Chapter Text
Nobody slept that night. Well, Melissa did, but then she could sleep through a hurricane. Just like her mother, Mulder always said. Jackson could feel Scully crying from across the house, could hear Mulder’s soft murmurs in his head, like Scully was trying to calm him as an extension of herself, like focusing on him would make it easier not to focus on the daughter on her couch. He could hear the occasional shift and creak from the other side of his bedroom door, Emily stirring, attempting to silently scout out the room, study books and photographs and papers alike.
He heard the rhythmic squeak of a floorboard at one point in the night, press-ups behind the sofa. He counted to 78 before plugging his headphones into his phone. Emily was a machine; one he was certain could obliterate the entire household should the fancy take her. He was confident that it wouldn’t though, that tonight at least they would be safe with her. But she didn’t seem to like being caged. As the night wore on and grey morning light filtered weakly through the windows, her pacing of the living room grew more nervous.
The energy at breakfast was tense. All of them had bags under their eyes and Mulder was the only person who was not staring at the floor or his coffee cup. Scully had refused to bring Lissie downstairs with Emily in the house and had insisted instead that she take breakfast up to her. Mulder had relented but insisted they had to talk everything out. At which point a rather one-sided argument had ensued, one in which Scully pointed out that ‘talking everything out’ had never actually worked for them, really, and that he was one to talk, considering he never actually said anything he meant and had spent so much of the last twenty-five years keeping secrets and keeping his emotions hidden from her. Mulder took every barb she cast at him straight in the chest, and kept taking them until she was spent, breast heaving, shoulders slumping, cheeks flushed and eyes overflowing with tears.
Deciding that he really didn’t have the energy to deal with any more shouting, crying or discussing, and that, honestly, these discussions didn’t involve him at all, really, Jackson took the bowl of porridge and bananas from his mother’s hands, along with a sippy-cup of water from the counter, and headed upstairs.
His sister was sat on the landing, eyes wide in the dark.
‘What are you doing out here, hey?’
‘Mama said I wasn’t allowed breakfast.’
‘I don’t think she meant you weren’t allowed breakfast, I think she just meant she wanted you to stay up here for a bit. See, she gave me your breakfast to eat up here today. Like breakfast in bed,’ he proffered her water and a hand, both of which she took and led him to her room, plonking down in the middle of the floor.
She was three spoonfuls into her breakfast when she looked up at him, ‘who’s Emmy?’
‘Emily?’
‘Mmhm. Mama was talking ‘bout Emmy last night.’
‘I think that’s something you need to ask Mom and Dad. But she’s come to visit for a bit.’
‘Does Mama not like her?’
He placed a hand on his sister’s soft, sleep-tousled curls and shook his head, ‘I don’t really know. I think she likes her a lot, and she’s very important, but she’s feeling a lot of very confusing things at the moment,’ clear blue eyes gazed up at him innocently and he smiled, ‘come on, eat your breakfast and we’ll go see what’s going on.’
All was quiet downstairs when he placed Lissie on his shoulders and headed out of her room with her empty bowl and cup stacked in one of his hands. Soft murmurs drifted up from the kitchen as he made his footfalls heavy enough to alert them of his coming presence.
‘…seeking you out or anything. Not at first. I saw you as I was walking by a shoe shop and I recognised you both instantly, and I just…I wanted to watch you for a bit. You had a son and a daughter and it was like, I don’t know. You seemed happy. And then I saw you again, going into IKEA, and I followed you to this coffeehouse. Jackson saw me watching you – most people don’t notice me.’
‘You’ve grown your hair out since then. It’s longer,’ he said from the bottom of the stairs.
Three faces turned to see the two kids watching on. Jackson made his way over to Scully, as she stiffly leant against the kitchen counter, stood next to her and bumped her hip with his own as a sign of reassurance before settling in next to her.
‘I figure I’d be less recognisable like this.’
Scully pursed her lips and turned back to Emily. ‘And then what? You just…searched us up, found our address, decided to pop by for a visit.’
‘I- I guess I was curious. I spent a lot of time in libraries reading articles about and by the pair of you –‘ she tilted her head towards Mulder ‘-I liked your book by the way. Very…honest.’ Mulder gave a shrug and she continued, ‘I didn’t plan to introduce myself or anything. I just wanted to see where you lived, see that you were happy. I guess…part of me wanted to see whether if it had all been different, whether you were the sort of people who would have given me a home, if you actually would have adopted me, would have fought for me. But, uh, this place isn’t really on many maps. I hitchhiked to the store, hoping I’d be able to ask about this place and you guys. Only Jackson was there, and I could hardly ask him where he and his parents lived. So I figured it might be on more local maps.’
‘It’s not.’
‘I realised, thanks,’ her face crumpled as soon as the remark had slipped out. ‘Sorry. I- I’m not used to-‘
‘It’s a defence mechanism-‘ Mulder interrupted her apology, much to the apparent relief of Emily ‘-I can only imagine what you have been through, you’re entitled to a little sarcasm here and there.’
‘And then we were here. And I was hearing about how perfect you are as parents and I was wishing so much that I could stay and that you would just accept me as one of you and we could all play happy families and I could rest. But then Jackson said that I had died and that you didn’t really talk about me because it hurt so much. I didn’t want to hurt you anymore, so I took the map and I left.’
‘Where’d you go?’
She shrugged. ‘Around. I hitchhiked to San Diego. I tried to find the Sims’ graves. I thought mine might be there.’
Scully lifted her head and stared at Emily directly for the first time that morning, ‘it’s here, next to my sister and my mom. We had your funeral in San Diego, but your coffin is buried here so I could visit it.’
‘Why were you returning the map?’
She paused, brow furrowed, ran a thumbnail along the grain of the table. ‘I figured I didn’t need it and I figured that if anyone found me, it would potentially lead them back to you, and I didn’t want that.’
A look of concern crossed Mulder’s face as he sat down in the chair opposite her, the psychologist in him showing. ‘Emily,’ he started carefully, ‘why would anyone have found you?’
‘My body…I don’t know how I would decompose. I’d planned to make my way down to the Atacama desert, and, um…I don’t know how much you know about hybrids?’
‘Enough.’
‘We’re not particularly easy to kill, see. But there’s this one point, on the back of our necks, where the implant is-‘
‘We’re aware of it, yes.’
‘I figured…I figured if someone else could kill me by stabbing me there, so could I.’
‘Why?’
‘I wasn’t meant to exist. I was an experiment. It’s what happened to everyone who stayed at the hospital when the nurses left. I figured, with nowhere else to go, that would be the best thing to do. The Atacama has so little life, see, I figured my body wouldn’t harm anything no matter how it decomposed, and I was fairly certain I wouldn’t be discovered. I just didn’t want to do any more harm.’
Mulder reached over, covered her hand with his where it was worrying the wood, and smiled softly at her. ‘Okay. Thank you for telling me.’
Scully cleared her throat and ducked her head, a short ‘excuse me, please,’ before darting up the stairs.
‘I’ll-‘
‘No, I’ll go-‘ he interrupted his father ‘-I think- I think it might be better if I go,’ he proffered his sister and she squirmed as soon as she was sat in Mulder’s lap, twisting to face Emily across from her.
‘You’re pretty.’
‘I…’ a look of confusion passed across the older girl’s face, and she hid behind her soft curls. ‘Thanks.’
Jackson sent a sad look towards the girl who had never been told she was pretty and made his way carefully up the stairs, sending out feelers towards his mother, knowing already what was plaguing her thoughts. She was in her and Mulder’s en suite, knuckles white as the porcelain they clutched as she hunched over the sink and sobbed. ‘Hey.’
She sniffed, stood straight and wiped her eyes on her sleeve as she turned her face away from him.
‘Don’t do that. I know you’re crying, and that’s okay.’
‘I don’t deserve to cry.’
He snorted as he slouched against the doorframe, ‘that’s bullshit and you know it.’
‘Jackson!’
‘I’m just telling the truth. I can read your mind, remember. Firstly, I know your language choices are much more vulgar than mine, and secondly, I know that you’re hurting, and you’re allowed to cry when you’re hurting.’
‘I’m a terrible mother. I just listened to a child’s suicide plan and all I can think about is how I didn’t even trust her. What kind of a mother doesn’t even trust her own daughter? What kind of a person holds a gun on an innocent kid and doesn’t believe them when they say they’re their daughter? I’m a terrible person.’
‘Nah, you’re not. You’re someone who’s been through a lot. A lot a lot a lot. I mean, you’ve been through…just a lot, really. I don’t think Emily would have ever expected any different reaction from you. I think that’s maybe why she came at night. Why were you awake, anyway?’
‘I felt…I don’t know, I felt like it was the right place to be. I had this feeling, like I needed to guard the house. Apparently, I was wrong.’
‘Maybe you knew she was on her way and you just couldn’t identify what it was that you knew,’ Jackson shrugged. He knew his mother was psychic, even if she didn’t. ‘Do you still think she’s here to harm us?’
Scully shook her head slowly, tears rolling down her cheeks, ‘if she was she’d have killed us all last night.’
‘Exactly. You really aren’t a terrible person you know? I mean, you were just protecting your family. You’ve lost far too much already. She understands that.’
‘It doesn’t forgive it, though.’
‘So, go down and apologise. Give the girl a hug – lord knows she needs it.’
‘And then what? It will all be okay? These things aren’t that easy, Jackson, and you know it.’
‘And then you tell her that you love her. Tell her that it’s going to be okay. Tell her she can stay as long as she needs, as long as she wants. You tell her she’s home. You kiss her forehead and tell her how you feel, how glad you are that she’s alive, but that you’re still scared. You’re scared you’ll do something wrong. You’re scared she’ll get sick again. You’re scared that someone will find us all, that something will happen to all of us. You tell her that, whilst you don’t know her yet, you want to change that. You want to get to know her. You tell her that, no matter whether she was an experiment or not, you always wanted her.’
She shook her head. ‘It won’t fix anything.’
‘No, but it will be a start.’