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Title: Impasse
Author: Agent L
Classification: V, post-ep
Rating: PG -- a couple of bad words
Spoilers: DeadAlive, Three Words
Doggett mentioned, but not present.
Disclaimer: To Chris Carter, David Duchovny, Gillian Anderson, Fox, 
and now Robert Patrick: I know they're not mine, and no money, gifts or 
even chocolate would be expected or accepted for this. 
Summary: Missing scene from Three Words
Feedback: Yes, please! LHoward388@aol.com


He would have found out from someone else.

That's what she told herself as she waited in the car with the dead 
cell phone clutched in her hand, her stomach rolling not from the 
familiar  movement of the baby, but from nerves stretched as 
tightly as rubber bands. From the last few seconds of her 
communication with Byers, Langly and Frohike, she got the 
impression that all hell had broken loose -- with Mulder in the 
middle of the firestorm. 

Just like old times. 

All she could do now was sit and wait. Just like old times.

She didn't know why she had insisted on accompanying him on 
this latest impossible mission, except she could hardly bear to have 
him out of her sight these days. But in her condition, there was 
nothing she could do if something went wrong except to dial 9-1-1, 
and they were way past the point where the local police force 
could be of any assistance. Agent Doggett was with him, or at least 
trying to find him somewhere in the Statistics Center maze, but 
that thought gave her little comfort. Agent Doggett had been in 
over his head since the beginning. He still had no concept of what 
lengths some people would go to in order to protect their secrets in 
the world of the X-files. And Mulder would certainly reject any 
rescue attempts from a man he saw as yet another player in the 
ongoing conspiracy to keep him from the truth. 

Suddenly something slammed against the passenger side of the car. 
"Scully! Open the damn door!"

She unlocked the car and Mulder scrambled in. "Go."

"Mulder, what --"

"Just drive, Scully."

She started the car, feeling as if she'd just walked in on the middle 
of a play and didn't know her lines. "What about Agent Doggett?"

Mulder gave her an odd look, as if she'd said something amusing. 
"He can take care of himself." Then he glanced out the back window. 
Scully looked in the rear view mirror and saw nothing. "Mulder, I think -- "

"Don't think, just get us out of here," he snapped. 

She automatically obeyed.

Just like old times.

Except it wasn't, she thought as she manuevered the car through the 
unfamiliar, twisting drive  that led out of the Statistics Center. Mulder 
had always been obsessed with his search, single-minded and occasionally
downright rude to anyone who dared question him or get in his way. 
But since he had come back to her, after those hazy hours in the 
hospital when he'd done little more than smile at her whenever he 
was awake, he'd been driven beyond reason. He was suspicious, paranoid, 
and seemed to care very little that he'd been given a second chance at life.

Or maybe he cared too much. She knew he was frustrated at the loss 
of time, and angry that the X-files seemed to have been deliberately 
left in her and Doggett's incompetent hands. And she freely admitted 
her incompetence, not as a federal agent, but as an investigator of 
paranormal phenomena. Neither she nor Doggett had the passion 
or the gift for working those kinds of cases, and everyone in the FBI 
knew it. But she couldn't quit -- not only because of the baby, but 
because she needed the bureau's resources and the information in 
those basement files to search for Mulder. 

She knew he felt betrayed and abandoned, not only by the bureau, 
but by her personally, and it hurt. But when she'd tried to explain to 
him what she'd been through, how she'd searched, it had sounded weak 
and self-pitying, as if she were trying to compare her experience to his, 
to force him to be happy and grateful to be alive. It frightened her to 
think he might not be. 

And later, in another unintentional betrayal, she should 
have told him about Doggett instead of letting him find out 
from Skinner. She'd seen the flash of hurt in his eyes before 
he masked it with some flippant remark. But so much had 
happened in such a short time...She  was still reeling from the 
fact that Mulder was sitting there in his apartment, breathing, 
talking, sulking -- when she had tossed a handful of dirt on his 
coffin only three months before. Agent Doggett had been the 
last thing on her mind. 

So she had watched helplessly, not knowing what to say or do 
as he had withdrawn behind a shield of sarcasm and solitude, 
reverting to his old motto: Trust no one. Tonight she had done 
the only thing she could, given him the only gift he would accept 
from her. The truth. The password to those files in the Statistics 
Center. And even as she told him, she had a nightmare vision of 
a coffin, the flowers, the snow....How would she be able to go 
through that again?

They hit the main road and she started to feel safe, seeing no 
headlights or red flashes in the rearview mirror, hearing no gunshots 
glancing off the metal of the car. She forced herself to loosen her 
deathgrip on the steering wheel to stretch her cramped fingers, 
wishing she could stretch her back until it cracked like her knuckles.

"Are you okay?" came the soft voice beside her. "Do you want 
me to drive?"

He was Jekyll and Hyde -- one moment vulnerable, concerned for 
her, needing her...The next minute snapping at her like a wounded 
animal, not understanding that her hand was extended to heal, not hurt.

"I'm fine," she said, the words coming out more sharply than she 
intended from her fear and confusion. Would they ever be able to 
have a normal conversation again? Would that headstone always 
loom between them?

"Look, Scully... I don't like Doggett, but I wouldn't leave him 
there to die. He took off in his truck before I got to the car. I saw 
him leave, safe and sound."

She almost laughed. He thought she was upset about abandoning 
John Doggett.

She swallowed hard to keep from screaming at him and tried to 
show an appropriate response -- relieved, but not *too* relieved --  
knowing he was intently examining her reaction to the news, 
had been putting her through a series of tests since she had 
walked out of the hospital with him. With Doggett it was easy 
to hide everything behind a cold exterior, a quick rebuff. He 
didn't look too far beneath the surface. Mulder saw to the bone.

"So what happened back there?" she said.

There was a long silence. "Doggett was right," Mulder finally 
muttered, as if the admission had been dragged up from the 
soles of his feet. "It was a setup."

Only a few days back from the dead and he was already tangled 
in lies, deceptions and secrets, chasing the ever-elusive truth -- risking 
his life as if this miraculous second chance meant nothing to him. 

"Mulder...We need to talk."

There was no response, and she glanced over to see him 
slumped in the seat. "Mulder?" she said a little more loudly. 
He didn't move.

She pulled over to the shoulder of the road, her heart pounding. 
Had he been hurt at the Center? Why hadn't she been paying more 
attention? She twisted awkwardly in the seat to check his pulse. 
Normal. She flipped on the interior light, relieved to see no blood 
or bruises, and felt no  bumps when she ran her fingers through his 
hair. She pinched his earlobe.

"Ow!" His eyes flew open and he batted her hand away. "What 
are you doing?"

"I couldn't wake you, Mulder. You scared me to death." She sank 
back against her seat.

"I was just taking a nap," he mumbled, rubbing at his ear. 

"I can't do this anymore." She blinked back sudden tears and 
clutched the steering wheel so hard she thought it would shatter. 
"I buried you three months ago, Mulder. Picked out your suit. 
Chose the coffin and stood there as they lowered it into the ground. 
It may not compare to what you've suffered or what you've 
lost, but I don't have the strength to go through that again."

For a long moment he was silent, staring out the window at 
the darkness outside. Then he turned in the seat to face her. 
"Scully...I have -- flashbacks, I guess you'd call them. Some 
memory of what happened to me." His hand drifted across 
his scarred cheek. "But sometimes I see other people being..." 
He took a long breath and let it out slowly. "Other people in my 
place. My sister. Skinner. You." Another pause as his voice broke. 
"Scully, I'd let them take me again before I'd let them do anything 
to you, to your child. I know I've been given a second chance -- 
and I can't help but think it's to expose this conspiracy, to stop 
these abductions."

"Our child," she said softly, almost to herself. 

"What?"

"Our child, Mulder. The baby is yours." She hadn't wanted to tell 
him like this, sitting in a car on the side of the road. She had 
started to tell him so many times over the past few days, but then 
he would look at her as if she were a stranger...

Just like he was looking at her now. 

"How...?"

"Sometime after the closing credits of 'Caddyshack,' if my 
calculations are correct." She couldn't help but smile at his 
dumbfounded expression. "I want this child to have a father, Mulder." 

In the silence that followed, she began to hope that somehow 
she had reached him, that he would understand what she was
asking him to do. Then he spoke.

"I want this child to have a future."

Checkmate. 

He had used her own weapon against her. What better father
could she ask for than one who was willing to sacrifice 
anything -- even life itself -- to protect his child? There was 
nothing more to say, no scientific argument against the 
statement. She started the car. They did not speak again 
until she pulled up in front of his apartment building, where 
he opened the car door, then hesitated.

"Scully, I wish things were different. I wish I could be the person 
you want me to be."

She sighed, her back stiff and sore, her eyes scratchy and dry
from staring at the road. Her throat aching with unshed tears.

He got out of the car.

"You are," she whispered as she watched him walk away 
into the darkness.

The End