Abandoned
Chapter 2: Traveling
=====
all headers in Ch. 1
=====
It didn’t take long for Scully and William to develop a routine. Scully took roads at random. They drove all morning, stopping briefly for necessaries such as feeding William and bathroom breaks. They stopped for an hour or two at lunchtime. After lunch, she drove all afternoon. Before dark, she found a nondescript motel and they stopped for the night.
Scully tried not to be more paranoid than usual. She was watchful, but did nothing overt to arouse suspicion. She and William ate in cafes and chain restaurants, and stayed in decent, if modest, motels. She wasn’t overly friendly, but she schooled herself not to freak out if someone approached to admire William.
William was a good traveler. He was rarely fussy, and he still slept a good deal of the day. Sometimes Scully would have conversations with him, catching his eyes in the rear-view mirror and trying to make him smile at her.
She missed having Mulder along. She’d even have let him do the driving without a protest. She missed his conversation, the crack of his sunflower seeds, his constant fiddling with the radio.
It was the nights that were the loneliest. Once William was bedded down for the night, Scully had too much time on her hands, with nothing to do but think, and remember.
x-x-x-x
Despite what the “super soldier” said (if indeed, that was what he was), Scully hadn’t been feeling particularly lonely the first time she’d asked Mulder to stay. Mulder had come over for dinner,
and they’d discussed their current case while eating. After, Mulder helped her clean up the kitchen.
It had been a pleasant evening. They’d argued, but in the usual way: taking opposing theories and working them out on each other. These evenings had been occurring with increasing frequency. Neither of them questioned this new need to spend even more time with each other. Scully wasn’t sure how it started, but they both found reasons to have dinner together nearly every night during
the week, case or no case.
For some reason, she’d felt more at ease with Mulder since the IVF attempt. Even though it had been unsuccessful, Mulder’s unwavering support and his unexpected tenderness made her see a side to him that she could no longer ignore.
When Mulder had agreed to help her have a child, Scully knew he’d say yes. She didn’t think about his motivations for agreeing. She told herself that he was doing it out of his love for her as a dear friend. He made it easy for her to believe that, playing as always to what he read as her wishes. “I just don’t want this to come between us,” he’d told her when he agreed to be her donor.
Now she knew that he must have feared that any chance for true intimacy would be destroyed by the success of the IVF. She realized that he was afraid that the connection they had would be due only to the child they shared, and not the deeper bond that had existed between them almost from the beginning.
It was odd to think that performing such a personal, private favor could somehow distance them. And yet, she thought now that it could have, by changing their relationship through the most artificial of means. It would have been, in essence, an arranged marriage.
When he’d come back from abduction and death to find her pregnant, that very thing had almost happened. But before that, before her pregnancy and his death, Mulder’d had other things on his mind.
In some ways, Mulder had seemed so uncomplicated. He had a goal, long before he’d met Scully, and he pursued it single-mindedly. For years, Scully thought finding Samantha was Mulder’s only goal. His hidden agenda manifested itself in unguarded moments: a touch, a look, a heartfelt hug. A drug-induced “I love you.” Their rarity and subtlety didn’t make them less true, but it did make them easier for Scully to ignore.
It wasn’t that she didn’t have feelings for Mulder, but she could always come up with reasons why getting involved with him was a bad idea. And, despite the hints he dropped from time to time, Scully knew that he would never force her hand. She told herself he relied on her good judgment. She had moments of doubt, but consoled herself that keeping apart was the wisest course.
What had finally tipped the balance in Mulder’s favor was a second birth announcement from Holman and Sheila Hardt in Kroner, Kansas. They both seemed to think that Scully and Mulder were responsible for their happiness, and Sheila wrote a personal note to Scully in the card, asking if she and Mulder were still “together.”
Scully thought of the conversation she’d had with Sheila that night in Kroner. <“…one day you look at the person and you see something more than you did the night before. Like a switch has been flicked somewhere…”>
She looked at Mulder with new eyes that night, and she stopped kidding herself. As Mulder went to the door, she took his hand for courage. He squeezed her fingers and smiled at her. She tilted her head up and leaned toward him, and the smile was no longer just on his mouth, but in his eyes as well. She closed her own eyes but could still see him smiling, and then felt it too as his lips touched hers. Their mouths smiled against each other, and their arms found each other, and what had seemed impossible before suddenly became inevitable.
Her memory of their first time together was more a matter of moments and impressions. The warmth and strength of his arms around her. The feel of his mouth on hers. His endearing uncertainty that she really wanted him to stay. Hearing words she’d never expected to hear from him, or anyone else, ever again. The surprising softness of his skin against hers. His gentleness. The feel of him moving inside her, at once electric and comforting.
She lay awake afterward, thinking. Mulder had whispered to her as he held her close, “Do you know how happy you’ve made me?” He stroked her hair softly until he dropped off to sleep, but Scully couldn’t sleep. She wished Mulder were two people: the man she loved, sleeping in her bed, and her friend, Mulder, whom she could call and talk to about what just happened.
Scully felt that way now. She wished she could call Mulder up, and tell him where she was, and discuss her options. Am I doing the right thing? Should I give up and go home, and take the consequences?
She could almost hear Mulder in her head. Don’t give up, Scully. If you quit now, They win. I can’t do this alone.
I miss you, Dana.
She kept on.
x-x-x-x
The second day, Scully had sent post cards. Each went to “Alec Walker” in a different city, and each contained the same message:
“Hi! Just wanted to let you know I moved. Hope to catch up some time when things settle down. Here’s my number:
Fondly, Alice.”
Langly and Frohike had devised a code. It looked like a phone number, but it was actually coordinates for the town she’d chosen, the first stop on her tour: Des Moines, Iowa. The cards were to let the Gunmen know she was on the move. She then had five days to get to her destination. She hoped that they had escaped undetected, and that their part of the plan was working.
The Gunmen couldn’t tell her exactly what would happen when she arrived there. They’d told her to check General Delivery at the post office when she got to her destination, and there should be
something waiting for her if all went well. They told her to wait at least a week at her destination town. It might take that long for them to contact her, depending on where they were.
“The less we know of each other’s movements beforehand, the safer it will be,” Byers reassured her. “We’ve got some parameters we’re working within, but if we’re too specific, the information could be more easily compromised.”
Scully couldn’t fault that. She remembered all too well how badly the rendezvous at the train station had gone.
She nodded seriously but said, “I think you guys watched too many spy movies growing up.”
“Nah, it was `Dungeons and Dragons’ that taught us all this strategy,” Langly said.
“Speak for yourself, Beastmaster,” Frohike said.
It did seem like a giant board game to Scully, and it would be amusing if it weren’t so deadly serious. She’d pored over maps with the Gunmen, learning how to send and how to decipher the codes they’d worked out.
They had to have a starting point, however, and she had to smile at the towns they’d chosen. Independence, Missouri, Liberty, Kansas, and Fort Defiance, Arizona.
She’d raised her eyebrows at the last one, and Langly blushed and said, “That’s my choice.”
The safety of this method was in its randomness, she told herself. That was also why it could take a while before she and Mulder finally found each other.
The hard part was that she would have to stay put for a while after getting to her destination, hoping that at least one of the cards ended up in the city where either Mulder or the Gunmen were, that they’d gotten her message, that he’d find her. That it was safe for him to find her.
But what if she wasn’t doing it right? What if the Gunmen hadn’t told Mulder this part of the plan? What if they hadn’t hooked up with Mulder yet? What if he was moving around as much as she was,
and they never ended up in the same part of the country?
x-x-x-x
Another day, another Denny’s. It was past lunchtime when she stopped that day but she shared the restaurant with a busload of tourists, all women, all grandmotherly looking types. Her table was near the restrooms, and it seemed like every person who passed her table had to coo over William. She smiled and thanked the well-meaning women and did her best not to slap their hands away when they touched his soft cheek.
For his part, William took it all in stride, gazing at these women with wide eyes and waving his fists, but not upset at all.
“What’s her name?” A group of three women stood at William’s high chair. They looked enough alike to be sisters, though maybe it was the identical sweatshirts each wore that said, “I’m a Lollie” on the front.
“W-Willa,” Scully said. She could have kicked herself; William was still dressed in girl’s clothes and she hadn’t thought of a name for his alter ego.
“What an unusual name! And what beautiful eyes she has! She must take after her father. Does she?”
“I wouldn’t know,” Scully said evenly. “I don’t know who her father is.”
“Oh,” one of the women said. “Well, have a nice day, dear,” she said, and chucked William under his drooly chin. All three walked quickly away.
William had gone very quiet when their visitors left the table. Scully looked up from her salad to see him staring at her, sucking fiercely on his fist. Except for the fist, he looked just like Mulder when he was annoyed with her for some reason.
Maybe that was why she felt he was reproaching her for the lie she’d told. “Don’t worry,” she said softly. “You know and I know the truth.”
William kept on sucking, but he blinked, and the little wrinkle on his forehead smoothed out.
x-x-x-x
That night, she had a hard time falling asleep. She still felt a pang of guilt for her repudiation of Mulder, however facetious it was. It reminded her of the argument she and Mulder had over that very subject.
Right after he’d been revived and miraculously cured of all that had ailed him, Mulder had withdrawn from her. She’d done her best to give him space, give him time. As much as she’d wanted to talk about what he was feeling, and what she had gone through, she held back after the first fumbling attempt when he’d seemed unwilling or unable to respond to her overtures.
She remembered her own reluctance to talk or even think about her own missing time, and how she tried to immerse herself back in the work.
His, “I don’t know where I fit in,” comment should have been a clue to her about what he was thinking. But she couldn’t bring herself to ask him, any more than he could ask her.
It wasn’t until after the visit to the Federal Statistics Bureau that it all came to a head. Everyone else had gone home, but Mulder was still at Scully’s. He was restless; he paced the floor in Scully’s living room while she made tea.
“So close, Scully,” he’d said when she came back in. “We were so damned close, and we might have made it if Doggett hadn’t interfered.”
Scully had grown tired of Mulder’s little digs at Doggett. Was he jealous? Did he think that she hadn’t been watching out for his interests? Why didn’t he come out and say what he meant?
But instead of saying any of these things herself, she asked, “Mulder, are you determined to get yourself killed?”
He stared at her for a minute, then looked away. “What difference would it make?” he muttered, just loud enough for her to hear. “You’ve done okay without me.”
That was so unfair that it nearly took her breath away. “How can you say that, Mulder? All I wanted was to have you back. I didn’t ask for a new partner, and I sure as hell didn’t expect that I’d
be raising our child alone.”
Mulder looked up at that, and started to say something, but Scully was on a roll now, and cut him off. She’d been spoiling for a fight ever since he’d returned, and she was going to have one.
“Not to mention that even before you were abducted, you were keeping things from me,” she said heatedly. “Why didn’t you tell me about your illness?”
Mulder countered with, “Why didn’t you tell me?” He gestured at her belly.
“Do you think I knew before you left? It’s not the same thing, Mulder. You knew about your brain disease MONTHS before you were abducted, and you never said a word!”
Mulder slumped into the sofa. “There was nothing you could have done,” he said. “All I could tell was that it had to have been caused by what Cancerman did to me. There was no cure, as near as anyone could determine.”
She sat in the armchair across from the sofa. “I don’t understand how I could have missed it,” she whispered. “You were hospitalized more than once after Spender had you. How could I not have seen it?”
“I don’t think you could have, if you didn’t know where to look,” Mulder said. “It was more a feeling. I had some memory lapses, a few dizzy spells. Headaches, sometimes really bad ones. The neurologist I went to said that there was something going on, but nothing so obvious as a tumor. He didn’t even have a good description of it. He said it seemed — elusive. But that I showed a marked decline in certain brain functions.”
“And he couldn’t treat you?”
Mulder shook his head. “He wanted me to come back regularly, promising me he was working on it. But I think he just wanted to study me. I guess you could say we used each other. He could track the progress — or decline — of the disease, and I could get a sense of how much time I had left.”
“Like Robert Patrick Modell?” Scully asked. “When were you going to tell me? When you were on your deathbed?” She spoke quietly now, but she knew Mulder could hear the hurt and anger behind her words.
“There was nothing you could have done, Scully,” Mulder said again.
“But you wouldn’t even let me try,” Scully whispered. She caught Mulder’s agitation and paced awkwardly, holding her belly, feeling the movements within. “How would you have felt if I’d kept my cancer from you?”
“You did your best to keep it from me, Scully,” he accused in turn. “All you’d ever say was that you were fine. I had to watch you every day, fading away from me, and I couldn’t do anything. I didn’t want to put you through that.”
“I went through it anyway,” she said. “We were more than partners, Mulder. I always expected to take the bad with the good. Maybe I could have done something.” She sat down heavily again.
“Maybe you’d have been better off if I hadn’t come back at all,” he said tiredly, rubbing his face.
“Damn it, Mulder! Stop saying that!” Scully said, trying to get up quickly and almost overbalancing. In a flash, Mulder was at her side, holding her steady. She shook him off. “If you think I’m going to sit here and listen to your little subtle digs about how well I’ve done in your absence, and your sniping at John Doggett –”
“Oh, so it’s `John,’ is it? How nice for you that you have a partner who lets you use his first name,” Mulder taunted her. He sounded for all the world like a twelve year old.
“Knock it off, Mulder. If you’re going to act like that, you should just go home. If you want to ask me a legitimate question, ask. I’m not rising to the bait.”
Mulder towered over her as he stood beside the armchair but she wasn’t intimidated. She met his stare with one of her own.
Ask me, Mulder. Go ahead. I won’t answer until you do.
“What is Doggett to you?” he said.
This was the question she expected. “My partner,” she said flatly. “My *work* partner.” She stared him down, waiting for the next question.
This one she didn’t anticipate. “Your child … am I the father?”
She should have just said yes. But the question took her by surprise, and she was still angry with him. “What do you think?”
His belligerent look disappeared. He sank onto his knees beside her. “God, I hope so, Scully. Ever since I saw you in the hospital, I’ve hoped so.” He lay his head on the armrest and tentatively put his hand on her arm.
She nodded, though he couldn’t see her. “It’s what I always hoped for too, Mulder.” She stroked his hair.
“Everybody seems to think I am anyway,” he said. “Like what Langly said this afternoon…”
“People have made assumptions about us for years, Mulder,” she said. “Just because this time they made a lucky guess…”
“I think maybe I’m the one who got lucky,” Mulder said, and he moved so that his head now rested against her thigh, and he put his arm around her belly.
It was so typical of them. No actual apologies were exchanged, but each had let the other know all was forgiven, nonetheless.
Things had gotten easier between them after that, though nothing more was said directly on the subject. Scully had always suspected that Mulder made his grand gesture of farewell to the X-Files and the FBI when he’d realized what a toll his activities were taking on her. “Tell the kid I went down swinging” seemed to have more than one meaning. He’d had no intention of going down on that oil rig. Whatever happened, he’d be fighting. Not just for the truth, but for her, and for their child. It was also his tacit acknowledgment that he believed he was the father of her child. As frightened as she was for him, she knew it meant he would find his way back.
She hadn’t realized that he still had doubts about his place in their lives until she told him what she’d named their child. For a brief period after that, everything seemed clear, and they’d been happy. <“The comfort and safety that we enjoyed for so brief a time…”>
And then, he’d had to go.
Now it was her turn to find her way back to him.
x-x-x-x
The day before they were due to arrive at their first destination, Scully decided it was time William became a boy again.
She also decided she’d had enough of the grunge look. It seemed to draw attention of a kind she wasn’t used to. When she went into a store or a restaurant, she was watched. Like she might run off without paying the check. Or maybe like she might panhandle if anyone looked her in the eye. That might be a good thing as far as traveling incognito, but she’d rather try for anonymity than suspicion, of any kind.
That was the reason she told herself, anyway. It had nothing to do with the idea that maybe by this time tomorrow, or the next day, she might see Mulder. She didn’t want to tell herself that. If it didn’t happen, the disappointment would be devastating.
She lingered in the hair care section of Walmart for a while, looking at the choices. It had been a long, long time since she’d worn her natural hair color <“I know your true hair color,” the super soldier had said>.
She’d been born blonde, but when she applied to medical school, she’d dyed her hair a darker shade. She thought it would help her to be taken more seriously.
She knew her academic record was excellent. She could hold her own against anyone in that area. But she feared the “blonde backlash” that at least one of her fellow students had suffered. She already knew she was going to have a tough time in medical school, and possibly her whole career. Her small stature and her coloring were two strikes against her in what was still largely a man’s world. She couldn’t do much about her height, but she could dye her hair.
Her medical school application contained a photograph of a very serious young woman with wire-rimmed glasses and medium-brown hair, pulled back from her face.
She’d kept her hair the same shade throughout medical school, and when she entered the FBI Academy. She’d had a reputation for being a serious, somewhat humorless, grind. That was fine with her. Whatever it took to get ahead.
Not long after she was assigned to the X-Files, she celebrated by changing her hair style and dyeing it red. Ethan, her boyfriend at the time, wasn’t pleased. But then, he wasn’t pleased with much she was doing. He didn’t like her new job, and the traveling it entailed. He didn’t like her smartass partner. However, Scully acknowledged to herself that she hadn’t done it for Ethan. It was a milestone, and she’d wanted to mark it in some way. Another blow for independence.
She didn’t admit it even to herself for a long time, but she also did it to elicit a reaction from Mulder. He never said a word about it. It wasn’t for some years that she found out he was red-green colorblind. By then, she’d known for a long time that he rarely made personal comments. It wasn’t that he didn’t notice things, he just didn’t comment on them. It was frustrating as well as intriguing.
She wondered if Mulder would care if she went blonde. She wondered if she’d care if Mulder went blonde. Maybe he had. The thought gave her pause.
With what they’d seen, it was a wonder that they didn’t both have white hair. Maybe under the color, she did.
In the end, she settled for the medium brown, close to the shade she’d had when she first started on the X-Files. She didn’t try to analyze why she’d spent so much time agonizing over it. She’d never had so much trouble making a decision before. Everything now seemed to carry so much import, such weight. She was tired of the burden.
x-x-x-x
Much as she wanted to, Scully didn’t head for the main post office as soon as she got into town. Instead, she found a coffee shop and sat for a while. She was anxious, wanting to prolong the suspense rather than know disappointment. She got herself a latte, and William got some warmed milk. Instead of thinking about the post office, she thought about Mulder.
Eventually, she couldn’t delay any longer; the post office would be closing at five. She gathered William up and headed for the main post office.
With held breath she waited while the postal clerk rummaged around in the bins for anything addressed to “Alice Adams.” She smiled when she returned with a large Priority Mail envelope. It looked very businesslike and professional. Scully showed her fake ID to the mail clerk, who barely glanced at it before handing the package over.
Scully waited until she was back in the car before she opened it. The envelope contained a smaller legal-sized envelope with a printed letter and a cashier’s check made out to “Terry Randall.” In another small brown envelope was her new identity in the form of a driver’s license apparently issued in Michigan, and a birth certificate for Douglas William Randall.
The check was drawn on something called “LS Holdings Inc.,” with a box number in Golden, Colorado.
“Dear Ms. Randall,” the letter read, “Enclosed please find your first annuity payment. As agreed, you will receive these payments twice monthly, the nearest business day to the 5th and the 20th. If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact us at the above-referenced address.”
It was signed very illegibly by someone claiming to be Peter Joshua, which made her smile.
Interestingly enough, though the picture on the license showed her with reddish hair, the written description showed her hair as “brown.” Her height was correct, and her weight was a bit low.
So Alice Adams was no more, and Terry Randall was the new Dana Scully. She wondered if Mulder picked out the names, or if one of the Gunmen had a secret yen for Katharine Hepburn. It was probably not Mulder. He probably would have chosen Donna Reed or Samantha Stevens. Whatever, she was just glad whoever it was hadn’t chosen Lara Croft.
There were no other instructions in the packet. When Scully and William got to their motel, she pulled everything out again and inspected it carefully. Nothing at all to indicate who sent it, or what her next move should be.
Considering the work that went into all this, they must have had everything ready to mail as soon as they got her postcard. Maybe they’d even had some of these things in place before they’d left Washington. She was beginning to realize that maybe she didn’t know the Gunmen very well at all.
It appeared from the letter that they would be communicating with her regularly, but she knew that she wasn’t to contact them unless it was an emergency. She had no way to contact them quickly until now. Byers had told her they’d find a way to get her a number, cautioning her at the same time not to use it unless in extreme emergency.
When she and the Gunmen made their original plans, Byers suggested that they not set any kind of a pattern. “We need to figure it out as we go along,” he said. “If we know what the next move is, chances are the enemy will know, too.”
It amazed her, what good strategizers the guys were. She’d underestimated them, had thought of them as amiable conspiracy nuts, and never realized just how intelligent and committed they could be. She was grateful once again that they were on Mulder’s side. And hers.
She had to trust that this packet was from them, and that they did have her best interests at heart. She would follow their instructions, and try to be as patient as possible.
The new identity was the beginning of the next phase, and the most dangerous one. Scully had agreed that once she settled in a place, she would start using her identity to open a bank account, rent an apartment, try to live a normal life. This was to see if she flushed any watchers out of the woodwork.
She tried not think what might happen if the whole thing backfired. Trust, she told herself. I’ve got to trust someone.
She looked over at William, who was gnawing on an arrowroot biscuit. He seemed oblivious of the turmoil his mother was experiencing. There were times when he seemed so in tune with what she was thinking, and other times when he seemed off in his own baby world, thinking his baby thoughts. She was grateful that he seemed more baby than “more human than human.” Krycek’s words haunted her.
William gurgled at her and waved his biscuit at her, drool coursing down his chin. She smiled at him, and he gave her an open-mouthed grin, once again looking so much like Mulder in one of his rare light moments that her eyes teared up.
“Well, baby boy,” she said. “I guess we’ll just have to wait and see what comes next.”
William gurgled his agreement.
=====
End of Part Two. Continued in Part Three.