Schisms (2/?)
by Singing Violin (Pearl on Ephemeral/Gossamer)

Email: perlner@mit.edu
Rating: PG
Category: X-Files SRA

Summary: What could possibly cause these two to break up? A
series of short stories explaining the reported status of Mulder
and Scully's relationship upon the revival miniseries.

Disclaimer: The X-Files characters and universe are not mine.
Archiving: Anywhere, as long as you let me know. I put stuff on
AO3, ffnet, and Ephemeral/Gossamer.


Chapter 2: William

The hospital was deserted, eerily quiet. Doctor Scully wandered
through the halls, wondering why she was alone.

Suddenly, she heard her name: the voice was faint, high,
child-like. "Dana?"

She broke into a jog, trying to follow the sound of the voice.
Finally, she came upon a figure huddled in a corner: a girl,
with curly black hair.

"What's wrong?" Scully asked apprehensively, kneeling down and
gently touching the child's shoulder.

The girl raised her chin and her dark eyes, moist with unshed tears,
met those of her would-be rescuer. Immediately the doctor gasped.

"Samantha?"

The girl nodded, her hair bouncing with her chin. "He needs your
help."

Scully frowned. "Who?"

The child gave no reply but a solemn gaze. The doctor reached out a
hand and pulled the girl to her feet. "Show me," she begged.

With that, the girl led her through the hallways to a private room.
Though there was no sound, Scully observed a crowd of people
gathered around the hospital bed, heads bowed as if in prayer.

The doctor unclasped the hand of the child in order to turn the
doorknob, but upon touching it, she found it sticky. Quickly, she
pulled away her hand and observed the redness of blood.

"What is this?" she asked, turning to Samantha, but the girl was
gone.

---

Scully gasped, sitting up in her bed, and was met with the
concerned eyes of her former FBI partner.

He grabbed her hands and squeezed them. "It's all right," he
murmured soothingly, as he had so many times before. "It was
just a nightmare." As he raised one hand to stroke her hair away
from her face, guilt bubbled up inside him: he knew, most likely,
that this night terror, as many others before it, was borne from
their work on the X-Files, the "darkness" she so desperately
wanted to get away from, but which followed her relentlessly
nevertheless. He too, had dreams, but he'd had them since
childhood: he couldn't imagine a life without the hole left inside
him when he'd lost his sister. For him, it was a way of life.
Monsters in the dark were essential to his existence, but she
was a creature of the light: healing the sick, comforting the dying:
his wasn't her world. At least not anymore. For her, evil and pain
was a cancer, not unlike the physical one she had suffered so
many years ago, and which every day he dreaded would return.
And as when she'd been physically ill, he could tell her spirit was
failing now: more often than not, she had no appetite for food
or anything else, and she was so thin that her pale, drawn face
added years to her appearance.

Scully nodded, taking deep breaths to calm herself. "I think I'm up,"
she assessed. "You can go back to sleep if you want. I'm going to
go to the hospital to get some paperwork done." It was only a
little lie: in truth, she wanted to reassure herself that there was
nothing nefarious in that room, not in reality.

"Okay," Mulder answered, eying her askance, obviously
unconvinced of her excuse. He'd learned long ago to accept
whatever she had to offer: he'd hidden things from her more
times than he could count, and he owed it to her to let her
keep some secrets too. Many years ago, he'd yelled at her,
brought her to tears for hiding things from him: she'd been sick,
and struggling to accept the truth herself. Yet he'd treated her
like an enemy, and he marveled at the fact that she'd ever
forgiven him. They'd been through so much since then, but
very rarely had there been a moment when he was sure they
were both being completely honest with each other. Perhaps
that was why they'd never considered marriage or any other
commitment: both were desperate to maintain some
semblance of individuality, some privacy in which to hide their
secrets and shame.

Thus lying to each other had become a way of life, too. And
although he wanted more than almost anything for her to let
him in, to share her whole self with him, he also knew it was
never going to happen, for the same reason there were certain
things he could never admit to her.

So he let her go.

As she scuttled about, he tried to fall back asleep, but his
thoughts were troubled, and eventually he checked his cell
phone to see what time it was. It was then that he realized
the date: December 22, 2012.

"Scully?" he called out hoarsely, jumping out of bed and
running towards the front door, not even bothering to dress
first.

She was already gone.

He cursed, then hastily threw on some clothes, hoping she
had at least been honest about her destination. He needed
to find her.

---

The hospital was still quiet in the wee hours of the morning,
but a few orderlies and nurses populated the halls, and patients
were visible through the glass windows to their rooms. The
sound of monitors beeping softly filled her ears, putting Scully
at ease. This was familiar, comfortable, perhaps more of a
home than the one she went to at night.

She knew these halls inside and out, and the memory of her
dream was still vivid in her mind. She traced the path Samantha
had led her through and gasped once again when she observed
exactly what she'd seen in her dream: people, huddled around
the bed, heads bowed as if in prayer.

But the door was ajar, and she crept towards it, listening to see
if she could hear what the people around the bed were saying.

"We loved you very much," said a woman. "You were a gift to us."

"I know you're in a better place now," said a man, his voice choked
with tears. "No more pain."

"Our father who art in heaven...," someone began, and Scully
looked around to realize there was a priest in the room. Other
voices joined in the chorus of the Lord's Prayer, and then slowly,
people began to filter out of the room.

One looked curiously at Scully as they passed her, and she
attempted to give a reassuring smile while not arousing
suspicion. After all, this wasn't her patient, wasn't her business,
but as a doctor, she had a plausible reason to be anywhere in the
hospital. She planned to use that to her advantage.

Finally, the bed was visible through the glass, and she suppressed
a gasp when she observed the figure inside of it: it was an
adolescent boy, pale and still, with reddish-brown hair and a
dimple on his chin. The two figures remaining were most likely
his parents, and they stood close, the man's arm about the woman,
whose head leaned upon his shoulder.

Scully attempted to disappear into the shadows as she observed
another doctor entering the room. She couldn't quite hear what he
was saying to the parents, but they nodded and then left. The
doctor drew the sheet up over the boy's face, then wheeled him
out of the room.

She knew, given the late hour, that most likely the body would
remain in the morgue overnight. She retreated to her office, her
heart pounding in her chest and butterflies flittering in her
stomach. She closed her eyes and put her head in her hands,
a desperate mantra going through her mind: don't jump to
conclusions, Dana; wait for the facts. When she determined
it had likely been long enough for the morgue to be vacated,
she headed down.

Once she was alone with the body, she carefully retracted the sheet
from his face.

He was the spitting image of a young Fox Mulder, aside from the
auburn hair. Don't jump to conclusions, Dana: wait for the facts.

She looked over for the boy's charts and quickly found what she
was looking for. His name was William Van de Kamp. Adopted in
infancy, blood type as she suspected.

Oh God.

She continued peering over the charts: apparently he had
suffered from an unknown and terminal illness, and they
hadn't been able to determine what was wrong. There'd
been nothing left but to say goodbye.

She looked over once again at the still form, not sure what
she was hoping to see. Suddenly the sheet moved slightly
over the boy's face, as if he breathed. Quickly, she removed
it, and was astonished to see that the boy's eyes were open,
and he was looking at her.

"Don't do this," he told her. "Let me go."

Her hand went to her mouth, and wordlessly, she shook her
head, not taking her eyes off the boy.

"Mommy, please," came a small, high voice behind her, and
reflexively, she turned around to see who had spoken.

Her eyes grew wide at the vision before her. "Emily?!"

The small girl smiled at her. "I'll take good care of my little
brother," she said. "I promise."

At that, Scully's eyes returned to the prone boy, who was
once again still. 

Quickly, she put fingers to his neck, desperately feeling for
a pulse, only to find him cold and lifeless. She turned around
to see the little girl had vanished as well.

Tears sprang to her eyes and her stomach flip-flopped. Hastily,
she put down the charts and bolted from the room.

It seemed like hours later when someone knocked at the door
of the bathroom stall where she sat huddled next to the commode,
her arms hugging her aching midsection.

"Are you all right?" called a concerned voice.

Suddenly embarrassed, Scully picked herself up off the floor and
flushed the toilet. She refused to meet the eyes of the concerned
woman as she brushed past her on the way to the sink. "I'm fine,"
she muttered, hoping the other woman would disappear.

"Doctor Scully?"

Now she had to turn around and look up at the woman. Shit.
"Yeah. Did you need me for something?"

The woman nodded. "Actually, there's a man here looking for you.
He's in your office." Double shit.

Scully nodded. "Thanks for letting me know."

With that, she washed her hands, splashed water on her face,
then headed out, not looking back to see whether she was still
being watched.

When she arrived at her office, she was only slightly relieved to
see Mulder sitting at her desk. She had no idea how she would
have dealt with anyone else at this moment, and had dreaded
that it was someone connected to the boy in the morgue,
someone who was going to start asking questions as to why
she'd disturbed the body.

Upon sight of her, he instantly rose and placed a hand on her
shoulder. He seemed to want to hug her, but as she flinched at
his slight touch, he stopped there. "What's wrong, Scully?"

She looked down at the floor and shook her head, then looked
back up at him, tears once again trickling down her face.

She took a deep breath. "He's dead, Mulder."

"Who?" Mulder asked apprehensively.

"Our son," she replied evenly, then sobbed, raising a hand to her
mouth.

Now he gathered her to his chest and held her close, stroking
her back. "Are you sure? How do you know?"

She pushed him away. "The body's in the morgue. I just know."
Angrily, she swiped at her tears. "I've lost everything now."

He frowned, taking her hands in his. "You've still got me."

She pulled her hands away. "No. I haven't had you for years.
And maybe if I had, he wouldn't have died."

Her words were like a knife through his heart. His voice was
thick with distress, "What do you mean, Scully?"

She looked up at him, fire blazing in her overflowing eyes.
"He died because I couldn't protect him alone. He's been sick
for years. Probably as a result of that magnetite injection
Jeffrey Spender gave him right before I...." Her voice broke,
and she sobbed again.

"Hey," he replied, anger suddenly rising in him to match hers.
"I left because you convinced me it was the only way."

"Yeah, because you'd already screwed up," she pointed out.
"You disregarded everyone else, in pursuit of your truth,
regardless of the collateral damage. Me. William. And then
you did it again, and almost got yourself executed. And you've
almost gotten yourself killed more than once since then. I
keep saving you, but every time there's a price, and I can't
afford it anymore."

He pursed his lips, not sure how to respond. "I'm sorry."

"Yeah?" she responded. "Well, sorry won't bring him back to
life."

Mulder's instinct to fight kicked in. "Maybe we can still save
him, like you saved me, even after you thought I was dead.
Or if we can't, at least we can prove what was done to him.
Or maybe it's not even him. Don't give up, remember? Can
you get us access to the body and the records? We can solve
this, Scully. Did you bother to check the date today? It's
colonization day. That's got to mean something. William was
supposed to be an integral part of that. He's got to be still
alive, somehow."

She shook her head sadly. "Stop, Mulder! I can't hear your
incessant theories and keep hope about something I know is
lost. I am one hundred percent sure that the body in that
morgue is William, that he's not coming back from the dead,
and I need to accept that. I gave him away, in hopes that it
would keep him safe, but it was already too late. Now I have
no authority over him, and it wouldn't be right for me to
disturb his family at this time. It's time to give up. It's time
to walk away."

"Walk away from what?" asked Mulder, dreading the response.

She fixed him with a determined stare. "Among other things, from
you."

He nearly toppled over at the physical force he felt from her
words, and grabbed onto the desk for support. "You want to
push me away now?" he asked, his voice breaking. Now,
when you need me the most?

She nodded hesitantly. "I need to. This life...it's over, Mulder.
I need to start anew. I'm not the same person you worked
with at the FBI. That person is broken beyond repair, dead.
The only way I can survive is to be someone else, someone
without so much pain. I need to forget the past, and every
time I look at you, I remember every last, agonizing detail.
I can't look at you without seeing him, Mulder. You know,
the first thing I thought when I saw him in that morgue was
that he looked just like you. I can't do this to myself anymore.
I just can't."

Mulder sighed. "I told you once, when I agreed to father your
child, that I didn't want it to come between us."

She looked at him. "Well, it's too late. It already has."

Sadly, he nodded and walked out the door.