Redemption (4/26) by GeorgeHale Rating: R Feedback: Classification: Colonization/Mythology/MSR/William, post I.W.T.B. Canon. Spoilers: Left, right, & center. This is best served if you REALLY know your X-Files. Disclaimer: I wish I made this. This has been my catharsis, five years in the making. Maybe it can be one for you, too. Warning: Violence, Gratuitous employment of the 'Our little sailor' clause (swearing,) Fluff with two 'f's, Cheesy dialogue, Friendly Ghosts, Melodramatics, Plot devices, Fiji Mermen (no, not really,) Angst, Blasphemy, Dehydration via crying, Scientific Whammies, Plams, Lots & Lots & Lots of...Bees, Magical Growing Scully Cross Chain, Red Herrings. It's going to get strange and ugly before the end. ------------------------------------------------------------------ IV ------------------------------------------------------------------ "Mulder, even if George Hale only saw elves in his mind, the telescope still got built. Don't give up..." - Dana Scully, Little Green Men ------------------------------------------------------------------ GREENBRIER RESORT CONGRESSIONAL BUNKER White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia 11:47 p.m. Mulder pulled back from the wall and parked them in the only empty space left in the shadowed lot. They moved quickly, Mulder leading them to a security monitor and camera that were posted by a sealed exit. It too appeared to be motion-activated and informed Mulder to standby for a retina scan before it chimed and Mulder began to whistle. He finished the short tune and the blast doors in front of them released with a pneumatic burst. "Seriously, Mulder?" Scully might have laughed under different circumstances. "*Garry Owen,* the tune of doomed men everywhere, Scully. Colonists can't sing or whistle, so that's your human credential here." "If that really is the case, I am doomed." An elevator concealed behind opened before Mulder could respond and took them down several floors to the quarantine area. Two doctors and a nurse clad in biohazard gear met them with a stretcher. Mulder laid the unconscious boy down and they began rushing him quickly to an adjoining isolation room. Scully updated the staff on the boy's condition, relieved now in part that there was a professional facility awaiting them and not the primitive clinic she had expected. "He's displaying symptoms of shock and significant swelling. He's been stung a number of times but has been overdosed with vaccine. Unconscious now just over an hour. No known allergies." Positioned inside the isolation room in thick hazard gear, a doctor drew a thick clear plastic curtain around the bed while the other set to beginning an I.V. and inserting a breathing tube. The nurse drew a blood sample and left the room quickly. Another assistant entered with bags of ice and began layering them over William after she cut the sleeping bag off from around him to limit the swelling and slow the progress of the virus present in his system. The doctor who appeared to be directing the others did not look up from his examination. "With your permission, I'll start an epinephrine drip followed by a course of antihistamines, steroids, and antivirals." The course sounded appropriate to Mulder for what he knew but he looked to Scully to approve and she quickly nodded her assent. Limit the swelling and aggressively fight the virus. One of the nurses left to gather supplies. "Have you treated anyone with the virus before?" she asked the man. The doctor nodded, but did not share that the outcome had not been positive for any of the patients. Mulder noticed his friend's quirk and understood the implication of the nod without a verbal response. A low rumbling reverberated through the room for several prolonged seconds. "What was that?" Scully asked. "Midnight," Mulder murmured. "They've sealed the bunker." Scully wasn't sure whether to be alarmed or relieved. The medications arrived and the nurse who had administered the ice loaded the IV packs with the thick liquid mixture. The action slowed and everyone left the room with the exception of Mulder, Scully, and the doctor from before who drew their own blood for testing. The doctor directly addressed Scully as he finished bandaging her arm, wiping helplessly at the facemask of his layered helmet. "I apologize I wasn't able to introduce myself earlier," he said in his deep altered baritone. "My name is Threadgoode, but everybody calls me Theo. It is nice to meet you finally, Dr. Scully. Hound dog here never shuts up about you." The older man winked up at Mulder as he delivered the jibe, apparently relieved to settle finally after all the commotion of their arrival. Scully was unable to cover how overwhelmed she was, but trusted the man before them since Mulder did. "Thank you. Is there anything else we can do for him right now?" "Until the blood work is finished, no," Threadgoode shook his head. "Let the vaccine and fluids get into his system and do their job. Were either of you stung?" Seeing their indications that they had not, the man stood up in his suit slowly, exposing his advanced age in the care he took. "Then I'll take my leave and see what I can do about rushing those results. It may be tomorrow before I see you again. The other new arrivals are going through decontamination and I'll be needed there. Use the alert if anything develops and I'll get here as fast as I can." Theo patted his shoulder in passing but Mulder caught his arm before he left. "Thanks." Beside the whir of medical machinery, the room fell silent. Seated together on a storage unit that doubled as a bench, they began a vigil that wound over the next several days. Scully's bloodshot eyes held a thousand silent questions, and Mulder was unsure where to begin. William's heart monitor quietly heralded the passage of time. "Theo's good," Mulder nodded, placing a reassuring hand on Scully's knee as she wiped her brow. "Former field surgeon. John Hopkins neuroscience and a soldier enhancement think tank where he became privy to information regarding the early supersoldier programs. After he retired he became involved with the Resistance and showed up here a few months before I did. He helped me a lot when I first arrived." Scully sighed. "Do you hear what you're saying, Mulder? What happened to these doctors that were treating him before? Why aren't they here? I mean, he didn't even ask about where you got the vaccine." "Scully...he's the one who helped me palm the dose. Besides you'll be here to help and supervise. If anyone can help us help William, it will be him," Mulder nodded. "I don't know where the other doctors are," he admitted. "I'm scared, Mulder," Scully admitted uncharacteristically, leaning into him. "There's so many things that-" Scully began but Mulder cut her off. "I'm scared too, Scully, but try not to think about it right now, okay? I know it's hard. C'mere." Opening his arms, Mulder silently invited her to rest against him, and while she resisted sleep at first, it was not long before she passed out with her head in his lap. Tucking a stray loose lock back over her ear, he was content to watch over them both, worried but relieved that he had been able to get them both to safety. ------------------------------------------------------------------ A nurse came to check on William some time later and Scully talked at length with her regarding his care. The isolation room that housed them connected to another room with several cots and they took turns sleeping after they had both finally had a chance to clean up and change clothes. Once Mulder finally slept, the dreams he often had of the boy on the beach returned to him and he saw the boy had grown older and was his son. He had thousands of dreams like this over the last decade, but they had never been so vivid and the boy had never appeared to age. ------------------------------------------------------------------ *The monochromatic beach was lined with sand ships now that towered around them several stories high. The water lapped at them but they did not wash away as they had in the past. 'More ships. They're much larger now,' Mulder murmured to his dream son, but the boy had been in the distance and slipped out of sight behind one of the mounds. Mulder had tried to find him, but the ships were a labyrinth that he ran through until he was exhausted. He yelled for William, but the boy did not answer. He found himself resting his hands on his knees, bent over, breathing hard. "You really think you're safe now? They'll find him now, you know. Find him and kill you all. But that's alright," a distinctive old man wheezed behind him. "It didn't have to be that way but now it's meant to be. Everything dies, Fox." Mulder spun hard as he heard the voice of the man breathing smoke. He watched a cigarette fall from the man's hand, land at the man's feet, and watched as he snuffed it callously with his shoe. "Except me, of course. You won't be able to save them this time, Mulder. No one can - it's his destiny... and yours. It ends soon."* ------------------------------------------------------------------ When he woke screaming, Scully was shaking his shoulder. "You're having a nightmare, Mulder, wake up. William's here safe with us. We're all safe. We're all okay. He's okay." She took him in her arms as she had many times when he experienced nightmares and smoothed his hair, wanting to give him comfort with her presence. Mulder wanted to believe, but his heart pounded and his eyes were wide with fear. ------------------------------------------------------------------ When they were both awake, they spoke mostly of the boy at his bedside. Long and lanky already like his father, it would be many years before he filled out. Scully decided she would be happy if he only regained consciousness and his health. She had once been able to fight off the virus and prayed her son would have the strength to as well. She reflected she had done more praying in the last twenty-four hours than the last five years, but concluded that desperate times required desperate measures and didn't think God would mind. "Don't worry. He's an UberScully, our own little Great Mutato," Mulder assured her, gripping her hand tighter. "I'll bet he's as stubborn as both of us. Good luck to us both if he is." Leaning close, Scully left her head rest against Mulder's shoulder as they regarded their son. "Still think he looks like Walter Skinner?" Mulder tilted his head to look down at her with a furrowed brow as she raised an eyebrow at him and they shared their private smile. ------------------------------------------------------------------ On their second day in the bunker, the attending doctors drew more of William's blood for analysis. Heavy levels of Phenytoin in his blood had them confused, but Scully linked the drug use to the "preventative treatment" that had kept William's abilities subdued. Mulder himself had received the same drug when he struggled with his artifact experience just over a decade before. At Scully's request, additional equipment was brought to help monitor William's brain function. Mulder had taken the initiative to arrange for their quarters and supplies through the communications system and they both had listened rapt and horrified as the day passed to the radio bulletins from outside that channeled through the base for anyone who decided to listen. Looking over William once the arrangements were complete, Mulder chewed through a pocket of sunflower seeds and on his lip absently as he listened to one broadcaster's descent into madness. *"...have announced that martial law is now in effect nation-wide and throughout the entire Roanoke area. Local government facilities have collapsed beneath the strain of demand and Homeland Security authorities state that the situation is similar across the country and throughout the European Union..."* The announcer paused briefly to crumple the paper near the microphone. *"For those of us left, the only real question remaining is survival. Have you been to the ruins of Memorial hospital? There are thousands of bodies littering the hallway, their chests cracked open where these creatures birthed themselves to feed on every living thing they could find! There was no cure! There is none! It was all lies, man, and now they're all dead! This is the Judgment, friends, the weeping and gnashing of teeth, oh yes, we were warned and now time has come for us all! Not with a bang, but a whimper. Elliot said this is the way the world ends. The epic finish of all our yesterdays, the triumph of science, the Age of Aquarius, the end of digital man! This is the way the world ends, Honey Boo Boo - it's the sixth extinction, mother-"* Sweeping past Mulder, Scully quickly shut the speaker off as she entered the observation room, visibly upset. "How can you stand listening to that garbage?" Mulder shifted so he could reach up and turn the radio back on. "Keep something on, Scully. I'm going stir crazy and I can't stand sitting still." "No, you never could, Mulder," Scully stated joining him, the edge back in her voice. The broadcast had scared her and now she was annoyed with herself and him for having it on. The way Mulder's eyes appeared glazed over made her nervous. "Hey now." Mulder changed the frequency until another station came in as he met her reluctant gaze. "I don't wanna fight." 'cause this feelin' won't leave me alone. But I won't, won't be losin' my way, no, no 'Long as I can see the light.' "Dance with me, Scully." Mulder stood, grabbing her hands, drawing her close before she could protest. Slipping an arm around her waist, he began to slowly dance them around the room half in-time with the music. "A revolution without dancing is not a revolution worth having. Am I right?" "I'm sorry," he whispered close to her ear, growing serious as they turned together. "I'm sorry I lied to you. Forgive me. I, uh...meant to protect you. I'll always try to protect you." It was as intimate an embrace as they had shared since their reunion and an even rarer occasion that they danced. Taken back at first, Scully felt herself slowly relax into the familiar embrace as Mulder lead them about. She could barely recall the last time they danced like this, but if she closed her eyes, she could almost pretend they were anywhere else their journeys had taken them through the years as John Fogerty pleaded from somewhere beyond. 'Put a candle in the window, 'cause I feel I've got to move. Though I'm going, going, I'll be coming home soon,' "Don't be sorry," Scully relented. "I'm grateful you came for us." 'Long as I can see the light.' "I should have been honest from the start, Scully...I was afraid you wouldn't come with me if I told you. All these years we've shared, and I wanted to hide it from you because I couldn't accept it myself." 'Long as I can see the light.' "Maybe I wouldn't have come with you," Scully admitted. "It's hard to believe, and even harder to accept." 'Long as I can see the light.' "It is." "It's not quite how I imagined ringing in Christmas this year, Mulder...but thank you." Scully traveled a hand up over Mulder's shoulder blade and behind his neck meaning to draw him down for a kiss but instantly froze and broke their contact just before his lips met hers once her hand came to rest on something that hadn't been there before. Mulder was heartbroken, knowing he bore the marked bumps she had felt at the nape of his neck. "Oh Mulder, what have they done to you?" She hugged him tight before she brought his forehead down to hers and they stood there a long time, braced against one another. ------------------------------------------------------------------ At 10:13 p.m. on Christmas Day, the last public broadcast went silent. The static left in its wake was as eerie as the last alarming moments when the broadcaster fought to keep the invaders from entering the station. Chanting an unintelligible prayer, the broadcaster had shot himself just as the studio door was battered. Sickening snaps and unintelligible noises followed before silence replaced them. Together then, heads bowed, they cried for the fallen. Their lips met and they lost themselves completely catching up with each other that night, desperate for a sense of normalcy and escape in a lost world. ------------------------------------------------------------------ Tangled together in their sheets on their combined cots that had collapsed to the floor, Mulder told her about his involvement with the Resistance. "On the day Colonization began, our forces released their own bees, engineered to inject venom that would prove fatal to the infected unconscious and newborn Colonists. There won't be nearly as many as there would have been, at least near here. Surface teams are also burning the infected to keep as many from hatching out as possible. These troops were all vaccinated against the virus, but they don't have a large window to work in and they have to survive topside while they work." Scully began to murmur, but Mulder continued. "This is only the first stage of a rebellion coordinated by survival groups scattered across the globe to slow their progress and to expose their weaknesses. Still," Mulder sighed, waving a hand across the air before drawing Scully closer to him, "chasing monsters with a butterfly net." Scully turned so that she could look up at her favorite set of eyelashes, eyebrows lifted in surprise. "You mean everyone here hasn't already been vaccinated?" "No," Mulder shook his head slightly, opening his eyes. "It's a difficult production process and the vaccine itself is fragile. It breaks down easily." "Then how did you get that dose, because you're already-" "I volunteered to lead one of the strike teams that will be sent out once the next phase begins." "Mulder! Why?" Scully's eyebrows furrowed, her displeasure apparent in her inflection. Mulder cautiously captured her eyes with his own after looking away. "I know this may be hard to believe, but they didn't need a criminal profiler. I joined as a mercenary and used my information and abilities to gain what leverage I could. It's how I was able to come for you and William and get the vaccine. Besides, you saw how I've been changed." He swallowed, finally able to share the demons that had haunted him over the past year. "My, uh...unique capabilities have made me an outcast here. I'm simultaneously regarded with a dangerous mix of awe and suspicion, but they keep me around because I'm useful. I'm a regular Frankenstein." Scully hugged him against her tighter sharing what comfort she could, grateful for his sacrifice to keep her and William safe, but frustrated with the context. She couldn't help but think of how Mulder had similarly been viewed by their colleagues at the F.B.I., not wanting to speak of his physical transformation or indulge in his self-pity. "My funny valentine...Spooky Frankenstein." Mulder softly chuckled since the only alternative was to cry and drew the blankets over both of them in the darkness as he began to drift off, so grateful she was back in his arms. "Dana?" "Hmm, yeah?" She lowered her chin and nestled her head against his chest. "You know you're a sorry son-of-a-bitch when it takes the end of the world to put a smile back on your face." Smiling against him, Scully placed a healing kiss over his heart, wishing she could take his pain away.