Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

It’s the fatigue that does it.

Given the latter-day insanity of her life at the moment, none of the rest of it was enough to tip her off, make her connect the dots: the tremor of nausea over a plate of bulgogi (which she’d powered through and eaten anyway; she was ravenous), a desperate weeping fit over a cute cat video Mulder had sent her, the way she was suddenly as conscious of her boobs as if they’d been written by a male author.

The fatigue, though — it scares her. Bone-deep exhaustion despite going to bed at 8 p.m. every night, snoring and unwakeable for the next 10 hours. She’d spaced out at a red light, reviving only when a chorus of car horns jerked her back to full consciousness; she’d actually fallen asleep while Mulder was going down on her, an embarrassing and awkward first that he’ll probably make fun of them both for until they die.

The list of possible causes for whatever-this-is range from terrifying and beginning with “c” to … well, terrifying and ridiculous. But she’s a practical woman; she’ll start with the least likely and most-easily-disproven one.

Thus, here she is, in the cleanest stall this Target had to offer, four different brands of pregnancy test unsheathed and ready to go. She holds her breath, mind a blank, while she does what needs doing. Counts carefully to sixty, then to 120 for good measure. Opens her eyes.

No.

No, no, no. Please, God …

Oh, no.

She can’t suppress a sob; her eyes fill with tears that overflow with a single blink. Everything you wanted, but in the worst way possible — it echoes in her mind, she can’t remember where she read that but she hates whoever wrote it.

Not here, not now — “Please, Jesus,” she whispers, fluorescent lights buzzing overhead, other people coming and going, the flushing and the air-dryer adding asynchronous notes of brain-frying sound.

Elderly multigravida. Ectopic. Blighted ovum. Increased likelihood of birth defects, gestational diabetes, hypertension, delivery by caesarean section, miscarriage, preeclampsia, placenta previa. Low birth weight, premature birth, fetal mortality, maternal mortality. An over-50 father: sharply increased risk of an autism spectrum disorder, schizophrenia, dwarfism. Again, miscarriage.

I can’t, I can’t — take this cup from me, Lord … I cannot do this. Not again. Not now.

Even if it works — against the incredible odds — the toll on her body, her mental health, her work, her marriage, her GODDAMNED RETIREMENT …

A stab of the blackest darkest resentment knifes through her on William’s behalf — she might actually get to keep this one.

How many women would be weeping with joy right now, prayers answered, a miracle within? How ungrateful, how churlish, how evil of her to react this way …

What a colossal fucking joke, what a nightmare! The greatest sin is despair, for that denies hope in God, but oh — oh, does she despair.

It’s a long time until she’s able to gather herself together enough to exit the stall. When she throws the plastic bag full of tests and packaging in the bin, she sees another positive pregnancy test in there. “What fools we all are,” she murmurs bitterly, wondering whether the plus sign was good or bad news for whoever else chose this place to discover what a radical turn their life was about to take.

She sends a wordless prayer of goodwill to this other person, this other potential life; for herself, she has nothing yet to say.

Chapter Text

An entire day, a week, two more weeks she waits, sure the unspeakable thing will just … resolve itself. Which, medically, she knows is the extremely likely outcome.

She goes about her business, breathing shallowly with the effort of denial but not bothering to refuse coffee, sushi, a glass of wine at dinner. Refuses to mentally calculate a due date. Spares it not a single thought when her job gets physical. There’s a lot going on, it’s easy to direct her energies outward, while expecting every moment to begin feeling those telltale cramps in her thighs and lower back that have always signaled the onset of her period.

Her fucking period — what the fuck. It’s been fifteen years since that was even a thing — three IUDs with five-year lifespans, basically to eliminate menstruation altogether since really there was no point to it, in her case. And at the last appointment to remove and replace her Mirena, just a few months ago, she and her doctor had decided, based on all the other signs, that she was safely through that phase of life — and hadn’t inserted a new one.

That particular fact strikes her one night just after she and Mulder have made love — it was tender and sweet and her hypersensitive breasts had been the star of the show, from her perspective. And now, this ruinous thought. Luckily he’s still in the bathroom, so she can mentally kick herself for it and scream into her pillow in private.

She hasn’t told him.

She blames it on timing — when would be a good time, in the midst of these wild cases they’ve been on, the whipsawing emotional anguish of William’s sudden reappearance, the fear and paranoia and very real danger of their work?

But it’s more than that, so much more fraught and complicated and fucked up. Her own feelings about it keep pogoing all over the emotional map, and they’re mostly negative. How can she expect him to take it? She’s afraid of looking into his eyes when she tells him and seeing fear, reluctance, regret, anger, bitterness, disbelief, despair — the journey she went through in the first moments she learned of it herself.

She’s so, so afraid of seeing hope.

Hope, when there’s vanishingly little chance of her carrying this pregnancy to term; hope, when there’s so astronomically high a chance of losing it, or of dying in the attempt. Hope, when she herself has thought it would be a mercy to them all if she quietly terminated with never a word to anyone but the doctor who would perform the procedure.

That she hasn’t done so already is a mystery to her. She could. She’s long since made her peace with God about the idea — just has never applied it to herself. Never thought she’d need to.

But there’s this tiny, stubborn, fierce little part of her that doesn’t want to. Wants to give the pregnancy a fighting chance, absurd and insane as it all is. This is the thing at the very core of her being, in the foundation of her character, that’s kept her doing this work all these years, staying with Mulder through thick and thin — constantly seeking the truth, tilting at windmills, bashing her fists against walls until they crack and crumble down.

So, in limbo, she waits.

She tests again, every other day, paying cash and hiding the evidence in the trash cans of drugstores all over the area; still positive. The weight of the secret divides and multiplies, grows like the cells knitting themselves together inside her. She feels like a criminal, a smuggler; somehow … emotionally unfaithful to her husband, disloyal to her son.

She’s going to have to see a doctor soon, if only to confirm with a blood test. She’s going to have to tell her therapist.

She’s going to have to tell Mulder.

Chapter Text

It’s not until late the next afternoon, both of them slumped staring straight ahead in the back of a squad car on the way to the motel (which the local PD and the Feds have gone halfsies on, basically to keep them from leaving town), that he asks, “How long have you known?”

Nearly hallucinating with fatigue and unable to put any kind of gloss on it, she answers, “Three weeks.”

She doesn’t say: I was sure I’d lose it and I didn’t want you to suffer that loss too. I thought of terminating so I wouldn’t ever have to tell you. I couldn’t really believe it, despite the dozens of tests I took. I was superstitious: What if this was history repeating itself and it meant I was going to lose you again? I was angry, irrational, bitter — I didn’t want you to know how ugly I can be inside. I was afraid of how it would change us. I was scared you wouldn’t want it. I thought you might run away on some bullshit noble errand as soon as you knew. I still might lose it, or die because of it, and I’m terrified.

She doesn’t say any of those things, because she’s too fucking tired and anyway they don’t matter now; she’s sure that he hears: [I didn’t trust you to take care of me.]

He makes no reply; after a few seconds, she turns to look at him, and with his eyes closed and head tilted forward, shoulders drawn in — he looks old. Maybe it’s the angle of the last of the sunlight, maybe it’s his lack of sleep and need of a shave, but suddenly he looks old. The future is now.

It’s galvanizing, painfully so: She’s awed by the force of her love for him, the way it surges up inside, damn near choking her, at a time when she’s pretty sure she’s about to lose him altogether.

But then he opens his eyes, straightens up, and reaches a hand over to cover hers, all without turning toward her. And again, maybe it’s the light, maybe it’s the posture — but he’s himself again, middle-aged like she is, the old-man vision gone as quickly as it came.

Still looking straight ahead, he asks, “Do you want it?”

“Yes.”

He turns to her, then, lambent eyes holding nothing but love and hope.

The tears are shockingly sudden, bubbling up from a decades-old well she thought she’d capped forever — every dark, curdled feeling and fear about losing him, in every way, all over again. All of the terror, anger and heartbreak of the last few days; the soul-deep weariness; the hideous, twisted grief over their son; the mechanical relentlessness of the questioning they’d endured from various law-enforcement agencies since last night; the fact that they can’t go home yet; the fact that when they do, it will be something akin to being shoved out an airplane without parachutes, miraculously landing physically unharmed but emotionally and spiritually traumatized in a dozen fresh new ways.

He pulls her to him, and she feels his tears soaking the back of her head, her neck, dripping into her collar, even as hers soak the front of his shirt. The poor bastard of a rookie cop just drives, and it’s hard to tell how long they sit there in the back of her Crown Vic before either of them is able to realize that they’re parked at the motel, probably have been for some time.

They pull it together enough to thank her for the ride, stagger inside as if joined together at the torso and shoulder, and collapse on the bed. They don’t speak; there aren’t any words. Twined together, at last accepting how inextricable they are from each other, they sleep.

For the first time in so long — so long — they sleep.