Work Text:
2016
Monica Reyes sat perched on an old split rail fence, while John Doggett was hunched beside her, resting his elbows on the top beam. Some two hundred feet away, a young girl sitting atop a tan horse was letting it pace nervously while she absent-mindedly adjusted her hair and then her grip, her focus truly on the open space before her dotted only with three barrels. Behind her, another girl and horse stood, but far more casually.
The first girl took off, racing her horse around the barrels, the horse’s body leaning so far towards the ground on each pass that Monica’s grip on the fence tightened at each pass. Less than 30 seconds later, it was over and she and John exploded in cheers. The first girl fist bumped the second girl, and Monica’s heart gave a happy flutter, as it always did when she watched their casual displays of sisterly love. The second girl took her place, but was off just a second later, for she was not the type of person to waste time. Her appaloosa took the first barrel a little long, but they quickly recovered and she finished with cries of exaltation so loud that the two adults at the opposite end of the field could hear her clearly.
John waved his arms in the air until he had the attention of the girls. “Time to get ready for dinner!” he called out, and the girl disappeared into the horse barn while he and Monica headed to the large white farmhouse in which they lived. They didn’t say much to one another – they rarely did, even when they first moved in, eight years earlier. John made his way to the kitchen and Monica followed, for it was more his house than hers. He lifted up the lid of the crock pot, breathing in deeply before grabbing a cooking spoon and giving it a stir. He sampled it and grinned. “Best chili I think I’ve ever made.” He held out the spoon to her and she came over, giving it a taste and then agreeing. She didn’t have the heart to remind him that it had probably been years since she’d last tried his chili, and therefore no longer remembered it.
She wasn’t home much. At best, she could get a full week out of every month to come home and be with John and their daughters. The ache of time lost never left her, though it had been this way almost since the beginning. The pain of having to leave her infant daughter after only a few months, and then not returning until two weeks later still felt fresh. Her daughter had started to babble and reach for toys in her absence, and she’d grown so much. But this was the only way to keep them all alive and safe, so she kept leaving and returning and crying over time lost and milestones missed, and doing her best to savor the rare moments of family life she was able to experience.
She’d never wanted to be in such a position, yet here she was. All due to one complicated night in the desert. With emotions running high after Mulder and Scully’s escape, she and John had checked into a motel for the night, and then nine years of unresolved sexual tension had filled the room. They had no protection, but neither one cared – they could not think so far ahead, not even to the next morning.
When they did awaken, with sweat from sex and cheap acrylic bedclothes covering their naked bodies, John apologized. She told him not to, but he did it again and added that he couldn’t be with her, not like that. He didn’t go so far to call it a mistake, so she was grateful, but it hurt all the same.
Three weeks later, she knew without having to take a test that she was pregnant. Had she done that intentionally? Had her lizard brain decided that procreation was the only way to entrap John? She couldn’t help but remind herself that John had not said a word about protection either, so perhaps somewhere in the dark recesses of his brain, he too had wanted this to happen, though she feared he would never admit it.
She waited another few weeks before going to the doctor to have the obvious confirmed, and then she told John. He took it in stride, and offered to support her no matter what decision she made.
One afternoon, as she sat at her new desk at the FBI, a temporary assignment while they figured out where to place her next, contemplating the logistics of co-parenting – for John was still adamant that they not be in an actual relationship – her cell phone rang. The voice on the other end addressed her as Special Agent Monica Reyes and simply said that she was to come to Washington National Hospital, to room 527 in the burn unit. She was to come alone and tell no one. The cryptic message reminded her of the calls that so often graced the basement office. She looked around at the agents milling about, obliviously going about their lives, and stood up, grabbing her blazer, striding out the door without a word.
She could never have guessed that she would soon be face-to-destroyed-face with the Cigarette Smoking Man. The tales she heard that afternoon were only believable after having worked on the X-files. He told her that he would protect her from the oncoming alien invasion by making her one of “the chosen” if she would come to work for him. She told him no. He claimed he could save Dana Scully as well. She held her ground. It was then he added that John and her unborn child could be saved too. No one knew that she was pregnant, other than John, of course, and the staff at her doctor’s office, and she suddenly hated herself for going to the doctor using her real name, for forgetting that dark forces continued to do their devious work despite Mulder and Scully’s removal from the scene.
She stared at him long and hard, her eyes steely and unforgiving. To put her in the position. To perversely threaten the lives of her child, her one-time lover, and a woman whom she loved beyond reason and feared would never see again. She could not let him see that she was shattering inside. She couldn’t say no because she knew that she was looking at the heart of the evil they had been trying to defeat. Accepting this allowed her access, though she risked losing her humanity in the process. He took her lack of an immediate refusal as a sign that she was his. The next afternoon, a sunny, warm day, portending nothing but glad tidings and drawing smiles from even the glummest of DC residents, both she and John were let go from the Bureau, effective immediately, no explanation given.
She couldn’t tell John what had happened. He was pissed and distraught at being let go, and Monica did her best to assuage him, reminding him that their actions in the desert and at the military facility where they had facilitated in Mulder’s escape could have brought about far worse. He grumbled more, though subdued.
They had both received severance. It was nothing extraordinary, but it was sufficient. John spent his time job searching, his need for employment exacerbated by the impending arrival of a child he was secretly ecstatic about, eventually settling on consultant work as it was less binding in such uncertain times. He forbade Monica from even thinking about getting another job; she still held her tongue about the job she’d been threatened into taking.
As for the job, she had not yet heard again from Spender. Her vigilance was raised at all times, yet still nothing happened. When her severance was nearly gone, just as her pregnant belly became too large to ignore, a rather exorbitant amount of money was deposited into her account. It was far more money than she needed, especially since John had insisted she move in with him – she would have her own room, of course – so that she didn’t have to worry about being alone though all of it, and so that he could be easily available after the baby was born. It was certainly more money than she wanted, knowing that its source could not have been moral or ethical.
Despite John’s dogged insistence that they were to remain nothing more than friends who were co-parenting, she was honestly happy to be moving in with him. They were indeed friends, no matter what, and yes, she certainly felt more for him than that, but she was grateful she still had his friendship and that he hadn’t run as far and as fast as he could to keep his distance. In truth, he was a loyal companion and a thoughtful, sympathetic father-to-be, just as she had expected. He drove her to all of her appointments, cried honest tears of joy when they learned they were having a girl, rubbed her feet when they ached, brought her whatever she wanted to eat, and went with her to Lamaze class. When she went into labor, he rushed her to the hospital with an almost comical amount of terror.
Lying in her hospital bed, she watched him cradle their tiny daughter in his arms. In the delivery room, he’d started crying the moment the baby cried, but now in her recovery room the joy had mellowed into a dreamy look. It was at this moment that he asked Monica to marry him. She knew he was not in his right mind due to the ecstasy of fatherhood, and she knew that her current deal with the devil would taint her in his eyes forever. She smiled sadly, though he only saw her exhaustion, and whispered, “Maybe.”
When she awoke a few hours later, morning sun pouring into her room through ineffective blinds, he was already there, already holding the infant. “Did you pick a name yet?” he asked. It had been her choice, he’d told her from the beginning, but she’d never settled on anything, for nothing felt right. She’d thought, perhaps, that seeing her would make it clear.
“Do you have any suggestions?” she asked, and he nodded, without taking his eyes off of the child who held tight to his finger.
“Katherine,” he said.
**
Katie was the first one in the door for dinner, pulling off muddy boots while simultaneously complimenting her father on the smells coming from the kitchen. “Dad makes the best chili,” she told her mother, flashing a smile that mirrored her own, all while knowing full well her mother hadn’t had chili with them in years and yet not resentful.
The door slammed and a frustrated voice called out, “Why do you never help me with the tack?” Julie’s boots came off too, but were thrown angrily at the wall, leaving mud and muck splattered on the yellow floral print.
“Julieta Doggett!” came John’s roaring voice as he stomped to the vestibule in the back where the girls had come in. “Control yourself. Your mother does not need to witness this attitude of yours. Now get a rag and clean that wall.” Julie held her tongue and complied, though she could not hide the fire that burned in her eyes. She remained sullen for the next half hour, slamming silverwear on the table as she helped set it, and refusing to answer her mother’s questions. At dinner she began to settle, mostly with aid from her older sister, who was more than used to her moods. Soon, the table was full of joyful laughter as both girls were chatting about school, Girl Scouts, the upcoming county fair, and some pop band Monica had never heard about, but which John had clearly heard too much about, judging by the look of exasperation on his face.
They were only half way through dinner when Monica’s phone rang. By the way that she sighed, they all knew who it was. She excused herself, but didn’t answer until she was out of the room. As she started to ascend the stairs, listening to some lackey’s instructions for her next assignment, she heard a glass break downstairs and her heart sank, knowing that it was Julie.
**
Katie had been such an easy baby, sleeping through the night at six weeks. She giggled and cooed and brought her parents so much joy that they both struggled to remember Monica’s agreement with CSM.
When Katie was a week old, John had disappeared from the house for several hours, under the guise of “running errands.” He returned with a square shaped bulge in his back pocket and a dopey grin. She knew what he intended to do, and so she told him then about Spender. John, as she had anticipated, had not taken the news well; all he could say, when he finally was able to speak to her again, was if it would save Katie’s life one day, then she had to do what she had to do, as long as she never told him about what she did. She never saw the ring.
Exactly three months after Katie’s birth, while John was at work, Monica received a package containing a cell phone, which rang just seconds after she’d opened the thick, padded envelope. It was not CSM, but rather one of his employees, confirming that the phone had been received and instructing her on its proper usage. He told her that Spender would be in touch with her shortly for her first assignment and then the line went dead. Lying on the floor under a baby gym, Katie kicked her legs in the air and laughed merrily as unsteady hands reached for hanging toys. Monica watched her daughter and began to weep.
The phone rang later that night, and the next morning she left for her first job, not returning for two more weeks. Katie was still a joy when she returned, and didn’t seem to have forgotten her, as she had feared. The most surprising thing to her, however, was that despite John’s clear discomfort with her situation, he began to seek comfort in her. The unease of not knowing what she’d gotten herself into manifested into his inviting her into his bed upon her return, though that night, he did nothing more than hold her as she cried two weeks’ worth of suppressed tears.
For a year, she continued to travel, and every time, she returned to a smiling baby and an understanding partner. He had asked her around the time of Katie’s first birthday, an event she was thankfully able to attend, if she would be willing to have another child so that Katie wouldn’t be alone with an old man most of the time.
Shortly after Katie’s second birthday, their second daughter was born, whom John named Julieta, though he always said it in an American pronunciation. She was a beautiful but fussy baby who never seemed to calm. It was almost a relief to be called back to her job after three months – the first night away was the first night she’d had more than a few hours of sleep in one stretch. Each time she returned home, after two, three, four weeks away, Julie would scream when she held her or even approached her, only settling down if Monica was able to stay for more than three days. Even then, she was a handful. John would say that she had gone from the terrible ones, to the terrible twos, to the terrible threes, and so on.
They recognized that she was highly sensitive and incapable of great changes, which was unfortunately the heart of her life with her mother. It was then that John decided they should move to a more secluded part of the country where they could buy a farm and some horses with Monica’s substantial income. Horse therapy was a saving grace, and Julie thrived in her new home, and in the private school the girls attended that was able to provide the child with support and structure.
Still, there was no denying that the girls had starkly different personalities. As a toddler, Katie dealt with the unexpected removal of any item – toy, food, forbidden treasure – from her possession with uncertainty and a deep teary gaze that showed she was trying to figure out why the item had been taken. If one took something from Julie at the same age, she would fall into an immediate tantrum that could last upwards of an hour. Some things never changed.
**
That evening’s phone call became more urgent when Spender himself came on the line with instructions like none she had ever expected. She was initially excited to go on her next assignment, even though Spender would soon send her a script, dripping with what he considered artistic flourishes, to read when making initial contact and several clear talking points she was supposed to follow as closely as possible when meeting face-to-face with her target, but when he concluded with news that the virus had finally been unleashed on the general populace, her heart sank heavily. Outside the door, she heard angry footsteps stomping up the stairs and a door slam down the hall, and her heart sank again and she had to ask her employer to repeat himself. When the call was over, she ventured to Julie’s door and knocked.
“Go away!”
“I’m going to come in now,” she warned. She cautiously opened the door a few inches and peeked in. Julie lay on her stomach, her face pressed into her pillow. Had it been Katie, she would have walked over to lay a comforting hand on her back, but she knew all too well from experience that Julie did not respond positively to physical comfort unless she was seeking it out.
“I have to leave tomorrow morning before you wake up.”
“Of course you do. Why don’t you just go now?”
She didn’t say anything and sat there on the edge of her daughter’s bed, waiting it out. Finally after what felt like an eternity, Julie curled onto her side and turned her head to look at her mother. “Why are you still here? You should go like you always do.”
It was in that moment that Monica decided to break the most important rule in her contract. She spoke as openly as she could to her daughter about her unwanted occupation.
“Julie, do you know what I do?”
“No, and I don’t care.”
“Did you know that I was blackmailed into my job? That I don’t want to do what I do? That I work for a very wicked man who plays with people’s lives and wants to watch the world burn?”
Julie didn’t know how to react to that. It was far beyond anything she had ever expected her to say. Secretly, she believed her mother was a spy, perhaps CIA, and secretly, when she was in better spirits, she thought proudly of her mother.
“Wait, what’s your job?”
“I run errands for this man, all over the world. He is physically weak and greatly injured from an accident and so I am often his proxy, like his representative, for his dealings. I’ve spied for him, I’ve shaken hands with some of the most powerful and awful people in this world for him, and I’ve … I’ve done things I can’t even talk about to your father or to anyone.”
“Why?”
“Because he holds our lives in his hands.”
“Will he kill us if you do something wrong?”
“I hope not. But he will spare our lives if I work on his side.”
“What do you mean, ‘spare our lives’?”
Monica reached out and laid her hand palm side up near Julie’s hands and Julie tentatively reached out, nervously laying her hand inside her mother’s. Her mother’s eyes grew red, though she only shed a few tears, but it was something the girl had never seen her do before. For the first time in her life, Julie sensed that her mother had not been leaving so often simply because she preferred work to family.
“Julieta, mi pequeña," she began, saying her daughter's name the way it was meant to be pronounced, "Something very bad is happening, not to any of us, but to our friends and family and billions of people we don’t even know. I was told 15 years ago that this was going to happen, but if I came to work for him, he would protect your sister, your father, and me. When you were born, he agreed to put you under protection too. And that time is now.”
“What’s happening, Mama?” asked Julie, sitting up and tightening her grip on her mother’s hand.
“Something like a plague. The man I work for is sending men here tomorrow morning to test your blood, and Katie and Dad’s blood too, to make sure that a vaccine you received when you were a baby will still protect you. You won’t be able to go to school. You won’t be able to leave the farm at all.”
“Will Dancer and the other horses be ok?”
“Yes. The disease only affects humans.”
“And my friends?”
Tears began to pool in Monica’s eyes again. “I don’t know,” she managed to say. “I don’t know. If I could save everyone, I would, but I only get to save five people.”
Julie furrowed her brow in confusion and concern, a little crevice forming in the exact spot as the one that had settled on her mother’s face. “Who’s the fifth?”
“An old friend. The woman your sister is named for. I haven’t seen her since before Katie was born. That is where I’m going tomorrow, to see her and warn her.”
“That’s your friend Dana, right? She’s a doctor, right? She can save everyone?”
“I don’t know. I hope she can. I am to tell her everything I’ve learned about the disease and the vaccine. But this might be much bigger than her, and I’m scared.”
Julie nodded. “I don’t want you to leave. When will you be back?”
“I don’t know. I have no instructions beyond meeting with Dana tomorrow. Maybe I can be back in time to tuck you in.”
“I want you to stay with us.”
“And after I see Dana, I will do everything within my power to do so unless I can save more lives somehow.”
“Ok.”
She kissed her daughter on the forehead, telling her that she loved her, and then returned to her abandoned dinner.
**
That night, after the girls had gone to sleep, she told John about her meeting with Dana and the virus’ release. He nodded grimly and then confessed that he already knew about the virus, having heard something on the news that morning about widespread illness. “I just knew what it was. Didn’t even need to ask. Didn’t want to ask.”
She watched him begin to undress, this man who was every bit her husband, just not in any legal sense. He loved her too, though it had taken him years to reach that point and it was a quiet kind of love. But sometime around Katie’s fifth birthday, he’d given her this look that she still remembered so well. Those eyes that purposely never searched her own were drilling into her. It wasn’t as though he were seeing her for the first time; it was only that he was letting himself do so – it was the looking, not the seeing that made her realize he finally loved her as more than just a friend or a lover or the mother of his children.
He turned around to face her, having only managed to unbutton his shirt, and leaned against the dresser. He looked washed out, with lips the same shade as his weathered face. His closely trimmed mustache and goatee were white, as was the hair at his temples, but surprisingly the rest of his hair held tight to the same shade of brown hair as could be seen in the hair of their older daughter. Still, in that moment, he looked older to her than his 56 years.
She sat on the bed and held out her hand, and when he stood before her, she pressed her head against his chest, listening to his heart beat. His arms wrapped around her and they held each other in a desperate attempt to push away everything transpiring around them.
“I wanted to have done so much more by now. I wanted to stop this. I thought I could.”
“You tried, Mon. Maybe it was the right decision, maybe it wasn’t, but you at least tried.”
“I’ve already failed. What was it all for? All these years…”
He tilted her head up to him and she saw his blue eyes glistening. “You did your best.” He kissed her, long, hard, his whiskers scratching her lips, and then he pressed her into the mattress, making love to her as though he would never see her again. It was the only way he ever made love to her.
**
She’d followed the talking points perfectly. The worst part about it was that it was all true. Spender knew everything. Of course he did. When he’d instructed her to tell Scully that she only accepted the position in order to spy on him, she balked. “But my dear, we both know it’s true. Why tell Dr. Scully a lie? Only the truth will bring her to our side.”
There was nothing in the script about the girls, nothing about John. She yearned to tell Dana everything, but knowing that her family was far away from her, with Spender’s men no doubt slinking around the sole dirt road that lead to their property, she couldn’t risk it. It didn’t seem to matter, though, as Dana didn’t so much as ask about John, being far too embittered upon learning of Monica’s collusion with the Cigarette Smoking Man. She passed along the information she knew. Dana softened ever so slightly, though her “thank you” was still cold, and she hurried away, leaving Monica clutching her umbrella in the rain.
She was indeed home again that night. Spender had called as she was being driven up the dirt road, past two conspicuous black SUVs, to assure her that there was nothing more for her to do at the moment. It was in Dr. Scully’s hands. He thanked her, wished her a pleasant evening with her family, and hung up just as the hired car pulled up to the large white farmhouse.
As she exited the car, the girls’ faces appeared in an upstairs bedroom even though it was after their bedtime, and she looked up and smiled at them. John opened the door, taking her bag from her and kissing her on the cheek as the girls’ feet stomped excitedly down the stairs. They both wrapped their arms around her, a gesture so familiar from Katie and so rare from Julie.
“I’ve missed you so much,” she said to them. As they moved to the living room, the girls started telling her about their day, from the blood test to the shocking news that some of their friends, classmates, and neighbors were already deathly ill.
“Will they be ok?” asked Katie, who had apparently been filled in to some degree on the events happening throughout the country.
“I hope so. One of the few people who can do something about it now has the research and information she needs to start fighting this.”
“You met with Dana? Julie told me. Don’t get mad.” Katie had always been curious about her namesake, especially as she was held in such high esteem by both her parents, yet had no contact with them.
“I did. And I’m not mad.”
“Did you tell her about me? Do you think she’ll come visit us when this is over?”
“I didn’t have a chance to talk about you two, but perhaps next time, if things are calmer…”
“Are you even allowed to talk to her?” Julie asked, her eyes squinting with anger towards the man who controlled her mother’s every move.
“Not freely. But maybe after all this, maybe…” She took a moment to look at both of her daughters, sitting on both sides of her, before locking eyes with John. “It’s time to tell them.”
When to tell the girls had been a matter of discussion between them for years, with no resolution having ever been reached. They’d found reason after reason to prolong the declaration, ultimately wanting to preserve their daughter’s innocence for as long as possible. He already knew that she’d spoken to Julie the previous night, so he wasn’t surprised by her decision now, especially with the unavoidable events occurring around them.
He nodded.
For several hours, they sat with the girls, telling them about their work on the X-files, about colonization, about the broken man who was playing god with lives all over the globe simply because he could, and about a man and a woman who occupied such important roles in it all and had changed the trajectory of their parents’ lives. Eventually, Katie fell asleep with her head in Monica’s lap, and Julie curled up nearby, her eyes fluttering open every few minutes as she fought off her fatigue.
They knew the girls needed to be put to bed and that they themselves needed to rest, but neither one moved. They knew their backs would ache and their necks grow stiff with pain, and yet they stayed in the living room, watching their daughters sleep, more afraid than ever before of what the next day would bring. John rose from his recliner and retrieved blankets, draping them over the girls first. He laid a blanket over Monica, pulling her towards him, kissing her forehead, his hand lingering on the crown of her head, his eyes examining hers. He was never one for words, not in these situations, but he knew he needed to say something.
“You did the right thing, Monica. You never had a choice in this, not really. You saved our daughters, and I’m shamefully glad you did.”
“Me too,” came a somnolent voice. They looked at Julie, who smiled, her eyes still closed, before digging her cold toes under her mother’s thighs. “I’d do the same thing.”
Monica’s breath became labored as she tried to keep her emotions in check. She rested her hand on Julie’s blanket-covered arm. “Thank you.”
“If you’re not sleeping, I’m stealing your space,” said John grinning, and he scooped his daughter up, causing her to giggle, and plopped down next to Monica. Julie rolled out of his arms and made her way to the L-leg of the couch, stretching herself out, slipping her toes under her father’s thigh instead.
Not wanting to disturb his younger daughter as she was drifting off to sleep again, and needing suddenly to ask Monica something, but not having a way with words in the first place, he put his arm around the woman he loved so dearly. She rested her head on his shoulder and closed her eyes, relaxing as his fingers traced a path down her arm. She didn’t think much when his fingers stopped at her hand and gently tapped her finger. He tapped again and she snuggled closer, with a hint of a smile on her lips. “Mon,” he whispered, tapping yet again, and she finally realized that he was tapping her ring finger. She lifted her head to look him in the eye, to see if he was doing what she thought, and she found a grin on his face and he raised his eyebrows as if to ask, “Well?”
In all this sorrow and uncertainty, he was asking to marry her, to make it official when they didn’t even know what the world would be like in a week. They would survive the virus, she was sure of that, but she was terrified of the chaos and the horrors that would follow. She could see now, though, that it was his way of offering her the only stability and certainty he could give her. No more of their undefined relationship that in all appearances was a marriage, yet wasn’t; no more avoiding the subject as they had for 15 years. It was also the ultimate forgiveness, denied since she’d first told him of her pact with the devil and the original nuptial offer had been quietly rescinded.
She nodded yes and clasped his hand. The next day she knew he would dig up the ring he’d bought after the birth of their first child, and the girls would notice it on her finger immediately, reacting with jubilation before excitedly planning the kind of wedding that could only have occurred before the virus’ release. She would let them have their joy, knowing full well that it would be a small, simple affair, lasting only as long as it would take for them to recite a few words and sign the paper, assuming there were any civic offices still standing. She knew all this and so she smiled while he showed his exhilaration by holding her tighter and kissing the top of her head. She had made the best decision she could have so long ago when there were no better decisions to be made, and now they were safe because of it, and despite it all, John forgave her and loved her.