Halrloprillalar hal@prillalar.com http://prillalar.com/ May 29, 2000 RATING: PG13. FANDOM/SPOILERS: X-Files. S7. SUMMARY: Requiem post-ep. Scully wonders what the hell is going on. DISTRIBUTION: Archive anywhere. Email forwarding allowed. DISCLAIMER: CC, 1013, Fox, not me. UNMARRIED MOTHER by Halrloprillalar - hal@prillalar.com Scully was knocked up. At first that made her happy, because with all the mystery symptoms she'd been having, she thought that she had incurable cancer again. Or maybe mono. But then she realised that there were a lot of questions to be answered. Like how she managed to get P.G. when according to Mulder she was infertile due to having all her eggs sucked out of her to make half-alien clones. So then she was unhappy. Unless maybe Mulder was wrong about that. Next she thought how all her life she had always wanted to have babies. Her career as a doctor and FBI agent was just something to keep busy with until then. And now that time was here. So that was good. But then she realised what was even more puzzling: how could she be up a pole when she hadn't had sex for at least seven years? Or even any heavy petting! Even though she had not been a practicing physician to living people for a long time, she still remembered her medical school training and according to her human sexuality professor, you had to screw first. Scully was confused. While she was trying to figure out if she had gotten drunk recently, A.D. Skinner came into her hospital room. "I lost Mulder," he said. "He got abducted." Scully took the news with mixed emotions. She had always sensed that Mulder was jealous that she had been abducted and he never was, so she was glad for him. But now she needed vital information from him about how he knew her eggs had been sucked out and she couldn't ask him. Plus he owed her fifty dollars. "I'll find him," she told Skinner and he sniffed a little bit. Scully thought how sensitive and caring Skinner seemed right then. She squeezed his hand. After all, her baby would need a father and who knew when Mulder would be back? "By the way, I'm pregnant," she said. Skinner didn't really say much though; he seemed preoccupied with Mulder being missing. Skinner left almost right away, because he had to plan Mulder's rescue or play golf or something. That left Scully alone to think some more. Maybe it was a virgin birth, like with Mary or Darth Vader's mother. So, given those statistics, her baby had a 50-50 chance of turning out good or evil. But then again, Scully wasn't actually a virgin. She'd had sex enough times so that she wasn't a prude, but not so much that she was a slut. Scully had a horrifying idea: what if the bun in her oven wasn't a bun at all, but a terrible alien monster? It might be part of a plot to invade the planet. Or another freakish experiment. Maybe it was consuming her from within right that very moment. And it would probably need non-standard diapers. Maybe she should just have an abortion. Sometimes she thought that was wrong and sometimes she thought it was OK. Because sometimes she was a practicing Catholic and sometimes she wasn't. And sometimes she had these Buddhist tendencies. And sometimes she believed in aliens. And sometimes not. Scully found it hard to keep straight from week to week what she believed because the circumstances changed so often. But right this minute, she figured that abortion was a viable alternative, especially if it was a alien monster, which she sort of believed in. She reached for the buzzer to call the nurse so she could ask for the abortion. But suddenly someone appeared beside the bed. It was the Cigarette Smoking Man. "Hello, Scully," he said, taking a puff on his cigarette. "Where did you come from, you cigarette smoking bastard?" Scully didn't like him very much. "I'm dead. I came to talk to you." Dead? Scully hoped it was true, but then how could he be here? Scully did a quick belief check and decided that it was OK to believe in ghosts. Especially since he was glowing a really eerie blue colour. "If you're dead, why come here?" "To warn you, Scully. Don't have an abortion." "How did you know about that?" He took another drag on his blue glowing cigarette. "Because I'm the one that got you in the family way." Oh, right. That time that they took that trip together and he drugged her and then she woke up later already in her jammies. But she had always figured that was platonic. "I don't want to have your baby, you son of a bitch." "It's not my baby, Scully, I just implanted it." "So it is a horrible alien monster after all?" "Sort of." "Then why shouldn't I have an abortion?" "Because if you do, you'll disturb the very fabric of space and time. And you know how fragile that is." Scully was more confused than ever. "How could that be?" "Because the baby is Mulder. A human/alien hybrid incubating in your womb. After he's born, someone will come pick him up to take him back in time to be adopted. We needed a hero fast to face the coming invasion. The next one, that is. So time travel was the only option. If you have an abortion, that will cause a paradox. Does that make sense?" "Not really, no." "Well, maybe it will in a few months." Despite the fact that Scully was feeling very open to believing impossible things this week, this one was still a bit of a stretch. But it *did* explain why she and Mulder had never had sex, after seven years of close partnership, lots of near death experiences, and even some spooning. If it was Mulder, she couldn't very well get rid of him. "OK, I won't have the abortion." "I knew you'd see it my way. Make sure you get plenty of rest and don't drink any alcohol." The Smoking Man flickered and disappeared. She'd have the baby, sure, but there was no way she was giving him up for time-travel and adoption. She knew she could do a better job of bringing him up than the Mulders had. She'd start by giving him a normal name. And no TV, especially any science fiction. And if she kept working on Skinner, there'd be a strong father figure around the house. They'd be a happy little family. She'd get another dog and learn to knit. Scully reached for the phone. It was never too early to reserve a place in preschool. F I N I S Halrloprillalar hal@prillalar.com http://prillalar.com/