Chapter Text
Mulder opened his eyes and took a moment to work out where he was. As his eyes adjusted to the dim light he recognised his own living room. He groaned as he sat up and rubbed the back of his neck. Since he had started sleeping regularly in a bed again, his body rebelled whenever he slept for a whole night on his couch. Mulder sat, bleary-eyed, trying to remember why he had fallen asleep. He caught sight of the box from the night before and he remembered the delight and remorse of listening to the personal conversations of Dana Katherine Scully. Sighing, he shuffled into his bathroom, berating himself for invading her privacy whilst simultaneously acknowledging that he would continue to do so immediately after his shower.
Drying his hair and sipping his coffee, Mulder settled himself back on his couch just as the weak winter sunlight started to push through his dirty windows. He continued to listen.
“Hello?”
“Dana, it’s Mom.”
“Hi Mom. How are you?”
“I’m fine, sweetheart. Have you asked Fox yet?”
“Mom, it’s Mulder, not Fox.”
“Fine. Have you asked Mulder yet?”
Mulder smiled at Scully’s insistence on not using his first name, even when he wasn’t there to hear. That conversation out the front of Tooms’ place had really stayed with her. It had stayed with him too (“I wouldn’t put myself on the line for anyone but you.”). He also wondered what she had been supposed to ask him. He thought back but couldn’t remember Scully asking him anything on behalf of Maggie.
“Mom…”
“Dana, I need to finalise the menu and do the shopping. Is Fo-Mulder coming to Easter Sunday lunch?”
“I haven’t had a chance to invite him yet. Work has been busy and it just hasn’t been appropriate.”
“Dana! It’s in less than a week! You need to ask him. What if he’s already made other plans?”
“Mom, I don’t think Mulder celebrates Easter. He’s not religious. At least, not the way we are. I’m not sure that he’ll want to come and spend the day with our family. It could be a bit awkward for him. Plus I know he won’t want to go to Mass.”
“He doesn’t need to go to Mass. He can just come to lunch. And I want to invite him - it’s not up to you to make the choice for him. If you won’t ask him, give me his number and I’ll call him myself. You said his parents are divorced and he doesn’t see them much. He doesn’t have a girlfriend. It would be nice for him to be part of a family celebration.”
“I’m not sure he would agree, Mom, but I’ll ask him. I promise. I’ll ask him tomorrow.”
“Promise?”
“Mom! I said I would. I’ll ask him and I’ll call you tomorrow night. I’m sure he’ll say no, though.”
Mulder frowned, wondering why Scully never asked him to Easter lunch. He wondered if she lied to her mother and said she asked him when she hadn’t. She was right, he would have refused the invitation with a lame excuse - but he would have been touched that Maggie Scully had thought of him in such a caring way. He couldn’t imagine Scully lying to her mom, though. He thought back to April 1995 and suddenly remembered why she had never asked him. The night Scully was having this conversation with her mother, Mulder was meeting The Thinker and getting the encrypted digital tape. He was also, unbeknownst to him, being drugged. The day she had promised to ask him, he had shown her the files and attacked Skinner. From that point on, a series of events were set in motion that would have pushed all thoughts of Easter and joyful family lunches out of Scully’s mind. And eventually Maggie’s as well.
“Oh Mulder. My God. Look at you, you’re sick.”
“I’m OK. I’m OK.”
“No. Come on. Come on. I want you to lie down. No. Come on. I want you to lie down. Take your coat off.”
“We gotta find him, Scully.”
“You have to lie down.”
“We gotta find out who killed my father.”
“RIght now you need to rest, OK? Just rest. It’s OK. It’s OK.”
Mulder frowned as he heard his own voice but had no recollection of the conversation. He knew he had made his way to Scully’s after his father had been killed but he didn’t remember getting there. He must have been delirious. But damn he was lucky to have Scully in his life.
“You’ll help me, won’t you, Scully? You’ll help me find him?”
“Sssh, Mulder. Rest.”
“Promise me you’ll help me! I need you! I can’t do it alone. I never could.”
“Mulder, please, you need to rest. Lie down and close your eyes.”
“NO! Why won’t you help me? Do you think I did it? I didn’t do it, Scully! I promise! Please… please believe me. You have to believe me.”
“I believe you, Mulder. Sssh, I believe you.”
“I didn’t kill him, Scully.”
“You didn’t kill him.”
“And you’ll help me find who did? I need your help. You’re so smart. Way smarter than me. Have I told you that?”
“No, Mulder, you haven’t.”
“Oh. Maybe it’s a secret. Don’t tell anyone. But you’ll help me find who killed my father?”
“I’ll help you, Mulder. I always help you.”
“You always help me. OK, if you’re going to help me, I can rest now.”
“Good. But first we need to get your clothes off. Do you think you can do that?”
“I don’t think it’s a good time, Scully. I don’t feel that great. And besides we have to find the man who shot my father.”
“Mulder. I know you don’t feel great, that’s why you have to rest. We will find the man who shot your father tomorrow.”
“But you said I had to take my clothes off.”
“To rest, Mulder. You’re covered in blood. You need to take your clothes off and get into bed. Can you do that?”
“But this is your bed.”
“Yes, Mulder, it is.”
“This isn’t how I imagined taking my clothes off and getting into your bed.”
“I’ll be back in a minute. Take your clothes off and lie down.”
Mulder heard the sound of her footsteps and rustling on the tape. A few minutes later he heard her footsteps returning and a loud sigh of relief. He must have been asleep.
“What have they done to you, Mulder? I promise we’ll figure it out. You’ll be OK. You have to be OK.”
Mulder closed his eyes and imagined he could feel the ghost of Scully’s hand brushing his forehead. He didn’t remember the conversation at all but he seemed to have a somatic memory of her soft hand gently stroking his hair back and running her cool fingers across his face. He was jarred out of the sensation by the sound of his own angry voice.
“You took my gun. You think I did it, don’t you?”
“I took your gun to run it through ballistics to try and clear you, Mulder.”
“Why didn’t you ask me?”
“You had a temperature of 102 last night, I didn’t want to wake you.”
“What, were you afraid I would shoot you too?”
“Mulder, I’m being called into Skinner’s office this afternoon. They’re gonna want answers and I’d like some good ones to give them.”
“So you can clear your conscience and your name? You’ve been making reports on me since the beginning. Taking your little notes!”
“Mulder, you’re sick. You’re not thinking straight. I’m on your side. You know that.”
“Look, you have my files and my gun. Don’t ask me for my trust.”
He winced at his tone and his words. Telling Scully he didn’t trust her was the biggest insult he could imagine. And he knew she knew that too. He was lucky she even spoke to him again. He was lucky that she had dismissed his actions and his words as drug-induced paranoia and had stuck by him anyway. She had saved him. From himself. From Krycek. From the faceless men who were attempting to manipulate him. The consortium never stood a chance against him once they introduced Scully. He let out a humourless laugh. They had tried to assign him a spy and a foil but all they had done was given him the one person in the world who would follow him and support him no matter what. They had handed him the secret weapon. He would have been long dead or discredited or jailed or in a psychiatric ward if they hadn’t sent her to him. The idiots. He smiled at the thought that it was not long after this conversation that she had shot him. Then she had driven him cross-country to meet the person who she thought could help him. She had risked her life, her job, her freedom, her reputation all because she believed in him, even when he was pushing her away. Even when she had every right and opportunity to walk away. Instead she had come to him and rescued him. Again.
As the next recording began there was a shift in the volume and the ambient sounds.
“Dana?”
“Hi Mom.”
“What are you doing with your shoes?”
“They started to give me blisters, so…”
“You walked here this time of night?”
“Oh Mom!”
“What is it, Dana?”
“I’ve made a terrible mistake. Dad would be so ashamed of me.”
Mulder quickly drew in a breath. This wasn’t recorded at Scully’s apartment. This had been a conversation at her mother’s house. Those bastards! Was no corner of her life sacred? How long had they had surveillance on Margret Scully? The thought made him sick. Bringing his attention back to the tape, he realised this must have been shortly after he had disappeared in the New Mexico desert, presumed dead. After she had been suspended without pay.
“I don’t see how you could fault yourself. You had to make a choice. You did what you thought was right.”
“No. I did what I thought was right for my partner.”
“Wouldn’t Mulder have done the same for you?”
“Yes! But that’s exactly it, Mom. I behaved exactly how Mulder would have behaved. I lied and I countermanded my superiors because I thought that pursuit of the truth was more important.”
“And wasn’t it?”
“I don’t know what the truth is. But as far as the FBI is concerned the truth is that if all of their agents behaved this way, they wouldn’t be able to do their job. And they’re right!”
Mulder considered Scully’s words. Did she honestly regret standing up to the FBI, taking care of him, taking him to New Mexico? He supposed he couldn’t blame her, the apparent outcome being what it was - she had lost her job, the respect of her superiors, and the partner she risked it all for had died anyway. She thought she had lost everything, including him. And for nothing. But the disillusionment and agitation he heard in her voice as she spoke about behaving like him still hurt.
“Dana, if you’re really worried about what your father would think of you… I think he’d see that there’s no right choice and no wrong one. He would have been very proud and supportive of his daughter.”
“Mom, there was a right choice to make. And I didn’t make it. I went with Mulder to New Mexico.”
Mulder found himself wishing, not for the first time, that his mother was more like Maggie Scully. Full of unconditional support, comfort, and love. Offering her daughter a safe space, a shoulder, and the words she needed to hear. He had loved his mother but he had never felt close to her. Never thought of her as the person to go to when he needed consoling or encouraging. Now, when he thought of the concept of a mother, he pictured Margret Scully.
On the tape he heard the sound of a door opening and closing and another person entering the room.
“I never should have let him go off by himself. He, he was in no condition.”
“Something’s happened to the man you work with, hasn’t it?”
“Melissa, please.”
When he heard Melissa’s voice, Mulder felt tears start to well in his eyes. Not long after this she would be dead. Murdered in cold blood. Not only had she died because of him and his quest but he had managed to ruin the last family celebration that the Scullys might have had with her. This conversation was the day after they were supposed to have their big Easter lunch. The lunch that Maggie had wanted him to attend. Instead, her daughter was driving his unconscious body across the country in search of answers to questions she didn’t even fully believe in.
“No. No, I’ve been feeling it for the last couple of days. He’s become ill or something.”
“I’m gonna go make some coffee.”
“I’m right, aren’t I?”
For a moment, Mulder thought the recording had ended abruptly. Then he heard Scully release a big sigh.
“Melissa, Mulder is very likely dead.”
“You don’t believe that.”
“No, I do believe that.”
“I’m getting very strong feelings otherwise.”
“I wish it weren’t true…”
“No. No, honey, it’s more than that. You’re radiating, Dana. You have a connection with him that’s still strong. Powerful.”
“Melissa, don’t do this.”
“Well, I know what I feel.”
“Fine. We’ll leave it at that. Because you have absolutely no sensitivity to my feelings.”
“Oh Dana. I wouldn’t say it if I didn’t feel so sure… You need a second opinion.”
“This isn’t a medical condition, Melissa. It is a statement of fact. It’s either true or it isn’t. And based on the empirical evidence which I happen to have gathered, it’s a pretty damn sure bet that you’re whistling in the wind.”
“I’m sorry. Look, I, I know that you’re feeling a lot of things right now. You may even be feeling responsible. But if you can just try and see through your, your guilt and your anger then maybe you can look past this Western Empiricism.”
“I’ll make sure to consult my tarot cards when I’m not looking for a new job. Thank-you… Melissa, I have lost somebody. I would like to deal with it in my own way.”
Through the tears he smiled at Melissa’s stubborn mystic optimism and Scully’s own adamant adherence to pragmatism and facts. They were much more alike than he had ever realised. Two sides of the same coin. Sisters through and through. Mulder let the tears fall for Scully’s loss.
*****
Mulder’s own surprise mirrored that which he heard in his partner’s voice as she answered the door.
“Frohike?”
“I know it’s late but I heard the news… Maybe I should go. Pardon my presumptuousness.”
“How much have you had to drink?”
“Do you recycle?”
Mulder chuckled at the image of a drunk and more-dishevelled-than-usual Frohike sitting at the table of Dana Scully in the middle of the night while she made them both coffee. He wondered why neither of them had ever told him about this conversation.
“He was a good friend. A redwood among mere sprouts. I guess this means he’s passing you the torch.”
“Ah, I’m afraid not. I’m soon to be out of a job.”
“Those sons of bitches. They’re rigging the game.”
“And like rats they just scatter back into the wood pile.”
“The rats that killed the cat.”
Mulder listened as Scully read from what he assumed was a newspaper article. He smiled as he heard the exact moment she got back in the game. Despite herself, Scully had become just as invested in the truth as he was. And she had always been passionate about justice. She was never going to walk away, whether he was dead or not. It just wasn’t in her. Her drive and her sense of morality were too strong to be defeated by a few men in suits - FBI or Consortium.
****
“Dana, what’s wrong? You sounded so upset on the phone.”
Mulder smiled as he realised that the last conversation he heard between the sisters was not their last conversation before Melissa’s death. He knew if it had been, Scully would be torturing herself about it.
“Missy, I… I went to the FBI today, for a meeting. And I had to go through the front entrance, through the metal detectors. And, and I set them off. I got the security guard to run the wand over me…”
“What, Dana? What happened?”
“The wand beeped when he waved it over my neck. I went to a doctor and he did an x-ray. He extracted this.”
“This was… inside you?”
“I don’t even know how long it’s been in there. I have absolutely no recollection of it being put there.”
“That is frightening. Dana, this is very serious. You gotta find out what this is.”
“I don’t have access to the FBI labs.”
“No. I’m, I’m talking about access to your own memory.”
“Oh Melissa.”
“Obviously you have buried this so deeply you can’t consciously recall it.”
“Melissa!”
“I know someone, someone who can help you - ”
Mulder jumped as he heard a loud bang emanate from the stereo.
“NO!”
“What are you so afraid of, Dana? You afraid you might actually learn something about yourself? God, I mean you are so, you are so shut off to the possibility there could be any other explanation except for your rigid scientific view of the world. It’s like you’ve lost all touch with your own intuition. You’re carrying so much grief and fear that you can’t see you’ve, you’ve built up these walls around your true feelings and the memory of what really happened. Just do this for me. As your sister. Please!”
Mulder recognised the Scully in this conversation. It was his Scully. It was his stubborn, rational, logical Scully who refused to see and hear what was right in front of her. He regretted the loss of a potential ally in the crusade to get Scully to consider extreme possibilities. Who knows what they could have achieved if he and Melissa had been able to work together?
“Missy…”
“What have you got to lose, Dana? Really? Where’s the harm?”
“Who… who is this person you think can help me? How do you think they can help? I’m not going anywhere near any of that reiki crap, I’ll tell you that right now.”
“He is not a reiki master. He is, in fact, a doctor. Don’t look at me like that! He is a real doctor, well a psychologist. He specialises in regression hypnotherapy. He can help you uncover your memories, Dana. I truly believe that.”
“Melissa, there is very little evidence that regression hypnosis is accurate in any real sense. There is a lot of concern in the medical community that it produces false memories and perpetuates delusions.”
So that’s what you think of my memories of Samantha’s abduction, Scully? I wonder, do you think they’re false memories or that I’m deluded, he thought, smiling wryly.
“There is also a lot of credible research that suggests, when implemented properly by a trained psychologist with the right controls, regression hypnotherapy can be both highly therapeutic and valid. These are peer-reviewed studies being conducted in universities by scientists, Dana.”
Damn, she is good, Mulder thought, smiling.
“What’s the worst that can happen? You don’t remember anything. Or you do and you discredit it. How are you any worse off then than you are now?”
“Fine. What’s this man’s name?”
Mulder realised that this explained something that he had never understood but never really gotten a chance to ask Scully about. After the incident with Cassandra on the bridge where all those bodies had been burnt, he had convinced Scully to see Dr Heitz Werber, his own hypnotherapist. Dr Werber had asked her if she had ever been hypnotised before and she admitted she had. He assumed she had been pulled out of the crowd at a Vegas show or something. Not that she had once before tried to uncover repressed memories. Obviously, it hadn’t been very effective. He knew for a fact that she didn’t remember what happened to her during her missing time. And he knew she remained highly skeptical of regression hypnotherapy. It occurred to him that she must desperately want to know what happened to her during those months and on that bridge for her to agree to do something she considered so far-fetched. He wished, not for the first time, that there was something more he could do to help her.
Mulder listened to her strong, accusing voice as she spoke to Skinner on the phone, asking him why he had gone to her apartment. He listened to her speak to Missy again after what, he quickly realised, would have been his father’s funeral.
“Missy, something strange happened to me today. I’m… I’m a bit freaked out by it.”
“OK. Look, I, I, I wanna come over. I wanna talk to you. Are you gonna be there for a while?”
“Yeah, yeah I will.”
“OK. I’ll see you in a bit.”
It shook him, hearing Scully so shaken. That so rarely happened. He knew that she had been told at his father’s funeral that an attempt was going to be made on her life. That someone she trusted would come to her home and kill her. When she told him about it, she was back in control and her usual stoic Scully self. He found it disconcerting to hear the uncertainty in her voice when she spoke to her sister. He heard her answer the phone again in a tone that suggested she knew who it was and then the telltale click that indicated it was being tapped. He heard her call Melissa and tell her machine that she would come to her and look for her on the way. Mulder sighed deeply, knowing that Scully would never see or speak to her sister again. His breath caught in his chest as the tape played muffled whispers and the sound of furniture being bumped. He heard the sound of a door opening and jumped as the ear-shattering burst of a gunshot resounded around him.
“Oh no… Damn it.”
“What’s wrong?”
“Let’s get out of here.”
Mulder sat up as he recognised Krycek’s voice. That rat-bastard! He killed Scully’s sister. Or at least was there - they were fairly certain that Louis Cardinale had been the one to pull the trigger but the fact that Alex Krycek was present was at once both shocking and unsurprising. Mulder seethed at the idea that Krycek killed both his father and her sister. That they had worked with him and against him over and over again throughout the years without ever knowing this important truth. He truly was worse than scum. Mulder was equally disgusted by the idea that the Consortium had kept this particular piece of audio. What, did they like listening back to the sounds of their ineptitude and failure, hearing the death of an innocent? Mulder swallowed down bile and took some deep breaths to regulate his erratic heartbeat. His fury at the shadow men and Krycek was quickly overshadowed by a guilt-infused sense of relief. He grieved Scully’s loss and hated that Melissa had died but he couldn’t help but be grateful that it wasn’t Scully herself. Even now, the idea that it could have been the sound of her body collapsing on the floor instead of her sister’s made his chest tighten and his eyes burn. Mulder ran his hands through his hair as he paced his small apartment with kinetic frustration. His body tingled with the need to do something. He wanted to punch Krycek in the face. He wanted to pull Scully into a tight embrace and never let her go. He wanted to smash the stereo that was the conduit for this overload of information. He stormed into his bedroom to change into his workout gear. He hoped going for a long, hard run would help relieve some of his physical tension and help him to clear his mind. What was he going to tell Scully? And how? He couldn’t keep this from her but to tell her would be to tell her everything. He would have to admit to his betrayal and invasion. Fuck!