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, to Erica who makes me much more 
presentable to the world, and a warm welcome to dear 
Miriam, my Water's Edge beta from way back in the day, now 
back to kick my ass in line once more!

AUTHOR'S NOTE: Please excuse the brief inclusion of Daniel 
Waterston, but for the old time Edgeheads this is just a 
little something to let you know you really are reading an 
Elizabeth Rowandale novel (like it or not).;) I couldn't 
help myself.


Copyright (c) 2019

Chapter 15

//////////

She can't remember the last time she slept. Or ate. She 
knows she is literally running on caffeine and adrenaline 
through this rough and tangled patch of growth, branches 
slapping at her face and chest that will probably leave a 
sprinkling of scratches she won't feel until later. She 
sends up a silent prayer that her legs will stay strong, 
just keep carrying her this little bit farther. She will 
take care of herself later; she will sleep when the girl is 
safe. Mulder is supposed to be the obsessive one. He is the 
one she guides away from the Violent Crimes cases, from the 
serial killers, from the all-consuming drive to get inside 
the murderer's head, to understand the darkness in a self-
defeating attempt to pull someone else out of it while 
there is still a chance for redemption.

But this time she understands. They have been drinking and 
breathing nothing for days but the pictures of the dead 
girls, the stories from the families, the tox screens, the 
trace evidence under fingernails. Cataloging every step, 
walking through haunted and silent bedrooms with Backstreet 
Boys posters and cheerleading ribbons and no blood on the 
floor, combing through every microscopic detail, 
desperately trying to see in through the darkness, to find 
more than shadowy outlines to lead their way. To zoom in on 
one single detail that will tear down the veil, bring the 
whole picture into vivid color and allow them to find the 
missing girl before she is another cold and blue body. 
Another picture on the wall.

Last night the veil fell. And now they are only a few yards 
away...

The door of the aging cabin gives with only the second ram 
of Mulder's shoulder, and a sea of trained bodies spills 
onto the aging floorboards and spreads out like water. 
"FBI! Get down on the floor! Down on the floor, now!"

They are in the right place. Purple streamers are hanging 
everywhere. The killer's trademark. A twisted death party, 
like a clown with a butcher knife.

To the right is the suspect, and Scully registers that he 
has surrendered, hands up, then down on the floor, and 
there are enough agents to secure him, Mulder is one of 
them -- so she goes to the left. Looking for the girl.

She finds her in the first room they try.

"Get the paramedics in here!" Scully drops to her knees on 
the uneven floor, only peripherally aware of the law 
enforcement swimming around her. There is blood splashed 
everywhere. The finger-shaped bruises on the girl's neck 
virtually guarantee the expected manner of death. Scully's 
hand goes to the girl's cheek. Still warm. Her skin is 
still warm and a little resilient to touch. It hasn't been 
long. So much blood...tangled in her ash blonde 
hair...Scully is kneeling in it. Purple streamers spin 
around her. But she is tunnel-visioned upon her task. She 
yanks up the girl's torn shirt, scanning for the locations 
of the knife wounds, making certain she is not pressing 
anywhere that will only push out more blood. Then she lifts 
high onto her knees and plants her hands on the girl's 
chest. 1...2...3... She starts performing CPR on instinct, 
trusting her body to do what needs to be done.

In her last year of med school, Scully was walking down the 
street outside her favorite coffee shop, and a middle-aged 
man simply collapsed on the sidewalk in front of her. The 
man's wife started screaming for help, and Scully shouted 
to a random bystander cradling a cappuccino to get into the 
shop and call 911. Then she dropped to the concrete and 
started performing CPR without ever deciding to do so. A 
few minutes later, and the man gasped and coughed his way 
back into this world. Scully sat back onto her heels, 
checked his weak but present pulse, mumbled something to 
the patient's wife about letting him lie still. She heard 
the sirens in the distance.

When she looked up from the newly breathing man on the 
pavement, breathless and shaking herself but starting to 
process her surroundings, her own book bag spilling out on 
the ground beside her, she found herself locked eye to eye 
with Daniel, whom she had been meant to meet at the coffee 
shop. He had stood by and watched her work.

"Why didn't you help me?" she asked as soon as they were 
alone.

"Because you're a doctor," he said. "And one of the hardest 
lessons is to learn to trust that. Trust your training. 
Trust your body to carry you through what needs to be 
done."

"But I'm not a doctor. Not yet."

"Today you were."

The girl's ribs feel thin and fragile beneath the heels of 
Scully's hands, and even as she knows in the pit of her 
stomach that lifeblood will never pulse through this flesh 
again, that this girl will not get the second chance of 
that long ago man outside the coffee shop, she is fearful 
of fracturing those delicate ribs in her effort to save a 
lost life.

"Come on," she breathes as she counts. "Come on..."

She continues until the paramedics arrive. They take over, 
move in around her until she is an observer, sitting on her 
heels with nothing in her hands and no one left to save. 
She knows they've lost.

The room is blue rotting wood and fresh blood and sweat and 
pain and she is dizzy and sick and she pushes unsteadily to 
her feet and moves out of the room as fast as her legs will 
carry her.

She shoves out the door and keeps walking. Her subconscious 
registers that the suspect has been cuffed and is being 
placed in a vehicle. No one left to save, nothing to 
supervise and make sure it is executed with speed and 
precision; the agents behind her will do what has to be 
done.

She has to walk and keep walking and be somewhere where no 
one can see her, where she can breathe for a minute, where 
the nauseating smell of that place won't make her throw up. 
She has barely slowed to a stop when she lets herself 
acknowledge that of which she has already been aware -- the 
familiar footsteps behind her.

"Scully...?"

"Dammit..." She yanks a random branch from a tree above 
her, hurls it blindly into the brush. She smacks the heel 
of her hand against a tree trunk, scraping her skin.

"Scully, it's not your fault."

She whirls on him, her hot breath fogging in the chill 
Oregon air. "Then whose fault is it? Her parents? The 
killer? The teacher who abused him? The counselor who 
didn't notice early signs of a psychotic disorder? The 
company that sent faulty solution for the DNA preservation 
tube?...God?"

"I wish I knew. I don't. But I know it's not yours."

She releases a breath that's too close to a sob, rests her 
hands on her hips and looks around the endless wet and 
green, looking for something, anything to ground the 
desperate restlessness in her limbs; the need to escape 
this heavy and relentless reality.

"You did good work," Mulder says. "We caught him. We did 
what we set out to do."

"We did nothing!" she shouts. "We didn't save any of them."

"We saved the next one." His words are clear and steady and 
meant to project their truth onto her skin.

It works. This undeniable fact drains the last of the fight 
from her. She feels her limbs go hollow and shaky, feels 
small and useless among the towering and ancient trees. Her 
chin shakes as she says, "Mulder, she was still warm..."

"I know." This time she can feel the controlled pain in 
him, as well. He has been beside her through all of this. 
Every driven and obsessive moment. Every sleepless night. 
He's taking the hit, too, but he's been swallowing it to 
support her.

She is so exhausted and her blood sugar is low and she 
burned all her adrenaline with the run, and she tells 
herself she would be crying at this point if she lost her 
keys, and maybe that makes it easier to justify completely 
melting at a crime scene. But here she is, letting him wrap 
her up and try to make it okay that there's a teenaged girl 
dead on that dirty floor, and the last days of the girl's 
life were spent in hell, because their moment of revelation 
was just one fucking hour too late.

She grips Mulder's white shirt in her bloodstained fingers.

She never gets all the blood out of her own clothes. She 
has to throw them away. Like everything else that has been 
lost.

She shoves and buries the voice in her head that keeps 
telling her there is an end to how long she can survive 
this job. How long she will want to.

The voice that says Daniel may have been wrong for her, but 
he was still too fucking right about too many things.

//////////


"Isn't that Orion?" Scully said, leaning toward his 
shoulder and pointing.

"Oh, yeah, I guess so. I was seeing it like it was attached 
to the one next to it, that bright star. You see it?" 
Mulder pulled her half-across his lap in the front seat of 
the car, trying to match their eye lines.

"Yeah..." she said, but it was a little vague whether she 
was really seeing what he had seen or just going for it. 
She straightened up into her seat. "It's confusing when 
there are so many stars. We're too used to the city."

The sun had finally sunk behind the Organ Mountains, and 
the stars had been sparkling into view over the past half 
hour. Following an afternoon of paperwork and voicemails 
and dinner in Las Cruces at a place the sheriff had 
recommended that served some kind of allegedly wondrous 
Pecan Amber Ale (and Mulder had to agree, it had been a 
memorable flavor), they had headed back out for one more 
night's hopeful observation in Miller's Clearing. Mulder 
was starting to wonder if these strange light sightings 
held any validity, or if the phenomenon had simply stopped 
before their arrival in Verdad. It seemed strange that the 
Black-Eyed Children stories would have so much 
circumstantial evidence while the lights were proving a 
total bust.

"You called the military liaison officer earlier, didn't 
you?" Mulder asked. "Did he give you anything else on the 
source of the radiation?" They could still see the crime 
tape and orange cones in the distance, even in the last 
bits of fading light. A few concrete barriers had been 
added to the mix to keep cars away from the quarantine 
zone.

Scully shook her head. "No. He barely even spoke to me. I 
think they're done sharing on this one."

"The military less than forthcoming? How unusual."

Scully huffed out a soft sound. "You know, it's strange, 
Mulder. I grew up on military installations. I held such 
reverence for all that my father did...for the other 
officers who lived around us. I still do. It's hard to 
reconcile the military world I grew up a part of with the 
immovable and secretive forces we've found ourselves up 
against in the years since."

Mulder dropped his head back against the headrest and 
lolled it in Scully's direction. "Well, I feel like we 
still see both sides of that, Scully. We've struggled 
against a powerful minority in high level positions seeking 
to deceive, inveigle, and obfuscate, a sort of shadow 
government that probably always existed, but we also run 
into military officers and their families all the time who 
are in the job for all the right reasons, as much victims 
to the greed and machinations of the higher-ups as you or 
I."

Scully's eyes narrowed as she gazed out the windshield. "I 
guess so...," she said quietly, still obviously wrapped up 
in her own thoughts on the subject.

They were quiet for a while, then Scully said, "What do you 
think about what Jarvis was saying today? About the alien-
hybrid babies."

Mulder drew a slow breath, pulling up all the proper files 
in his brain. "Well, we've definitely heard stories like 
that before. Hybrid programs, the aliens not understanding 
the human babies' need for touch, physical comforting. A 
general lack of human empathy is a common theme in 
abduction stories. Abductees often cite a seeming complete 
lack of empathy during painful tests."

"Yeah. Penny Northern said that to me."

"What?"

Scully narrowed her eyes, staring intently into the distant 
darkness, while Mulder gazed intently at her profile, 
waiting for her to find her words. "When I was in the 
hospital, undergoing Dr. Scanlon's treatment. Penny was 
sitting with me, when I was feeling sick after the chemo. 
And she told me they had let her come stay with me during 
the tests. In the place. To...comfort me. And that that 
wasn't normal for them. They didn't usually...care."

Mulder was quiet, letting her words hover in the dimness.

"Do you...do you think that was some kind of experiment as 
well?" she asked. "That they were observing what Penny 
might do to comfort me?"

He slowly shook his head. "Maybe. I don't know. Scully, do 
you *remember* that?"

She swallowed and lowered her gaze. "No. I mean...I 
thought...I had a dream...sometimes... They were doing 
something to me...and I could hear Penny's voice telling me 
it was going to be okay. I don't know. I had a lot of 
nightmares during the treatment, and when I was sick. 
It...like fever dreams, you know? I don't know that any of 
it meant anything."

"Maybe. But it might have."

She shifted position, tucked one foot up behind her knee. 
"Penny was always pushing me to remember. I didn't want 
to."

"Do you want to now?"

She took a long time to reply, staring out into the night, 
breath quiet but shallow and slightly fast. He learned long 
ago to read her anxiety levels in the rise and fall of her 
chest. "I'm not sure, I..." She shook her head. "Now it's 
all so long ago, it's so fuzzy, it..."

"But it still affects you," he offered gently.

She nodded, gaze on her fingers in her lap. "Probably," she 
agreed, slowly and quietly. A concession he might once have 
been denied. There were things he loved about where they 
had come.

"Why does everyone assume they're evil?" Scully asked.

"What do you mean?"

This time she lifted her gaze, met his eyes directly. He 
felt the connection like a current that shimmered through 
his chest. "These...so-called Black-Eyed Children," she 
said. "Why does everyone assume they're evil?"

"Well, the way Mariela described it, the visits seem to 
come with an accompanying sense of darkness or dread. Like 
something is wrong or dangerous."

"Dangerous and evil aren't the same thing. Fire is 
dangerous, but it's also life-giving."

"True. What are you thinking about, Scully?"

She drew a deliberate breath, exhaled before replying. 
"Mulder, Emily was a hybrid child. Or...at least a child of 
a government experiment. And her blood could be toxic to 
those around her, just like something about these kids, 
radiation or whatever it is about them that's making people 
sick after they encounter them. But Mulder, Emily was not 
manipulative nor lacking in empathy, and she was certainly 
not evil or demonic or a curse upon those whom she 
touched."

"No, she wasn't. But Emily was raised by very human 
parents. Good parents. They would have nurtured and brought 
out the human side of her, rewarded and encouraged all her 
warmest qualities."

Scully took this in in silence and turned to gaze out the 
windshield once again.

After a moment, Mulder said, "Scully, let me ask you this -
- because so far you're the only one of us to have 
encountered them -- do the Black-Eyed Children scare you?"

Her admission came as reluctant but honest. "Yes."

"And is that because of what they are now, or because of 
what you say you've started to remember? The feelings their 
images triggered within you?"

She shifted, visibly discomforted by the subject. "I don't 
know. I can't pull it apart."

"Okay. That's okay."

"I don't like the lack of control."

That part he believed.

In the silence, the scope of her words replayed in his 
mind. It had been so long since he had heard Scully speak 
Emily's name, the impact came as a gut-punch, realizing how 
raw those wounds still were beneath her facade. It nagged 
at him that in their last years together as lovers, she 
hadn't felt she could bring up the subject with him. He had 
probably been too wrapped up in his own bullshit to see 
what she was hiding.

"Do you still think about her a lot?" he asked now, before 
inertia could settle in and silence once again prevail. 
"About Emily? You haven't spoken about her for a long 
time."

Scully's reply came with surprising ease. "I do," she said. 
He was still adjusting to this older Scully who alternated 
between distance and functional maturity. Their separation 
had confused things even further, retracting some areas of 
their progress, and cementing others into vital forward 
motion. "Mulder...do you realize she would be 23? At 23 I 
was in medical school..."

"That is hard to believe. I can still feel her little arms 
around my neck."

Scully's quick intake of breath was hard to read, but for a 
flash she looked at him like she had when they had been 
parents. When that additional thread had held them together 
with a level of selfless intimacy he had never felt before.

Mulder jumped into the deep end while the door was still 
swinging.

"Dana, I know you left the x-files because you didn't want 
the darkness. I know you didn't want to come back."

She shook her head. "It's okay."

"No, Scully...I know you've said things are different now, 
that you're here for different reasons, but I know you're 
still wrestling with this, too. Do you want out? You said 
yes to this case because it was a chance to be in the sun. 
And now...there's darkness even here in the desert. You 
were attacked and injured. Is this what you want to be 
doing? I mean, really? Are you okay?"

She took a long time to reply. "Right now, I still want to 
be here. And I'm okay."

He accepted that he should be content with this reply. If 
he had learned anything in the past 24 years it was that 
sometimes, it was better to stop digging. "Okay. And when 
that changes...you'll tell me?"

She didn't speak, but she reached over and squeezed his 
hand.

Scully had always been better at not talking.

****

In the lingering silence Mulder felt Scully tucking in all 
her raw edges and straightening the covers. She might have 
learned to share to keep the lines of essential 
communication open, but he knew she still had her limits 
before she had to re-center and withdraw.

He wasn't sure how much time had passed before she asked, 
"How much do you think Mariela Garcia and Nate Monroe have 
to do with this?"

"How do you mean? Are you asking if I think they were 
creating the problem? If they were staging the 
visitations?"

"I wasn't, but do you?"

Mulder shook his head. "No, not at all. Do you?"

"Instinctually, I don't. But we should still consider the 
possibility."

"What would they have to gain?" Mulder took a sip from his 
lemonade, nestled in the console between them. The dry air 
was starting to dry out his sinuses.

"I don't know...enemy of my enemy? If they thought somehow 
that posing a threat to both families might bring them 
closer together? Get them to approve of the relationship?"

He swallowed and lowered his drink. "Seriously? You think 
the local Romeo & Juliet decided that staging visitations 
from Black-Eyed Children would get their parents to 
understand their love? It's a pretty non-traditional 
approach to the problem, to say the least. And I can't 
imagine those kids having anything to do with Joseph 
Garcia's death, or the grandmother or brother's illness."

Scully breathed for a moment. Then, "No, they wouldn't 
have. But actually, my original question was about whether 
you think the stress of their situation, the friction it 
created both within and between these families, was an 
instigator for what all of this has escalated into?"

"Well, I think it's pretty clear in the case of the 
Monroes. If Ed suspected his wife of betrayal and at the 
same time thought his son was going to leave and abandon 
the family business, that's a lot of layers of stress to 
lead to crazy. But what are you thinking as far as the 
Garcias? Do you think they disapproved of the Nate? Did 
Donna say anything to you?"

Scully caught hold of Mulder's lemonade as he was returning 
it to the cup holder and brought it to her own lips for a 
quick drink. "No, I haven't seen any indication of that," 
she said. "Mariela is a driven and serious student. We 
never saw her interact with her father, of course, but as 
far as her mother, I don't get the stereotypical micro-
managing parent vibe there. If anything, Donna expressed 
feelings that Mariela takes on too much, tries too hard to 
take responsibilities for the family that shouldn't be hers 
at her age. I would imagine she would encourage a positive 
social relation for her daughter."

"I agree. So what angle were you thinking about?"

"The stress on Mariela. Knowing the conflicts in Nate's 
family. She clearly takes a lot on her shoulders, and 
having someone who potentially might take on a role of 
taking care of her, making her a priority, making her feel 
like she wouldn't be alone in all the stresses of college 
and career looming ahead of her...that might carry a lot of 
weight with a girl like her. And if she thought she would 
be losing that. Or if she thought her parents might be 
disappointed in her for focusing on a boy instead of her 
grades... She strikes me as the kind of kid who might over-
exaggerate others' expectations of her since her own run so 
high."

"Speaking from a little life experience there, Scully?" 
Mulder said with a hint of an understanding smile behind 
the needling.

Scully quirked her lips and gave him a quick affectionately 
tolerant glance. "Maybe. But the point is, anxiety spreads. 
It's contagious. If her stress levels caused concern in her 
mother, and then they were the two most directly involved 
in the supposed visitation from the Black-Eyed Children... 
then their symptoms, the rash and the nosebleed, were those 
most explainable by mental stress... it makes sense."

"What about the grandmother and father? Car crashes aren't 
generally a stress symptom."

"Well, they can be. This was a single car accident. 
Inattention, emotional distraction..."

"And then we had the same accident? I don't think my stress 
over the Redskins' humiliating elimination from the 
playoffs made our brakes stop working."

"And the grandmother died of a virus, a rare one, but it 
happens. And it's scientifically proven that stress weakens 
the immune system, which would increase her chance of 
contracting such a virus."

"So, you think the Redskins-Chargers game *did* cause our 
crash."

She rolled her head his direction with a disapproving 
smirk. "Mulder..."

"No, I hear you Scully, I do. And I'm sure stress was a 
factor here, but I feel like it was a contributor to how 
the events played out, not the instigator."

Scully considered for a long beat, then said simply. 
"You're probably right. I just wish I knew what else was 
going on here."

And for that he had no concrete reply.

****

She truly was exhausted. She couldn't miss sleep like she 
used to and not take the time to make it up. Which was 
disconcerting for a doctor whose whole mentality had 
centered around being able to take whatever grueling shift 
was thrown at her. Mulder noticed her prevailing fatigue 
and increasing silence tonight, which both annoyed her and 
comforted her, and after an hour of full darkness over the 
desert, he reached out an arm and motioned her onto his 
shoulder.

"Come here, G-woman. You get some rest, I'll take this 
shift."

Scully hesitated only a moment, then she settled 
comfortably against his shoulder. She knew where she fit. 
She had ridden thousands of miles in this man's arms. Spent 
a thousand half-sleepless nights keeping one another going. 
He spread his suit coat over her and she closed her eyes. 
"Wake me in a little while, okay?"

"Hmmm."

She listened to his heartbeat through the familiar pulse 
point in the hollow of his collarbone and close beneath her 
ear. She was mostly asleep, unsure what was real and what 
was a dream in her last moments of thin awareness, but she 
thought she felt Mulder's lips brush her forehead and heard 
him whisper, "No more monsters tonight. I promise." *No 
blood on her clothes this time. No one dead on the floor.*

She slept.

Then, she startled awake to a sharp rap on the window. 
Scully opened her eyes to find herself alone inside the 
car, Mulder's suit coat bunched beneath her cheek where his 
shoulder had been, and a face with large black eyes pressed 
up to the driver's side window.

*****

(End of Chapter 15)