From: ephemeral@ephemeralfic.org Date: 11 Apr 2001 19:06:53 -0000 Subject: Rage, rage (Missing scene, Three Words) by AnnaRan Source: direct Reply To: annaran@wi.rr.com Title: Rage, rage (Missing scene, Three Words) Dedicated to: MBush Author: AnnaRan E-mail: annaran@wi.rr.com Spoilers: Three Words Keywords: MSR, missing scene Rating: PG Feedback: Please! Summary: What happened between Mulder and Scully after the lone gunmen leave. Disclaimer: These characters belong to Chris Carter et.al. No copyright infringement intended. Rage, rage She's staring at me again. I can feel her gaze without even looking at her. It seems they're all staring at me. I'm a freak show. See the man who was abducted and tortured by aliens and raised from the dead. Man or alien? See for yourself, put your money down for a good cause. "Mulder," she interrupts my carnival of thoughts. "Don't go. Can't we talk?" She hesitates. "About some things." She pleads those words so pitifully, her eyes always brimming with tears for the poor freak. I miss her controlled mask--her anger, but hey, I've got rage enough for the two of us. "I had to tell them, Mulder." She motions to where Langly, Frohiki and Byers had just been sitting at the table. "I had," she sighs looking for the right words, "problems with the pregnancy and I was afraid." The pregnancy. She refers to it as if it's a laboratory experiment. In retrospect, I guess that's not too far from the truth. She looks at me to say something, but all I can do is sit down. I'm suddenly too tired. She sits down next to me on the couch, that same look of pain on her face I saw in the hospital. She begins cautiously, studying my face as she speaks, ready to stop if she sees any pain or discomfort there. I hate the way she's trying to protect me. That's my job, or maybe that's the whole problem here. What is my job? What is it I need to do. . .to be? I need to make sense of this, to get my arms around it. I hate to admit it, but it's been too much to process all at once. She's talking again and I try to calm the fire raging in my head so I can hear her. "I needed Langly to get me some information on my ob gyn." She glances briefly at her belly. "I had reason to suspect that my doctor may have lied to me about the invitro being unsuccessful." "Lied? I ask her and she searches my eyes again looking for clues that I understand what she's telling me. "Mulder, Langly hacked records which confirmed what we had been told--the invitro did fail. Do you remember that?" She asks this gently, her hand cautiously approaching mine and then holding it. "Of course I remember." She winces at the tone of my voice. She does that a lot lately. "You don't get it, do you, Mulder?" She smiles ever so slightly. I smile back ruefully recognizing the same words I had said to her earlier. I don't get it. "Mulder," She brushes my cheek with the back of her hand. "This baby is the miracle you told me to. . .never give up on." She hesitates as she checks my face for a response. She must be satisfied by what she finds because she continues. "Mulder, there's no third party here--just you and me--and this miracle. . ." She looks down as if she can see the baby she's carrying and then back to my face. "But, Scully, you were barren." "I thought I was barren, Mulder." She looks at me to see if I've caught her attempt at humor. "Scientifically speaking, if that's what you're looking for, I am barren, Mulder, and that's the miracle. Don't you see?" She says that with such certainty that she leaves me speechless--Scully certain. Scully sure that what was impossible, somehow happened without a scientific explanation, other than the fact that we were damn good together that night. The memory makes me smile like an idiot. She laughs at me with tears welling up in her eyes. I love it when she laughs. "I've had a long time to think about all of this," she says with an ironic laugh. "And I am certain of one thing. Mulder, what we have together is special--special in a miraculous way. It's what I told you the night I had my vision," she smiles at the word chosen for my benefit, "the night I realized Daniel would have taken me on a dead end path to nowhere. All roads led you and I to one another because," she hesitates a bit gauging my reaction, "because we're partnered by fate. . .by God." She says this like a child full of wide-eyed wonderment and then continues cautiously in a near whisper, "to fight the future, for lack of a better phrase, with the only weapon capable of working against them-- human love, our love. Love is something you and I both know they don't possess, and it changes the outcome somehow." Her eyes are frantically searching my face for any sign of affirmation. "It's my belief that this. . .our. . .baby is part of the answer we've spent eight years searching for." Her voice is thick with emotion. "Mulder, the answers aren't all out there." She shakes her head slowly, waving the back of her hand at the window and the black starless night. "Some are here, with us,. . .and now with. . .our child." She raises her arm around my shoulders and gently pulls me down into her lap. The rage in my head has been subdued by the pounding of my heart and my shameful tears once again soaking Scully's sweater. How many times have I been here before? I shift my position and put my arms around her, locking my fingers at the small of her back. For the first time in days I've got my arms around everything that matters and I'm not letting go. She combs my hair with her fingers--her touch already the healing touch of a mother. "My two prayers answered," she says softly and I shiver at the responsibility of being a prayer answered. "Mulder, I saw what they did to you," she incorrectly responds to my shaking body. "I saw it in my nightmares." He needs to tell her now, to clear the air between them. "Scully, when I saw what they were capable of, how they could do the things they did without conscience or feeling. . ." I roll onto my back and look into her eyes so I can see what she's thinking. "My only comfort," and I laugh a little at my word choice, "was knowing you never got pregnant-- that you'd never be able to bring a child into such a world as theirs. . .and then to come back to find you pregnant. . .that knowing everything you knew and saw, you still went ahead and agreed to bear this life. . .this person so tiny and helpless against them. I tried to see what it meant to you. . .to be happy for you. . .but it meant something so different to me. . .until now." We both smile at the irony. "Scully, I died angry and I woke up angry. I know this doesn't justify some of the things I've said or done, but I was afraid that what happened to me would happen to you and. . ." She puts her fingers over my lips to silence me and shakes her head. "Mulder, I believe, I've never been less vulnerable. I've been comforted in dreams by a power I'd have trouble explaining. . .even to you." Scully emits strength so radiant that it seeps deep into my soul. I sit up and we hold each other for a long time before I kiss her as slowly and tentatively as the first time. When I open my eyes and pull away, her face is so peaceful and beautiful that I'm afraid to say anything else. The phone rings just then and we both look at it, but she doesn't make a move. I'm really not sure she even hears the ringing. "Scully," I start cautiously. "I do know what it was like, you know. . .first learning of your abduction. . .and then searching for you. I too wanted to protect you when you came back, but you wouldn't hear of it. You just wanted to get on with your life, to make it all mean something. I know you want me to stop pursuing this census thing, but I can't do that. It's not me. It's not who I was. . .who I am. It's probably not a good thing to be talking about yourself in the past tense either." I make a feeble attempt at some humor to break her silence. "I know we're on the right path, but what comforts you. . ." I put my hand gently on her belly, "is what I now know I must defend fiercely. Can you understand that?" She nods quietly and reaches for her coat. "Scully?" Her face has once again become that old mask I recognize so well. "I've got some unfinished business to tend to." She smiles at me. "I think you can take care of yourself for awhile g-man." I'm a little insulted and grateful to her at the same time. "Scully, humor an old alien abductee and take a cab. It's late." Without comment, she dials the cab service, bends down to kiss my head, and is gone. I get up, only to sit down again at the table. The room is dark and the rage burning in my head is manageable for the first time since I woke up in the hospital. I realize now it's what's kept me alive--that, and this news somehow. Where there's anger, there's hope, and without hope, I can't fight these bastards. Suddenly, my father's face, as it looked the night he was murdered, flashes so clearly before me. I realize now his hopelessness after Samantha died cost him his life. I remember the words of Dylan Thomas running over and over in my head that night: "And you, my father, there on the sad height, Curse, bless me now with your fierce tears, I pray, Do no go gentle into this good night, Rage, rage against the dying of the light." In my exhaustion, these words fill my mind and soul and I find myself repeating them over and over again like a mantra until I suddenly realize I too am the father. . .am a father. Scully and I have been gifted hope and with it, the strength we need to move forward. And it is then I hear a child's voice. . .my child's voice. . .telling me, "Do not go gentle into this good night, rage, rage against the dying of the light."