More Questions than Answers
Mulder’s first response, of course, had been no. “Absolutely not.”
Scully pushed her hair out of her eyes and stared at him with a stubborn expression. “You’re acting like you have a choice.”
Frohike exchanged a look with him, a cross between don’t mess with her, and she’s hot. “You don’t know what you’re getting into here.”
She crossed her arms. “And you know that because…?”
Mulder didn’t have a snappy retort or a way to push her off. He tried shooting daggers, hoping that would throw her off or discourage her.
“It’s dangerous and we frankly don’t know what we’re doing.” Byers said, breaking a unspoken tension.
“Then you’ll need me.”
The Gunmen exchanged a look and Frohike looked towards Mulder for the cue. Mulder sighed, this only complicated things and the situation was already too complicated to begin with.
“I’m not responsible for you. You’ll have to hold your own.”
Scully felt almost like jumping up and down. For some reason it felt like purpose had been given back to her. “Fine.”
“And he’s in charge.” Said Langly, nodding towards Mulder. Mulder wanted to object because he frankly didn’t want to be in charge, but Scully was already nodding.
“Anything else?”
“Yeah. Don’t do anything stupid.” Mulder said. He wasn’t sure if he liked her. She seemed to hold herself strongly but she also felt like a weight to drag behind, and he couldn’t have anything holding him back. Not even the Gunmen. “And meet us tomorrow at the diner.”
Something about the whole endeavour had made Scully feel incredibly powerful. She was the one skeptic, the one in power because she was keeping their secret. And it gave her something to think about aside from Monica.
The boys finished packing up and left. When they got back to Frohike’s house and had brought the boxes in, no one dared to speak. As if when they were opening the boxes they were cracking open every secret that had been kept from them.
There were a lot of notes. Scribbles and sketches and bags with samples and rocks with strange etchings on them. Maps with markings of the houses of the abducted and locations of anomalies and who knows what else.
Mulder felt his eyes dampen. This wasn’t what he had expected in the least. It was hope and possibility and the beginnings of answers.
“According to her field notes, there’s no connection at all between the abductees. She’s been very thorough, checked background and age and the whole shebang.” Frohike said, sounding impressed.
“She’s got pictures, here, of all the scenes, the places she found the soil samples, everything. There’s so much of it.”
It was like conspiracy Christmas morning.
Mulder hadn’t noticed the other three were looking at him. He had been thumbing through the papers and photos.
“Mulder, how the hell are we going to find her?” Langly asked.
His heart rate rose, incredibly peeved by the comment. “I don’t know, but what were you expecting? A map that said ‘this is where she’ll be?’ Did you ever really expect that it would be that easy?”
Langly looked hurt. “Man, I’m not looking for a fight here. It’s just there’s so much.”
He was right. There was so much. Piles and piles of papers and field notes and samples and everything and none of it had a trail to follow, none of it gave any hint of where to start.
Mulder raked his fingers through his hair, closing his eyes and feeling his heart throb in his head. What if she’s really gone?
“There is. I’m sorry, Langly. I’m overwhelmed too.”
Frohike’s mom knocked on the basement door. “Melvin? I’m ordering takeout. What does everyone want?”
This was always summer. The four camping out at everyone’s house, ordering takeout and pizza and eating at the Little Alien, working on the paper and watching movies. Summer felt so much more complicated now.
Mulder ate his drunken noodles, legs crossed, reading and rereading what Margaret Scully had on Samantha. Food was a little easier to eat, and he didn’t have to force it down and try to keep it.
Margaret Scully had some information she’d obviously gotten from Samantha’s friends, the note parents won’t share medical history or speak to me at all. That had made Mulder laugh-- he could only imagine her standing on the doorstep and trying to talk dad into letting her know anything.
“Hey guys, I could something!” Byers waved them over and everyone crowded around him. “There’s some places that the anomalies have gathered around specifically, certain latitude and longitude points out there in the desert. Most of the animal skeletons have been found in a general radius of each other, the stones were found near each other, too.”
“Had she examined this yet?”
“No, I don’t think she’s noticed it.”
“Langly, are you getting this?” Langly responded by typing faster.
Mulder’s heart raced. “We need to go out there, guys.”
The decision was made unanimously because no one could find a good reason to not go out there, despite all apprehensions. They dropped Byers and Langly off, where Mulder knew they went home to families that were still whole.
Frohike’s couch was starting to feel more like home than Mulder’s bed did, at least in his head. He thought about his parents and what his mother had said, that it wasn’t their fault.
Mulder didn’t know if he could forgive that, though. Even if they were suffering, they had profited off it, and they had accepted it. They were loved by the town for bringing the people back, and Mulder knew his parents loved the attention more than they suffered from the disappearance of their daughter. That just didn’t seem forgiveable.
Mulder had dreams about Samantha. Bickering but always messing with each other, Mulder stealing her hairbrush and the two arguing over what to watch when mom and dad were gone. He missed that, all the normal things.
And he dreamt about her funeral. He dreamt their parents dressed in their alien themed clothing and their smiles, trying to be modest but soaking up the “sorry for your losses” and the hugs, the wet eyes and all the attention they craved.
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Scully was early, stirring a curly straw in an alien head glass and chewing on the decision she had made. Was it really the right decision, to join them? Why did it mean anything to her in the first place?
She hadn’t told Margaret, which was not something that happened often. Her heart was buzzing with a weird sensation, adventure and anxiety. Maybe she wasn’t sure why she had wanted in, but that didn’t mean that it was a bad decision, right?
It felt like impulse. Probably the impulse to spend her time doing something other than staring at pictures of Monica. Impulse to mean something?
Maybe she just missed being around believers, with their seemingly endless faith that kept them going, day and night. That was something that skeptics didn’t have. Mom doubted herself a lot, questioning her theories and second guessing herself.
Scully couldn’t even imagine the Mulder boy doing that. Even if he was weird and seemed like he didn’t belong on earth and just accidentally crash landed here, he seemed to hold himself.
The bell jingled and the four boys entered. Frohike made finger guns at her and she couldn’t resist laughter. He was cheesy but he ran on that same power generator of faith that she so envied. She ran out of faith so much lately.
She’d gone in favor of plain jeans and a t-shirt with dirty converse, not knowing whether they were just talking or actually going out. The boys were dressed in wrinkled t-shirts and jeans. Scully marveled at how easy it was for boys to just not care.
The Mulder kid -- jeez, Fox,-- sat to the far end of the circular booth, so he was sitting directly across from Scully. Weirdly handsome. She pushed it out of her mind. It was just a pity crush, anyway.
“We found something last night, going through your mom’s files.” Frohike began, and walked her through the anomalies and the locations where they clustered.
Fox hadn’t spoken much, except for to add in what he knew. He wasn’t as involved and eager in the conversation. He seemed frustrated about something, looking almost as if he wanted to fight the fry basket on the table.
They pinpointed a specific location on the map, finishing their milkshakes by spooning out the whipped cream, and left.
“Where’s your car?” Byers asked, and Scully looked down, sheepishly.
“I rode my bike.”
She expected some kind of sarcastic retaliation, but no one seemed to care. She’d always been embarrassed about being uncomfortable driving, and that had got her a lot of shit from a lot of people.
“Throw it in the back, then.”
Frohike threw his keys up high and caught them, while Langly and Byers rochambeau’d for shotgun. After two rounds of best-of-three with no clear winner (they kept getting the same one, ) they both decided to sit in the front seat, Langly on Byers lap, which Scully found both ridiculous and entertaining.
Strangely, it felt like they were almost her friends.
Her and Fox piled in the back, him still quiet.
“You’re quiet today, Fox.”
That prompted a smile. “Call me Mulder, almost everybody does.”
Scully supposed that there was a certain type of person who preferred being called by their last name. “Call me Scully, then.”
His smile was really, really nice. The kind of smile that felt like Scully was stealing it, like she wasn’t supposed to be seeing it.
“I’m sorry about being a dick yesterday. I just want to find my sister and I didn’t want to have to bring someone else along.”
“You changed your mind, then?”
“You don’t seem too bad. You covered the milkshakes, after all.” She laughed.
It was the middle of the day and the sun made the desert god’s oven. Scully pulled her hair into a ponytail and put on her sunglasses, trying not to think that today she’d be at the pool with Monica, laughing and kissing and--
Not now.
Byers was leading the group, holding the map. Around them was a wide expanse of sand and in front of them were the cliffs, which held a series of caves. She’d explored some of them when she was a kid, with Melissa, and then later with Monica.
A crunching sound under her foot brought her back to reality. She’d stepped on a bone, which was far from uncommon.
“Hey guys,” she waved her compatriots over. “I found a skeleton.”
She brushed aside the sand, revealing a very small skeleton. It could fit in her hand. Mulder picked it up and the resemblance was strikingly similar to something she’d seen in her biology textbook-
“Am I the only one who think that looks a lot like a human fetus?”