such a long time. How long had it been since the whole Scully family had celebrated Christmas together? Margaret tried to remember. Not since... Before Ahab and Missy. Way before. Actually, it had been her idea to invite the whole family this Christmas. She knew that Dana desperately needed something else to focus on, think about. She had to stop obsessing about Mulder, her job, the baby, conspiracies, the FBI - and Mulder again. It seemed as if her daughter's life more or less revolved around Mulder, about finding him, about revenging him, about *telling* him. But she didn't reveal her feelings. She never really had. Not Dana Katherine Scully. The Ice Queen, the Freezer Frau, all the things she had been called for years now. Exclusively by people who didn't know her. Those who didn't see beyond the facade that she was so good at keeping - although she, as Mulder, had devoted her life to finding the truth, she was afraid of revealing the truth about herself. Mrs Spooky. She hid her feelings carefully, as if she was afraid that they could be used against her. Only once had she cried in her mother's arms after Mulder disappeared. That was the time when she told her mother that she was pregnant. Afterwards, she had apologized to her mother. Nothing had ever hurt Margaret more. "Where's my little sister?" Bill Scully shouted in the direction of the kitchen and the living room, knowing that Dana would be there somewhere, as he was helping his nephew, John, take off his shoes. Shoe laces can still be tricky when you're just six years old, particularly if they're full of snow and ice. Dana had, of course, heard them coming. She just had to gather some strength before she faced them. The last time she had seen her eldest brother, had been in California. Emily. It had hurt so much to see her brother and his wife Tara awaiting the birth of their first child such joy and enthusiasm. And now Matthew was three years old already. She had never thought that it would ever happen to her. And her youngest brother? She had met him briefly two years ago. When was the last time they had really *talked*? How could I drift so far away from my own family, she wondered. She knew the answer, but tried not to think about it. That, too, hurt too much. Then there was no more time to think. Putting on a brave smile, she walked into the living room, which was by now full of four children aged three through twelve, an unknown number of suitcases, as well as five grown ups. Her mother looked nervous, she noticed in the corner of her eye. Her mother always knew and understood. "Hi, everyone." Then she didn't say anything else, she just stood in the doorway with a smile she hoped looked more or less normal, wondering what on earth to say next. Bill, who had turned around smiling when he heard his sister's voice, stiffened when he saw her. Saw her, and the little bump on her stomach, which was getting more and more revealing every day. His smile faded. She could see the shock in his eyes, as well as in the eyes of her other brother and their wives. Charlie Scully's eldest, Hannah, seemed a bit embarrassed and confused, the two youngest kids were too busy investigating this new room, but John, with all the openness of a six-year old, shouted; "Auntie Dana is going to have a baby!" The silence in the room was - if possible - even more compact. Then Dana laughed and gave the little boy a big hug. "Yes, Auntie Dana is going to have baby," she smiled. "You've almost become a young man since the last time I saw you. How old are you now, four? Five?" "I'm six!" young Johnnie shouted, as she had known he would. "I'm six and a half in three weeks." "Well, as I said, you're almost a young man now." She couldn't help but laugh again. There was something special about John. Even though she made very sure not to show it, he had always been her favourite among her brothers' children. Tara gave her a long hug, whispering "I'm so happy for you" in her ear. So she saw it, Scully thought. She understood what was going on in my mind - with Emily, the baby... "Wow, this was a surprise," Charlie said, taking over where his sister-in-law left off. "Next time keep us posted when something like this happens, okay? It makes it so much easier for us to buy Christmas presents." His voice was intentionally light, but she could see the warning in his eyes. She didn't have to ask why. Her eldest brother's voice was as sharp as a knife when he said: "Well, I guess I shouldn't be surprised. And the father just happens to be on the run somewhere, I suppose? It's Mulder, right? Panicking again?" Scully flinched as if he'd hit her. "Not now," Margaret said. "That bastard..." "Not now, Bill," she repeated, her voice sharp this time. The kids were starting to pick up that something was wrong - twelve year old Hannah naturally understood a lot more about what was going on than the other three, she looked scared, seeking her mother's hand. Scully gave her oldest brother a short hug, to try to smooth things over, but it didn't really seem like an embrace to either of them - it was just strained and uncomfortable. She couldn't help but notice how he seemed to try to avoid having their bodies touching each other. Which was difficult, with her growing stomach in the way. And that was, she guessed, just the part of her he was trying to avoid. He had never gotten along with Mulder. The hostility in that relationship definitely originated mostly from her brother - but she couldn't help but think that maybe Mulder didn't try that hard to ease the tension, either. On the few occasions the two men had met, Mulder had - intentionally? - talked even more about weird cases and phenomena than usual, wearing the most outrageous ties she had ever seen, even by Mulder's standards - and he was always very attentive to her, touching her more often. Had he been trying to piss off her brother? Had it been a kind of show of testosterone - look at me with your sister, I know things about her that you don't? Had her brother taken over her father's possessive, protective role? She wasn't sure. Suddenly, she regretted that she hadn't done what her mother had urged her to do for months - tell the rest of the family. Or at the very least let her mother pass the news on. But she had refused. She had lived in her own little world, she guessed. Obsessions can be very comfortable. They can help you shut out the whole world, if the world is too difficult to handle. By focusing on the one big problem in her life, she had managed to avoid the other, smaller problems. Problems that, even though they didn't seem very important compared to the big, aching hole in her life, still needed to be resolved. Bravely putting on a smile she was sure was more than a bit stiff, she looked over at her only niece. "Want to help me out with the cookies?" Thankfully, Hannah smiled and nodded. ************** Maybe they had been a bit too cheerful during dinner. Margaret had made very sure that they were always talking about something light, funny, definitely not dangerous. She, too, was putting off what she knew would come later. But she didn't want the children to witness it. She knew that her daughter was scared. On the outside, she seemed happy, laughing, telling funny stories that never, ever had anything at all to do with her work. But once, after she'd unintentionally met her eldest brother's piercing eyes, she had spontaneously grabbed her mother's hand under the table, squeezing it, desperately seeking comfort. ************* "The kids are asleep," Charlie's wife Karen said, sitting down on the couch next to Dana, who was sitting with her feet curled up under her with a cup of tea in her hand. With her hair in a pony tail and her face free of make-up, she looked no older than eighteen. Young, innocent. Only her eyes revealed that she was by far not that innocent. They revealed what she had seen. And experienced. The others were sitting around the table as well, next to the open fire. The silence was uncomfortable. Dana didn't answer, even though Karen's remark was clearly aimed at her, she just stared into the flames. After a while, Bill asked, his voice breaking the silence like you break the ice under your shoes a cold morning in October, realizing only afterwards that you have destroyed the intricate and beautiful pattern. But then again, there will always be other ice flowers. Perhaps even the next night. If it is cold enough. "Obviously, sister, there's a lot you haven't bothered to tell us." Dana still didn't answer, she just took another sip of her tea, wondering how much to say, and how. She had played out this scenario in her head so many times, she had known the perfect answer to every question, but now her brain seemed blank. Maybe he mistook her silence for arrogance. "Was I right? Is this partner of yours the father of your baby?" Finally, she found her voice. "Yes." "And where is he now? Why isn't he here?" A long silence. "I don't know where he is." "Why am I not surprised? He's left you, the selfish bastard. Isn't that just his style, running off when things get to difficult?" "Bill, listen..." "No, now you listen to me. That man is the main reason why Missy isn't here with us today. If he hadn't dragged you into this insane alien hunt of his, she would've been alive, and you would've been happy and safe without having to worry about all those mutants and vampires that I hear the two of you have been trying to catch. Do you wonder why I hate him? He's destroyed the lives of both of my sisters. One is dead, the other has no life anymore. And now this." He paused, narrowing his eyes as he looked at her. "For how long have the two of you been fucking, anyway?" Dana's hands shook, she almost dropped her cup of tea. Only a tremendous effort of will made her sit still, remain calm, instead of simply running out of the room as she wanted to. Her brother was humiliating her, humiliating Mulder, and what could she say to her defense? Nothing. He didn't understand. How could he? How could anyone understand what her life had become since she first walked into that office in the basement of the J. Edgar Hoover building? "That's enough, Bill," Margaret snapped at him. "I know you like this guy, Mom, God knows why," Bill answered. "But I think Dana is old enough to tell this story herself. Don't you think we deserve it? We are her family, after all." She had had enough. "If you are my family, then where have you been these last years?" She asked him, trying to suppress the rage she could feel growing in her, knowing that it wouldn't help her at all. She had tried rage. It didn't help, it never did. "Where were you when I was abducted? Did you come to Mom to help her, comfort her? Where were you when I came back in a coma? When everyone thought that I was going to die? Not even once did you find time in your busy schedule to come and see me. And how about when I got cancer? A phone call now and then, that was all. How are you doing, fine, awfully nice weather isn't it, talk to you later, good bye. So don't you come here and talk to me about deserving to know anything at all. You are only there for me when I do things that you can be proud of, make decisions that you agree in. You have no idea what is going on in my life. No idea at all. If you had shown some interest, maybe you would've." She decided to test him, as he had tested her. "Would you have found time to attend my funeral if I had died six years ago, like I should have done?" "That's not fair..." "Life isn't fair, Bill. That's something I've found out time and time again during these last eight years." Her purse was standing on the floor next to her. She opened it, and took out a thick brown envelope, which she threw on the table, hard, sliding in the direction of her older brother. "What is it?" "Open it," was all she said. Her eyes didn't leave his, not even for the fraction of a second. He did. They were test results of some kind. What he recognized as sections of DNA separated in agarose gel, although he didn't understand why. Columns of numbers. Abbreviations he didn't understand. "What is this?" "I just got them two days ago. I had the lab test if the baby really was Mulder's. Whether it was *my* baby." She hesitated slightly. "Whether it was a human baby at all." She could see her brother's hands tense around the test results he held, and he was becoming pale. She smiled a bittersweet smile. "That is what my life has become, Bill. I have to worry whether the child I am carrying really is mine." "But..." "The FBI has blood and hair samples of all their agents. It is a kind of insurance - not for us, but for our relatives and loved ones. Knowing that the jobs we do are dangerous, and that there are risks, the Bureau keeps genetic material from all of us, so that - if anything happens - they will be able to identify us if we turn up dead somewhere. Faceless corpses, without fingerprints, anything that can identify them. Under floors, in back yards, in rivers. No one has found such a corpse belonging to Mulder as of yet. I had to pull quite a few strings to get my hands on some of his blood. I had to pull even more strings to be able to get the lab to do all the tests I wanted them to make." In fact, she had forced Skinner to pull those strings for her. You owe me this, she had told him. You owe both me and Mulder this. After all we have done for you - don't you think that I deserve to know it if *someone* is using my body in some kind of sick experiment? Again? I need to know if I can look forward to getting this baby or not. Whether it really *is* a baby. It had been four grueling weeks before she found out. "Dana, I had no idea..." her mother started. "I didn't want you to worry," Dana said with a quick smile. The others were simply stunned. Especially her two sister-in-laws, she noticed. She supposed that her brothers had a better idea of what her job was really like, although they didn't even know a fraction of it. For the first time, there were tears in her eyes, and it was difficult to speak. "It's a girl. She's perfectly normal. She's Mulder's. She's mine." She was barely able to continue. "She is ours." And then she broke down in tears, crying helplessly with her mother's comforting arms around her. ******* No one dared to say a word. Margaret was whispering something into her ear, as if her daughter were five years old again, afraid of the darkness or of the imaginary ghosts under her bed at night. Because even young Dana Katherine Scully, who would later become a scientist and a sceptic, had seen ghosts under her bed. No, the others didn't understand. They just stared at her in shock, realizing then that she had been right - they had no idea. "Why isn't he here, Mom?" Dana cried, unable to hold up her cool, on-top-of-the-world facade any longer. "Why isn't he here with me? What are they doing to him?" Answering the question none of the four others had dared to ask, Margaret said out loud, for the first time raising her voice so not just Dana could hear what she said. "Fox was abducted some months ago. No one knows where he is, whether he's alive, or who's taken him." She paused. "He doesn't know." Finally Dana looked up, her blue-green eyes piercing even through the tears. She tried to regain control over herself, but was unable to. She hadn't let her feelings free for so long - and when she did, the power of her emotions were scaring even herself. She looked at her eldest brother, meeting his eyes, seeing that he, too, was close to tears. The rage was gone - instead he seemed scared. He had gotten some insight into the nightmare her life had been the last eight years. It had been a nightmare - but it had also been a dream. Whatever she had lost and sacrificed, she wouldn't have traded with anyone. "You were wondering how long Mulder and I had been... 'fucking'." She almost had to smile when she used that word. That was so not what she and Mulder had done. "Not that it's any of your business, you don't deserve the answer, but I'll tell you anyway." Sitting up, quickly wiping away her tears, she continued, "Not for too long, brother. You can relax. Your sister didn't live in sin more than six months or so." She took up the test results that Bill had put on the table after he was done looking at them. Going through all these papers that she already knew by heart, she had spent most of the two last nights reading through them over and over again, to make sure that she hadn't missed anything. She knew exactly where it would be. A 3D ultrasound picture. She had asked them to print it out for her - she hadn't believed her own eyes when she had seen it at the hospital. What seemed most amazing to her, were those two little hands. She could even count the fingers. They were so small, and yet so perfect. Those two hands were what had made her realize for the first time that it was actually happening. They were reminding her of Mulder somehow. Reminding her of the countless times he had touched her - in the beginning of their partnership almost apologetically, as if asking for permission. Offering comfort, help, understanding, or simply a cup of coffee. Then, the last year, his hands had offered a way out of the darkness. The darkness that had surrounded them, the darkness it sometimes seemed impossible to escape from. And she knew that whatever happened, she had to find him, so he could see this little miracle too. [END]