Category: SRA
Summary: I tried a post Requiem piece.
Disclaimer: The X-files and all properties thereof belong to Chris Carter and 1013 productions. This is intended only for reader enjoyment and no money has exchanged hands.
Spoilers: Requiem
Distribution: If you want it, you've got it. Just keep my name and email attached.
Feedback: Give me the good, the bad, and the ugly at [email protected]
Note: This has not been beta read. Two of my beta's are out having babies *g*, and the other hasn't seen Requiem yet. All mistakes are mine.
My name is John Fitzgerald Byers and I am about to face the toughest task of my life.
This evening, upon hearing the news of Mulder's disappearance, Langly immediately began to tune into other Northwest United States radio frequencies hoping to learn something, and Frohike had left for an unknown destination. Skinner has yet to return from Oregon, and I'll be damned if Scully is going to hear the news of Mulder's disappearance from someone who isn't a friend.
Shaking my head to dispel these thoughts, I quietly enter Agent Scully's hospital room. Scully is propped up on several pillows, facing out a tiny window. The last of the evening sunlight shines onto her face, and I realize belatedly that she is a beautiful woman. Her hands are interlaced and clasped on her stomach, but while the pose looks peaceful, the tautness of her body belays it. Without turning to me, she speaks.
"I think I know what you've come to tell me," she says in a choked voice.
I clear my throat nervously and fight the urge to shuffle my feet. I approach the bed and she looks towards me, her blue eyes boring holes into my brown. I stare back, wishing I didn't have to say what I knew I had to.
"Scully, I have to tell you...Mulder is gone. Taken. The reports we've gotten are sketchy, but regardless of that...he's...gone." I swallow loudly and look out the window, wishing for escape.
When I chance a look back towards her, she has her head bowed, but her hands remain clasped on her stomach. "What have you heard?" she asks.
"The guys and I were monitoring Bellefleur radio transmissions, and we heard that an FBI agent was reporting another missing. They claimed that the man was hysterical, babbling about UFO's and force fields in the forest. After awhile the reports carried the name of the hysterical agent, Walter Skinner, and that of the missing agent-Fox Mulder. The woods were combed, and nothing was found, although one officer did mention some charred treetops in the general vicinity Skinner pointed out..." the words tumble out of me, and by the end of my speech I am lightheaded. I can tell that Scully feels the same.
She is crying openly in front of me, and her tears scare the hell out of me. I long to reach out and comfort her, but I am not the man for that job. After a few minutes she wipes at her eyes and straightens to face me again.
"I want to thank you for telling me, Byers," she says, managing a small smile for my benefit. "I think...it's better to know, isn't it?"
Knowing that Suzanne was missing hadn't helped me any, but I nod to her anyway. Searching for and finding no words I opt to sit in the plastic chair by her bed. Scully is now staring at the white hospital bedspread and I wonder if there is something she wants to say. Rather than push her I wait; hoping the sting of tears in my eyes will go away.
"Byers...I'm not going to tell many people this yet," she begins, removing her hands from her stomach and tracing idle patterns on the on the sheet under her, "But I will be needing your, Langly, and Frohike's, help."
I nod, "Anything", I say, meaning it.
"I'm...pregnant." She stops. "You're the first person I've told."
I cannot speak for a moment, bombarded as I am with images and feelings from the past. I remember Mulder's drunken tears one-night two years ago when he told us that while he'd realized that Scully would never be a mother, he hadn't taken into account the fact that he'd never be a father. Now, I realized that the chance might still have been taken from him.
Scully continues speaking after this beat, returning her hands to her belly. "I'll need to find him, Byers. I have to search, but at the same time I have to keep my-our-child safe. Can you help me? Can you help me to find Mulder?"
My own tears begin to fall then, as I nod to Scully. "We will find him, Scully. We will." I emphasize my last statement, wishing I could make it into a promise.
I sit quietly with Scully until the sun drops. I finally leave in search of Langly and Frohike after she has fallen asleep.
We must begin our search.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
End.
Notes: Ok, so Scully was staring out the window when Skinner came to see her as well, but I loved that image! Call me a loser if you must...! I've never written Byers before...can you tell?