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. Distribution: Anywhere, as long as my name is attached. 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