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fandomcampcounselor · 9 years ago

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XFWC Prompt - Sight

Title: Basement Believer Rating: T Timeline: Season 8 up to (but not really including) “Deadalive” Summary: After Mulder is abducted, Scully dreams about finding him, but no matter what she does, she can never reach him. Notes: Written for the Writing Challenge prompt Sight. Scully in season 8 has always fascinated and infuriated me. She takes on Mulder’s role until he returns, but is back to her old skeptical self as soon as he returns.

When he’s gone she sees him in her dreams.

If she’s honest, Mulder has been making appearances in her dreams since they met. She would have strange dreams about going on wild goose chases with him, and would wake up with him staring at her from the drivers seat while they were on a stakeout. She would have dreams where he made momentary appearances, ones where he was a secondary character, and ones where he was the star player. Mysterious dreams, slightly odd dreams, and titillatingly sad dreams, sometimes even erotic dreams, but these are different.

They’re different because he’s gone. They’re different because she doesn’t know where he is this time. Not in Puerto Rico or the Bermuda Triangle or Graceland, but somewhere else entirely. Somewhere she can’t follow even if she could explain it.

They’re different because of all the impossibilities, she has his child growing inside her.

It’s usually the same dream, or some variation on in. She sees him from far away, and he doesn't see her. She can never tell if that’s because he physically can’t or because he doesn’t want to. She tries to go to him, but when she gets to where he was, he’s gone. Sometimes he’s gone in a whiff of smoke, or a sudden whoosh of movement, but usually just gone.

When she wakes, she clutches her stomach and tries desperately to forget that these dreams are rooted in truth. That she doesn't know where he is. She instinctively knows that if even if she were to find his trail she would never be able to trace it all the way to him.

So instead of dwelling on it, Scully takes her vitamins and goes to her appointments with the pre-natal specialist and goes to work.

With Mulder gone, Scully is the one finding the cases for the X Files now. The skeptical and stern Special Agent John Doggett inexplicably looks to her for instructions. She finds that even in her rationalism, she’s the basement’s believer now.

Nothing about that makes sense to her, but they investigate and try to find the answers like she and Mulder used to. Of course, this Doggett is nothing like Mulder, but they find a rhythm. He quickly proves to be useful.

Still, her entire life aches with the missing of him.

She struggles to fill his role of basement believer even while Doggett falls so readily into her old assignment of reasonable . Even trying to fill Mulder’s shoes is almost enough to make her laugh out loud, but it’s as if the whole world has been lowered to half volume in the wake of his absence.

At the doctor’s office, she is the only woman in the waiting room without a significant other nearby to wait on her hand and foot. Not that she would expect him to do that, but it would have been nice to have someone to listen to her sarcastic commentary. Her mother comes along sometimes, but it’s not the same.

When she comes home at night she makes dinner for herself and reads What to Expect while she eats. She mostly know what to expect, but reading it gives her some small comfort. Until she comes across the ‘daddy’ chapters and flings the book across the room in a near rage.

She takes a bath and listens to music and hopes beyond hope that in the morning she’ll find a clue to where he might be.

In her dream, she finds him. She traces his tracks from Oregon through the stars. She follows his spirit from New Mexico. She finds the truth that he was always searching for and it leads her to where he is. He’s been waiting for her, and she doesn’t take her eyes off him, but when she reaches for his hand, hers goes right through him and he fades away in an instant.

On the weekends, she and her mother go to Babies R Us and find things that she’ll need and mountains of things she probably doesn’t. This isn’t Maggie’s first grandchild, but it’s the first within driving distance and she’s beside herself.

They go to church, and Scully is engulfed with well-wishers. Other new and expectant mothers bring her into their fold. Their children listen to her stomach to try and hear the baby. Teenagers offer to babysit, telling her about taking red cross training and other jobs they’ve had recently. She thanks them warmly and takes their numbers when they offer.

Her plans shift every day. Most of them involve Mulder coming back at some point. She knows the statistics of missing persons cases, but she also knows that they have always been the exception to the rule. She doesn’t stop looking. In her dreams she chases after him.

She was always chasing after him. Picking up the pieces of her partner. She dreams of every sentimental thing he’s ever called her. His “one in five-billion”, “touchstone”, and once “songbird” when he was definitely teasing her. Their conversations echo in her head every day and haunt her dreams at night.

And then they’ve found him and all her dreams are shattered into a million pieces that even Mulder - had he been there to try - wouldn’t have been able to put back together.

So she adjusts her plans. No one even tries to tell her it’s going to be easy, but she surrounds herself with a community to try and make it bearable.

The night of his funeral she dreams that Mulder is in her kitchen. He’s making breakfast for her and her child. In her dream she is deliriously happy, even as something on the edges of her mind tells her that this isn’t quite right. Mulder goes to the fridge to get milk or bread or butter or something else entirely and, when he turns towards her again, his face is mottled and grey with death. He opens his mouth to ask her something and his jaw falls off his face and drops to the floor.

She wakes up screaming and crying and seething.

Because he’s done this to her, even if he didn’t mean to. She’s carrying his child and he doesn’t even have the decency to stick around for any of it. She’s given up everything for him and he left her on her own to deal with the consequences. She’s so angry she could spit, but she misses him so much she cries instead. She’s alone in her bed, her only company the swell of her belly as she thinks of all the things Mulder’s ever said to her, ever made her realize and believe.

Mulder has made a basement believer out of her and even in all the darkness, she hasn’t quite given up hope.

#XFWC prompt: sight #xf writing challenge #x files fanfic #fanfic #fandomcampcounselor writes fic

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