TITLE:  Arden Hope (1/1)

AUTHOR:  ArtemisX5

EMAIL ADDRESS:  artemisx5@hotmail.com

CATEGORY:  SR, MSR, H, some A.  I should just reprint
the alphabet here.

RATING: R for language and sexual content.

SUMMARY:  Scully: not as innocent as advertised.

TIMESPAN/SPOILER WARNING. Eh, Trust No 1 and
everything before.

KEYWORDS: MSR, Scully POV

DISCLAIMER:  If you think I'm Chris Carter you got
problems.

DISTRIBUTION: I'd be so flattered I might cry.  Just
please let me know so I can take pictures to put up
on the refrigerator.

AUTHOR'S NOTES:  Hmm, well, since we now all know
that CC is the world's biggest Shipper, I don't feel
I have to warn anyone about the content.  This story
hopefully reflects a mood swing experienced by
character and author simoultaneously.  By the way, I
am still a beta-free writer.  Volunteers?

FEEDBACK:  Feedback, oh feedback, birds sing and
roses bloom whenever I look upon your radiant
countenance.  Come on, give a poor student something
free for dinner.

***************************************************

This was quite possibly the stupidest thing she had
ever done.

Had she known how it would end she would have kept
her pants on and probably invested in a chastity
belt.  Something in kevlar, perhaps.

She hadn't kept her pants on, however, and now life
was the exact opposite of how she had imagined it
when she had formulated this collossoly stupid plan.

Snapshot of Scully's imaginary Falls-at-Arcardia-
without-the-garbage-monster family:

Proud-yet motherly-Scully balances dazzling career at
FBI with raising child skillfully and tenderly.
Adorable, well-behaved and colic-free William
balances dazzling intellect (inherited from the
unique meeting of his parents gametes) with a
childish sense of wonder to the delight of family,
friends and strangers alike.
Loving and emphatically present Mulder balances newly
fulfilling career as daddy with the overwhelming
desire to worship the source of his new-found
happiness-i.e. Better Homes and Gardens-like family-
his intrepid partner of nine years.

Christ, when had she started to think of herself as
Scully?  More importantly, when had she reverted to
the intellect of a fourteen year-old girl?

Snapshot of Scully's bitch-slap-in-the-face reality:

Exhausted and paranoid Scully balances a collapsing
career at the FBI with protecting her son from a wide
variety of wackos who would kill him or make him
their God (to the equal detriment of mommy's
happiness, mind you).
Spooky and often cranky William balances dazzling
displays of telekinesis (please God, let that be from
Mulder's side of the family) with building a stronger
attachment to his grandmother than his aforementioned
distraught mother.
Loving yet conspicuously absent Mulder, accepting
role as father, pseudo-husband and center of
intergalactic conspiracy, abandons indomnible partner
of nine years under unsubstantiated guise of
protection.

This really was a bad plan.  Perhaps God was still
pursuing His interest in smiting sinners.

She should have known better.  If her mother knew the
truth, she would say the same thing.

After the incident on New Year's Eve (was that Super
Soldier blind or just mean?) she had formulated this
Hindenburg of plans.  It involved an uncompromising
attack on Mulder's already-dubious virtue whenever
her fertility monitor-stealthily purchased with cash
(old-style twenties destined for the incinerator,
mind you) from an Osco Drug in Ohio-indicated the
stars were aligned and her echoing ovaries were
trying to perform the only job she had ever asked
them to do, goddamnit!
It was the luck of the Irish perhaps that said
fertility monitor spewed forth glad tidings only when
she and Mulder were in some God-forsaken, one-horse
town (or L.A....is there really a distinction when it
comes down to it?).

Not that she hadn't taken her fair share of pleasure
out of Operation Ovary Storm...perhaps more than her
fair share if she really thought about it.  The
estrogen-producing combination of reaching her sexual
peak during the world's longest nookie dry spell and
being in close proximity to a man who emitted
pheremones with Scully-seeking navigation on board,
not to mention the many moments of spine-tingling
sexual tension over the years had made for a
thoroughly enjoyable war.  Sometimes she couldn't
remember how to talk when it was over.

For his part, Mulder did not ask any questions and
did not try to ask more of her than she was willing
to give.  He suspected it was reluctance, fear, or
just plain bull-headedness that made his partner
offer soul-shattering sex only sporadically.
Actually, she spent her self-imposed sex embargoes
when the fertility gods were not accepting offerings
considering the pros and cons of wasting a possible
chance at motherhood for an orgasm.

Three months brought nothing.  Not even a hysterical
pregnancy.  She would have taken an hysterical
pregnancy just for the practice.  Dana Scully, M.D.,
wearing her white coat and stethescope, stood inside
her mind lecturing about the odds of getting pregnant
for even a healthy individual and reminding her that
she was unlikely to get pregnant in three months of
trying even if she was getting good information from
a drug-store fertility monitor.  Scully skipped the
rest of that semester's lectures in favor of a
seminar in ardent hope.

When her new gynecologist asked if she and her
husband had considered using fertility drugs or IVF
she wanted to laugh.  Actually, Doctor, he doesn't
even know that I'm trying to get pregnant.  Oh, and
we're not married.  Oh, and I don't have any ova
because some aliens took them all.  Is there a pill I
can take for that?  Instead she smiled just a little
and asked for some pamphlets.

Bless me father, for I have sinned. I am considering
taking fertility drugs without my lover's knowledge.

She sat at home for a week staring at the pastel-
colored brochure.  She looked in her old PDR to find
out about the side effects of taking fertility drugs.
Were they bad enough that Mulder would notice?  She
was officially losing it.

In a moment of weakness she scheduled an appointment
to be evaluated for invitro fertilization.  Nothing
will take the romance out of making a baby like the
phrase "the donated sperm."  Like her body was some
charity organization.  Like Mulder was a benevolent
philanthropist looking for some less-fortunate soul
who needed his sperm.  Ugh.

Her gynecologist had since deduced that she was not
married.  In fact she recoiled to the other end of
the sad-woman-in-her-thirties-wants-baby spectrum and
asked if she had anyone in mind for the donation.
Somehow she managed to smile nervously and mumble
something about finding the way to ask him.

The understatement of the year.

After attacking Mulder with everything she had
learned in the field of sex, she would have thought
that asking him to provide another sample of
something he had been giving freely for months would
be easy.  Wrong, wrong, wrong.

Bless me father for I have sinned, I have been lying
for months and now I am going to be caught...

She decided the only way to tell him was to set a
mental time to do and drink copious amounts of water
in the hour before that time so the urge to pee would
force her to get it overwith.  A liter-and-a-half
later she was ready.

The look on his face when she asked him made her feel
so guilty.  He knew.  He had suspected what she had
been doing all along and now he had confirmation.
She wanted to vomit.

Bless me father...

Waiting.  Every clack of her heels on the resonant
floor of the Hoover Building cried out "Stupid!
Stupid!  Stupid!"  What a fucking moron she had been.
How she had thought the most paranoid man in the
universe would not question her motives for jumping
his bones after nearly seven years of restraint was
beyond her.  And how stupid to prove him right!

He wore his hangdog expression all week.  She drank
Pepto Bismal out of her coffee cup.

When he said yes she had to cry.  He wasn't only
giving her a chance at motherhood, he was forgiving
her for using him for months.  So she did the only
thing she could think of to prove that she really did
love him and not just his testicles.  She fucked him
silly.

IVF failed.  The Consortium was probably rolling
around in their suits on the floor of their offices
when they found that out.  Another victory for the
conspiracy.  Motherfuckers.  He told her not to give
up on a miracle.

Then she went with CGB Spender on the wild-goose
chase through the fourth and fifth circles of hell
and tore a rift between them so big she could see
China through it.  And China looked pretty fucking
good compared to Mulder's face when the Gunmen said
the word "blank."  She held her face still while they
worked a little longer, chewing the inside of her
cheek raw.  They left and he stared at her and her
lower lip quivered and she blinked over and over but
the tears won and she cried in front of him for being
so fucking stupid.  He didn't forgive her then and he
didn't forgive her the next day.

...for I have sinned...

Her penance came in the form of abandonment.  Staking
out a strip club all alone in a room so filthy she
felt like retching just thinking about it was more a
test of hell than purgatory but by the end of
Mulder's outing to suburbia he was teasing her over
the phone and she knew that her parole hearing had
ended in her favor, if you will forgive the mixed
metaphor.

...this is my first confession since...since...um, since...oh
shit, I can't remember.

They were on good enough terms when he proposed the
trip to England that she felt safe refusing.  She had
made him growl like a tiger the previous morning
(look ma, no hands!) and he knew it wasn't about him-
for once.  His absence was like an amputation once it
was done and she felt a persistant itch and a nagging
sense of guilt the whole time she was in Daniel's
room.  But her soul was screaming for peace and she
would ignore it no longer.  The failed IVF was salt
in her soul's many wounds and the possibility of
repair was just too tempting.

He had told her not to give up on a miracle and she
hadn't thought that she had given up until she was
brought to her knees in a Buddhist temple and nearly
drowned with that miracle.

On the other hand that stupid ass miracle was what
landed her in this single-mom gig.  It wasn't
supposed to be like this.  Why the fuck had she let
him go back to Oregon?  Why the fuck had she let him
leave her and William behind?

Snapshot of Scully's ardent hope:

Emotionally and physically exhausted Mulder, weary
but wise from his self-imposed exhile, closes the
door to Scully's apartment behind him and locks the
rest of the world out.    Weeping, but smiling Scully
rushes to wrap him in her arms and never let go for
the rest of her life.  William, happily gurgling from
his walker shakes his chubby fists at his beloved
father and makes the magazines on the coffee table
spin around with his mind.

Can't have everything.


END