The Doppler Principle by Kate Lesky
Spoilers: S8 through Via Negativa (yes, this has been
sitting on my hard drive quite a while)
Classification: SA, MSR, early season 8 strangeness and
musings
Feedback: Yes! [email protected]
Archive: Sure! Just let me know where you're putting
it.
Summary: Scully's hopes, fears, memories, and musings.
Disclaimer: They're not mine, I wish they were.
I make no money, I wish I did. They belong to each other, however
CC may avoid it.
Author's Notes: At the end.
0
We refer to the yearly movement of
the apparent position of the fixed stars resulting from the motion of
the earth round the sun (aberration), and to the influence of the radial
components of the relative motions of the fixed stars with respect to
the earth on the colour of the light reaching us from them. The
latter effect manifests itself in a slight displacement of the spectral
lines of the light transmitted to us from a fixed star, as compared
with the position of the same spectral lines when they are produced
by a terrestrial source of light (Doppler principle).
-- Relativity: The Special and
the General Theory, by Albert Einstein
I
Mulder was at home packing when I came
in, knocking gently on his bedroom door.
"Hi," he said without turning around.
"Please don't try and tell me you're coming whether I like it or not, because
I won't let you."
"That's OK, I won't. I have no
desire to be . . . abducted . . . again." I gave in to the word I had
always been reluctant to use. "Besides, I haven't been feeling
well, and I made an appointment tomorrow to go get a blood test and
make sure I'm OK."
"You have been a bit . . . woozy lately,
Scully."
"I know. I want to make sure
it isn't some neurological problem." Or the cancer, I could
hear him think.
"Call me when you find out."
He stuffed one last pair of socks into the corner of his bulging duffel
bag. He always was a horrible packer.
"Mulder, I want you to take this with
you." He finally turned to look at me, and I showed him my necklace,
limp and crumpled in the palm of my hand. "Because I can't go
with you."
He looked into my eyes, asking if I was
sure. I nodded, and he let me fasten it around his neck.
Then he leaned down to kiss me, and I closed my eyes.
Byers came in to see me the next
morning, just a few minutes after the nurse had left my hospital room
to double-check all my test results, per my orders. Something
told me they were right, but I was still in shock and didn't want to
give in so soon. Byers looked mortified, and he seemed to think
that whatever he had to say was going to kill me. It almost did.
"We've, um, been tracking the satellite
telemetry over Oregon. There was . . . there was this, this huge
flare at 9:32 last night. When it cleared we tried to call Mulder,
ask if he'd seen anything. But Mulder . . . he . . ."
I think I must have turned pale, because
Byers looked even more scared.
"I'm sorry," he mumbled. I buried
my head in my hands. I couldn't cry, I had no tears. Newborn
babies don't have tear ducts, I suddenly remembered. I stayed
that way for a long time, and when I lifted my head again, Byers had
left.
When Skinner left, too, a few hours
later, I sat and stared out the window for a long time, still unable
to cry. I think my brain was so caught between happiness and despair
and shock that it had shut down, like how a computer crashes when it
tries to do too many things at once. I felt so alone.
Around noon -- I must have drifted
off -- I was getting out of bed to get dressed when I noticed something
glinting on the table next to the bed. It was my necklace.
I called the nurse and demanded an account of every person who had been
in my room. None could have left it there. Skinner had not;
he had not gone near the table the entire time. I left wearing
the gold chain, still not knowing how it had appeared.
II
Mulder was not going to Raleigh; his
mother is not buried there. She was buried in the cemetery right
next to her husband, and I was there at the service. Mulder also
did not love his mother enough to drive down so often. I saw the
dates of the receipts, too, and I know that he was not absent then.
In fact, one of those weekends we spent together, in bed nearly the
entire time.
So one day I called all the cemeteries
in Raleigh, asking if there was a Teena Mulder buried there. None
had her on record. I had found it suspicious that the FBI had
to desecrate a grave by removing the stone and shipping it to Washington
just to read it, but I realized that it had been necessary, as there
was no grave to go with the stone. If anywhere, the stone should
have come from Massachusetts, where Mulder's parents were both buried.
And once I realized that was faked,
I knew that everything else in the investigation into Mulder's disappearance
could be as well. The stone, the rental receipts, our missing
computers; and Mulder had not seemed sick either. As both his
personal physician and the person who spends nearly 24 hours a day with
him, I would have noticed if he had been dying from an inflammation
of the brain for all these months.
So what was real? All I knew
at that moment was that he was gone.
III
When Mulder left, he took part of me
with him. And not in some schmaltzy romantic-goop sense.
I just wasn't the Scully I knew anymore. I had always hidden behind
a shield of science, determination, and four-inch heels. And despite
the fact that I always maintained my shield, Mulder and I had both known
it was just that -- a facade. He knew the real me behind it, and
I trusted him enough and he respected me enough that I could drop it
near him and he would not think me weak.
Now that I was the believer, I wasn't
allowed to hide. I had to constantly assert myself and my beliefs
to a man who not only was a skeptic, but didn't have enough science
or old wives' tales to pull out and refute me with. I knew I would
have to earn Doggett's respect the hard way, and soon. I would
have to be the tough-as-nails, no-nonsense Dr. Dana Scully that I maintained
so well, only this time knowing that I could not let it down near him.
And I would have to earn it soon -- no one respects you when you're
gestating and as big as a house.
So far I didn't think I had done so
very well. I had been proven right with my wild theories and bullshit,
but I had also ended up in the hospital on most of the few cases we
had investigated together. That was par for the course with the
X-Files, but I felt that it gave me the image of the weak female, who
couldn't escape uninjured from any encounter with a bad guy. Not
to mention I was starting to worry about the baby's safety after all
this, and I could only say "they wanted to run a few extra tests that
just happened to take a few days" every time I ended up in the hospital.
And I really hoped Doggett wouldn't read the transcript of the trial
of that slug-cult in Utah. I also hoped he would find out about my
pregnancy after he got to know me as a competent agent, or else a good portion
of his assessment would be "her department got audited, she was sleeping
with her partner, and just about the time she found out he had knocked her
up, he disappeared."
I worried about my ability to maintain
the position of believer. I had been the skeptic so long, worked
for so many years on ways to prove that wild theories were wild, that
I wasn't sure I could come up with any wild theories of my own.
So far I hadn't needed to, but I dreaded the day. Where did Mulder
come up with all his theories anyway? Did he have a big book in
his bottom desk drawer, under his porn videos so I would never find
it, that had a list of crazy ideas for any situation? Somehow
I had always just attributed it as one of those things about him, like
his nose or the way he smelled in the mornings, and never really realized
that it was one of those things you had to learn. And I didn't
think I would ever be right-brained enough to learn it.
And somehow I doubted I'd attract quite
as many interesting cases as he did. Mulder, the man who'd been
a keynote speaker at a UFO conference, written articles for the Magic
Bullet every other month, appeared on Jerry Springer, and attracted
mysterious informants like shit attracts flies. And then there's
me, who once in a while is mentioned as his partner when he gets onto
CNN. I barely even made any of the footage on COPS, though I suppose
that was because I avoided the cameramen like the plague. How
would I even maintain a viable department when only a handful of cases
had ever come in through me?
IV
Every night in the hospital in Utah,
I had the same dream. I gave birth, and the doctors seemed to
be pleased, but when I saw my baby, it was a slug. They insisted
it was perfectly healthy, that all babies were red and squirmy at first.
They made me hold it, and feed it, and they took it to the nursery and
dressed it up in diapers and a onesie. It even had a little name
tag that said "Slug," and the nurses cooed over it. I insisted
it wasn't mine, but they said of course it was, and made me take it
home. It made horrible slug noises, too, sort of a gurgling screech.
I usually woke up about then, and the woman on the other side of the
curtain would be staring at me.
I dreaded Doggett paying attention
to the trial, or reading transcripts to make sure nothing too horrible
had happened to his partner before he had to slice a Jesus-slug out
of her spine. I just didn't want him to know that I was pregnant,
that I had screamed it for hours to total strangers while I hadn't told
him, the person I had to trust my life to. Of course, even if
he did read all the transcripts, the cult members weren't likely to
admit that they had ignored all my pleas and knowingly endangered a
second life.
Luckily he didn't seem to be following
the trial in the weeks after we returned home. He didn't mention
anything, and I really hoped he didn't know.
V
I hate cases involving small children.
Every good investigator does; no one wants to see violence inflicted
on innocents who did nothing to deserve it, especially when those innocents
are young children. And it seems that every investigator I have
ever met on a case like this has some personal reason to get the perpetrator.
Anyone who is a parent has their children in the back of their minds,
protecting them. But some of us have a specific child in mind,
one who has had something terrible happen to them, one who haunts our
dreams and stares out from the face of every victim in a case like this.
Mulder has Samantha, I have Emily, and I think Doggett has someone,
too.
He had a determination about him that
says he has experienced something close to what that family is going
through. And I think it scared him that he was not seen as a sympathetic
person who could help, but as the bad cop. And I, who have never
been very good at interrogating families and children, was suddenly
the good cop, the mother-figure a child can trust. Am I suddenly
exuding mother-hormones now? I wouldn't be surprised. But
now cases like these have another reason to worry me -- Before (I have
started thinking of it in capital letters), I knew that I would never
have to live though the tragedy of my husband being murdered, my daughter
being kidnaped, my son being held hostage. But now all of it is
a possibility, a new source for nightmares, yet another danger I may
never be able to protect my children from. Another lullaby I will
never be able to sing.
Last night Doggett called me around
three AM, had me driving like a madwoman up to Baltimore, and I got
there just in time to help him charge up the stairs and into an apartment.
He shot an attacker and comforted the man in the apartment, whom I had
never seen before, and who seemed strangely satisfied that an intruder
had been killed in his living room. Doggett refused to explain,
and didn't appear to understand it himself. I didn't press him;
I have my own secrets and don't begrudge him his.
VI
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world
ends
This is the way the world
ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.
This is the end of the world.
I had hoped I wouldn't be there when it all explodes, but somehow I
knew I would. I am still waiting for them to set off the charge;
we, I and all the Faceless Men, are all standing in the room, looking
at the screen that will show the nuclear blasts. Something is
wrong and they are impatient; I am scared because every second that
passes is one less in the universe, in my life. It terrifies me,
but no one else is scared, no one even notices I am there. Then
Mulder sticks his head in the door in the back of the dark room, motioning
for me to come with him. I don't want to, I don't want to miss
the very end of everything, but I am following him anyway.
We go down a dark hallway, dimly lit
from an unknown source. I ask him what is wrong, but he will not
say anything. We stop at a door and he gets out the keys to unlock
it. It is our office, "Special Agent Fox Mulder." He steps
inside and I follow him, wondering what he wants to show me. He
begins a slide show, displaying gory pictures of dead cows on the wall.
I don't understand what he wants, and I ask him. He is still silent,
and flips through more slides, wearing the face he wears when he is
amused that I am shooting down all his theories. But he keeps
clicking away, and when I ask again, he looks frustrated and flips to
his next slide.
It is Skinner, sitting behind his desk
in his office, and he is glaring down at me. He moves in the slide
on the wall, like a view screen on Star Trek. "Agent Scully,"
he asks me, "why can't you see" All the evidence points to it;
Mulder knows it; the police know it; I know it; why don't you?
It's all there right in front of you, and you still can't see it.
Look."
And I look down at my feet, and on
the floor in front of me there is a bloody mutilated cow, warm and freshly
mangled. I get down on the floor, wearing scrubs now, and peer
at it. There is something moving inside, small and slimy.
But then suddenly the cow gets up, almost stepping on me, and ambles
out of the office ignorant of its state.
"What was that, Mulder?" I stand
up and ask. He smiles and shrugs, but then his face grows serious
and he taps his watch. "It's time, Scully." Then we are
back in the room again, seated on folding chairs in the back row, and
Mulder has his arm around me as if we were teenagers at a movie.
The fear suddenly returns, and it is as if I am the only one who knows
that the world will end when They blow it up. Mulder turns to
me and pecks my cheek, laughing. "Of course it won't, Scully.
'Cause I got us saved. I sold us out. In exchange for a
sample or two, they're going to let us live, and we'll be the new Adam
and Eve. Isn't that great, Scully?" And he goes back to watching
the screen. Nothing is happening yet, but everyone there seems confident
that it will any minute now. My fear is still growing exponentially
with every second that passes.
Bang.
And this is usually about when I wake up.
VIII
What am I supposed to tell Mulder when
he gets back? I lie awake at night and wonder. If he doesn't
come back in the next few weeks I'm going to be visibly pregnant.
I'm sure he'll be happy, but how do you break it to someone that he's
knocked you up, despite both of you thinking it impossible? It's
like being sixteen and having to tell your boyfriend that the condom
broke. Except that I'm thirty-six. I imagine the exchanges.
"Scully! I just woke up in my
apartment, and I remember everything they did to me! You've got
to get over here right now!"
"Sorry, I can't."
"You can't? Why not?
What could be more important?"
"I can't drive, Mulder."
"Are you OK? Were you hurt?"
"Oh, I'm fine. I just can't
fit behind the wheel anymore. AND IT'S ALL YOUR FAULT!!'
OK, maybe not. But those hormones have been known
to cause drastic mood swings.
Waking up in the hospital, Scully!
You're fat!"
That one seems a bit more likely.
"You're going to have a baby?!
Well, it can't have been ME. It must have been an alien.
Have you been seeing another man?"
"Of course not. And I wouldn't
exactly classify aliens as "men." I've never seen one with any
external genitalia."
"That wouldn't stop them.
As an abductee, you probably have very desirable genes. Maybe it was
a shapeshifter who looked like me."
"I think I would have noticed
the difference, Mulder."
No way. I don't think he would be that rude.
Or that stupid.
"Scully, is that baby yours,
or did you just start finding children again?"
"It's mine. I gave birth
to it."
"Are you sure? No mysterious
phone calls from your dead sister? Does it bleed green, Scully?
Is it dying yet?"
I don't want to think about that anymore.
I can't sleep.
IIX
Meanwhile, I have tried to get on with
my life. Without Mulder, though, I have almost nothing to do from
the time I get home until the morning when I have to go to work again.
No phone calls in the middle of the night, and no cases over the weekend.
So I got all my Christmas shopping done by the week before Thanksgiving.
And I got everyone the perfect gift, wrapped them with cute curly ribbon,
and stacked them in the back of my bedroom closet. I tried to
rearrange my living room (unsuccessfully), killed three ferns by overwatering,
and tried to clean Mulder's apartment out. I just didn't have
the heart to do that.
I have taken up the habit of wishing
on satellites. Not stars. My next-door neighbor, Mike, works
at Goddard, and he stands out in his back patio and tracks satellites.
Somehow he always knows which one is which, and when it is supposed
to be there. He points them out to me sometimes, and I always
secretly hope that it isn't the space station or some telecommunications
satellite, but an alien ship coming to bring Mulder home. Whenever
I see one when I am out by myself I make a wish upon it. I make
the same wish every time.
I take care of Mulder's affairs, all
the little things like credit cards with monthly payments that he left
behind. I am his next of kin and have power of attorney, and managed
to arrange with his lawyer and his bank a way to do things like pay
the rent until he gets back. I hope he has deep pockets, since
he is listed as missing and is no longer on the payroll. I, on
the other hand, got a 5% raise as the new department head -- as if that's
anything special. I suppose it is in other departments.
For me all it means is twice as much paperwork to sign; I guess that's
why Mulder always handed me the expense reports. I go feed his
fish, and clean the mold out of his fridge, and give his tape collection
to Frohike, who turns red.
The Gunmen have installed a filter
program in my laptop that alerts me whenever UFO activity is reported
or John Does fitting a certain description show up in the hospital.
They have been very helpful in searching for Mulder now that his case
has been put on hold, and very understanding about my pregnancy.
I never told them outright, but apparently they keep tabs on my medical
records. It's almost funny watching them when I drop by their
lair -- one does not often get to see three computer geeks being overly
solicitous to a pregnant woman, and it's even more amusing since the
pregnant woman is me.
I still have trouble believing sometimes.
IX
Yesterday morning I went into the office
alone, having nothing better to do on a Saturday. There was a
lingering scent of cigarettes. Just the smell made me so nauseous
I had to run down the hall and throw up. I went home without the
files I had intended to pick up.
I have tried to ignore all the threats
the Conspiracy poses, and it has been rather easy to do lately with
so many other things to worry about, and no trace of them since Mulder
disappeared. But now they all come rushing on me, new ones piling
on the old, and all I want is to be able to ignore them. But I
can't, and I know it would be foolish to.
My baby would be desirable to the Conspiracy
doctors. Both Mulder and I have been exposed to the black oil
and been given an antidote. I was abducted before, and apparently
They liked me enough to experiment on me and then use my genes to create
hybrids. Mulder's sister was taken and experimented on, and he
shares genes with her. He also experienced anomalous brain activity
a year ago, which they thought significant enough that they had to take
him and drug him and give him a lobotomy. And now he's been abducted
again because of that brain activity, along with others who had it.
I don't know why only some abductees have it, but not others.
I certainly don't - maybe it's genetic. I hope not; it would be
hard to discipline a child who can read your mind.
And I have no idea what I would do
if They ever tried to take my child. I certainly wouldn't let
Them, but They are notoriously hard to stop. I have never heard
of a child being taken at such a young age, and I know it would not
survive the experimentation. My hopes are not raised by the realization
that a living person is not even necessary for some procedures, only
a few cells.
What if Colonization takes place while
Mulder is gone? He would be safe, up there in his spaceship, but
the rest of the world needs him. He knows so much more than me
about what will happen, and between the two of us we probably know more
than anyone else outside the Conspiracy itself. If he was there
the Earth might figure out how to resist, survive, create a vaccine,
anything. Without him I have little hope, I could not do it on
my own.
X
Every night now I have a dream.
I am standing in a cornfield, just like the one in Texas. It is
dark out, but most of the sky is still a dark blue and one end is lighter,
as if the sun set about an hour ago. There are no stars, no moon,
no light anywhere, but I can still see what is happening around me.
I stand by the edge of the field, all alone and waiting for something.
I can see the end of the world, I see it as a huge black mass approaching
on the dark horizon, like huge thunderclouds but dull and black.
I know that it has been approaching forever, and it has not yet arrived
nor come any closer, but it is coming nonetheless. If I turn my
head, look away for just a moment, it will arrive.
It is the end created by the men who
have controlled me and Mulder and collaborated with the enemy, whoever
that may be, and it is an end filled with pain and terror and destruction.
I am paralyzed by it; I cannot move to look away. A dry evening
wind blows past, stirring up dust and rustling the corn stalks around
me; it is the wind created by the approaching storm. I feel that
I cannot look for one more moment, that if I see anything more I will
be overwhelmed and turn away. But I cannot tear myself away from
the horrible spectacle, and I know that if I turn away it will arrive,
and that will be the end. So I keep staring, even though I know
that any moment it will overpower me.
Doing this alone frightens me.
Mulder is supposed to be here, helping me, holding it back. He
is my partner, he knows how to stop this better than I do. I know
I cannot last much longer, and if there is no one watching it we will
all be killed. The whole planet. I cannot do this alone,
but I cannot stop, because he isn't here yet. Why won't he come?
I am helpless.
End
Author's Notes: A while ago I was
IMing with my friend Diandra, who isn't even a Phile really, and I was
suddenly inspired. I wrote to her:
"I have this image in my head, of Scully in a cornfield.
She can see the end of the world, the one brought about by the bad guys
and aliens, as a physical black mass, approaching in the distance.
But it has been approaching forever and it does not seem to be coming
any closer. She knows she cannot turn around and stop staring
because if she does it will arrive and kill her and everyone else, and
she is the only person watching it, preventing it from arriving.
Also, it is dark out, and Mulder is not there; she wishes he was because
he would help her."
And I knew I had to write it into a
story. So, this is it, and it's for Di, who is the very best for
random weirdness. A cyber-spork for Diandra. Also, special
thanks to Theresa, for the title. More thanks to Sarah, for help
with the picture (of which I am immensely proud), and Mike, for pointing
out all those satellites to me. Also, the poetry is TS Eliot,
who rules.
I look back and realize that this is
a bit dark, with the fear outweighing the joy. But with the way
the writers had been avoiding all mention of Scully's pregnancy, and
she still refuses to tell even Mulder much . . . let's just say that
if Scully was running around being really happy all the time, it would
show. It's a lot easier to hide fear, and I think it's a lot more
likely, too, unfortunately.
Also, this thing has what isn't quite
a soundtrack, but some mood music, I'd call it. "Walk Away" by
Bree Sharp; "When You Dream" by Barenaked Ladies; "Walking After You" by
Foo Fighters; and a weird/neato song called "Mulder in Oregon" by I
don't know who, available only through mp3.com.