In or Out
The Mulder parents were surprised to find their son standing on their doorstep. Bill Mulder took his stern father approach, aiming to make his son feel bad for disrespecting their decisions and their legacy.
Teena Mulder quickly got emotional. “We knew you’d come back, we just knew it.”
“I’m not back for you. I want to know everything about the last time you saw Samantha and any information you might have on her whereabouts.” Mulder said in a cold, clipping voice that took almost all of his energy to muster up.
“Honey?”
Mulder felt as if a hand was pushing up through his throat. His mother looked almost betrayed.
It doesn’t matter. She’s all that matters. She’s why I’m here.
“I want to know everything you know about where Samantha could be.”
“Fox, what do you mean? You know what happened to her.”
Not another fucking abduction story. No more bullshit.
“Mom, no more bullshit. Everything.”
Bill Mulder seemed to grow a foot taller at Mulder’s tone and comment. “Do not speak to your mother like that, Fox.”
“Listen. I see it like this. Either you don’t tell me and I leave and neither of us get anything out of it. Or you do tell me everything you know and I leave anyway, but you’ll gain some forgiveness for being selfish bastards.”
Bill looked livid. “Excuse me?”
Mulder tried to stand tall, feeling incredibly small and with the least leverage he could collect. His bargaining chips were small and his parents were stubborn. But this was the only starting place.
The Gunmen watched from the van. They brought the video camera for documentation if the Mulders would give “testimony,” but from what they couldn’t hear and everything they could see, it didn’t look like it was going very well.
“You heard me.”
Teena gave a pleading look at her husband. What she was trying to say Mulder did not know, but he hoped it was a good sign.
“Bill. We can’t lose anything from telling him. It might help him cope.”
I can hear you?
He exchanged a look with his wife and nodded. “To be fair with you, Fox, we don’t know much at all.”
Mulder waved the Gunmen out and they came with their video camera and notebooks.
“Seriously, Fox?”
His so-called entourage were obviously trying to make themselves look tough and as if they hadn’t eaten meals at the Mulder house all year and all the summers before. It was almost comical.
Frohike nodded at the Mulder parents. “Mr and Mrs. Mulder.”
Mulder had to disguise a snort as the beginning of a coughing fit, recieving a few questioning looks.
“Well, everyone come inside.”
The house didn’t look any different. Mulder didn’t know what he had been expecting. A graveyard? A memorial? But it appeared that the Mulders had been living about the same as they did when both of their children lived there with them.
“State your names for the camera, please.”
“Melvin, you know our names.”
Mulder gave them a frustrated look and they complied. Maybe he had more bargaining chips than he thought he had-- maybe they felt guilty.
“Bill and Teena Mulder.”
Byers was staring down at a sheet of questions that had obviously been quickly compiled-- probably in the van ride over.
“Describe the last time you saw your daughter. Please include times, locations and any other details you might find important.”
Bill shook his head, apparently put off with the professionalism of the encounter. Even from Mulder’s perspective, it was a little ridiculous, but it made him more grateful to the Gunmen.
“It was about 3:00. Fox was out with--” he paused. “Friends, and we were going out for dinner together. Samantha was going to be home alone.”
Mulder took a sharp breath. I could’ve been here with her. I could’ve --
Teena interjected. “We told her to stay inside the house and keep all the doors locked while we were gone--”
Langly interrupted. “Why did you tell her to lock the doors in a town with practically no crime? Where people can - and do - sleep with their back doors open?”
Teena made a face. “Richard, you’re not a mother, but when you love your child, you make sure they take all precautions, even when they go against fact and logic.”
She gave a look to Mulder that seemed to say this is not my fault.
“When you returned from dinner?”
Teena exhaled what sounded like the beginning of a sob and Bill retook control. “She was gone. We thought maybe she’d gone to Alice’s house down the block, but when we called her parents said they hadn’t seen Samantha. We walked around the block, knocking on doors to see it they’d seen her, but no one had. All the windows and doors were locked.”
Frohike nodded. “Do you know of anyone who would want to hurt Samantha? Do either of you have any enemies that would particularly stand out on wanting to hurt one of your children?”
Bill seemed taken aback. “Of course I have enemies, Melvin, but no one would want to hurt Samantha. This is getting ridiculous.”
Mulder had to bite his tongue, a few choice words trying to escape.
“Do you have any idea of where Samantha might be?”
Shocked, Bill Mulder replied, “son, do you think if I had any idea where my daughter was, I would be sitting here talking to you right now?”
Byers wrote something down.
“I think that concludes the interview, unless you have anything else you need to say.” Mulder tried to say it with sangfroid, but his voice came out shaky.
“I’m sure that Scully woman has already compiled one of her files on the whole thing, we saw her outside taking photos yesterday. She even asked us if she could dust the windows for fingerprints. Can you believe the audacity?” This seemed to be question to Mulder.
For a moment everything felt normal. Sitting around the dinner table talking about some “personal” enemy of the Mulder’s and the ridiculous thing they’d done today, Samantha and him kicking each other under the table and sharing secret smiles.
Mulder felt his whole body run cold.
“Thank you, Mr. and Mrs. Mulder, we’ll be going now.” Frohike said, and the other two Gunmen began to collect their things.
“Mulder, are you coming?” Byers said, as he approached the door.
Teena grabbed his shoulder, trying to hold him back. “Fox, this isn’t our fault. We didn’t want to lose her either. She wasn’t just your sister. She was my daughter, too.”
He pulled free of her grasp and headed towards the door, shaking with a concoction of anger and pain.
“Thank you for your time.”
---------------------------------------
Scully was curled up under a blanket, watching reruns and trying to drown her mind when there was a knock at the door. It was 9 at night.
Melissa looked up from her book. “You’re closer.”
Scully groaned, wrapping the blanket around her shoulders. The least unexpected quartet was standing on her front step. The Lone Gunmen? This couldn’t be good. They were accompanied by the Mulder boy, the one whose sister had been in the papers and whose parents wouldn’t listen to reason.
The one who’d hit on both her and Melissa was the first to speak. “Sorry to bother you at such a late time, Dana.Can we just talk to Ms. Scully?”
The Mulder boy wasn’t paying any attention to the conversation. He was standing in the very back, looking everywhere but the doorway.
“Uh, yeah. One second.” She turned around to address Melissa, who was apparently interested. “Where’s mom?”
“In the study.”
Scully gave her a look as if to say, well, go get her! And Melissa scrambled off of her chair. When she returned, mom had bags under her eyes and her hair was in a messy ponytail. She’d been working overtime, unable to spread her time evenly between mom duties, studying the anomalies on Federal, and trying to get her papers published, trying to get someone to listen to her. She looked tired.
She brushed her hair out of her face and saw four teenage boys standing in her doorway.
“We need your help, Ms. Scully.”
She nodded, as if she knew exactly what was happening. Scully sure didn’t, and stepped out of the way as her mom ushered the boys in.
“Tea? Coffee?”
“No thank you.” The Mulder boy had finally spoken, wringing his hands. His eyes looked just as bagged as mom’s but he was a sort of messy-handsome, as if God had been both very careless and very careful when making him. His hair was really messy and his shirt was wrinkled and his eyes seemed completely lost until mom re-entered the room. He focused on her as he stirred the spoon in her coffee.
The boys had clumped together in a protective little pack but Frohike was still trying to catch her eye. Mom sat them all at the kitchen table and Scully was struggling to understand the context of the situation.
“So I assume you’re here because you want to talk about your sister, and because you boys want to know something for that conspiracy paper of yours. ” She gave him a weak smile. “It’s Fox, right?”
Oh. That’s why.
“Yeah, it is, and yes I do. Sorry to intrude so late.”
“No, it’s alright. Sometimes people do come to see me. I just didn’t expect that anyone in your family would.”
The other boys had resigned themselves to staring about the room, examining the china plates, the bookshelf with scientific journals.
“Melissa, can you get the manilla folder on my desk? It should be labeled ‘Mulder, S.’”
Fox seemed visibly upset at the mention.
“Are you sure you don’t want anything?” Margaret offered, and he shook his head. Samantha came back with a thick folder.
“Thank you, dear.”
She laid it out on the table and the three boys suddenly seemed re-interested as she pulled out a map marked with X’s and lines drawn between them. Scully had never seen it before.
“This is where I’ve found anything strange-- scientifically, I mean-- in my research. Some of the others have helped me. Some of them are weather phenomenons others are just unexplainable--” she paused. “I mean, unexplainable by the science we know today.”
Something strange? Something unexplainable? No way, mom. No way.
“But others are just strange, stuff even I can’t put reason to. Some of these are carcasses and bones of animals that don’t live in this climate and can’t survive. And there’s more than that.”
Her eyes looked almost electric. Margaret now had a podium for research, for everything she’d put her years into. But admitting there wasn’t an explanation? That wasn’t like her.
She pushed the map towards them, then pulling out some bags of soil samples labeled with names. Mulder, Johanssen, Smith-- the abduction cases.
“I’ve found these at every so-called abduction site so far. They appear to be some kind of soil. I’ve gotten it tested and a lot of it’s unidentifiable except for some of the mineral in it, which matches dirt samples I collected in the desert.”
“I haven’t found any fingerprints at any of the scenes, but then again, my forensic science is incredibly unadvanced.”
The Gunmen looked almost giddy, while Mulder studied the map and the bags she had given him. Scully knew of the Lone Gunmen newspaper thing. They sold issues of it for like, 99 cents at the Little Alien.
“Everything I know is in this folder, and I have more in my study. I’ve collected as much data and evidence as possible the past few years but it keeps leading me to dead ends.”
“Ms. Scully, may I -we, I mean- borrow everything you have on this?” Frohike asked, turning over the soil sample bags in his hand. “We’ll return it. It’s just for the paper, we’re trying to document everything. We want to make an issue on the unexplained--” he paused, obviously trying to make it more appealing to the scientist sitting across from him “and the explained, in this town. We will credit you for everything we use, here.”
She bit her lip. “You won’t make it some crazy radical UFO theory?”
Scully almost wanted to snort.
The boys hesitated, unsure of the decision that they were going to make. Mulder was sure, however. This wasn’t about that, this was about finding Samantha. They couldn’t tell that to her, of course, she was an adult and she wouldn’t support them, no way. It had to be for the paper.
“No, we won’t.” Mulder said.
I’m sure you won’t.
“Alright. I’ll be right back.” Margaret stood and when she returned, she was carrying two boxes stacked on top of each other. “I warn you, this won’t be easy to write about. It doesn’t fit together.”
Scully had never seen her mother use words like unexplained easily, and here she was admitting that the work she was doing wasn’t fitting together entirely, it was unfinished and confusing and unclear. Holy shit.
The boys nodded. “We understand. We can’t thank you enough, Ms. Scully.” Said Mulder, and Margaret smiled.
They stood to leave, thanking profusely for her kindness and saying how much this would help.
Margaret placed a hand on Mulder’s shoulder, and gave him a warm smile. “Fox, don’t go looking for something you can’t find. Leave that to me, and the rest of us, okay?”
Mulder felt terrible. “Of course. Thank you for your hospitality.”
Scully stared, blinking, as the boys left with manilla folders and boxes full of research she’d never seen before. Four teenage boys collecting soil samples and real scientific research to write a newspaper article?
All that? For a newspaper issue?
Something was wrong, really really wrong. They couldn’t use all that for a newspaper, and the map? She’d let them have the map, too.
Mom was a smart woman, but she could also be really, really stupid. She couldn’t get her work published in any scientific journal so she’d trusted it with four 17 year olds, one whose sister had just gone missing.
Scully ran out the door after them, barefoot. She found them outside, packing their new things back into that awful beat up van. When they saw her, they stopped, completely.
“Did we forget something?” The blond one asked, Richard, Scully thought was his name.
“I know all that’s not for a newspaper article.”
Mulder looked taller, now, studying her. “So?”
“You can’t go looking. She even said you couldn’t. Everything is out there in the desert. You don’t know what you’ll find and you could evendie.”
“Can’t you mind your own business, Dana?” Said Melvin, or Frohike, or whatever he’d wanted to be called. She’d punched him once or twice before. Good to know the name of someone you’d punched.
“Did that black eye hurt last time, Melvin?”
Mulder gave him a look. He hadn’t put two and two together before, that this was the girl Frohike had tried to hit on in his own “special way” and gotten punched for it. This is her?
“So what do you want? A cut of the profits?” Langly asked, and Scully almost snorted. Like there are going to be any profits.
Scully considered for a moment. She hadn’t really planned a course of action before coming out here. Was she really planning to talk them out of it?
And maybe she was impulsive and heartbroken or maybe she was just bored and lonely but the answer came like it had always been ready, waiting in the wings.
“I want in.”