Work Text:
4:37 PM
GEORGETOWN
Dana Scully closed her apartment door behind her and leaned her forehead briefly against the wood, the quiet pressing in on her from all sides. The familiar hum of the refrigerator. The distant city sirens. Life continuing, indifferent. She dropped her keys onto the side table, the sharp clatter far too loud in the stillness, and exhaled a shaky breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding.
The past ten days had collapsed into one continuous nightmare—blurring into bruises, hospital beds, antiseptic smells, and fractured moments of terror and disbelief. She was pregnant. Mulder was missing. She had followed an apparition of him only to realize too late that it was the Alien Bounty Hunter wearing his face. Then came the assault. The pain. The hospital. The doctors’ guarded looks and careful phrasing. She still could not fully accept that this was real.
Scully stared up at the ceiling, its cracks as familiar as constellations, and placed a tentative hand over her abdomen. The gesture was instinctive, protective—anchoring. Somewhere inside her was a life that felt miraculous and cruel all at once.
After being discharged from the hospital in Arizona, she had chosen to wait until Skinner was well enough to fly home with her. He had insisted she didn’t need to—reassured her that he’d be fine, promised he’d return to D.C. as soon as possible—but she hadn’t been able to leave him there alone. They had gone to Arizona together to find Mulder. It hadn’t felt right to come back without at least that small solidarity intact.
The flight home had been long and heavy with silence. Scully spent most of it staring out the window at the endless stretch of clouds, wondering where Mulder was—if he was in pain, if he was afraid, if he was even alive. At the airport, she and Skinner parted with quiet nods and a few practiced words about returning to work, neither of them able to say what really hung between them.
Now alone, Scully moved through her apartment on autopilot until she reached the answering machine. She pressed the button.
“You have one unheard message.”
Her mother’s voice filled the room, warm and worried all at once.
“Hi, Dana, it’s Mom. I’m sorry I didn’t call sooner. I just got back from visiting Bill and Tara. Sweetie, it sounds like we need to catch up. Give me a call when you get this.”
Scully closed her eyes. As much as she wanted to delay it—to keep everything contained just a little longer—she knew she couldn’t. She picked up the phone and dialed.
“Hello?”
“Hi, Mom. It’s me,” Scully said, forcing steadiness into her voice. “Sorry I missed your call. I just got back into town from a case.”
There was a pause on the line. “No worries, Sweetie. I’m sorry I missed you too. But… it sounds like things have been hard recently.”
“Mmhmm,” Scully murmured, the sound barely audible. Her eyes burned, and she swallowed hard.
Her mother heard it anyway.
“Honey,” Maggie said gently, checking the clock. “It’s still early. Why don’t I come over now? We can talk about it.”
Scully hesitated. Talking—really talking—had never come easily to her. Words failed where facts usually succeeded. Still, the ache in her chest told her what she already knew: she needed her mother now more than she had in years, even more than she had during the cancer.
“Okay,” she said softly. “I’ll see you in a bit, Mom.”
After hanging up, Scully unpacked her suitcase mechanically, changed into sweatpants and an old University of Maryland sweatshirt, and moved back into the kitchen. She filled the kettle and set it on the stove. Tea had never been her first choice—she’d always been a coffee person—but since Mulder had returned from England, she’d found herself sharing cups with him late into the night, their conversations drifting somewhere between work and something much more intimate.
She reached for the lemon ginger tea without thinking.
The knock at the door came sooner than she expected.
Scully opened it to find her mother there, and for a moment her composure shattered. She stepped forward and hugged Maggie tightly.
“Hi, Mom.”
“Hi, Sweetie,” Maggie replied, holding her just as firmly. When she pulled back, her gaze fell on the faded bruises along Scully’s face. Instinctively, she reached out—but Scully turned away.
“Come on in,” she said quietly. “I was just making tea.”
Maggie sat on the couch while Scully poured the water, the kettle screaming louder than necessary. When she returned with two mugs, Maggie took one gratefully.
“You said a lot’s been going on,” Maggie began while Scully was still standing, giving her daughter the space she’d always needed.
“Yes,” Scully said, finally sitting. Her voice trembled.
“So… what’s been going on?” Maggie asked.
Scully stared down at her hands. How did you explain joy and devastation in the same breath?
“Mom,” she began, “for the past several months, I’ve been seeing someone.”
Maggie’s face lit up. “Dana, that’s wonderful! Tell me about him.”
Scully smiled—but it was fragile. “It is wonderful,” she said. “It’s… it’s Mulder.”
For a heartbeat, Maggie simply looked at her—then broke into a wide, joyful smile. She had seen this coming long before her daughter ever would admit it.
“That’s wonderful,” Maggie said again, her eyes shining.
Scully nodded slowly. “It has been. It was wonderful.”
Something in her tone made Maggie’s smile falter. “Oh, sweetheart,” she said softly. “What else?”
“Mulder’s missing,” Scully said, the words falling heavily. “Two weeks ago. On a case in Oregon.”
Maggie gasped quietly.
“We’ve been looking for him,” Scully continued, tears finally spilling over. “Skinner, other agents. We still haven’t found him.”
Maggie pulled her into an embrace without hesitation. “Oh, Dana. I’m so sorry.”
They held each other for a long moment before Scully pulled away. She stood abruptly and crossed the room, opening the middle drawer of her desk. Her hands shook as she retrieved the sonogram photo.
When she returned, she pressed it into her mother’s hands.
“And I’m pregnant.”
The words broke her. Maggie stared down at the image, then back up at Scully, her face a careful blend of shock, awe, and fierce maternal resolve. She pulled her daughter close once more. In the quiet that followed, Scully let herself rest there, her mother’s heartbeat steady beneath her ear. For the first time since she had come home, something inside her loosened. She didn’t know how—or when—but she felt it nonetheless: a thin, unyielding thread pulling forward through the darkness. Mulder was out there. Somewhere. And just as this life inside her had persisted against every impossible odd, she believed—quietly, stubbornly—that he would too.