Chapter Text
Chapter 1: Chicago
Rebecca Hartley was the spitting image of her mother, dark long locks framing her round face. Yet, she had her father’s eyes, ones that seemed to contain a permanent innocence to them, contrasting with her mother’s smirk that she always wore. Being the social butterfly she was, she was never one to exclude anyone. The more the merrier.
Today was her first day of the third grade - the class that her mother taught at Tracy Grammar in Chicago. Most children told her that they would be embarrassed to be in their mother’s class, but she wasn’t. To her it just seemed like a good chance to get straight A’s without having to try so hard. She literally lived with the woman that had all the answers. Besides, who would flunk their own daughter?
“Alright everyone! It’s time to settle down!” Emily called as soon as the morning bell rang.
Rebecca went to take a seat, but paused as soon as she spotted a kid sitting by himself in the back corner of the room. He wore a red sweatshirt with the hood pulled up over his head. As she slowly approached him she could see that his face was disfigured. There was this scarring as if he had been injured.
“Hi,” she gently greeted as she took her seat.
The boy only looked at her before resting his head on his desk.
“I’m Rebecca,” she continued, hoping to at least get a response from him.
“Excuse me,” Emily firmly stated in attempts to get her attention.
“Sorry,” Rebecca replied, earning a sigh and a smile from her mother.
The little boy finally looked up to Rebecca. He slowly reached for his hood and froze as soon as he grabbed the fabric. She offered him a smile to try and encourage him. All she wanted was to make sure he had a friend, he looked so lonely back there and she was was sure he was nice. He didn’t seem mean.
He forced himself to go ahead and reveal himself to her. His face was covered in scars making him look as though he had been the victim of a bad car wreck. Blotches of his skin didn’t match together.
“Ew!” Yelled a little girl from across the room.
“He’s not gross!” Rebecca argued, standing.
“He looks sick!”
“Enough!” Emily sternly warned.
“Tommy, Cindy, you two need to apologize!” She instructed. She then turned her attention to Rebecca. “Now Becky, why don’t you go ahead and take…” She had to pause for a moment. Most of these children had been to her house before, she knew the names. This however was a new student she didn’t even know to prepare for. “I’m sorry, sweetie. What’s your name?”
“Alfie,” he softly answered, sounding as though he were about to cry.
“Becky? Why don’t you walk Alfie down to the office? Just tell Miss Lambert that I needed a moment to talk to the rest of the class,” she gently suggested.
Rebecca nodded to her before taking the boy’s hand and leading him out of the classroom. “You’re all getting yelled at!” She mocked them as she walked out the door, causing Emily to roll her eyes.
“I’m sorry,” Rebecca started as they made their way down the hall. She noticed that Alfie had made sure to pull his hood back up before they saw anyone else.
“Why didn’t you laugh?” He asked, genuinely surprised.
“I didn’t see anything funny,” she replied.
She continued walking, but noticed that she was suddenly alone. He’s paused a few paces back and was just standing there. “Are you okay?”
“Why are you being nice to me?”
Rebecca didn’t truly understand the question. She didn’t see why she had any reason to act any other way towards him. Besides that, being nice to him garnered a pretty disgusting reaction from Tammy, and to Rebecca, that was an accomplishment.
“I don’t know,” she answered. “Do you not want me to?”
Alfie offered her a small smile. “You wanna come over to my house after school? I don’t get too many friends that I can invite over,” he offered.
“Let me ask my mom,” she replied. “I’ll ask when we get back to the room.”
oooooo
“Rebecca Hartley. Eight years old. Goes over to a friend’s house and neither she nor her friend Alfred Myers have been seen since,” Mulder said, tossing the file onto his desk for his partner to examine.
Scully sighed, reaching for the folder. “Since this seems to mundane for you to even consider looking at, why don’t you just tell me what it is that’s different here?”
“Well,” he started, leaning back in his chair. “If you do some further reading you’ll see that this Alfred Myers kid has been present with a lot of missing children.”
Scully’s brow furrowed as she skimmed through the papers. “It says here that he’s been to six different schools,” she mentioned.
“And at each school, there’s been a missing child from each of his classes,” Mulder added.
Scully set the folder back down and shrugged. “It looks like he lives with his father, Donald Myers. Has he not been considered a suspect? It seems pretty clear that he would have something to do with this.”
“Now I thought the same thing,” Mulder replied, leaving his chair to go retrieve another file. “But they’ve always managed to pinpoint it on someone else. Now I would claim that he’s framing these people, but the police have always found pretty damning evidence against the others. And it’s always been people that no one could link to Donald.”
She watched intently as he walked over and handed her another folder containing all the men arrested for the kidnappings. “Is this the part where you tell me that little Alfred is an alien hypnotizing these men so that we have to fly all the way out to Chicago to look for a kidnapper?” She muttered, irritated.
Mulder was taken aback by her reaction. Normally she would question him and maybe even judge a little. It was never anything too much, but he had noticed that she had been snippy lately. “Something wrong? Or do you just hate Chicago that much?” He questioned.
Scully huffed, setting the folder aside before moving to close the door. “I guess now is as good a time as any to tell you,” she stated, hurrying back to her seat.
“What is it?” He asked, growing concerned.
Scully sat there and watched him for a moment. Something told her that she needed to memorize everything about him. She trusted him with her life and knew that he would be understanding, but she was scared. This was a big commitment and she knew that sometimes even the strongest of men could be chased away by such things.
“Mulder?” She started, taking a moment to try and brace herself just in case. “I’m pregnant.”
A soft laugh emitted from him as he breathed out a sigh of relief. He didn’t even realize that he had been holding his breath, anticipating to hear the worst from her. This however was great, at least to him it was. “Really?” He asked.
“Yes,” she answered, relaxing a little. She didn’t even notice that her hand went to rest on her abdomen.
“Is it mine?” He teasingly inquired.
Scully rolled her eyes. Even if she knew he was kidding, she still didn’t appreciate him trying to ruin this moment for her. It took nearly two weeks for her to be able to admit it to herself let alone him. “Mulder I…”
“I know,” he laughed. He leaned in and planted a kiss on her lips that left her with a smile. “Thank you.”
“You mean it?” She didn’t doubt him, she just wanted the reassurance. After spending the entire morning stressed and ill, it was nice to hear him say it.
“I mean it,” he replied.
She wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed him once more. “I suppose I owe you a thank you too.”
“I believe there’s evidence that you already thanked me enough,” he replied, tucking a strand of her hair behind her ear.
“Keep it up and it’ll be a very long time before I thank you again,” she warned with a smirk.
“How about I just go reserve our seats?” He offered before he pulled back from her.
“You do that. I’ll gather everything we’ll need,” she told him.
Scully sat there, watching as Mulder got up and left the room. Suddenly she was excited. Maybe this would all work out very well for them. She wouldn’t rush him into anything, but they would raise the baby together, she would finally get to be a mother, something she had wanted for a long time.