Date: Fri, 09 Oct 1998

Title: Secrets Long Forgotten
Author: Vickie Moseley
Summary: A slightly twisted ending to the episode 'Demons'.
Category: V, A, UST
Spoiler: Demons
Ratings: PG
Disclaimer: Hey, Chris, have I got a great one for you! You
basically hinted at it, I just picked up the hints. But I won't infringe
on your copyright anyway, OK. And Happy B-Day on Tuesday.
Archives: Yes
Comments: Please! vmoseley@fgi.net
Thanks to Susan Proto and Daydreamer for beta-reading and cheerleading :)
DON'T FORGET TO VOTE!!

Secrets Long Forgotten
By Vickie Moseley

Dana Scully looked up at the sound of high heels on the tiled floor.
Even though she'd made the call, she still wasn't sure the woman
would come. If there was one person on the planet that Dana could
not figure out, it was her partner's mother.

Christeena Mulder walked with practiced grace toward the waiting
room where her son's partner was sitting. She extended her hand
in greeting.

"Ms. Scully," she said, composed, sure of herself. "How is he?"

Dana drew in a deep breath. If I knew that, she mused, you
wouldn't be here. But she held her tongue and fought for a
civilized answer.

"He's in and out. The seizures are subsiding, but the doctors are
still very concerned. He's been asking for you. That's why I
called."

Teena nodded and sat down heavily in the chair. "You mentioned a
'treatment'? I don't think I understand what's been going on the
past few days. What is the matter with Fox?"

Dana shook her head. "I can't really say, Mrs. Mulder. He called
me on Sunday. He'd taken some 'treatment', . . . actually, it was
little more than having a hole drilled into his head," she sighed.
Mrs. Mulder frowned, but said nothing. "The 'doctor' who
performed the 'treatment' is currently in custody and will be
prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law."

"What on earth was he doing? What was he trying to gain? Is Fox
ill? He's not mentioned anything to me," Teena said, perplexed.

"I think he was trying to regain his memories. For as long as I've
known him, Mulder, er, Fox, has been trying to remember what
happened the night Samantha was taken. For some reason, it's
been eating at him more lately. I don't know exactly why." That
was a lie and Dana dropped her eyes before the older woman
caught on. She knew exactly why Samantha's disappearance was
bothering Mulder recently. Soon, she would be 'disappearing'
herself. Dying of cancer. One more person in his life lost forever.
But there was no way she was going for reveal that fact to his
mother.

"Has he been successful?" Teena asked with forced calm.
Suddenly, the events of the previous day, the argument they'd had
was brought into striking clarity. This could be very dangerous, for
both of them, for all of them.

"Somewhat. He has 'episodes', at least, when they were mild, they
were 'episodes'. Flashbacks, apparently. He could remember
'snapshots', or that's what it sounded like. But not of the night of
the disappearance. It was connected with your summer house. He
talked of seeing you and your husband fighting about something."

Dana reached out a hand as Teena paled and swayed in her chair.

"Oh, dear God," the older woman muttered.

"Mrs. Mulder, are you all right?" Dana demanded, standing and
ready to call a nurse.

Teena caught her arm. "I'm fine, dear. Fine. Please, it just . . it
just brought back some bad memories of my own. Bill and I had
terrific fights before the divorce. I'm sure that's what Fox is
remembering." If Dana had taken a moment to look in her eyes,
she would have seen Teena was hiding something of her own.
"Can I see him? I would like to see him."

"As I said, he's been in and out of consciousness. But I'm sure the
doctor wouldn't mind if you sat by his bed. You might get lucky
and catch him awake." Though the words were hopeful, the tone
of voice was discouraging.

"Ms. Scully, why don't you try to get some rest? Do you have a
motel nearby?"

Dana shook her head. "I'll just stretch out here. I don't want to be
too far away."

Teena shrugged and looked toward the hall of rooms.

"He's in 624. It's two doors down from the nurses station. It's
semi-private, but he doesn't have a roommate."

"Thank you. For everything," Teena said, allowing for a moment
the gratitude she felt for this young woman to shine through her
reserve. She reached out and clasped Dana's hand in her own.
"You have been good for him."

Dana dropped her gaze again, embarrassed. "I respect your son,
Mrs. Mulder. I'm very glad I'm partnered with him." If she
wanted to say more, she stopped herself.

Teena gave Dana's hand a quick squeeze and got up to walk down
the hall.

Room 624 was dimly lit, only the night light over the bed casting
any illumination.

"Shadows," Teena murmured. "Our lives have been nothing but
shadows." She saw that a chair had been pulled up next to the bed
on the side closest to the windows. She moved around the room
and sat down.

Her heart jumped to her throat when she finally looked closely at
her son. Mulder's head was swathed in bandages, a dot of red still
leaking from the site of the impromptu craniotomy. Monitors were
affixed to his forehead and his chest. An IV drip was hanging from
a pole attached to a monitor. The hand closest to her sported the
IV needle, taped securely to his skin.

Teena reached over the bed rail and ran her hand down her son's
cheek. As she did so, his eyes fluttered open.

"Mom?" His voice was hoarse and scratchy from lack of use or
from the drugs that were being pumped into his bloodstream. He
looked at her fuzzily. "Mom, zat you?"

She forced a smile to her lips. "Yes, Baby Boy, it's Mom. I'm
here, Fox. Right here. I came as soon as Ms. Scully called me."

"Didn't think you'd come," he sighed, closing his eyes, but reaching
for her hand. "Thought you were mad at me."

Her heart broke into a million pieces. She stroked his temple with
her free hand. "No, sweetheart. I could never be that angry with
you. You must know that. I love you, and I always will."

"Mom, please, tell me," Mulder begged, opening his eyes and
straining to keep them glued on her face. "Is he, is that smoking
bastard, . . . is he my father?"

She bit down on her bottom lip hard. How much should she tell
him? How much did she want to reveal? Finally, she realized she
would answer all his questions and deal with the consequences.

"No, Fox. William Mulder was your father. I fell in love with Bill
Mulder my first day on Boston College campus. I was a freshman,
he was a graduate student in foreign policy. I fell head over heels."

"Bet you were a . . . hot chick, Mom," Mulder's smile was goofy
and his eyes kept drifting shut. He fought them open and waited
for her to tell the story.

She smiled at that. "I did all right," she laughed. "I did better than
all right, actually. But after I met your father, I quit answering my
phone." She blushed slightly, something she couldn't remember
doing in ages. "To tell you the truth, I started answering the phone
at your father's apartment."

That opened his eyes wider. "You _lived_ together? Before you
were married?"

"Fox, I really don't think you are one to stand in judgement," she
huffed. "How many times did I call you at Oxford to find you were
at that Miss Greene's flat?"

"Point taken," he conceded. "So you lived together. OK, I've got
that."

"Six months after I met him, I found out _you_ were on the way."

"Ouch," Mulder winced. "Bet that went over real well," he said
glumly.

She gave him a superior smirk. "If you want the real truth of the
matter, it did! Your father was overjoyed. He'd begged me to
marry him after I moved my things to his place, some two months
after we started seeing each other. I thought that was rushing the
relationship too much. But once I discovered I was pregnant, we
really didn't have a choice."

Mulder's eyes clouded. "Would you . . . if you'd had 'another
choice', would you have . . ."

"No," she assured him firmly. "I loved your father with all my
heart. I knew he was the only man I would ever love in that way.
And I was very happy to be carrying his child. I wanted you, Fox.
We both did."

"So I was born. Where does 'he' come into this?" Mulder
struggled to sit straighter, but a spasm of pain lanced through his
temple. He grabbed for his head and for a moment, Teena was
terrified that he would begin to seize. After an eternity, he dropped
his hand to the bed and gave her a weak smile. "Sorry. Please, go
on."

"You were a month premature. You weighed just over 4 pounds at
birth and you were very sick. Your lungs weren't fully developed
and you were in the hospital for weeks. We were constantly being
told that you wouldn't last through the night, through the next
week. It became a way of life, waiting for you to die."

Mulder clenched his eyes shut, blocking out the thoughts that were
surfacing. "But I didn't die."

Teena smiled brightly. "No, you fooled them all! But not your
father. He never gave up hope. The doctors took us aside early on
and warned us both not to get too attached. They even suggested
that we not fix up the nursery, since it would only serve to remind
us after you'd died. Your father would hear none of it. He stayed
with you every night, muscled his way into the hospital to be with
you. Pulled strings, had a Congressman call the hospital
administrator so he was allowed full access to you. His own
stubbornness refused to let you die."

"I never knew any of this," Mulder whispered.

"Of course not! Why would we want to bring up the most horrible
time of our lives? But that's when your father met 'our friend'.
He'd finished his studies and was working for the state department
again. He came home one day to tell me that he'd found a new
doctor, one who was willing to perform surgery on an infant as
young as you. You needed surgery to correct a defect in your heart
and no one was willing to even try. We brought you by ambulance
to Boston General and the doctor operated on you. In less than
three weeks, we were able to bring you home. From that point on,
you thrived."

"He found you the doctor," Mulder supplied.

"Yes, he did. I worshiped the ground he walked on for that one
feat alone. He watched over you, you thought of him as an uncle.
When your father entered the military because of the war, he was
stationed with him at Fort Bragg. I would bake cookies and sent
them enough for both of them. I never forgot how important he
was in our lives."

"So he's really not my father," Mulder said aloud.

"I told you he wasn't."

Mulder pinned her with an unsteady glare. "What about
Samantha?"

Teena dropped her eyes under her son's scrutiny. "That . . . is
another matter." She took a deep breath. "I never wanted . . ."

"Mom, how? Why? What would possible make you do that? How
could you cheat on Dad like that?" Mulder was growing agitated
and she brought her head up to glare at him.

"You think I wanted it? You think I _planned_ it to happen? I
_loved_ your father. But he got so wrapped up in work, in that
damnable work that he forgot about me. Oh, he'd come home and
still had a few minutes to spend with you. But I was lucky if I got a
second glance. I was lonely. I was stuck in that house, you were
already in nursery school. I thought maybe, just maybe, he would
find out and be jealous. That's all I wanted. I wanted your father
to find us together and demand I end the affair. I wanted him to
start paying attention to me again!"

"You got pregnant by him," Mulder said with such revulsion that
pain lanced through her chest.

"I didn't want . . . I never meant . . . But I couldn't be certain.
Your father and I, he'd come to the summer house one weekend.
We'd been spending the month up there and he'd come up to be
with us, you and I. We made love for the first time in ages and I
thought I would call our friend and tell him we were through. But
by the next weekend, Bill was back to normal, and I was all but
forgotten. So our friend came to visit the next week and . . . we
resumed the affair. I discovered the pregnancy about two months
later. To this day, I'm still not completely sure."

"But you suspect," Mulder said softly. His face was blank, no
expression at all and that scared her to the core.

"Yes, I suspect. Samantha looked nothing like you as a baby. Of
course, you'd been so ill, and she was so healthy. But she had a
reddish cast to her hair, just like 'he' did when he was in the sun.
And her eyes. They were his eyes staring up at me. Oh,
sometimes, I could make myself see your father there, too. But it
was mostly a ruse to fool myself. When I was being honest, I knew
who her father really was."

"He took her, didn't he?"

The real crux of the matter. "What do you remember? Ms. Scully
said you remembered an argument at the summer house."

Mulder leaned deeper into the pillows. "I just have bits and pieces.
I remember you shouting something about 'not my baby' over and
over again. And Dad looked so . . . betrayed. Was that when he
found out? Was that when he knew? And 'your friend' as you
keep calling him, he was there. Standing in the dark hallway. He
called me a 'little spy'. Because I knew, isn't it? Because I knew
about the affair. I just hadn't let myself make the connections until
I was older. I must have been 11 or 12 at the time." He looked at
her square in the eye. "It was the summer before Samantha
disappeared." Then a look of confusion crossed his face. "But why
couldn't I remember before?"

"I don't know, Fox. I guess you just blocked it out. We don't
know everything there is to know about eidetic memories," she
sighed and stroked his forehead. His eyes closed automatically.

"You gave her up?" he said, his voice lowering to a whisper.

"I never wanted to. I never gave up hope of having her returned to
us."

"Why? Why did you do it?" He was being dragged down into
sleep just by the touch of her hand on his forehead. She knew he
had only a few seconds left.

"It was the only way to keep you safe," she told him, then kissed
his forehead. He didn't move, he was already fast asleep.

She reached down to the floor and picked up her purse. After a
moment's search, she came up with a capped syringe. With ease
born of years of practice, she injected the clear fluid into the IV
joint and watched as it invisibly mingled with the sterile water and
antibiotics.

"It was the only way to keep you safe. As was this." A single tear
streaked down her face as she place the empty syringe in her purse
again.

After a few moments of watching his peaceful slumber, she left the
room. She was walking past the lounge when a sleepy voice called
out to her.

"Did you get a chance to talk to him?" Scully asked, rubbing her
eyes against the grit in them.

Teena shook her head. "No, he was asleep the whole time."

"That's too bad. I was hoping you could help him remember,"
Scully said with a frown.

"Oh, I don't think there's anything to worry about. By morning,
I'm sure he'll have forgotten the whole episode." She turned and
with hunched shoulders, headed for the elevators and eventually,
home.

the end

Vickie

"Politics is a character flaw."

George Brown, politician and former mayor.

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