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ghostbustermelanieking · 7 years

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locking out the ghosts chapter five

chapter one, chapter two, chapter three, chapter four

s5 fic: spoilers for all souls and a little bit for the pine bluff variant and mind’s eye, part of my series that i write as i rewatch the x files.

disclaimer: i’m not trying to be preachy with this chapter in any way, shape, or form. most religious-related stuff is straight from 5x17 all souls, and the rest is just my interpretation of what scully would be feeling during/after the episode.

warning for discussion of child death (in the context of all souls and emily).

Things are fine afterwards. Fine. They work the Marty Glenn case in Delaware, and things are fine—at least between them. They don't agree on Marty Glenn’s innocence, not at first, but the truth comes to light easily. Marty goes to prison and Mulder seems disappointed. He goes to visit Marty in prison, offers to talk to the judge, but Marty refuses. Waiting outside for him, Scully wonders if he has a crush on Marty, the same way she did on Esther or Jack. If he does, she suspects it will fizzle out to nothing the same way her crushes did. If he does, she can't be jealous, because she's the one who broke up with him.

Time moves forward with ease, cases coming and going, little to no tension arising between them. Nearly before Scully realizes what is happening, it is Easter and her mother is flying down to see Bill and Tara and Matthew again. (She is absolutely delighted with this first grandchild of hers. Somehow, Scully has thought more than once, Emily doesn't exactly count.) She invites Scully, who vehemently denies and tries not to feel hurt. Her mother prods gently, suggesting that they visit Emily’s grave with flowers. Scully knows she means well, but her daughter's name in her mother's mouth after months of silence on the subject stings like a slap across the face. “Thank you, Mom, but it's too soon,” she says instead. “I'd rather stay here. I'll go to Mass.” She's been going to Mass every Sunday lately—she'd started going every now and then after her cancer went into remission, but since Emily, she's gone every Sunday that she's not been out of town on a case. She'd hoped that God could help her find peace.

(She thinks she is starting to find that peace. She'd moved the picture of Emily from her wallet to her desk drawer back in March, where she won't keep accidentally stumbling across it. She hasn't moved the chair in front of the spare room, though. Something inside of her won't let her. Like whatever is inside might get out. Like if she moves the chair, she'll be letting Emily go.)

She goes to the Easter service, and Father McCue asks for her help afterwards. He tells her about the Kernofs, and she feels that familiar pang in her chest when he tells her of their lost daughter Dara. She thinks that he wants her to investigate, until he says, “The Kernofs are devout, but their faith is giving them little comfort. I thought with your background your words might carry a certain weight.” Scully realizes then, the pain in her chest sharpening, that Father McCue wants her to comfort them. Because he knows about what happened to Emily. Her mother must've told him, she hasn't confided in Father McCue about this. He could mean her background in criminal investigations, of course, he could want her to tell them that everything is fine and the girl's death wasn't painful or was inevitable or something to that degree. Or he could want her to relate to them in their shared losses. Either way, he seems to want her to solidify their faith in God.

She doesn't tell him that she doesn't feel like her own faith in God is very strong at the moment, after the things she's seen and experienced. That her recent regular attendance of Mass is an attempt to restore that faith in herself.She tells Father McCue that she's available to meet with the Kernofs on Tuesday. The next day, at work, she considers telling Mulder, but ultimately decides not to. This could be a case, or it could be a simple hour or two spent attempting to comfort the Kernofs. If it turns out to be nothing, there's no need to pull Mulder into all of this.

When Scully goes to see the Kernofs the next day, the husband barely speaks to her. The wife is kinder—an understandably muted kindness. She offers Scully a drink before heading off to find a picture of Dara to show her. She tells her that Dara was found dead in the streets, eyes burned out. She shows her a picture of Dara on her birthday and tells her that their theory is that she was struck by lightning, that they have no idea how she even got out of the house. That she was praying when her father found her. The way Mrs. Kernof describes her husband is painfully similar to everything Scully has been feeling. The lack of understanding as to why God would let an innocent girl die. She agrees to help them.

The coroner clears things up and makes things muddier all at the same time. She tells Scully that the cause of death is unclear, due to the lack of burns anywhere but her eye sockets. The religious overtones are obvious, between the rigored kneeling position Dara is still in and the coroner commenting that it's as if God struck her down. Scully has no idea why God would do something like that.

The coroner hasn't looked into Dara’s birth parents. Scully decides on a whim to involve Mulder, at least to find some information for her. She calls him, but he doesn't answer; he must be busy or something. She leaves him a message urging him to call her back as soon as possible and heads home. It starts to rain, hard. She steadies her breathing, staring straight ahead out of the windshield. She keeps her mind firmly on Dara Kernof and doesn't let her mind wander from the case. It doesn't matter. She is going to help this family find peace. Dara Kernof is not Emily, and she is going to find her killer. Or at least find out what happened to her.

At home, she flips through the crime scene photos, looking for any clues as to what could've happened. She finds nothing, Dara's charred eye sockets staring out at her. They start to look as if they are pleading, crying out for her help. She falters. She gives into this pull in her stomach, her heart, pulls open her desk drawer and digs out Emily’s picture underneath all the stuff she slid it under. Her daughter's bright face grins out at her from underneath banners and a party hat. A birthday party she never saw, that she should've been the one throwing. A week is not enough time with your baby. She wonders if the Kernofs are thinking about all the birthdays they will never celebrate with their daughter, all the years they've lost.

Overwhelmed, she sighs, letting her eyes slip closed. The rain pours. It had rained the night she'd arranged Emily’s funeral, Mulder's hand squeezing her knee for comfort as she called the funeral parlor where the Sims had been buried. She thought it was fitting, like the sky was broken open and sobbing. She hoped it never stopped. But the sun had shone the day of the funeral. It felt wrong.

The phone rings and she scoops it up, answering with a simple, “Hello.”

“Hey, Scully,” Mulder says on the other end, voice rushed. “I’m returning your call.”

“Hi,” she says. “Uh, something’s come up. I was, uh, hoping that you could do me a favor.”

“Why? What's going on?”

“This isn’t official FBI business so I was hoping that we could keep it outside of work,” she explains.

“Hey, look,” he blurts, “I’m, uh… I’m kind of tailing a possible suspect right now, so I’m kind of rushed, so, uh…”

“I need some birth and adoptive records on a Dara Kernof.”

“Who?”

“Dara Kernof. I can’t tell you much more than that, Mulder. I’m sorry,” she says, somewhat apologetically.

“You want to give me a hint? Anything?” he prods.

“Not until you get me those records,” says Scully.

She expects more prodding on his part, but instead he says, “All right, I'll talk to you later,” before hanging up. He must've really been busy.

Scully sets the phone down, rubbing her temples wearily. Resisting the urge to look at the photo again, she slides it back in her desk, shuffling the crime scene photos and sliding them back into the folder. She can't work anymore tonight. She takes a scalding shower and goes to bed. She tries not to think.

The next morning, the police department that investigated Dara's death calls her early in the morning. A girl, Paula Koklos, has died in an identical way to Dara Kernof. A girl who is physically identical to Dara Kernof. Another young girl dead. Scully goes immediately.

Mulder finds her there, somehow. He's eager, immediately intrigued by the entire case. Scully tells him that she didn't want to involve him, although she's not entirely sure why. Maybe because this feels too personal. Or maybe because of the way he's treating it like some big, magical X-File. He's found Dara's birth records, he tells her. He's found that she was a quadruplet. That there are two other girls out there, Dara and Paula’s sisters, who may still be alive.

Mulder's theory is that some religious wacko is the murderer, based off of the position the girls died in and the upside-down cross found in Paula’s room. The social worker—one Aaron Starkey—directs them to Paula’s intended adopted father, one Father Gregory. They leave immediately, some unspoken agreement that Mulder would be consulting.

In the car, Mulder asks the inevitable question. “So, not to prod, Scully, but why didn't you want to involve me? Want this one all to yourself?”

Scully swallows, cheek pressed against the window. “No, I… thought you wouldn't be interested. Religious imagery and all,” she says lightly.

“I'm always up for a case,” Mulder teases. “Even with religious imagery.”

He's never seemed very interested in those in the past, but Scully doesn't say this. They're mostly quiet until they reach The Church of St. Peter the Sinner. “Unusual name,” Mulder cracks.

The church is just as unusual as its name, and Father Gregory is a fitting pastor. He claims to have wanted to protect Paula, to have known her birth mother. He seems to think that Paula and Dara's death was the will of God. Mulder thinks he's full of crap. Surprisingly—or maybe unsurprisingly, considering Mulder's beliefs that have been made clear in the past—he seems to think that there is no supernatural element to this case. He acts like he doesn't know what she's talking about when she brings it up.

“Well,” Scully says in response to this, “Dara Kernof was baptized on the day of her death. She was sanctified by the ritual sacrament… submerged in the spirit.”

“And why would God allow this to happen? Why do bad things happen to good people? Religion has masqueraded as the paranormal since the dawn of time to justify some of the most horrible acts in history.”

“I was raised to believe that God has his reasons, however mysterious.”

“He may well have his reasons but he seems to use a lot of psychotics to carry out his job orders,” Mulder says, like he's trying to be funny, like he's trying to be cocky. “You want to find out who did this? I suggest you autopsy the body of Paula Koklos before it’s interred, before the man who killed her has a chance to find her sisters.”

He heads for the car, climbing into the driver's side. Scully follows wearily. This is why she didn't want to bring him on; because he always freezes up on religious cases, becomes rigid in his disbelief in those things. It's infuriating, because if this were any other case, she knows he would believe every word out of Father Gregory’s mouth. But once again, they've found themselves at odds. Where they usually are.

She goes to begin the autopsy on Paula Koklos and hallucinates her baby on the metal slab. Emily’s pleading eyes, blue as her mother's and her sister's. She looks so small under the blanket. She calls her Mommy. “Mommy, please,” she says, pleading, and Scully can feel herself crumbling. This is not real, she tells herself after turning away and finding Paula there when she turns back. She is trying very hard not to cry. You are seeing things as a result of stress brought on by the similarity of this case to a traumatic experience you've recently had to deal with. But this doesn't erase the image. The sound of her daughter's voice calling her Mommy, calling for help. And she can't help but wonder if this is all a sign, if God is sending her visions. If this is all happening for a reason and she is an integral part in his plan.

She finishes the autopsy. She doesn't know how, but she finishes it. Types up the transcript and goes home. She crawls into bed and finds herself unable to sleep, tossing and turning and pushing at the layers of blankets. She's so cold. It's April in Virginia, and she is freezing.

It's not until Scully gets up and goes into the living room to retrieve her photo of Emily that she can fall asleep. She curls, shivering, in the bed with the only thing she has left of her daughter under her hand. She wakes the next morning with the photo a little crumpled under her cheek. She thinks she dreamed, but she can’t remember what about.

---

The autopsy bay is crowded the next morning. Scully decides to reexamine the results of the Paula Koklos case, having judged that she wasn’t in her right mind the night before. (She couldn't really have found those winglike things, she had to have imagined or misdiagnosed it.) She is putting up the x-rays when Mulder calls, with the news that he may have tracked down another sister and that he and the social worker Aaron Starkey are looking for her in DC. He hangs up on her before she can finish explaining the night before. Less than an hour later, he's calling to tell her that the third girl is dead and Father Gregory is in custody.

Hearing the news, Scully can't help but feel a rush of frustration. I should've been there, she wants to scream. God must want her to save these girls; that's why he sent Emily to her. But another one is dead, another innocent life. She is failing.

Father Gregory insists that he is protecting the girls, that the devil wants to kill them. He tries to find common ground with Scully. “You know. You’ve already guessed… what they are.” He tries to convince her to let him go so that the fourth girl can be protected.

Scully doesn't. Aside from the fact that Mulder would think her insane, she doesn't think it's necessary. Father Gregory may play an integral part, but she is going to save the fourth girl (who Mulder identifies as Roberta Dyer directly after their interrogation of the Father). She has to be the one—why else would God have sent her the vision of Emily? Those who have visions have some sort of purpose, and this is hers.

If only Mulder knew that. “Don't let this guy get in your head,” he tells her encouragingly, almost comfortingly. “That’s the last thing you want. Sometimes the most twisted ones are the most persuasive.”

“Mulder, he knows where she is,” she says.

“Well, that’s okay. As long as he’s locked up here, it doesn’t matter.”

“You’re not going to find her. I think you’re being misled,” she says in a rush.

“By who?” he wants to know, and she has no answer. None that he'd believe, anyway. “Scully, I think you’re the one who’s being misled. Not just willingly, but willfully. I’ve never seen you more vulnerable or susceptible or more easily manipulated and it scares me because I don’t know why.”

“I saw Emily,” she says, because maybe it will make him understand. He's believed people on visions of Samantha before—the miracle healer from years ago, for one thing. Second time they've mentioned her name aloud in months. “She came to me in a vision.”

Mulder doesn't say anything. She looks away, suddenly unable to look him in the eye. He steps closer, puts his hand on the back of her neck and leans close enough that their foreheads are almost touching. He looks off to the side as if checking for someone, and for an absurd moment, Scully thinks he's going to kiss her forehead in the middle of a damn police station to comfort her. She doesn't even think she'd mind at this point.

Instead, he says, “I think you should step away.”

He steps back, hand coming down to cover her shoulder, and she looks off to the side, blinking hard before looking back at him. “Personal issues are making you lose your objectivity,” he's saying, “clouding your judgement.”

Like that hasn't been an issue for him on a thousand goddamn cases. She's lost people too, now, damnit. She should get the same pass he's had for a while now. “You go,” she says out loud, nearly before she realizes she is saying it. “Go find the girl. I'm going to finish up with Father Gregory.” Because it's easier to agree than argue, especially in situations like this, and damnit, is this how he felt when she told him he should be off Modell’s case? She'd felt she was right at the time, and surely that's the same way Mulder feels. That he's protecting her from getting herself or others hurt. But then again, he was right on the Modell case and she feels she is right now. She knows she is right, she has to be.

“Okay,” Mulder is saying softly, taking the folder from her and walking off. Scully swallows, doesn't say anything else. She looks back down at the photo of Roberta Dyer, running her fingernails over the edge. There has to be a way to save her. She can't fail someone else.

But any hope of Father Gregory helping her is lost—he's found dead in the locked interrogation room, skin harshly blistered and burned with a guard right outside.

It takes a long time for everything to be cleared up, for them to interview everyone nearby about anything they may have heard or saw or done, and to take the body away. Scully puts in a request to do the autopsies, but she's not allowed to that night. So instead, she heads out to her car at close to ten, planning to call Mulder on the road and touch base with him. But her key won't turn in the lock of the driver's side.

Brow furrowing, she shuffles the keys in her hand, planning to try again when the phone rings. She pulls it out of her pocket and pulls out the antenna, putting it up to her ear. “Hello.”

“Yeah, hi, Scully, it's me,” Mulder says in a rush.

“He's dead, Mulder,” she tells him, bluntly.

“Who?”

“Father Gregory,” she says, fiddling with her keys. “They found him alone in the interrogation room. No one can figure it out. There was a guard sitting right outside the room.” The keys tumble from her hand and she kneels to pick them up, still holding the phone to her ear.

“We didn’t find her. The fourth girl—she was here,” Mulder is saying. But something seems to outweigh that. A strange whispering sound, and black shoes in front of her that have appeared seemingly out of nowhere. She didn't hear anyone else out here.

“Hey, Scully,” Mulder says. She doesn't respond. She looks slowly up, slowly… “Scully, you there? Answer me.” It's a man, light protruding from behind him, and yet it can't be a man. “Scully?” Mulder prods on the other end, and she can't answer because she's staring up in horror as the man's face shifts, changes to an eagle and then a lion, and Mulder is still calling her name, and the light grows brighter as the faces change…

When it fades, she is alone, still crouched on the ground with her keys in hand, her knees aching. The thing is gone. Her phone is silent in her other hand.

Scully gets to her feet, trembling a little, and scans the parking lot quickly. No one—no one going to their car or driving away, no men with many faces. The only lights are fluorescent. Shaking her head hard, she tries her key again. It works this time.

Her phone rings again a few minutes later. She answers it. “Scully?” Mulder shouts into the phone, frantic, before she can even put the phone up to her ear.

She tucks it between her cheek and her shoulder, says, “I'm here.”

Mulder's sigh is one of both of relief and of exasperation. “Thank God,” he says shakily. “I thought you were… I almost called the police.”

Somehow, Scully thinks bitterly, digging her fingernails into the leather of the steering wheel, I don't think God is who you would be thanking. “I'm fine,” she says.

“What the hell happened?” Mulder demands.

She swallows dryly. “I… I saw something.” She did, she can't deny it. For the first time in a long time, she can't deny it. Not after everything that's happened on this case.

“What? Another vision?”

Scully licks her lips. “I suppose you could say that,” she says carefully—because that thing couldn't have really been there, the same way Emily wasn't there. God is trying to speak to her.

“Jesus, Scully,” Mulder says in quiet awe. “This case… what the hell is it doing to you?”

She clenches her jaw, holding the wheel tighter. “Mulder…”

“I'm worried about you,” he's saying. “I think you need to walk away from this case, Scully. You seeing things… that's definitely not normal.”

“And you seeing things is normal?” she snaps. “What about you, Mulder? You see things on every case we're on ,and you never get booted off for that. And you're always furious when you are! Remember how upset you were when Skinner and I pulled you off the Bowman case?”

He doesn't say anything for a minute. “That's… different.”

“Why? Because you were right then and you think I'm wrong now?”

Mulder's silence is longer this time. Scully stares straight ahead at the road, glaring at the headlights across the median. Something bigger than a religious fanatic murderer is going on here—she just wishes someone could see it besides her.

“I'm just worried about you, Scully,” Mulder says finally. “Worried about your…”

“Call me if you find the fourth girl, Mulder,” Scully says tightly and hangs up, letting the phone drop in the seat beside her.

---

She goes to see Father McCue the next morning instead of going into the police station, to get his opinion on the things she's been seeing. If she could just figure out what God's trying to tell her…

Father McCue identifies the thing from the parking garage as a Seraphim from her description, an angel with four faces. The story he tells of the Nephilim, the children of the Seraphim and mortals, and the way that they are called back to heaven to protect them from the Devil, feels too familiar. It feels too much like what is happening. But Father McCue doesn't agree. He thinks she is imagining it based off of hearing the story a long time ago. Clear that she will get nowhere with him on the subject, he tells Scully that he believes God has his reasons. In the moment, she believes that, too.

Directly outside of the church, the social worker, Aaron Starkey, shows up and tells Scully that Mulder has been trying to reach her because they found the fourth girl at Father Gregory’s church. She rides with him down there, panic coursing through her the whole time. Whatever happens, she has to protect the girl. She has to protect Roberta.

When they get to the church, Scully goes straight in while Starkey lingers behind. The church is empty and silent, no sign of Mulder or any police ever having been there. When she turns to question Starkey about it, he answers in a low, menacing tone. She looks down and sees horns atop his shadow. Like the devil. She swallows and turns away to look for Roberta.

She finds Roberta under the stairs, cowering in fear. She reassures her, offers her a way out, and the girl tentatively reaches out to take her hand. Scully leads her further into the church, away from Starkey’s angry demands, muttering reassuring things. And then the light comes.

The light fills up the room, blinding her. Starkey is protesting in an inhuman voice. Roberta steps towards the light. Scully holds onto her hand, pleading with her to stay back. She can't let the girl die, she's still so young…

She looks again and sees Emily. Emily asking her to let her go. Emily calling her Mommy. “Emily,” she says in a trembling voice. She could never let her go, not her daughter…

“Mommy, please let me go,” Emily says. “Mommy, please.”

Her little fingers slip out of Scully's.

Scully watches her walk away, and she cries out for her. Not her daughter, not again. “Emily?” she calls, desperately, pleading, but Emily steps into the light anyway. “Oh, God,” she whispers, eyes slipping closed.

When she opens them, Emily is gone. When she opens them, the light is gone and so is Starkey. When she opens them, Roberta is dead.

Weakened by grief, by fear, by guilt, Scully collapses into a chair.

She tells herself that Roberta is in heaven now, where she'll be happy with her sisters. (She reminds herself that Emily is there, too, and she is in a better place.) She tells herself that this is God's will, that his means are mysterious but there was a reason he made her see Emily. He wanted her to let Roberta go. She tells herself she did the right thing.

But it is impossible to believe these things with Roberta stiff in her kneeling position only feet away. Her charred eyes look like they're calling for help, the same way Paula’s and Dara's did. An innocent girl. Scully calls for someone to come and get the body. When she hangs up, she bursts into tears.

---

When Mulder gets to Father Gregory’s church, he arrives just in time to see the stretcher being taken out of the building. The bizarrely-shaped black body bag that has the impression of kneeling.

“Oh, shit,” he whispers, moving into a jog. “Scully?” he calls out, though he has no idea if she's here, and enters the building in time to see her slumped in a chair in the makeshift sanctuary. Her arms are wrapped tightly around her torso, as if to try and shield herself. Her eyes are haunted, red and puffy.

“Scully.” He skids to a stop in front of her, putting his hands on her shoulder. “Scully, what happened? Was that Roberta Dyer?”

Scully nods, jaw clenched. She's looking at something somewhere past her; her hands clutch her arms tighter. “She's dead,” she says in a hollow voice.

“Are you okay?” Scully nods. Mulder doesn't let it end there, plows on like a freight train. “What the hell happened? Were you too late?”

She doesn't answer, still not looking at him.

Mulder sighs, collapsing in a chair beside her. Another girl dead, an innocent girl they should've been able to save. God, this must be killing Scully. And if she was here… “How did you know she was here?” he wants to know.

She finally turns to meet his eyes. “Starkey brought me,” she says numbly, but slightly accusatory. “He said that you were trying to reach me, that you had found the girl.”

“I don't know what you're talking about,” he says, hands flat against his knees, pressing down. “I thought you were going to take some time off. I thought that was what we agreed on last night, after you didn't answer me on the phone for about ten minutes and scared the shit out of me.”

Scully's shoulders tense even more, something he would've found impossible a few minutes ago. “I thought you needed me to come out here. That's what Starkey told me.”

“I never said a word to Starkey.” Mulder's hands ball into nervous fists on his knees. “Where is he, anyway?”

“Gone,” Scully mutters. Her arms are hanging loosely by her side now, her fingers trembling.

“Gone where?”

“I don't know. Mulder, I think Starkey might’ve been who we've been looking for. I think he might’ve had a hand in what happened to those girls.”

“So, what, you think he's God?” Mulder demands. “Or the Devil? How did he kill Roberta Dyer?”

Scully's mouth thins. “Mulder, you're not being fair. Of all the theories I've gone out on a limb for, because you believed them…”

“This is different.”

Something inside Scully seems to snap here. “How? How is it different? An innocent girl is dead, and I should've been able to stop it!” she explodes. “And maybe I would've if I hadn't… if you hadn't… we are partners, Mulder, and goddamnit, you believe in everything, everything except for God. You conveniently decide not to believe, and you're not there when I need you… when I need your help…”

“I thought you didn't need my help,” Mulder says in a low voice, hating every word as it comes out of his mouth. Hating himself. “You made that pretty clear in San Diego.”

Scully flinches, looks away. He notices just then that her hands are shaking; her hands are shaking, and he's bringing up San Diego, and fuck, he's such an idiot. Fuck.

Scully stands, her eyes teary but her face steely as ever. Her voice, too, strong and clear as a bell as she says, “Fuck you, Mulder.” And then she gets up and turns to leave.

---

The next day is Saturday, so Scully has more than enough reason not to go into work. That's good; she's tired of taking sick days. She downs sleeping pills and sleeps for hours at a time. She dreams tumultuous dreams of the quadruplets staring at her with their charred eyes, pleading for help. And Emily, looking tiny among the angels and demons and the wash of bright lights. She reaches for help that Scully can't give. She cries out for her, calls her Mommy.

Scully wakes with a start, hobbles to the bathroom to splash cold water on her face. It doesn't help. She crouches, trembling, on the tile and presses her face into the cotton of her towel so she won't have to hear her sobs echoing off the empty walls. She mutters something again and again into the fabric. It might be I'm sorry.

Eventually, Scully picks herself up off the cold tile and goes to sit on the couch. She turns on the TV with no idea what is playing. She loses hours at a time, the way she did the first few days after San Diego. She remembers dinner when it starts to get dark outside, goes into the kitchen and microwaves a frozen meal.

Her mother called at some point during the day to check on her; they hadn't talked for awhile, and she wants to know if Scully is planning to come to Mass the next day. When the phone rings again, Scully assumes it's her mother calling again. She lets it go to voicemail and is somewhat surprised when Mulder's voice crackles over the answering machine. “Hey, Scully, it's me,” he says. “If you're screening this, pick up. I'm worried about you.”

Scully doesn't pick up. She chews on her thumbnail absently. Mulder sighs. “I'm sorry, Scully. I shouldn't have said what I said yesterday. I don't blame you for Roberta Dyer's death. God knows I've fucked up that way plenty of times, and you're always there to pull me back from the edge. I know now… how hard this case was on you. I wish… I wish I'd figured it out sooner.” He sounds miserable. He sounds sorry. Tears well up at Scully's eyes; she stares down at the plastic case of shitty spaghetti she didn't heat up enough.

“I'm sorry for bringing up San Diego, Scully. I'm not mad at you about that. I'm not… I know I fucked up again. I've done that too much lately. And I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. And I just wanted you to know…” The beep of the answering machine cuts him off.

Scully sniffles, wiping her eyes. She climbs out of her chair and curls into the side of the couch, TV droning on in the background. She thinks about calling Mulder. She thinks about visiting Emily’s grave. She thinks about driving all night to clear the images in her head. She wonders if God will ever forgive her.

At some point, she crawls off the couch and pads into the kitchen, retrieves the bottle of wine from the fridge.

---

Sometime in the middle of the night, when he's half-awake on his couch, he makes the decision. The idea had sprung up when she didn't answer his phone call, but it solidified in his mind when he got the call from Scully's mom, saying that she'd called Scully several times without an answer. Her worry only rose when Mulder said he hadn't heard from her since Friday, and that she had a hard time on the latest case. “I know how hard the past few months have been on Dana,” Maggie had said, “and I feel awful that I haven't been there for her more. I'm… I'm honestly not sure she wants me to be.” Mulder hadn't said anything, scraping his teeth over his lower lip. Scully has barely mentioned her mother in the months since San Diego, but he suspects she has been avoiding her. He knows facing her family after Emily wasn't exactly easy.

“I've been worried about her, too,” he said aloud.

Maggie had paused for a minute before saying, “Would you mind letting me know when you hear from her? Or maybe even going to check on her? I think she'd rather hear from you than from me.”

Somehow, I don't think so, Mulder had thought, but he agreed to call her when Scully contacted him. And since then, he's been waiting. Trying to decide what to do.

And around midnight, it really does seem clear: he should go ahead and check on her. It's late, but she might still be awake. He can tell her that her mother is worried. He can tell her he is sorry. And he really is worried about her: the state that she was in when she left the church on Friday would worry anyone. He knows Scully, and he knows she can't be dealing well with any of this. He knows he should've been there for her.

He makes the decision and he gets up from the couch, shoving his feet in shoes and grabbing his keys. He just wants to know she's okay.

At Scully's place, he has to let himself in because she doesn't answer his repeated knocks. Inside, he finds a nearly empty bottle of wine, a glass shattered on the floor. “Scully?” he calls out cautiously. “Scully, are you okay?”

He heads towards Scully's bedroom, but stops in his tracks in the hall. He sees her lying on the floor in front of a door, in front of a chair wedged under a door. She's wrapped in a blanket and huddled on the ground. She's wearing an overlarge t-shirt that's he's stunned to realize is his—the Knicks shirt he's had for years. She's breathing slowly in sleep, but she jolts as soon as Mulder touches her shoulder. “What,” she mumbles, pulling the blanket tighter around her. He can smell the alcohol on her breath from here.

“Scully, it's me.” He touches her cheek. “Are you okay? What happened?”

“Mm, ‘m fine Mulder,” Scully mutters irritably. “Just tryin’ to sleep.”

“Why are you sleeping out here? Instead of in your bed?” He reaches for her cold fingers and pulls them into his.

“I wanted to be… didn't wanna leave her,” says Scully sleepily, her lids raising slightly. He gives her a look of confusion. The phone slips to the floor as she reaches for her necklace, to clasp it in her hands. “This would've been her room,” she clarifies.

Mulder sucks in a breath of surprise at that, feels the weight of her statement settle in. “Oh, Scully,” he whispers, pulling her up off of the ground and into his arms.

“I had it all planned out, was gonna get a bed and paint…” Scully shifts against him, balling a fist into the hem of his shirt. “I was gonna take care of her. I really loved her, Mulder. I wanted to be her mom.”

“I know.” He's stroking her hair a little. He'd mostly managed to block out what little things he'd remembered about Emily, but now they're back and crowding his brain, making him near physically ill. If he feels this terrible about a little girl he had a total of two interactions with, how must Scully be feeling? “I know,” he says again, and kisses her hair.

Scully sniffles into his shoulder. “And I barely even knew her. I never had the chance t-to love her. They took that away.”

“I know. I'm so sorry.”

Scully wipes her nose, her eyes. “I let her die,” she mumbles, her breath hot against the cotton of his shirt. “Both of them. Emily and Roberta… it never should've happened. I should've been able to save her… but I looked at her and I saw Emily. She asked me to let her go. She called me Mommy.” She sniffles again. “And I did it. I let her go. I let her go, Mulder. And now Roberta Dyer is dead because of me.”

Mulder rubs the space between her shoulder blades. “Maybe that was what was meant to happen,” he murmurs.

Scully laughs bitterly and loosens her hold on his shirt. “You don't believe that. Y-you said. You didn't… you didn't believe me. You never believe in anything religious… God… you n-never…”

He stiffens, his arms slack around her. She's right, he didn't believe. He doesn't believe, not in God. But he doesn't blame her, not for Roberta Dyer's death. But she needed him to believe. She needed him to believe…

“I'm sorry, Scully,” he says against her temple. “I'm so sorry.”

Scully pulls out of his embrace, mumbling something that sounds like, “Let go.” She leans forward on her hands and knees, lowering herself back to the floor. “Wanna sleep.”

“You should sleep in your bed,” Mulder says, touching her shoulder. “It's warmer there.”

Scully shakes her head firmly, huddling down in front of the chair and pulling the blanket tight around her. Mulder gives up, shifting to sit against the wall. Scully mutters something indecipherable into the blanket, pressing her face into it. “It's okay,” Mulder whispers. “Get some sleep.”

As soon as she's asleep, he pulls off her shoes, finds a pillow and another blanket on her bed and brings them to her. (He might as well make her as comfortable as possible.) He sits beside her again on the floor. Her right foot slides across the floor in her sleep, bumping against his arm. Her toes are freezing, so he reaches down to rub some warmth into them and vows to buy her some socks this Christmas.

Samantha used to sleep on the floor outside their mother's room when she was little and had nightmares. He wonders, briefly, if Emily would've had nightmares and if she would've slept outside the door to Scully's room in this same fashion. If Scully would've let her crawl in bed after nightmares, even though parenting books advise against letting your child sleep in your bed. He doesn't know the kind of parent Scully would've been. (Will be, someday.) Hovering, he assumes—she flat-out refuses to leave his side when he's injured. The doctors at Emily’s hospital described Scully as “one of those tiger-mothers”, said she chased a man down the hall with a gun. What if she had gotten a chance to be a mother, if the courts had approved her adoption petition. Would she have stayed in California with Emily? No, because she said that her spare room would've been Emily’s room. So, what then? Would she have brought Emily back to DC in tiny winter coats, held her hand in the elevator? Would she have painted her spare room a bright color? Would she read picture books to her daughter in bed, carry a gun so that no one could ever hurt them again? Would she have stayed on the X-Files? Would she have stayed with him?

Mulder rubs warmth back into her cold feet, closes his eyes to try and grab at the image. He'd do anything to give her this life, he thinks. Anything. Even if it had meant sacrificing their fledgling relationship. He would've lost her either way, it seems, so better to have her gain a daughter in the process. But then again, maybe she wouldn't have broken things off if Emily had lived. Maybe she wouldn't have. Are you the parents, the doctor had asked, and she'd looked to him as if for confirmation before looking away. Maybe they could've been. Maybe they could have.

Mulder sits on the floor with Scully as she sleeps until his ass hurts. Her toes curl into the palm of his hand. He rubs a thumb over the curve of her foot. He sits there with her until his phone rings. Scully turns on her side, muttering something and throwing her arm out. Worried he'll wake her up, he stands quickly and heads out into the living room, answering the phone with a sighed, “Mulder.”

“My colleague heard you speak in Boston, Mr. Mulder,” says an unfamiliar voice on the other side. “Your take on alien conspiracies and the men in Congress.”

Mulder huffs out a laugh. It won't be the first time that he's gotten calls from conspiracy nuts. Not the first time in the middle of the night, even. But he's really, really not in the mood right now. “Well, tell your colleague that three a.m. is a little late for fan mail,” he says irritably, rubbing at his forehead.

“Don't underestimate the gravity of this phone call, Mr. Mulder,” the voice says, and it sounds deadly serious. Serious enough that he revises his plan to hang up. “It would seem that your belief system aligns with ours. A man like you could be very valuable to our movement.”

Mulder tenses from head to toe. Pacing across Scully's living room, he can still see the top of Scully's bright head. “And what kind of movement is that?”

“I'm afraid I can't say any more over the phone,” the man on the other end says smugly. “We'd like to arrange a meeting to discuss this in person.”

Mulder rocks back and forth on his heels, turning away so he can't see Scully. “Can you give me a hint, at least?”

“You're notorious for your curiosity, Agent Mulder. I'd think that'd be enough.” The man pauses before whispering, “The fountain at Meridian Hill Park. Six a.m. Don't be late.” The dial tone clicks over, ringing harshly in his ear.

Mulder lets the phone clatter down on the counter, considering. Typically strangers calling him to arrange a meeting could be considered dangerous, something he'd want to avoid. But still… what if they're allied against the Syndicate, the people doing experiments on little girls and putting honing chips into the necks of innocent civilians? He has to go. For his sake and Scully's and Emily’s and Samantha's and any chance that this purported movement could be fighting against these people. He rubs his eyes again and heads for his coat.

He starts to leave without saying anything, thinks better of it. He tears a scrap of paper loose from the pad Scully uses to make grocery lists and scribbles a note: Scully, Had to go. I'm sorry. Take these. Have a good weekend, get some rest, and call me if you need me. He sets two aspirin on top of the note before grabbing his keys and heading out the door.

---

Scully wakes up alone on the cold tile of her hallway, a blanket tucked around her shoulders. Her head is pounding. Groaning, she sits up, rubbing circles on her forehead.

She doesn't remember much from the night before, aside from a bottle of wine that tasted salty with her tears. She thinks Mulder may have been there. She finds the phone shoved under the legs of the chair shoved under Emily’s doorknob, and deduces that she called him. She got drunk enough to forget things and apparently fell asleep outside of her spare bedroom.

This can't keep happening. Scully grabs the chair and scoots it away from the door for the first time in months. It makes a screeching sound as she moves it across the floor. She can't keep hiding her feelings at the bottom of a bottle. She has to find a way to ask for forgiveness, to reconcile this all within herself.

There only seems to be one solution, she decides as she shoves the chair back underneath the table. (It seems ridiculous, suddenly, that she left it there for so long.) She needs to go to confession. She needs to absolve of her sins, to understand why God has let this happened and used her to do it. She needs to know that she did the right thing. She decides to go in the afternoon, when she knows Father McCue isn't there. This is too personal to talk to her mother's old friend about.

She finds the note that Mulder left and takes the aspirins on top of them. She drives to the church in the late afternoon, when she knows she won't run into her mother. She tells the priest her story, grateful for the grate between them so that she cannot see his face. The shame is thick in her throat.

At the end of her story, the priest asks if she believes in a life after this one. She finds herself unable to answer. She wants to believe, but sometimes… after everything she's seen… She needs to believe that there is a better place, for Roberta and Paula and Dara and their nameless sister. For Emily, for Melissa. But she doesn't know what to believe anymore.

“Has it occurred to you that maybe this, too, is part of what you were meant to understand?” the priest asks her.

“You mean accepting my loss?”

“Can you accept it?”

Scully swallows. She can't forgive the men who created Emily and ensured that she would die. And she's not sure if she can ever forgive herself. But can she forgive God? (Will she ever be forgiven?) Can she accept that her daughter was meant to die, meant to go on to a better place where she could be with the only family she'd ever known? “Maybe that's what faith is,” Scully says quietly.

In the end, she doesn't know whether or not she did the right thing. And she's not entirely sure where her faith lies. Despite having moved the chair in front of the spare room (having, in a way, let Emily go), she knows she has a ways to go in the healing process. She's still haunted by her lost daughter. She needs to deal with it.

In the end, she calls Karen Kosseff and makes an appointment for that Monday. She's helped Scully get past things before, and Scully hopes to accomplish the same thing again.

She calls Mulder once she gets home, hoping for a full scenario of what happened the night before. He doesn't answer.

---

By the next evening, he's had a gun shoved in his ribs, been invited to join a ruthless terrorist group (called the New Spartans, of all things), and told by The People Above Him that he has to. He staggers in his door sometime after five, exhausted and wishing he'd carried Scully to bed and fallen asleep beside her instead of picking up the phone and stumbling straight into a trap. Stupid, stupid. He left Scully drunk and asleep on her floor to run off and become a double agent in an assignment that will likely kill him. He trusted a lead with absolutely no basis and ran headfirst into a ruthless militia. He left her alone. When she needed him. He collapses on the worn leather of his couch and dials her number. (Speed Dial 1, just like always.)

She picks it up with her usual, brisk, “Scully.” His first thought is, She sounds better, but then he remembers that Scully has a talent for hiding her emotions. The cracks in her foundation are hairline fractures, and she remains the strongest person he knows.

“Hey, Scully, it's me,” he says.

“Mulder?” She sounds confused. “Were you… were you at my apartment last night?”

He chews at his lower lip. “Uh, yeah. Your mom called me, worried about you, and I was, uh, I was worried about you, too, so I came over to check on you… you were asleep on the floor…”

“Oh.” Now she sounds embarrassed. “Was I… I was drunk, wasn't I.”

“You'd… yes.” Mulder exhales slowly. “I was worried about you. I am worried about you. Are you okay?”

“I'm fine, Mulder, I…” He imagines her rubbing her temples wearily. “I don't remember much from last night. It's been a hard weekend.”

He closes his eyes, her words sinking into his skull. “Scully, I'm… I'm sorry about what happened on Friday. I was an ass this entire case. I haven't… I haven't been there for you lately. I should be there no matter what.”

“You called to tell me you were sorry,” she says softly. “And you were there last night.”

But I ran off before you woke up. He licks his lips, starts, “Scully…”

“Mulder, can I call you later? It's been a long day, I've just come from Confession...” Her voice is trembling, uncertain.

“Sure,” he says, digging his fingernail into a crack in the couch. “As long as you're okay. You can talk to me if you need to. I'm here.”

“Thank you,” she says softly. “I guess I'll see you tomorrow.”

“See you tomorrow,” he agrees. She hangs up on the other end. He curls further into the corner of the couch, stretching his legs out.

He wanted to tell her. Wants to tell her. Skinner told him he couldn't. “The more people that know, the more dangerous this situation is,” he said. “You're at a delicate position, Mulder. If it ever slips that you're a double agent, they won't hesitate to kill you on the spot. Even make an example of you as a warning to others.”

“Scully's my partner,” Mulder said fiercely. “She's the best ally I have.” The only one I trust, he resisted the urge to add. “If I don't tell her, she's going to get suspicious. And I need her on this.”

“If you put her on this,” said Skinner, “you run the risk of the New Spartans targeting her. If they find out she knows…” And that was enough to convince him.

He still wants to tell her—Scully can handle herself, she'd be furious if she knew that was the reason he was keeping this from her. But now is not the time. She's been through too much in the past week—the past few months—to be worried about him. He can't tell her.

He should tell her. This assignment is dangerous. More than dangerous. Skinner went over the history of the New Spartans with him, and they have left a lot of dead behind them. They are good at disguising the dead so that the bodies aren't found for months and they're hard to identify when they are. If he dies—and he will die if he is caught, they have killed several federal agents before—Scully won't know that he is dead for weeks or months or even years. She might think he is still alive until they find him. He can't do that to her. If he doesn't come home, she deserves to know why. But. But he can't risk her. He doesn't want her to die, and she deserves a chance to move past these things that have haunted her these past few months. This should be his burden alone.

He tells himself that Scully will be okay if he dies because she is Scully and she is strong. But he knows, somewhere, that his death will be enough to break her. For the same reason that she couldn't leave him after a computer tortured him. She cares about him, even if it's in a solely platonic way, and Scully has lost too many people in her life. Attended too many funerals. They both have.

God, he hopes he doesn't die. He doesn't want to die. And he doesn't want to leave her alone. Of all the times he's let her down, that might be the worst.

#here's to absurdly long chapters?#xf rewatch #xf fanfic #i wrote this

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