Title: Oblivion

Author: Gillian Leigh

Summary: It's got Emily, and other Mulder children I invented. Mulder and Scully are married, but it's not all fluff.

Author's Notes: Sorry it doesn't have the happy-go-lucky vibe you want, but I'm in a weird mood.

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February 22, 2021

Dana Mulder sat on her therapist's couch. She gestured with her hands as she spoke, and the long vertical scar she had on her left wrist was visible. On her right wrist was a wound identical to the one her on her left, but this one was ten years newer. Two days old, to be exact. The stitches still held it closed, as it, like her heart, had not had proper time to heal.

"Emily was sixteen when she died," Dana began. She wouldn't let anyone call her Scully; it reminded her too much of Mulder. "Connor was eleven, and Anna and Aidan were almost ten." She took a deep breath. This was the first time she'd spoken about this to anyone other than Mulder since it happened. "It was my birthday. February 23, 2010; I was forty-six. My mother had the kids at her place, because they'd decided to make me a cake. " She smiled at the memory, but still cried. "She was driving them back to the house. They were all moving through an intersection, three streets from our house, when some sorry excuse for a human being blew a red light and hit them head-on. My mother and Emily were riding in the front, and were pronounced dead at the scene," She paused, fighting back tears.

"Are you sure you can continue, Dana?" The therapist questioned.

"Yes. Just give me a minute," she replied, blotting her eyes. "Connor had been in the back without his seat belt on, and when the car behind them slammed into them, he was ejected through the windshield. When Fox and I got there, he was still alive, and the medics were working on him. He was crying, and the firefighters were working on cutting Anna and Aidan out of the car. They were screaming and crying, and Aidan kept calling out for me. When I walked to the car, I assured him that I was there, and that it would be alright." She closed her eyes, and the images flashed through in rapid succession, as if the crash occurred the day before.

Her mother was slumped over the steering wheel and deflated air bag, and Emily had been thrown sideways, and her head rested against the cracked passenger window. They were both covered in blood, and she looked to the police chief, who simply shook his head.

"Dana!" Fox called, kneeling over Connor. "It's Connor, he's not going to last much longer..." He said, his voice breaking. She rushed to their son's side.

"Mom..." the boy whispered hoarsely. "I'm sorry...I...I should've been wearing my seatbelt. Grandma.....told me to...." She gripped his hand as tears fell from her eyes.

"Connor, shh, shh, don't try to talk. It's not your fault. None of this is your fault," Scully said.

"Are Grandma and Emily okay?" Connor asked. Scully suppressed a sob.

"I don't know, sweetheart. Just try to lie still," she said, stroking his forehead. His pulse was weak and thready, and he opened his eyes and looked at the two of them.

"I....I love you," he said, before his rapid, shallow, breathing, and pulse stopped all together.

Scully collapsed into her husband when, after five minutes of CPR, the medic informed them there was nothing more he could do. Mulder watched with horror as they placed Maggie in a body bag.

"Oh God, oh no," he said, feeling the tears rush forth. When he saw them placing the petite frame of their teenage daughter, Emily in the same black bag, he fled his wife's embrace and moved to the side of the road, where he instantly became ill. Scully remained, knelt beside the body of her son, which they covered with a sheet, as she watched the bodies of her mother and daughter being wheeled into two of the awaiting five ambulances. She stared in numb shock, and didn't realize what had happened until a paramedic was pulling her to her feet.

"Mrs. Mulder, they're transporting your son and daughter to Northeast Georgetown." There was still hope.

"I remember that I thought there was still hope. We were in no state to drive, so Fox and I rode in the back of a police cruiser to the hospital. Once we arrived at the emergency entrance, I saw them unloading Aidan, who was on oxygen and being Foley-bagged, but they had covered Anna with a sheet...."

"We lost her, Mr. and Mrs. Mulder. I'm sorry." Scully had never cried so much in her entire life. She sobbed uncontrollably in her husband's arms, and he had barely the strength to hold her up.

"Aidan was the only one who survived it. He held on for eleven hours. I'll.... I'll never forget what he said to me that night when I walked into his hospital room, red from crying.

"I'm sorry your birthday's ruined, Mom." Scully cried.

"Oh, Aidan, oh baby, it's not your fault."

"But, Dad had special plans for tonight..." Aidan said, hoarsely. Scully looked to Mulder. He'd planned to take her out to dinner, and the kids were going to present her with the gifts they'd bought her, each with it's own special meaning. Not that it mattered now. In one instant, they'd lost nearly all the family they had, and they weren't about to let their only living child feel guilty about a car accident that was not his fault.

"Aidan, shh, honey, none of that matters now. All that matters is that you're okay. But you need to rest, and save your strength," Mulder said, gently touching his son's cheek.

"We love you," Scully said, for both of them.

"I love you too," Aidan said, closing his eyes.

"He slipped into a coma not too long after that, and suffered a seizure that killed him." The therapist nodded.

"When the doctors told us there was nothing they could do to save him, I went on a rampage. I'd lost all four of my children because some asshole couldn't obey a simple traffic signal..."

"Where is he?" Scully asked of the doctors who had worked with her Aidan and the other car crash victims. She'd just been told that her son was dead, and she wanted to know who had killed off all the family that she and Mulder had; the one they'd cherished, and worked so hard to build.

"Where is who, Mrs. Mulder?"

"The man who killed my mother and my children, damn it! I want to know who he is!"

"David Andrews is up on his crutches. He's on this floor somewhere. Mrs. Mulder... Mrs. Mulder!!" The doctors called after her as she tore off down the hall. She found a man in a hospital gown, being followed closely by two uniformed police officers.

"Are you David Andrews?" she asked, running up beside them and standing in his path.

"Yeah. Who're you?" he asked. His arms and legs were covered in tattoos, and he had long, greasy black hair.

"Dana Mulder, the woman who's entire goddamn family you killed, you bastard!" She screamed. Mulder had followed her, and though he was furious as well, he came up behind her and put an arm on her shoulder, to keep her from doing anything rash.

"Where were you headed in such a hurry that you couldn't wait for that light to change? What was so damn important that you had to run it and kill my mother, two daughters and two sons? WHAT WAS SO FUCKING IMPORTANT?!" The man looked taken back by her words, and seemed somewhat remorseful. Scully was hysterical again, and turned to her husband, sobbing into his chest. "What could've been so important, so important that he took five lives?"

"That was the hardest time of my life, up until two days ago." She paused, and rose from the couch, walking over to the window. She leaned on the sill, and gingerly ran her fingers up and down the stitches on her right arm.

"Three months after it happened, when we were just starting to get over the tragedy of it enough to function normally, I felt ill, worse than I had since they'd been killed, and went to see my doctor.

Stunned, Fox and Dana Mulder digested the news.

"But...but I'm forty-six. It's.....impossible."

"No, Dana, I'm afraid it's not. You're indeed pregnant."

Even though it seemed impossible, I was pregnant. We thought of it as a second chance; a miracle. We weren't exactly spring chickens, but we felt that someone was giving us a second chance." The therapist looked up, pushing her glasses up the bridge of her nose.

"You were pregnant?"

"Yes. At the time we found out, I was four weeks along." She glanced skyward as she looked out the window.

"No one expected that I would lose the baby." Her overall demeanor saddened. "I was six months pregnant, and everything seemed perfectly normal..."

The doctor readied the ultrasound machine.

"So how're you feeling, Dana?" she asked.

"Old," Scully responded. "And like the Goodyear Blimp. I never expected to be doing this again." Mulder smiled, and kissed the hand he held. The doctor passed the ultrasound wand over her belly. She turned the volume up on the machine, and studied the screen. There was no reassuring, thunderous sound of a heartbeat. They could see the still form of the baby, and there was no beating heart to be seen. Scully and Mulder realized what happened before the doctor had a chance to say anything.

"I knew it was too good to be true," Scully said, quietly, letting her head fall back on the table in defeat. "But I felt him move yesterday," she said, letting the tears roll soundlessly down her cheeks.

"I guess it wasn't meant to be," Mulder offered, and Scully nodded, squeezing her eyes shut. Why weren't they allowed to have children?

"They took the baby by Cesarean that same day. They never could figure out why I miscarried," she said, sounding tired and defeated. "You might think that events like that would drive us apart, but rather, they pulled us closer together than we'd ever been." The therapist noticed that she hadn't mentioned when or why she'd slit her left wrist. As if she could read the woman's mind, Scully said,

"I did this on the one year anniversary of the accident." She pulled up the sleeve of her suit jacket. "It was when it really hit me that I wasn't getting any of them back." She pulled up her right sleeve. "I did this two days ago, when the rest of my world crumbled and disappeared into oblivion." The doctor nodded, knowing all too well what had happened two days ago.

"After all the years of facing dangerous monsters, and hardened criminals, who could've killed us many times, my husband dies of a heart attack, in the middle of a department store."

"His funeral's tomorrow. I hope you'll be there," Dana Mulder said, and simply walked out of the office, leaving a stunned Dr. Monica Reyes, Healer/Therapist, in her wake.

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February 23, 2021

It was her birthday, not that she even acknowledged it. She hadn't acknowledged a birthday of hers in eleven years. It became known only as the "DeathDay" and it wasn't celebrated so much as it was mourned. The service was short, the eulogy touching, but Dan heard none of it. To her right sat Monica Reyes, with her husband, John, and to her left, sat Assistant Director Walter Skinner. She sat deathly still, and listened only half-heartedly to the wonderful speeches given by Mulder's three dearest friends, Frohike, Byers and Langly. Only after the service was done, did she rise mechanically to her feet and walk toward his casket. Before she could reach it, there was a shooting pain in her head, a burst of bright light, and then it was over. Monica watched in shock as the tiny, black shrouded form of her best friend crumpled, and fell toward the beige carpeted floor of the church. She was dead before she hit the ground, of a brain aneurysm. Skinner knelt beside her, feeling in vain for a pulse. He opened her eye lids, to find one of her pupils was dilated, and the other was contracted, and her eyes were both bloodshot.

As Monica fell to her knees and began to cry, somewhere far above the heads of the mourners, a tall brown-haired man, and a petite red-haired woman walked hand in hand, up the porch steps to a house which looked much like theirs had on earth, where the family they had cherished waited inside.

-the end-

Author's Notes: Err.... sorry, I'm feeling morbid today. Well, love it or hate it, I put a lot of thought into it. I know Clyde Bruckman says Scully won't die.... but I don't believe him. So in this one she bit the dust... Sorry. Feedback is always welcome. [email protected]