Bridges
by Elizabeth Rowandale

Feedback:  Email: bstrbabs@gmail.com
Rating:  Mature
Relationship:  Fox Mulder/Dana Scully
Additional Tags:  Angst, Romance, An X-File Case, Mytharc

Summary: A family in a small town in New Mexico appears to 
be suffering the ill effects of an encounter with Black 
Eyed Children. While in the desert to search out the truth, 
Mulder and Scully find themselves confronting more than 
they bargained for, both in the investigation and in their 
personal relationship. Early Season 11, turns AU after 
"This." Past and eventual present MSR.

Disclaimer: Mulder and Scully and the search for the truth 
all belong to Chris Carter and Co. I'm just borrowing them. 
I promise to return them in no worse condition than Chris 
would.

Beta thanks to Annie, without whom I would probably still 
be sitting in a corner feeling sorry for myself and 
refusing to post.

Author's Notes:  Wow, it's been a lifetime since I posted 
an X-Files fic. It's kind of like coming home.:) I shall do my 
best to post chapters fairly regularly, but lately the muse has 
been insisting on working on later chapters rather than 
behaving and being all properly sequential, so the posting 
timing may be uneven at some points...just warning you...:)


Copyright (c) 2018

Chapter 1

The rain had lasted for days. Scully had almost forgotten 
the feel of warm sun on her skin. The District had fallen 
into grey. Real storms she could almost handle. Flashes of 
lightning and pounding thunder and a quivering sense of 
excitement lifting the fine hairs on her skin. Reminders of 
a hundred trips to blustery towns in the vastness of the 
Midwest. But there was nothing but dampness and grey in 
this city. The skies seemed to draw the color from her 
skin. 

In recent winters the cold had exacerbated the early pangs 
of arthritis she habitually denied in the fingers of her 
gun hand. There was a lot she denied these days. Dana 
Scully was a doctor by trade, even if that was not her 
official job at the moment. Less than reliable fingers and 
a growing demand for reading glasses added to the insidious 
conclusion -- she wouldn't have the option of assisting in 
surgery much longer.

Hitting the ground hurt more.

For a few years, a few relatively quiet and misty years, 
when she had been a working doctor by day and somebody's 
warm body in the night, Dana had lived with her heart on 
her sleeve. At least around the people who mattered...the 
person. The person.

The misty bubble had shattered, and she had nearly drowned 
in unhindered emotion.

Walls were erected for a reason.

Denial was a comfortably worn suit. "I'm fine, Mulder." A 
look away. Fashionable boots in place of sensible shoes, 
hair precisely waved in place of a messy bun, eyeliner and 
lipstick and all the armor with which she had carefully and 
painstakingly authored the entity that once had been Agent 
Scully. A suit she remembered and relished in its 
resurrection.

But the rain would not stop.

*****

"I'm sorry, you said, 'Black-Eyed Children'?"

"Yes. Twice. No, I'm sorry, three times. Scully, are you 
even listening to me?"

"Yes. I'm sorry. Yes. I'm listening. I'm just...it's hard 
to focus in the rain." She pushed up in her perch on her 
stool, cleared her throat, and straightened her spine. 
"Continue. Please."

Mulder hesitated. She kept her gaze steady and watched the 
predictable rush of analytical thoughts flicker across his 
pale eyes. A little offended that she hadn't been listening 
(and she hadn't, and she was actually sorry about that), a 
little weary that he was *still* losing her attention some 
days when he brought her what she deemed a creepypasta that 
he was presenting as a "casefile," and then...then there 
was concern. Because she had been better about listening, 
lately, better about giving him the credit he deserved 
beyond the crazy, better about giving his theories half a 
chance...and if she was blowing him off in the first 10 
minutes, well maybe something was wrong and he should ask.

For a moment butterflies gathered in her stomach, and she 
wondered if he *would* ask and if he did if she would 
answer. Because it was not *then,* anymore, it was *now,* 
and now they were two people who had once clung skin to 
skin in the dark, once spilled the most intimate secrets, 
once given utter trust and utter faith in every whisper and 
glance and caress and dropped each and every carefully 
constructed wall. So sometimes he asked, and sometimes she 
answered, and sometimes she didn't, and it was all fucking 
confusing as hell.

"Have you heard of them?" was all he said.

She had no idea if she was relieved or hurt. "No," came her 
simple reply.

"Should I start again?"

"Please."

"Are you listening this time?"

She tamped down on her flare of annoyance. She deserved the 
snipe. "Yes. I'm listening."

He cleared his throat with more show than necessary and 
brought up another picture on his laptop. A boy of no more 
than 12 stared out at Scully, a dark hoodie pulled close 
around his face and his wide eyes as black as oil. No 
whites at all. The picture, clearly Photoshopped, should 
have meant no more to her than the poster for a cheap 
horror film. But the moment the eyes connected with 
Scully's her stomach felt sick, ghosted by a shadow of a 
memory too deep and visceral to name. Marrow deep, 
quivering through her bones more than her thoughts. A dingy 
and yellow-lit stairwell, concrete with water stains, a 
smell of antiseptic and cold. Cold. Fear.

Mulder was looking at his notes as he began to speak and 
missed her reaction entirely. She was grateful. She 
couldn't have explained if she tried. "The popular theory 
is that the stories began with a post to a mailing list..." 
Mulder. She needed to listen this time. She deliberately 
lifted her gaze from the laptop to focus on Mulder's face. 
"...by a man named Brian Bethel in which he recounted his 
story of his own encounter with the black-eyed children in 
Abilene, Texas, and that the story became a growing urban 
legend from there with similar stories appearing all over 
the internet. And, although it is true that any number of 
sensationalist and clearly fabricated stories and even 
videos of encounters with the Black-Eyed Kids, or BEKs as 
they have come to be termed, have appeared across the 
internet in the intervening years, the phenomenon actually 
reaches back much farther than its recent popularity. 
Researchers have begun finding stories from experiencers 
that contain distinctive matching elements from decades ago 
and from cultures with little contact with the outside 
world. One such story came from an older woman living on an 
Indian Reservation in South Carolina. The woman had no 
knowledge of the Black-Eyed Children phenomena and no 
regular access to the internet."

"Okay. So, what's the case we're looking at?"

Her question failed to shift the trajectory of his prepared 
presentation. "Stories of encounters with these children 
follow a fairly predictable pattern. A person, usually 
alone, usually at night, is either at home or in his or her 
car, and one or two of these children will knock on the 
door, asking for entry. The children often arrive in groups 
of two or three, sometimes with one child clearly older 
than the others, ranging in age from 6 to 16 but most often 
appearing in the pre-teen range. The children are all 
described as having pale and flawless skin, wearing plain, 
dark clothes, and often hoodies that allow them to shade 
their faces until closely inspected. The children will 
often look down or remain in shadow for the first part of 
the encounter, so the experiencer doesn't notice the 
strangeness of their eyes until they've already been 
interacting.

"Typically, the children will ask to come inside and call 
their parents, or to use the bathroom. If it's a car, they 
will often ask for a ride home. The children will use 
phrases that are clearly chosen to engender sympathy, 
claiming to be cold, or lost, yet their vocal tones are 
described as being impassive or monotone, out of sync with 
the situation, and often even out of balance with the 
season. A child will claim to be wet and want inside where 
its dry when it hasn't been raining or claim to be freezing 
in the middle of summer."

Scully drew a deep breath, ignoring the uncomfortable pull 
of the image still watching her from the laptop screen. 
"So...Mulder...what happens? I mean...they're kids asking 
for help..." She looks up at him with eyebrows raised.

Mulder nodded, clearly ready for this question and not 
finished talking. "Those who encounter these kids have an 
overwhelming feeling of fear. Of wrongness and impending 
danger. Grown men with military experience will find 
themselves huddling in a corner in tears, hoping the 
children will go away. Trained attack dogs will run from 
the door and hide in a back room whimpering. But 
experiencers also report the kids having a sort of hypnotic 
power, and victims will sometimes find themselves about to 
open the door to these kids when they had had no intention 
of doing so, shocked to find they had stepped forward or 
unfastened the door lock."

"Mulder...this feels like a lot of different legends put 
together...," Scully said, eyes narrowed, teeth catching at 
her lip. "Mothman stories, alien abductions, hybrids, even 
the dark fairy legends of--"

"Admittedly, the stories bear strong similarities to those 
of other paranormal phenomena, yet this same distinctive 
pattern with the same landmark characteristics appears over 
and over again through the decades from all over the world. 
Including the unwavering conviction that a terrible fate 
awaits those who are lured into letting these children 
inside. One as yet unverified story tells of a couple who 
allowed two quite young Black-Eyed Kids into their house 
one cold autumn night, allowing them to stay only a short 
time before the 'parents' came to get them, but symptoms of 
illness began for the couple even as the children were in 
their living room, and in the weeks and months after the 
encounter both suffered a series of life-threatening 
illnesses and a general feeling of darkness and dread 
having descended upon their lives."

"Okay...so, what's the current case?"

"The case..." Mulder reached behind him and snatched a manila 
file folder from his desk. Case files were electronic, now, 
but Mulder was old school. He liked to print things, spread 
them on the floor, look for connections and patterns. He 
tossed the folder to Scully, and she barely managed to 
catch it between her hand and her knee, the loud slap 
echoing in their basement cave. She straightened the file 
and began paging through, grateful to have something to 
look at besides the image of the child on the screen. "The 
case is in a small town outside of Las Cruces, New Mexico," 
Mulder continued. "The Garcia family. Husband, wife, two 
children, and Mrs. Garcia's aging mother made up the 
household. Two months ago, the teenaged daughter, Mariela, 
posted a story on her YouTube channel talking about a visit 
to her family's house the night before by two young 
children claiming to be lost and demanding entry into their 
home. Her parents eventually gave in and brought the 
children inside, intending to call the local authorities to 
help the kids find their way home."

"Let me guess...the kids had dark hoodies and all-black 
eyes?"

Mulder pointed his pencil at her. "Nothing gets by you, 
Scully. The children were only with the family for under an 
hour before some adults dressed in black suits showed up at 
the bottom of the Garcia family's driveway and called for 
the children to come out and leave with them. The kids 
identified the adults as their parents and insisted it was 
okay to let them go."

"Okay. And the Garcia family is..." Scully turned another 
page in the paperwork balanced on her thigh, scanning the 
text and gleaning the essentials, "...oh my God." She 
looked up at Mulder, eyes wide, and he lifted his eyebrows 
in acknowledgment. "The grandmother died of complications 
from necrotizing fascitis?"

Mulder nodded, expression sobering as professional 
excitement yielded to respectful sympathy. "Afraid so. And 
the bad luck doesn't stop there."

Scully continued to page through the information. "The 
younger brother...has been hospitalized and diagnosed with 
hantavirus."

"And the father was killed in a single car accident, 
Scully. No traces of alcohol or other intoxicating 
substances in his blood. No history of high-risk behavior. 
The mother has been experiencing unexplained nosebleeds, 
while Mariela's latest vlog post is detailing a painful 
rash on her skin that the doctors can't seem to identify. 
Yesterday, a school friend of Mariela's came forward 
stating that she too had seen these black-eyed kids in 
recent weeks, lurking under a streetlamp not far from the 
Garcia home."

Scully skimmed through the rest of the report. A lot of 
medical and forensic details were missing. She would need 
to see a great deal more information before she could even 
begin to put this picture together. She closed the file, 
rested it on her crossed legs and met Mulder's waiting 
gaze. He was standing beside his desk, balancing a freshly 
sharpened pencil between his index finger tips, the point 
of the graphite pricking into the pad of his finger in a 
way that made her teeth itch. His suit jacket was off and 
his shirt sleeves rolled up and she was cold just looking 
at him. And maybe...something else.

"Mulder, this is a horrible story for this family. But, 
although necrotizing fascitis is rare and rarely goes 
untreated long enough to be deadly, it is a substantial 
risk in those with a compromised immune system, and an 
elderly woman in a poorer part of town may have had some 
underlying disease that predisposed her to be vulnerable to 
the virus. I would have to see the rest of her medical 
records. As for the hantavirus, New Mexico is prime 
territory for infection from rodent droppings. Again, the 
lower economic status may have placed the boy in places of 
risk, rat-infested apartment buildings, even a friend's 
garage or basement. Maybe he went hiking with a scout 
troop. Younger children are highly susceptible to 
hantavirus, both due to their weaker immune systems and 
their less than meticulous hygiene practices. The 
daughter's rash could almost certainly be attributed to 
stress caused by the series of horrible events befalling 
her family. The same could be said of the mother's 
nosebleeds, particularly at the elevation at which they're 
residing and the overall dryness of the environment. And as 
for the father, we don't have anywhere near enough 
information to declare that as anything but tragic. The car 
could have malfunctioned, an animal could have run across 
the road. The man could have suffered a heart attack or a 
stroke or any other medical condition that impaired his 
judgement."

Mulder nodded and the barest hint of a grin tugged at the 
corner of his mouth. "Impressive string of rebuttals before 
your morning coffee, Scully, and I can't say I disagree 
with anything you say. But it does all seem like one hell 
of a coincidence, don't you think?"

"You're willing to take on this case on nothing more than 
the odds against a coincidence?"

He shrugged easily. "Wouldn't be the first time."

"Mulder, do you have evidence of a single incident where 
someone reported a sighting of these Black-Eyed Children, 
let them inside their home or car, and was seriously 
injured or killed as a direct result of the children's 
actions?"

"That's the thing, Scully...I think...we only hear the 
reports of the near misses."

"What do you mean?"

"I think the ones who let them in...aren't around to tell 
the story."

Scully let go an exhale that fell somewhere between an 
incredulous laugh and long-suffering sigh. She almost 
dropped the carefully balanced file from her knee, grabbed 
at it, and scraped her finger on a sharp edge. Then her 
falling gaze whipped past that damned photo on the laptop 
screen and her stomach churned.

"Well?" He was watching her like a poodle hoping for a 
treat. "What do you say, Scully? Up for a little trip to 
the desert?"

New Mexico. He wanted her to fly to New Mexico. There 
wasn't anywhere near enough in this thin folder on her lap 
to make these events into a case. The occurrences were 
tragic for the family, but there was no clear connection 
from one to the other. Scully couldn't imagine how Mulder 
was going to spin this to convince Skinner this case 
warranted a requisition for travel from D.C. all the way to 
a small town in New Mexico. She should be shooting this 
down right out of the gate.

New Mexico. Warm. Even this time of year. Dry. Warm. Dry. 
She had goosebumps up her arms beneath her suit jacket. Her 
bones felt damp. *Dammit, dammit, dammit...*

"I suppose...," she swallowed hard. *Dammit.* "It couldn't 
hurt to give it a day. Talk to some of the locals, see 
if...anyone else has seen these kids, had anything happen to 
them. If there's nothing there, we'll fly home in the 
morning."

Mulder's expression faltered. His lips moved but he seemed 
unable to catch hold of any words. He gazed at her as 
though she had just insisted that grass was purple.

Scully drew a breath and tried like hell to come up with an 
argument that made her willingness seem even remotely 
rational. Something scientific, something about potential 
toxic exposure and contagion, government experimentation in 
remote areas, brain-washing cult behavior, a rare childhood 
illness that affected eye pigmentation, something that 
would make sense of this sudden receptiveness and make it 
seem like her interest was even vaguely professionally 
valid. At best there was a health hazard that required some 
sort of investigation, but even then it was far from a 
matter for the FBI, let alone for the X-Files, and in the 
end, Scully gave up all pretense, dropped her shoulders, 
and said flatly, "I'm cold."

Mulder's incredulous exhale would have been funny if it 
hadn't all been so sad.

"Just don't ask me to explain this to Skinner," she said, a 
certain sharpness cutting into her voice as she pointed the 
file at his chest.

Mulder raised his hands in exaggerated innocence. "Wouldn't 
dream of it." He finally flipped closed that damned laptop 
and scooped it against his hip.

Nothing was as dark as it had been before the glimpses of 
light. Because she knew, she knew no matter how complex and 
uncertain and fucked up it all was, even if it never really 
got fixed, she knew she could stretch out a blind hand and 
he would grab for her, hold her, keep her head above water 
and never let her drown in the torrential rains. She had 
little left to hide when it all fell down.

Yet she had tasted a warmth and a freedom that haunted her 
silent dreams. Comfortable was comfortable for the time 
being. She needed things to hold still and stabilize and 
rebuild. And this Scully, this government agent with sleek 
suits, careful lipstick, complex scientific theories, and a 
knack for paperwork -- this was all she knew. The voice in 
her head that was cataloging things like arthritis and 
presbyopia and new fluctuations in estrogen levels knew 
there was a precipice not far ahead. A point where a bridge 
must be built or an entirely separate path forged.

But for today...New Mexico called.


//////////

"Come on, Scully. We're going to do something for fun. Just 
fun. You remember fun?" 

They've been on the run for weeks. The warmth and 
togetherness have been beautiful in their own bittersweet 
way, but every smile has been a little bit tainted. Their 
son is still a gaping chasm of loss between them. Their 
work has fallen down around their ears. But they are 
together, again. On the road and in their element. No more 
longing letters and desperation for a single glimpse or 
touch. She has been able to sleep in his arms, able to 
sleep in a way she hasn't in what seems like forever. 

They've been driving for hours and they are out of the 
desert and deep into the Midwestern planes. They pulled 
over for gas and have found themselves on the edges of a 
traveling summer carnival. Scully doesn't want to be on the 
edges of everything, anymore. Mulder must see her longing 
look at the carousel, because he takes her hand and leads 
her toward the wiry man at the gate with the dusty striped 
smock and the roll of tickets strapped to his belt. 

"Mulder..." she drawls. She's trying for a protest, but the 
truth is, she has no valid argument. They have nowhere else 
to be, the weather is comfortably warm but not yet 
scorching, she's wearing sunblock, their gas tank is 
already filled, and... 

"How much for that tilt-a-whirl thing over there?" 

"The Green Machine?" the man questions, voice booming, like 
he has worked near loud machinery for too long. 

Mulder nods. "Yeah, two for that, please." 

"Green machine is three tickets a piece. We sell in rolls 
of 10, 20, 50, or 100." He points to the chalkboard sign 
listing the prices. 

Mulder pulls out his wallet and hands over a $20 bill, 
working the whole process with one hand so he won't have to 
let go of her. Like they're teenagers at a school bizarre. 
"20 tickets," he says, and Scully chuckles softly, but 
she's enjoying the breeze and the feel of Mulder's fingers 
tangled with hers, and the idea of just forgetting it all 
for half an hour is dizzyingly appealing. 

Nothing here is too crowded this time of day and this far 
out in nowhere so the attendant lets them ride the Green 
Machine twice in a row. It's one of those bench seats for 
two that swings out in flat circles at first, then raises 
up to weave in big aerial loops of its three arms, diving 
them down in little rushes of wind and thrill with each 
turn. Centrifugal force crushes Scully against Mulder's 
solid body on the outward swings and the downward rushes 
feel a little like heaven on her throat and her exposed 
shoulders, lifting the wild tails of her hair. The landing 
and stop are bumpy and awkward and it makes them laugh and 
ruins any style left to her hair. Mulder runs a warm hand 
through her tousled and sun-dried waves and looks at her 
like she's the most beautiful thing in this place or any 
other. 

The sensory input pushes all thoughts of past and future 
from their heads and they are grounded in the thrill of the 
moment, waiting for the safety bar to release, and then 
kissing like a couple of kids, and being the last to notice 
they're supposed to get off the ride, now. Mulder helps her 
down, and she can't quite walk straight without his help 
after all that spinning and that just makes them laugh more 
as they stumble their way out of the ride pen and back into 
the main fair ground. 

Mulder whacks a mole and wins her a pink panda. Scully 
shoots a ping-pong ball into a glass bowl and wins them a 
goldfish. She gives her prize to a starry-eyed little 
blonde girl, because life on the road is no place for a 
goldfish. 

"You're so damned beautiful when you smile," Mulder says as 
they walk back to the car, his arm around her waist and her 
panda still hugged to her chest. She turns from her perusal 
of the endlessly green and blue horizon to look up into the 
almost blinding intensity of his gaze. Her eyes fall to his 
mouth, those soft and luscious lips full of brilliance and 
crazy theories and inexplicable notions that she is somehow 
worth sacrificing it all. 

She lifts her gaze lazily back to his, tilts back her head 
in a mix of challenge and flirtation. "Took you long enough 
to say so," she says. There is nothing but affection in her 
smile. 

"That's 'cause you scared the crap out of me, Scully." He 
says it with a laugh, but she knows it's true. She wants to 
stay in this moment forever, just keep walking arm in arm, 
and never let go. 

//////////


"Scully?"

She jerked awake with a gasp. Airplane. She must have 
fallen asleep on the flight. On Mulder's shoulder.

"Whoa, hey...sorry," he is saying, long fingers settling 
over her forearm. "I didn't mean to startle you."

"It's all right. I'm sorry. I must have been more sound 
asleep than I expected."

His smile was gentle and patient and she found herself 
pulling upright and away, because she was still half caught 
in the dream memory and the scent of his aftershave and the 
mixed up sensations were confusing and unnerving and she 
didn't want to do anything stupid before she was fully 
awake. Mulder was still firmly grounded in 2018.

"It's all right," he said. "You must have needed it. The 
pilot just announced our descent. I wanted to give you a 
chance to get awake."

She nodded. "Thanks. Yeah." Her mouth felt like she'd 
sucked in some of the cotton of his sleeve and she reached 
for her water tucked into the seatback in front of her. The 
cool liquid felt extraordinarily soothing passing through 
her throat and chest.

She had been on so many flights with Fox Mulder in her 
life, they had the system down to a science. She knew which 
pocket in his laptop case held his boarding pass, what size 
water bottle he liked to buy at the Hudson News shop, how 
many seats in front of the wing he preferred to be, which 
kinds of peanuts and pretzels he would squirrel away for 
snackage at the motel and which ones he would spit out, how 
many hours the flight had to be before he would take off 
his shoes, and where in the boarding process he was likely 
to decide he should probably go pee.

And he knew her. He would reach up and turn the air vent 
away from her when she was cold, grab her favorite Snapple 
for the flight when he was buying his water even when she 
insisted she really should have the diet, flip down the 
armrest that never quite leveled with the seatback between 
them, so she could fall asleep on his shoulder without the 
edges digging into her flesh. They had only known one 
another two years the first time she had poured herself 
onto a flight, literally beaten up, beyond exhausted, 
dragging on autopilot, bandaged and bruised and just 
wanting to get home, and he had said simply, "Come here," 
and guided her to turn herself sideways on the seats, 
taking advantage of the empty windowseat beside them, and 
she had managed to curl on her side with her head in his 
lap. He had spread his winter wool coat over her huddled 
form and kept a protective arm across her throughout the 
red-eye flight, his deadly glare daring any flight 
attendant to point out the need for an "upright position" 
and proper use of the seatbelt. To this day she told 
herself he had never noticed the tenderness and comfort had 
made her cry. She had written it off as exhaustion.

Mulder had the case file folder open on his lap now, and 
Scully found herself confronted with yet another simulated 
picture of a Black-Eyed Kid. "What do you really think 
we're looking at here, Mulder? A hoax? A coincidence? 
Exploitation of some kind?"

He shrugged. "Honestly, Scully? I don't know. But whatever 
it is, I don't want to let it happen to another family if 
we can help it."

"Fair enough," she said, voice just a little stronger after 
the water, ground just a little solider as she wrangled 
free of the dream. "We start with the coroner?"

"Yep. 4pm appointment." He glanced at his watch. "Our 
flight is coming in a little behind, but we gained two 
hours, so assuming the rental car is ready on time, we 
should make it."

"Sounds like a plan."

****

(End Chapter 1)