Chapter Text
Mulder is alive, and the idea is absolutely dizzying to Scully. Incredible and impossible. She prayed for a miracle and somehow received two.
She still can't believe she has him back. It’s taken her nearly eight years to believe in the impossible, and it’s still easy to revert to old habits. She believed for Mulder when it seemed vital, when it was imperative that if he couldn’t be there that someone else be there to fit his role, to take his place (at least in terms of the Files), but she didn’t believe when it was really, truly vital, when it was life or death. She never imagined him coming back from the dead, always thought it was impossible. If she ever imagined them raising the baby together, she imagined a reality where he never left and her life didn’t crumble to dust.
Six months without him and it still feels as if she has lost a vital organ, like she can't quite breathe. She still feels short of breath even now, sitting here beside him. She can hear the beeps of the heart monitor, his chest rising up and down. It feels unreal that he is here, alive, breathing. She felt his heart beat under her cheek earlier as her tears fell onto his hospital gown, she knows it is real. But she almost can't believe it, still. She reaches up and takes his hand, being careful of the wires taped to the back. His fingers are warm. She rubs her thumb over his last two fingers as she watches him breathe. And then his hand moves under hers.
She gasps a little in astonishment, drawing as close as she can get to him without leaving the chair. His head is moving against the pillow as he starts to awaken. Tears are welling in her eyes. He's here, he's really here. “Mulder,” she whispers gently.
He opens his eyes slowly, licks his lips and turns his head to look at her.
Her fingers tighten around his in a desperate sort of way. “Hi,” she whispers tremulously.
Confusion flickers over his face, and he answers in a voice dull from disuse, “Who are you?”
Shock ripples through her in waves; she struggles to keep from sobbing full-on as a tear trickles down her face. Not this, not after all they've been through. This just feels like another cruel way of losing him. She's about to say something—whether it's a prayer, a plea, she doesn't know—when he smiles, just a little, showing his bluff.
“Oh my god,” she gasps, tearful laughter in her voice. She'd hate him for that, except she's too relieved, she never thought he'd prank her again. She never thought she'd even hear his voice again. “Don't do that to me.”
He's looking at her in the way he has a thousand times, in the way she’d though he never would again: like she is everything in the world, the only thing that matters. She'd missed him more than he can put into words. If only she could have saved him sooner, if only he hadn't been put through… “Do you know…?” she whispers, because at this point, she thinks it would be a blessing not to. She used to hate being unable to remember hers, but she's seen the abductees, the things she was unable to save him from. “Do you have any idea what you've been through?”
“Only what I see in your face,” he says.
She squeezes his hand, reaches up with her free hand and strokes the hair away from his face. She can't stop touching him, doesn't think she'll ever be able to. He's looking up at her and he mouths something. Something that looks like, I love you.
Her stomach twists; the corners of her mouth lift up in a smile. She can't remember the last time she's heard him say that. November of 1998, she thinks, maybe. And she knows she's never said it to him. It was one of her biggest regrets, after she lost him. She blinks back more tears, leans down to bury her face in his shoulder. She rests her cheek flat against it, adjusting herself for comfort and squeezing his hand again. She never wants to move, if she can help it.
Mulder's chin brushes the top of her head as he turns his head towards her, whispers, “Anybody miss me?” She laughs waterily, turns her head to kiss his shoulder before pressing her cheek to his chest again. Everything feels so still; she can hear his heart beating.
Across the room, the door opens. Scully looks up, expecting to see the nurse, and finds Agent Doggett instead. He stands there awkwardly, mouth hanging open like he wants to ask a question. She says nothing, only looks at him and hopes he'll understand. He seems to; he turns and retreats back into the hall, closing the door behind him. Scully lowers her head again. Mulder's nose brushes over her hair; her hands balled into fists on his chest, she closes her eyes and listens to him breathe.
---
Mulder dozes in and out of consciousness, his mind foggy. It's impossible to ground himself to one moment. He's having faint memories of pain, tight spaces and pitch-black and blades cutting into his chest; he presses his lips together hard to keep from crying out. Scully the day he left for Oregon, when he'd kissed her in the doorway, her eyes puffy and red and her trying like hell to hide it. She's wearing her cross, the one she'd given him before he left, and he has no idea how she'd gotten it, but that doesn't matter. She's here . She's here and showing no signs of leaving. When he wakes for the second time, he finds her still leaning against him, sitting in the chair with her cheek against his shoulder. He brushes his lips over the top of her head and she shivers, burrowing against him, her breath hot through the gown. “Your back is going to be killing you in the morning,” he mumbles, reaching up to brush her side with a tentative hand.
She shakes her head without looking up at him. “Not going home,” she says stubbornly, in a tone he's rarely heard from her: vulnerability. Oh, Scully.
“I don't want you to be uncomfortable,” he says, even though he doesn't want her to leave. He doesn't. He reaches for her arm and rubs a hand up and down it.
Scully lifts her head a little, her eyes red and puffy like she has been crying. “Do you think you could move over a little?” she asks softly, brushing her fingers through his hair again. “Is there room?”
It takes effort, but he does move, sliding to the other side. The corners of Scully's mouth lifts, just a little, and she stands to climb in behind him. And that's when he sees it: the curve of her belly under her sweater.
Anything he wanted to say catches in his throat, freezes there. She is pregnant . He has no idea how long he's been gone, how the hell is she pregnant? He thought it was impossible. He always thought they'd try again someday, but he never thought this would happen. That he'd wake up with her this far along and no idea how.
Scully doesn't seem to notice, doesn't make any effort to explain. She crawls in beside him, curled up against him; there is no space for her to do otherwise. She presses her face into his neck, right below his chin where his pulse beats against her forehead, and breathes shudderingly into his skin.
“Scully?” he whispers, heart thudding. This can't be real, he isn't here. He's on the ship and they've found a new way to torture him: by showing him his partner as a mother, the thing they'd so badly wanted last December. It's impossible. It's impossible.
He feels a strange fluttering against his side, where the round of Scully's abdomen presses into his side. The baby is kicking. Scully makes a startled sound against his throat and holds him tight, arms wrapped hard around his ribcage. “Scully?” he whispers again, pressing his mouth into her hair. Is this real? he wants to ask. How did this happen? Is it mine?
“I love you,” she murmurs, voice cracking. She's never said it before.
A tear trickles down the side of Mulder's face. His throat is sore; he feels numb, foggy. He has dim memories of a coffin, tight with no space to move. He thinks he can remember Scully crying. It's too much, he lets his eyes slip closed, his head falls back against the pillow. Scully is asleep, curled against him; he can hear the ease of her breathing. He presses his cheek to the top of her head. The baby kicks again and he shivers. He doesn't remember falling asleep.
---
He's back on the ship, pinned in place as they slice into him. He cries out with pain, shrinks away from the blades, pushes at the blankets they've wrapped him in. He's hurt, he's buried, he can't breathe. He calls out for Scully out of pure habit, a useless attempt at comfort on the ship after she'd come so close to finding him. He had heard her calling for him in the desert, and he'd called back, but she hadn't heard. He thought she was here, but he's alone, he can't feel her beside him, he knew it wasn't real. He knew that seeing her again was too good to be true.
And suddenly she's beside him again, her face white with concern as nurses crowd behind her. “Mulder,” she whispers, stroking his forehead. “It's okay, Mulder, you're safe. I'm here.”
Someone injects something into his IV, and he clenches his teeth hard. “Scully?” he rasps, trying to get control of his breathing. He can feel his heart pounding. “Where am I?”
“You're in the hospital.” She takes his hand and grips it in both of hers. “You're safe, it's okay.”
He swallows dryly as the drug enters his system. “That-that was real last night?”
Scully nods. Her eyes are red and puffy. He looks down a little and sees her baby bump. He swallows again. That was real, too.
“Take it easy, Mr. Mulder,” says the nurse, who seems to be checking his vitals. “You're safe. We're going to examine you later, but right now, you should just try to relax. Get some more sleep.”
He doesn't want to go back to sleep—sleep is too dangerous, sleep has no ability to ground him, remind him that he is safe and back on Earth—but his eyes are already lolling, tired from the sedative they must've given him. Scully kisses his knuckles, sitting beside him in the chair.
“The chair… it's too hard for you,” Mulder mumbles. If she's pregnant (pregnant , Jesus, he'd never thought…), than she shouldn't be sitting in hard plastic chairs beside his hospital bed. She should be at home. He doesn't think that there's a father of the baby, someone for her to go home to—he has no way of knowing for sure, of course, but he doesn't think Scully would jump into bed with someone else right away—but whether it's just her or not, she should go home. The baby needs rest. “You should go home,” he says sleepily. “Your baby needs rest.”
Scully's mouth opens a little, maybe in shock, maybe like she intends to say something. Her hand brushes over her stomach. “I'm not going anywhere,” she says firmly.
“What about… what about your baby?” His eyes are only half open.
“The baby will be okay.” Her voice is soft, affectionate in a way he's only ever heard her use with Emily or scared children on cases. A mother's voice, he thinks, and flinches.
He wants to ask her how this happened, if she decided to try the IVF again, if there's a father. How long he's been gone. But sleep is overtaking him. He closes his eyes and tries not to dwell on it. He's too tired.
“Mulder,” Scully says in that same.soft voice, like she wants to tell him something. But he's falling asleep, he's already gone and he can't remember anything after that.
---
Mulder sleeps on and off as he slowly regains strength. Scully sits beside the bed. Daylight comes and Skinner is dropping in to visit, Doggett is poking his head in. The baby shifts inside his watery world, and she rubs her hand over the spot where he's kicking. I'm here, she thinks. She wants to tell the baby that his dad is here, too, but Mulder’s detachment makes her hesitate.
She doesn't know what to say to Mulder about the baby. That first night he woke up, he seemed shocked. She hadn't mentioned it, hadn't even thought of it, but she thinks he might've known based on the surprise on his face when he stood up. And last night, he'd told her to go home for the baby. Or her baby, he'd said. Did he say that because he was concerned about the baby, or because he didn't want her there? Her baby, he'd said. Hers. Not theirs. Hers.
She'd wanted to tell Mulder about the baby. She'd daydreamed about it when she first found out, before she knew he was gone, thought about Mulder coming back from Oregon and her greeting him with this wonderful news, miraculous news, until the Gunmen came to her room with sorrowful looks on their faces… Later, she'd thought she could tell him after she found him. Some degree of good news to surprise him with when he came back safely. Their miracle. She hadn't known how he would react half the time—and besides that, it got harder and harder to think about the longer he was gone and became impossible to imagine after she buried him—but she always imagined that she would be the one who got to tell him. Never imagined a scenario in which she was so visibly pregnant that Mulder knew just by looking at her.
He'd wanted to be a father when she asked him to do the IVF with her; she'd been nervous about his level of involvement, but he'd wholeheartedly thrown himself into the process, comforted her after it didn't take, offered to try again or adopt with her. He'd wanted to be a parent with her. She wants to know what's changed. She keeps hearing his voice saying Your baby, and she wants to know if he ever really wanted this. If he just said yes because he thought it would make her happy, or if he wanted it once but doesn't anymore. If he's as willing as he was back then.
It doesn't matter, she tells herself. All that matters is that he is here . Mulder is breathing raspily beside her and it is miraculous. She sniffles, reaches up and touches the side of his face. It feels different, his skin smooth and not decomposed (she bites her lips to hold back a shudder). He still has scars along his cheek, but he's starting to look more alive. Scully thumbs a tear from her eyes, shifts in the chair and watches him sleep with one hand in his and the other on her stomach.
When Mulder wakes up, later, he seems subdued. Better, in good health, but subdued. He speaks in few words, looks vaguely off into the distance. She tries to goad him into conversation, but he doesn't seem very interested. She doesn't even know what they'd talk about, anyway. The baby? His missing time? The X-Files? That's probably the safest topic and the one he'd be the most interested in, but she isn't ready to talk about Doggett yet. It still feels wrong, having another partner. Like she's betrayed him. They end up sitting in silence. But she keeps on holding his hand. He's here, she tells herself again. He's here, he's here.
They take him in for testing later and he is able to walk on his own. He really does seem to have a lot of his strength back. When the doctor mentions checking the state of Mulder’s brain, his face whitens a little as he looks over at Scully in fear. She clenches her jaw and doesn't break eye contact. She still hasn't completely forgiven him for keeping that from her. “You… you know?” he asks quietly, and she nods. He gulps, looking down at the ground. “I'm sorry.”
She swallows back any anger she has. She'd barely let herself think about this before, the fact that he was dying and never told her, because she was so focused on finding him. And now that she has him back, she doesn't want to ruin it with a fight. “It doesn't matter,” she says. “It's over now.”
Mulder looks down a little at her stomach before looking her in the eye again. “I guess it is,” he says softly, and she's not sure if he just means the disease. And she isn't sure if it is actually over. He could still be sick. He could still be dying. When Mulder leaves with the doctors, she goes to the chapel and spares a quick prayer for Mulder, for the baby, for herself.
Skinner visits when Mulder comes back, relief visible on his face. From leaving Mulder in Oregon to pulling Mulder off life support, Scully can imagine that he must be feeling a tremendous amount of guilt. Mulder seems somewhat subdued. Skinner apologizes awkwardly and Mulder just as awkwardly accepts it, and Scully stares down at her hands on her knees, unsure of what to do. Skinner is not normally the sentimental type; she's gotten used to it, his caring demeanor, after six months of crying all over him, but she supposes Mulder hasn't. She's a little relieved when he leaves.
“Was there any news?” she asks, almost as soon as the door has closed. “With your scans?”
Mulder works his jaw back and forth, looking straight ahead instead of at her. “Results tomorrow,” he says softly. Scully nods, thumbing the corner of her eye and praying she doesn't cry again.
“Scully, I…” He's speaking uncertainly, and when she looks up, he's looking at her. The scars on his cheeks are glaring, an expression not unlike fear on his face. “I found out after you… you went on the road trip with the smoker,” he says quietly. “I… I didn't know how to tell you. I know it's no excuse, but I didn't… I didn't want to try and make you forgive me by dumping that kind of news on you, and then… I kept chickening out. I didn't want to upset you.”
Scully swallows back the anger in her chest, her fear. She wants to scream at him, tell him how hard it was to lose him. That he has no idea. That he owes her the truth, at least, and he was the first person she told when she was dying, how dare he, how fucking dare he. “It doesn't matter,” she says too firmly, and now she's the one to look away. “All that matters now is that you're back.”
She can feel him watching her carefully, maybe a little sadly. Tears well up in her eyes unexpectedly; she curses these pregnancy hormones and struggles to her feet, muttering, “I'll be right back,” and making a beeline for the bathroom. She doesn't want to cry in front of him again. There's no Kleenex in the cramped room, so she muffles her sobs with the scratchy toilet paper. He could still be dying. She could lose him all over again.
---
Scully doesn't go home; when she exits the bathroom with red eyes, his chest stings as if someone has sucker-punched him there, and he tries to tell her to go to a hotel and get some rest because it's too hard seeing her like this. And that's when she tells him that she doesn't even have a hotel, and she doesn't want to drive an hour back home when she's this tired. She doesn't leave, but she also doesn't get back into the bed with him. She asks the nurse to bring her a cot. Mulder can't be too surprised, considering the fact that she knows about the brain disease and is pregnant with a baby that is likely not his, but it stings just as much as seeing her this sad.
No matter what, though, it helps to hear her breathing beside him in the dark. Being alone only increases it, the fear building inside of him. If he closes his eyes, he sees the ship. He sees the coffin he can barely remember and he can't breathe. He lies flat on his back, eyes open, and listens to Scully breathe.
---
In the morning, Mulder feels well enough to get out of bed and go to the bathroom on his own, without any help getting up or walking. When he exits the room, he finds Scully sitting up on the cot, her hand protectively over her stomach. “You must be feeling better,” she says, the corner of her mouth turning up just a bit. Just a little. She sounds extraordinarily relieved.
Instead of the bed that he's entirely too tired of, he opts for the hard plastic chair. “I'd say so,” he offers. “Considering everything.”
Scully climbs off of the cot, smoothing her rumpled hair. “I'm going to go find your doctor,” she says briskly. “Maybe I could get you home by lunchtime.”
Mulder looks at the overly clean tiles below his feet. “That'd be nice,” he mumbles. “But, uh. You might have some trouble getting me out of here in this.” He plucks at the thin hospital gown he's been wearing.
Scully unsnaps the top of her bag. “Actually, I brought some of your clothes with me,” she says, and he looks up in surprise. She pulls out a stack of his folded clothes. “I… I was trying to be optimistic,” she adds softly when she sees him looking.
“I still… I still have clothes?” he asks cautiously. He supposes that he expected Scully to keep some things, but an entire outfit? He's been buried for three months. Had she made a K-Mart run on her way to Annapolis?
“I kept your apartment,” says Scully. “I don't know why, I just… But everything of yours is still in it. It's still waiting for you.”
He chews at his lower lip, staring at her with some surprise. He can't believe she'd do this, keep his apartment through three months of him being buried. Scully, who is meticulous and not at all frivolous. Scully, who couldn't possibly have believed that he would come back, kept his apartment for three months while he was dead. His stomach twists with the weight of her confession. He thinks it'd be nice to go home, but he also doesn't want to go anywhere without her.
Scully leaves to find the doctor and Mulder stays in the chair, makes no move towards the stack of clothes in the corner. Maybe he should've tried to go with her; he hates to be alone. His memories rush in like running water, invading the corners of his skull with a piercing sharpness. The ship, the pain. He touches his cheek gingerly, the place where they pinned him, the scars on his chest, but that only grounds him further in the flashbacks. He stares numbly at the wall until he hears Scully behind him, saying, “Mulder, you okay?”
He turns to look at her and finds her standing in the doorway with the doctor. “Yeah,” he says, getting to his feet and turning to face them. “For a guy who was, uh… in a coffin not too long ago I think I'm doing pretty damn good.” He begins to cross the room, away from Scully and the doctor, because they both are staring at him in a worried, expectant kind of way and it makes him squirm. He adds, “I don't quite have my legs under me… yet.”
Scully says from behind him, “Well, you might want to consider sitting down when you hear what we have to tell you.”
This would be the result of his scans. “Uh-oh.” He spares a quick hope that he isn't still dying, that they won't have to go through all this bullshit again, as he turns and sits down.
“No, it's, uh… it's good news. It's… it's miraculous news,” Scully offers, smiling just a little bit as she looks back at the doctor for his part of this song-and-dance.
The doctor begins speaking, but Mulder is barely listening. The same shit he's heard before, about how incredible this all is, how they can't believe it. Spare me, he thinks bitterly. He's watching Scully, and he finds that she's watching him, too.
She speaks next, confirming what he had hoped. “Whatever neurological disorder you were suffering from, it's no longer detectable. After a course of transfusions and antivirals it has rid your body of the virus that was invading it. The scars on your face on your hands, on your feet, on your chest, they-they seem to be repairing themselves.” He touches his scars a little as she speaks, not sure whether to be relieved or frightened that they are disappearing. If they're gone, is it supposed to be like it never happened? He's faced the impossible before, but he'd never wanted to be the impossible.
“Mulder, you are in perfect health,” Scully finishes. Her relief is hidden underneath her professional tone, but he can hear it. He knows it. He heard her crying in the bathroom last night.
“Wow,” he says dumbly, unsure of what else to say. He's relieved, of course, but it's hard to process among everything else. He's not dying, but he knows what it's like to be dead. To be buried. He’ll live, but at what cost? How much do they really know about what's happened to him and why? What is his future with Scully, now that she's a mother?
She's smiling a little at him, like she can't believe it and is overwhelmingly happy because of it. It hurts a little; he can still hear her muffled sobs from the night before.
“How do you feel, Agent Mulder?” asks the doctor.
“Like Austin Powers,” he cracks dryly.
Scully laughs quietly, briefly, but her heart isn't any more into it than his is. They're on dangerous ground, treading lightly, trying not to hurt each other, and he knows he's doing a shit job of it. And besides all of that, he can't find one single thing funny about any of this.