Chapter Text
“How is she?”
“She’s inside. She needs to get to the hospital.”
He has spent an entire day cursing himself for sending her away, for thinking that would protect her -- protect their son -- when all it’s done is put them in even more danger. Cursing the unfathomable hubris of believing he could outsmart this being with the Billy Miles mask, and god only knows how many others like him, simply by “hiding” her in the middle of nowhere. As if hiding her was ever going to be possible. She’s got a goddamned beacon implanted in the back of her neck, but he was too blinded by his own panic to factor that in. (So stupidly blinded by it that he put his trust in Alex Motherfucking Krycek, of all people. What in the hell was he thinking?)
And now, after all of the hours spent frantically trying to get to her side, sudden terror nails his feet to the floor, not three steps into the room. Blood. The smell of it hits him, knocks the air from his lungs. His rational mind screams at him to Go to her, what the hell is wrong with you, go! But he can’t move. Can’t breathe. He thought he was past this, thought he was getting better, but no, that unmistakable copper tang assails him and he is instantly back on that ship, stripped and restrained and terrified.
If there was one constant during those months of torture, it was the smell of blood and burning. Pain came and went, consciousness came and went, but even his dreams were permeated by that sick stench. When they weren’t cutting him open, they were doing it to the others. As long as he lives, he will never forget the sound of Teresa Hoese’s screams…
“We need to get her out of here.” He nearly jumps out of his skin as Agent Reyes shoulders past him. “You carry her to the helicopter, and I’ll be right behind you with the baby.”
“No, don’… don’ let them take ‘im,” Scully slurs, her voice weak and barely audible. She’s curled on her side, holding something against her chest.
“It’s okay, Dana,” Reyes says gently, squatting down beside her. “Mulder’s here. We’re going to get you to the hospital.”
“Mulder?” Wide-eyed, she tries to lift her head to look for him, and finally, finally, that snaps him back into motion.
As if breaking an invisible tether, he stumbles forward, closing the distance between them in a few clumsy steps. “Yeah. I’m here. I’m right here.” Now that he looks, really looks, he can see the source of the blood smell, and his stomach flips. “What happened? Is the baby…?”
“He’s okay, but the cord detached with the placenta still inside,” Reyes says tightly, trying to ease the bundle from Scully’s arms. “I don't know a lot about childbirth, but I know that's not good.”
Weak as she seems, Scully is not giving the baby over to Reyes easily. “No, he needs to… needs t’keep…” she mumbles.
“Nursing stimulates the release of oxytocin,” Mulder says quietly. “If she’s hemorrhaging, that will help the blood vessels close up.”
Reyes looks over at him with eyebrows raised, and Mulder shrugs one shoulder; he may not be a medical doctor, but damn if he didn’t read that natural childbirth book on Scully’s shelf cover to cover a week or two ago.
He brushes a lock of sweat-damp hair back from Scully’s cheek. “We’ll get him back to you in the chopper. But first we’ve got to get you there, okay?”
“Don’ le-them take him,” she says again, even weaker than before. Mulder swallows down the cold fear because he will not let it take hold of him again. He needs to keep it together. For her. He is not going to let her down.
“I won’t let that happen,” he promises, at the same time Reyes says, “They’re all gone.”
“Whatever they came for,” she continues, “whatever they thought they’d find, it looks like taking him wasn’t the plan. Or if it was, then for whatever reason, they changed their minds.”
Mulder cannot afford to let himself dwell on the fact that all of those people, all of those cars he passed, were all the very people he went to such absurd measures to protect her from. And they found her anyway. They could have taken her, taken the baby, harmed or killed them both, but they didn’t. They didn’t, and now she’s bleeding out on a sagging daybed in a ramshackle building in the middle of fucking nowhere, and that’s entirely on him.
But there isn’t time for his guilt and self-flagellation. He needs to jump straight to atonement, and that starts with not letting his error in judgment become a fatal one.
“Come on, Scully. Let’s get you both out of here.”
At his gentle touch on her wrist, she relents and lets him guide her arm down from around the baby. His heart stutters as he takes his first real look at his son, draped in a thin blanket and nursing with one tiny fist resting by his face. What was for weeks this hypothetical and almost imaginary thing, now exists in the world for real, here, right in front of him. He doesn’t have a word for the feeling that flares in his chest, some mixture of awe and dread and pride and fear and wonder.
The baby -- Mulder realizes with some measure of shame that he never did get around to asking Scully if she had a name picked out -- makes a little cry of protest when Reyes eases him off Scully’s breast and wraps him more thoroughly in the blanket. As soon as Reyes stands up with the baby in her arms, Mulder pulls Scully’s shirt back down to cover her and scoops her up, quilt and all. The soaked quilt probably weighs almost as much as she does, but he pushes the implications of that fact out of his mind and walks toward the door as quickly as he dares, Reyes right on his heels.
Outside, the helicopter rotors are startlingly loud, but he can still hear the baby’s cries behind him. “It’s okay,” he says to Scully, almost as much to reassure himself as to reassure her. “He’s right behind us. We’ll get him back to you in just a minute.”
If she says anything in response, he can’t hear it, and he moves just a little bit faster. He’s breathing hard by the time they make it to the chopper, and he’s grateful when Reyes reaches past him to open the doors.
“You gotta get us to the hospital!” he yells over the engine noise.
“Hospital? You never said anything about--”
“I didn't know, and there's no time!” Deep down, of course he had always known there was a possibility he wouldn't get to Scully before something terrible had happened, but without the authority of a badge or the direct coordinates of her location, the best he’d been able to do was throw money at a charter company and hope for the best. “Look, if we have to wait for a medevac, she might not make it, and I’m not gonna let that happen!”
Scully is terrifyingly limp in his arms as he maneuvers them both inside, and for several heart-stopping moments, he cannot find a pulse. But no, there it is under his shaky fingers, and her chest rises and falls shallowly beneath his palm. He gathers her more tightly to him, making room for Reyes on the bench seat. Still cradling the baby with one arm, she slams the doors shut with the other and then leans forward.
“Special agent Monica Reyes, FBI. I need you to get on the radio with the nearest hospital and tell them we’re en route with an officer down. Can you do that?”
“Technically, but--”
“Good. Let’s go.”
***
Monica Reyes hasn’t slept in two days.
The night they got to Democrat Hot Springs, she and Dana cleared away just enough dust and cobwebs to manage a fitful few hours of sleep. Even exhausted from the drive, Monica’s whole body was on high alert, every creak of the old building or rustle of the leaves outside jolting her back awake. The couple of days since then have not exactly been restful.
Fear, however, is a powerful stimulant, and the interior of the helicopter is saturated with it. She is barely keeping her own in check, but the pilot’s is palpable, and Mulder’s is nearly overwhelming, rolling off of him in waves. Sometimes the energies and vibrations she feels are subtle, like a radio signal she’s barely within range to receive; this is not one of those times. She will crash hard when all of this is over, but for the moment, between the fear and the newborn baby crying in her arms and Dana’s life hanging in the balance, Monica is in no danger of falling asleep.
The baby. She looks down at the red-faced, squirming little human in her arms and shakes her head, with no small amount of awe. Helping bring him into the world may have been one of the most terrifying things she’s ever had to do, but never has that cliche about the miracle of life felt more valid. There is, no kidding, something miraculous about this child, above and beyond the mere act of creation or even the extraordinary circumstances of his birth. The sheer energy in him is unlike anything she’s ever seen, almost frightening in its intensity, though somehow not in its intent. She couldn’t say how, but she knows there is a capacity for profound healing contained within this tiny body.
There is no question in her mind that Dana needs him right now just as much as he needs her.
Turning toward Mulder, his fear hits her again, even though his face is a mask of deceptive neutrality. All of his attention is focused solely on Dana, as though he can keep the blood flowing through her veins by the force of sheer will alone. He looks up sharply as Monica reaches out to touch his arm, almost like he’d momentarily forgotten she was there. Carefully, she holds the squalling bundle out toward him, gesturing with her chin.
“He needs to be near her,” she yells over the din. “Take him.”
Mulder’s got one arm wrapped around Dana’s back, so the handoff is awkward, but they manage, with Monica helping to tuck the baby gently between his parents. He quiets almost right away, in a manner that feels like more than just raw instinct. Mulder’s face softens, some of the worry nudged aside by wonder.
“Hey,” he mouths, and Monica is torn between feeling like she’s intruding but also being completely unable to look away.
Maybe it’s the lack of sleep, but she has the sudden impression that there is something unspeakably powerful about the three of them together, something almost cosmic.
Her stomach swoops as the helicopter banks hard to the left, and the pilot turns to shout over his shoulder at her. “Grab that headset hanging next to you and put it on!”
She does, and the engine noise is immediately dampened; her ears ring for half a second before the pilot’s voice cuts through, much clearer and louder than a moment ago. “The hospital in Blairsville doesn’t want to let me land at their heliport without more information. You need to tell me exactly what is going on and if this is really life-and-death enough for them to break protocol.”
She frowns. What part of “officer down” wasn’t clear? “This woman back here is a federal agent who gave birth less than an hour ago while in my protective custody. There were complications, and now she is hemorrhaging. Every second counts. Tell the hospital they can call Assistant Director Walter Skinner at the FBI to vouch for what I’m saying, but they need to let us land.”
There’s a pause while he talks to the hospital on another channel. Then her headphones crackle, and he speaks again.
“If you’ll pardon the obvious question, what were you doing out in the middle of nowhere with a woman about to give birth?”
Given everything that happened, Billy Miles and the park ranger and all of the others finding them anyway, she can’t help wondering the same thing. Glancing sidelong at Mulder, she says, “Believe it or not, it seemed like our safest option, under the circumstances.”
“And whatever kept you from going to a hospital before, that’s not a problem now?”
She looks over again at the little family on the seat beside her and shakes her head. “I don’t know. I don’t think so.” Letting go of the mic button, she adds a murmured, “I sure hope not.”