TITLE: Ersatz Promises
AUTHORS: Susanne Barringer and Suzanne Schramm
EMAIL: [email protected]; [email protected]
ARCHIVE: Sent to Gossamer directly. Anywhere else, please drop us a line. Revisions have been made to earlier posted chapters, so please use this newer draft. The full story as a single file is available at http://www.geocities.com/s_barringer/ersatz.html or http://alanna.net/sue/ep.txt
CATEGORY: XA
KEYWORDS: Mytharc
SPOILERS: Up to Emily
RATING: R for heavy angst and adult subject matter
SUMMARY: Ersatz - an artificial and usually inferior substitute or imitation.
DISCLAIMER: These characters belong to Chris Carter, 1013, and Fox. No infringement intended.
Thank you to Kris P. and Sue P. (no relation) for beta reading, not just the final copy but many of the chapters when this was a WIP. Your enthusiasm was much appreciated.
**CONTENT WARNING: Please note that this story contains subject matter that some people may find disturbing. We can't elaborate without giving away plot points. Please read responsibly. :)
NOTE: This story occurs sometime during the sixth season. This is NOT a Post-Requiem story. We started this well over a year before that episode aired. Similarities are purely coincidental and really pissed us off (Yeah, thanks Chris Carter for ruining our version of babyfic!). More authors' notes at end.
~~~~~~~~~~~~
Ersatz Promises
by Susanne Barringer and Suzanne Schramm
CHAPTER 1
Mulder is missing, at least officially. Once again, he's run off to chase a shallow lead in an unknown direction, leaving me to follow the evidence. I have no idea where he's gone, but for once in our partnership, I do know why - exactly why - and I know what he is looking for. As if to remind me, the child inside me moves suddenly, fluttering in my womb. I try not to weep with the pleasure of it. I cannot allow myself to love it, at least not until we find out what it is.
*****
"I'm pregnant."
Mulder's face doesn't change, not even the slightest bit. The shock is so great it seems to have almost no effect on him. Only his eyes show his reaction, clouding over in concern and doubt.
"Scully," his voice catches on my name. He is not as stoic as he appears. "You can't... I mean, I thought you weren't able to..."
"I'm not." I relieve him of his discomfort. I wonder if he thinks I've suddenly become delusional. I wouldn't blame him. This is the craziest thing I've ever said to him. "All those tests showed that this isn't possible, but I'm pregnant just the same."
I watch his face carefully, how his lips move to form a word but then stop. He is weighing what he should say, wondering what question to ask. I toss the sonogram onto the coffee table and Mulder unlatches his eyes from mine to glance down at it. His gaze meets mine again in question, so I raise my eyebrows in consent.
Mulder reaches for the picture and his hand trembles. He raises the sonogram and examines it carefully. I watch as he runs his finger like a caress over the barely perceptible gray shadow that is the fetus. I wonder if he's conscious of doing that.
"This is your baby?" He looks at me in a way that breaks my heart - half enthusiastic wonder, half total confusion.
"Trust me, I didn't believe it myself until I saw the sonogram. I insisted on one because I was so sure the blood test had to be wrong. I'm pregnant, Mulder. It's growing inside me as we stand here."
Mulder tears his gaze away from the sonogram and I see the amazement glistening in his eyes. "Scully," he whispers in soft awe. My throat aches, holding back an unexpected sob. God, why does he have to be quietly hopeful? It's going to be so much worse when he has to give up that tiny glimmer of happiness.
His attention moves from my face to my stomach, studying it, although I haven't yet started to show. His eyes linger a long time, dwelling over the place that holds this tiny being whose reason for existence, at least for now, is a total mystery.
Mulder drops the sonogram on the table and steps forward to reach out and place his hand on my belly. It is a light, gentle touch, one filled with amazement and reverence. I shiver, wishing that this bittersweet moment could last longer.
"They took your ova," he finally says, his voice sounding loud after the softness of his gaze and touch. "But they didn't get all of them." He sounds sure of this theory, more sure than I ever could have been. I wait for the other half of the equation to sink in. It only takes a few seconds before I see its weight settle across his face. He snatches his hand away from where it has been hovering in front of me.
"Scully, how did...? I mean, who...? I, I didn't realize you were..." Pain is written all over Mulder's face, the betrayal, the fear of secrets being kept.
"I'm not," I answer, knowing exactly what he is wondering. It is a natural question, after all, at least under normal circumstances. "I'm not involved with anyone."
Mulder closes his eyes. In relief? In confusion? Does he realize how much worse the truth is?
"Mulder, I haven't been intimate with anyone in a long time. Years." He opens his eyes and looks at me. A frown buries its way into his brow. "This baby has no father, Mulder. I don't even know how it got there."
There is a long excruciating moment of stillness. Then, Mulder reels back from me, a gasp catching in his throat as the implication hits him. His fists clench and unclench. I watch as the understanding and anger build up inside of him, stretching from the center of him out to his limbs. I have felt that, too. I have felt the indescribable rage and horror.
"Are you saying they did this to you? They did it to you again?" He turns away from me and kicks the coffee table. The sonogram flutters to the floor, staring up at me, teasing me with the promise of what it isn't. Mulder stands with his back to me, his harsh breathing loud in the silence of my apartment.
"Yes," I whisper, stooping over to pick up the sonogram. My fingers brush over it, but I find I can't bring myself to lift it. I kneel instead, now too exhausted to rise. "I think so, Mulder. I think they did this to me. I don't know how else to explain it."
Mulder lets out a muted groan of agony and sinks to his knees, his back still turned to me. My head bows and the sonogram blurs through a veil of tears. I close my eyes, opening them again when I hear Mulder moving towards me. He reaches for the sonogram, tracing over the fetus again in a gesture that looks almost like farewell. Then he takes my hand and squeezes it and I understand that a promise has just been made.
I look up and he gives me a watery smile. For just a moment, I honestly believe that everything is going to be okay.
***
Mulder's grief at what has happened to me, at the possibility of what my baby is, touches me deeply. He is mourning for me and for the child which is a part of me, although not necessarily my own. As for me, my reaction was less explosive, less wrenching, at least at the moment I found out. After all, I was sitting in a cold examining room when the truth was handed to me by a doctor who told me with a smile, not realizing the nightmare that his words would set into motion.
I didn't believe him, of course. Not even after I went to the lab and watched them draw the blood a second time and test it right in front of me. It was so unreal, like some sort of hallucinatory image from long ago, from back when I thought its reality was possible. Dr. Zuckerman probably thought I was crazy when I insisted on an ultrasound that very day. I wanted to see it. I wanted to see what it was because there was no possible explanation for how it could be there except for the one I didn't want to face.
It was too early to tell if the fetus was normal or not. Whether that was a relief or a concern I don't remember. I was so numb, so out of it, trying to wrap my mind around the reality of the child growing inside me while attempting to concoct all the possible explanations for its existence.
Of course, I had to keep it all to myself. I couldn't tell poor Dr. Zuckerman that the reason I was so shocked was not because of my own infertility, which is what he presumed, but because I hadn't had sex in years. There was no biological way for me to be pregnant, even if they hadn't taken away my only hope. It was then that the reality began to sink in. They had done this to me. The horror stayed locked inside while Dr. Zuckerman gave me the obligatory lecture about eating well, avoiding alcohol, and taking vitamins, before referring me to an obstetrician. He would never understand or believe. No one would. No one except for Mulder.
And yet it took two days before I could tell Mulder. I needed the time to work through the implications in my mind before I could explore them with him. In the end, though, he was the only one I could tell, the only one who could help me.
*****
In all our years together I have never been as aware of Scully's femininity as I have the past couple of weeks. Don't get me wrong, I knew she was a woman. Her physical attributes have certainly not gone unappreciated. But we were partners, and, more importantly, we were friends. I've never treated her any differently just because she was a she. She was simply Scully, and Scully to me encompasses more than the word "simply" implies.
Now I look at her with new eyes. I can see the sweet promise in the curves of her hips and breasts. Her pregnancy isn't showing yet, but I seem to detect a new fullness beneath the loose clothes she's starting to wear. This is still her secret, but one with which she has entrusted me.
According to the ultrasound she is eleven weeks pregnant. She hasn't had any missing time to explain how this happened, so we're focusing on the two days she spent in the hospital at the insistence of her oncologist. Not to mention the insistence of her partner. Hell, I was the one who took her to the hospital in the first place.
It was right after we returned from a long dry tour through the Southwest. Scully had seemed tired even before we left D.C., but after six days on the road she was looking pale and drawn in a way she hadn't since the cancer. Instead of taking her home, I directed the cab to the Georgetown Medical Center.
"Something's wrong," I told her when she leaned forward to redirect the cab driver. Scully looked at me, her exhausted eyes reflecting the same fear I was feeling.
"I'm just tired," she whispered.
"Have you had any headaches, dizziness, nausea?"
She leaned back and shook her head. "No. I'm just tired."
"Then I know a place you can get some rest."
"Don't kid yourself, Mulder." Scully sagged against the window, her shoulders slumped in resignation. "They wake you up every hour in the hospital to check your blood pressure. You should know that."
By the time we reached the hospital she was practically catatonic, a condition that didn't improve for a couple of tense and frightening days. Scully says she has only a few hazy memories of her hospitalization. She remembers me stopping by, the nurses checking on her, and Dr. Zuckerman reassuring her that it wasn't a recurrence of the cancer - only the flu compounded by exhaustion.
Figuring out when the pregnancy most likely occurred was easy. Getting a look at her medical chart has become a Herculean task. She requested it as soon as we'd started to put together the timeline, but it was misfiled and no one could locate it. After nearly a week she received a call stating that her chart had been tracked down. It had been sent out for microfilming, and no amount of cajoling or threatening could get the chart back sooner. A week later an envelope arrived, but it contained only an exhaustive record of the treatments she was given before her cancer went into remission, not her most recent admission. Another visit to the hospital and she was given an apologetic shrug and told that they would look into it.
Only this morning was her chart finally liberated, although it took some maneuvering from the Gunmen to get what we needed. Now she frowns as she sifts through the chart.
"Mulder." She taps a pink sheet labeled 'Care Plan Enacted.' "According to this I was seen by Dr. Zuckerman and a second doctor - Dr. Jeffrey Wright. There's a mention made of both doctors filing case notes, yet only Dr. Zuckerman's are here in the chart."
She flips through the papers in front and behind the care plan. Lab reports on green paper, Dr. Zuckerman's notes on a blue sheet, a discharge summary on white, but nothing for Dr. Wright. Scully begins fanning the papers at the top of the chart where a two-pronged bracket holds them in place. "Something's been removed." She picks at the top edge with her fingernail, pulling loose a thin strip of blue paper with 'Patien' printed at the torn edge.
"Dr. Wright, I presume?"
Scully makes no reply, her eyes wide as she stares at the small strip of paper that had held an explanation for the unexplainable.
*****
End 1/8
AUTHORS: Susanne Barringer and Suzanne Schramm
EMAIL: [email protected]; [email protected]
ARCHIVE: Sent to Gossamer directly. Anywhere else, please drop us a line. Revisions have been made to earlier posted chapters, so please use this newer draft. The full story as a single file is available at http://www.geocities.com/s_barringer/ersatz.html or http://alanna.net/sue/ep.txt
CATEGORY: XA
KEYWORDS: Mytharc
SPOILERS: Up to Emily
RATING: R for heavy angst and adult subject matter
SUMMARY: Ersatz - an artificial and usually inferior substitute or imitation.
DISCLAIMER: These characters belong to Chris Carter, 1013, and Fox. No infringement intended.
Thank you to Kris P. and Sue P. (no relation) for beta reading, not just the final copy but many of the chapters when this was a WIP. Your enthusiasm was much appreciated.
**CONTENT WARNING: Please note that this story contains subject matter that some people may find disturbing. We can't elaborate without giving away plot points. Please read responsibly. :)
NOTE: This story occurs sometime during the sixth season. This is NOT a Post-Requiem story. We started this well over a year before that episode aired. Similarities are purely coincidental and really pissed us off (Yeah, thanks Chris Carter for ruining our version of babyfic!). More authors' notes at end.
~~~~~~~~~~~~
Ersatz Promises
by Susanne Barringer and Suzanne Schramm
CHAPTER 1
Mulder is missing, at least officially. Once again, he's run off to chase a shallow lead in an unknown direction, leaving me to follow the evidence. I have no idea where he's gone, but for once in our partnership, I do know why - exactly why - and I know what he is looking for. As if to remind me, the child inside me moves suddenly, fluttering in my womb. I try not to weep with the pleasure of it. I cannot allow myself to love it, at least not until we find out what it is.
*****
"I'm pregnant."
Mulder's face doesn't change, not even the slightest bit. The shock is so great it seems to have almost no effect on him. Only his eyes show his reaction, clouding over in concern and doubt.
"Scully," his voice catches on my name. He is not as stoic as he appears. "You can't... I mean, I thought you weren't able to..."
"I'm not." I relieve him of his discomfort. I wonder if he thinks I've suddenly become delusional. I wouldn't blame him. This is the craziest thing I've ever said to him. "All those tests showed that this isn't possible, but I'm pregnant just the same."
I watch his face carefully, how his lips move to form a word but then stop. He is weighing what he should say, wondering what question to ask. I toss the sonogram onto the coffee table and Mulder unlatches his eyes from mine to glance down at it. His gaze meets mine again in question, so I raise my eyebrows in consent.
Mulder reaches for the picture and his hand trembles. He raises the sonogram and examines it carefully. I watch as he runs his finger like a caress over the barely perceptible gray shadow that is the fetus. I wonder if he's conscious of doing that.
"This is your baby?" He looks at me in a way that breaks my heart - half enthusiastic wonder, half total confusion.
"Trust me, I didn't believe it myself until I saw the sonogram. I insisted on one because I was so sure the blood test had to be wrong. I'm pregnant, Mulder. It's growing inside me as we stand here."
Mulder tears his gaze away from the sonogram and I see the amazement glistening in his eyes. "Scully," he whispers in soft awe. My throat aches, holding back an unexpected sob. God, why does he have to be quietly hopeful? It's going to be so much worse when he has to give up that tiny glimmer of happiness.
His attention moves from my face to my stomach, studying it, although I haven't yet started to show. His eyes linger a long time, dwelling over the place that holds this tiny being whose reason for existence, at least for now, is a total mystery.
Mulder drops the sonogram on the table and steps forward to reach out and place his hand on my belly. It is a light, gentle touch, one filled with amazement and reverence. I shiver, wishing that this bittersweet moment could last longer.
"They took your ova," he finally says, his voice sounding loud after the softness of his gaze and touch. "But they didn't get all of them." He sounds sure of this theory, more sure than I ever could have been. I wait for the other half of the equation to sink in. It only takes a few seconds before I see its weight settle across his face. He snatches his hand away from where it has been hovering in front of me.
"Scully, how did...? I mean, who...? I, I didn't realize you were..." Pain is written all over Mulder's face, the betrayal, the fear of secrets being kept.
"I'm not," I answer, knowing exactly what he is wondering. It is a natural question, after all, at least under normal circumstances. "I'm not involved with anyone."
Mulder closes his eyes. In relief? In confusion? Does he realize how much worse the truth is?
"Mulder, I haven't been intimate with anyone in a long time. Years." He opens his eyes and looks at me. A frown buries its way into his brow. "This baby has no father, Mulder. I don't even know how it got there."
There is a long excruciating moment of stillness. Then, Mulder reels back from me, a gasp catching in his throat as the implication hits him. His fists clench and unclench. I watch as the understanding and anger build up inside of him, stretching from the center of him out to his limbs. I have felt that, too. I have felt the indescribable rage and horror.
"Are you saying they did this to you? They did it to you again?" He turns away from me and kicks the coffee table. The sonogram flutters to the floor, staring up at me, teasing me with the promise of what it isn't. Mulder stands with his back to me, his harsh breathing loud in the silence of my apartment.
"Yes," I whisper, stooping over to pick up the sonogram. My fingers brush over it, but I find I can't bring myself to lift it. I kneel instead, now too exhausted to rise. "I think so, Mulder. I think they did this to me. I don't know how else to explain it."
Mulder lets out a muted groan of agony and sinks to his knees, his back still turned to me. My head bows and the sonogram blurs through a veil of tears. I close my eyes, opening them again when I hear Mulder moving towards me. He reaches for the sonogram, tracing over the fetus again in a gesture that looks almost like farewell. Then he takes my hand and squeezes it and I understand that a promise has just been made.
I look up and he gives me a watery smile. For just a moment, I honestly believe that everything is going to be okay.
***
Mulder's grief at what has happened to me, at the possibility of what my baby is, touches me deeply. He is mourning for me and for the child which is a part of me, although not necessarily my own. As for me, my reaction was less explosive, less wrenching, at least at the moment I found out. After all, I was sitting in a cold examining room when the truth was handed to me by a doctor who told me with a smile, not realizing the nightmare that his words would set into motion.
I didn't believe him, of course. Not even after I went to the lab and watched them draw the blood a second time and test it right in front of me. It was so unreal, like some sort of hallucinatory image from long ago, from back when I thought its reality was possible. Dr. Zuckerman probably thought I was crazy when I insisted on an ultrasound that very day. I wanted to see it. I wanted to see what it was because there was no possible explanation for how it could be there except for the one I didn't want to face.
It was too early to tell if the fetus was normal or not. Whether that was a relief or a concern I don't remember. I was so numb, so out of it, trying to wrap my mind around the reality of the child growing inside me while attempting to concoct all the possible explanations for its existence.
Of course, I had to keep it all to myself. I couldn't tell poor Dr. Zuckerman that the reason I was so shocked was not because of my own infertility, which is what he presumed, but because I hadn't had sex in years. There was no biological way for me to be pregnant, even if they hadn't taken away my only hope. It was then that the reality began to sink in. They had done this to me. The horror stayed locked inside while Dr. Zuckerman gave me the obligatory lecture about eating well, avoiding alcohol, and taking vitamins, before referring me to an obstetrician. He would never understand or believe. No one would. No one except for Mulder.
And yet it took two days before I could tell Mulder. I needed the time to work through the implications in my mind before I could explore them with him. In the end, though, he was the only one I could tell, the only one who could help me.
*****
In all our years together I have never been as aware of Scully's femininity as I have the past couple of weeks. Don't get me wrong, I knew she was a woman. Her physical attributes have certainly not gone unappreciated. But we were partners, and, more importantly, we were friends. I've never treated her any differently just because she was a she. She was simply Scully, and Scully to me encompasses more than the word "simply" implies.
Now I look at her with new eyes. I can see the sweet promise in the curves of her hips and breasts. Her pregnancy isn't showing yet, but I seem to detect a new fullness beneath the loose clothes she's starting to wear. This is still her secret, but one with which she has entrusted me.
According to the ultrasound she is eleven weeks pregnant. She hasn't had any missing time to explain how this happened, so we're focusing on the two days she spent in the hospital at the insistence of her oncologist. Not to mention the insistence of her partner. Hell, I was the one who took her to the hospital in the first place.
It was right after we returned from a long dry tour through the Southwest. Scully had seemed tired even before we left D.C., but after six days on the road she was looking pale and drawn in a way she hadn't since the cancer. Instead of taking her home, I directed the cab to the Georgetown Medical Center.
"Something's wrong," I told her when she leaned forward to redirect the cab driver. Scully looked at me, her exhausted eyes reflecting the same fear I was feeling.
"I'm just tired," she whispered.
"Have you had any headaches, dizziness, nausea?"
She leaned back and shook her head. "No. I'm just tired."
"Then I know a place you can get some rest."
"Don't kid yourself, Mulder." Scully sagged against the window, her shoulders slumped in resignation. "They wake you up every hour in the hospital to check your blood pressure. You should know that."
By the time we reached the hospital she was practically catatonic, a condition that didn't improve for a couple of tense and frightening days. Scully says she has only a few hazy memories of her hospitalization. She remembers me stopping by, the nurses checking on her, and Dr. Zuckerman reassuring her that it wasn't a recurrence of the cancer - only the flu compounded by exhaustion.
Figuring out when the pregnancy most likely occurred was easy. Getting a look at her medical chart has become a Herculean task. She requested it as soon as we'd started to put together the timeline, but it was misfiled and no one could locate it. After nearly a week she received a call stating that her chart had been tracked down. It had been sent out for microfilming, and no amount of cajoling or threatening could get the chart back sooner. A week later an envelope arrived, but it contained only an exhaustive record of the treatments she was given before her cancer went into remission, not her most recent admission. Another visit to the hospital and she was given an apologetic shrug and told that they would look into it.
Only this morning was her chart finally liberated, although it took some maneuvering from the Gunmen to get what we needed. Now she frowns as she sifts through the chart.
"Mulder." She taps a pink sheet labeled 'Care Plan Enacted.' "According to this I was seen by Dr. Zuckerman and a second doctor - Dr. Jeffrey Wright. There's a mention made of both doctors filing case notes, yet only Dr. Zuckerman's are here in the chart."
She flips through the papers in front and behind the care plan. Lab reports on green paper, Dr. Zuckerman's notes on a blue sheet, a discharge summary on white, but nothing for Dr. Wright. Scully begins fanning the papers at the top of the chart where a two-pronged bracket holds them in place. "Something's been removed." She picks at the top edge with her fingernail, pulling loose a thin strip of blue paper with 'Patien' printed at the torn edge.
"Dr. Wright, I presume?"
Scully makes no reply, her eyes wide as she stares at the small strip of paper that had held an explanation for the unexplainable.
*****
End 1/8