Machines of Freedom: Chapter 12

[amalnahurriyeh]

December 22, 2012
9:25 PM Mountain Time
Stark, Montana

Mulder had woken up in hospitals plenty of times. Generally, he judged how bad it was by Scully's facial expression, demeanor, and distance from him. So when he opened his eyes in a hospital bed and she didn't immediately appear, he figured it was either pretty good or really, really bad.

"FISH!" yelled a small voice somewhere in the immediate vicinity.

"Sadie, you have a three right there," Scully said, less patiently than she probably intended. "See? That's a three."

"FISH!" Sadie yelled again.

He managed to turn his head, despite the vague vertigo. Scully had Sadie on her lap on the next hospital bed in the small infirmary, and Will was sitting at the head of the bed. Sadie's cards were all spread out on the bedspread, while Will held his like a cardsharp.

"Well, how about Will goes fishing in your cards again, for this card, right here."

"Yeah, okay. Fish this one."

"Thank you," Will said, sounding exasperated.

"Scully," he said, his voice hoarse, "are you teaching our daughter to cheat at cards?"

Scully's head snapped up, and she smiled like a switch turning on. Sadie launched herself off her lap and bounced across the space between the beds, chanting "Daddy daddy daddy!" She stood next to his head and jumped up and down. "Daddy I hid under a table and then Will went and did magic with you and Mama and then you got a headache but you're better now right?"

She was making him dizzy, so he closed his eyes and reached out to rest a hand on her head. "Right."

Scully's patted his cheek gently to get his attention. "How do you feel?"

He opened his eyes. She was still smiling, a little. "A little off. No pain, but like the echo of it." She pulled a penlight out of her pocket. Pupil responsivity, tracking her finger: he sometimes wondered if she became a neurosurgeon because of all those years checking him for head trauma. "How long have I been out?"

"Twenty-nine hours." Her voice sounded frayed. Maybe not quite so fine.

"What happened?"

"Up," Sadie said. "Daddy, I want up."

Scully lifted her up and put her on the bed. "Without an fMRI, I can't really say. Your EEG was abnormally rapid when you came in, but it returned to normal levels within a few hours. Your vitals have been stable. I think you just needed some recovery time."

Sadie had snuggled in to his chest. He wrapped his arm around her and looked over at Will. His legs were hanging off the edge of the hospital bed, and he was kicking them back and forth. "You okay?" he asked.

"Yup. My brain is young and strong."

"Don't be a punk, Neo." Will grinned.

"Actually, both his and Casey's EEGs were elevated when we brought them in, but they resolved faster than yours, and they never lost consciousness. I wish I had had the equipment to do more recording, but no one was expecting that we'd have to run a paraneurology ward in here."

"You'll just have to stick us in your machine back home and see what happens," he said, stroking Sadie's back.

"I can live without knowing," she said, quietly. He got the impression Scully was done with this shit, for a while at least.

He opened his eyes to look at Will again. "You're grounded."

"My other parents already grounded me for sneaking off." He seemed half proud of that; he probably didn't get grounded that often.

"Well, good, but I'm grounding you for concocting a secret plan to save the world with telepathy and not telling us. How long had you been working on that?"

He shrugged. "Casey and I'd just talk sometimes. She told me what blueprints to read."

He thought back. "The chess game. When I came in, neither of you had your hands on the table."

Will grinned. "You should have waited. We were going to try juggling next."

"See what I mean? Totally grounded." His eyes drifted shut. "Scully, you want to ground him for something?"

"I can think of a few things," she said.

Sadie had gotten her thumb in her mouth, and was sucking quietly. They were going to have to work on that soon. He felt a soft kiss on his temple. "Get some more sleep. You'll feel better soon."

He tried to think of something to say, but fell asleep before he managed it.

***

December 23, 2012
1:04 PM Mountain Time
Stark, Montana

Mulder chose to assume it was compassion for him that caused the postmortem meeting to be held in their quarters. Or maybe it was that Bill had burned through the floor in control and generally stunk up the joint, or that the dining room had been colonized by refugees. Anyway. He preferred compassion. He was nearly back to normal--got a little dizzy if he moved too fast, and still had the echo of a headache somewhere in his head--but he was up to most things.

Sadie had beaten him at Go Fish, though.

Monica was at the table, eating a slice of pizza. They'd figured out how to get delivery, which was the best thing they'd ever done, so there were two pepperonis, two sausage, and a lone vegetable pizza sitting around unmolested. She was watching the door, and occasionally running her fingers over the console shaped bruise on her forehead. Doggett was watching her, trying to avoid getting caught at it.

The next person to arrive was Skinner, though, and Monica tried not to look disappointed. "I just got confirmation. The president will be coming through tomorrow. He's flying out through the disaster areas in eastern Pennsylvania and central Illinois tonight, but then he'll be here in the morning."

"We should probably have a statement by then, huh," Matt said, his mouth full of pizza.

"Well, then maybe we should figure out what the hell happened," John said, popping the top off one of the beers they'd had delivered with the pizza.

There was a shy knock on the door. "Um, hi," Will said.

"Will," Skinner said. "We weren't expecting you." He threw Mulder an evil look.

Mulder cleared his throat. "Will's picking Sadie up. I thought it would be better without distractions." No fucking way was he letting them interrogate Will about what had happened, not right now, not ever. He'd rather not know.

Scully emerged from the kids' room, with a dressed but squirmy Sadie in her arms. "Look, Sadie, your brother's here. Aren't you glad you're dressed, so you can go with him?"

"Hi, Will! Mama, put me down." Sadie slithered down to the floor, and ran over to Will.

"Sadie, shoes," Scully said, straightening her shirt where it had been hiked up from baby-wrangling.

"I'm stayin' in the house," Sadie whined. "I want pizza."

"You can have pizza, but you have to wear shoes if you're taking an elevator. Will, you want pizza?"

"Yeah, okay," he said. He found Sadie's Cinderella heels in the chaos of the living room. "Here, Sadie, wear these."

"Pepperoni!" she yelled as she put them on.

"Pepperoni," Scully said, and slapped three slices on a plate. "Will, don't let her eat it until it cools a little."

Isabel ducked in the door. "Whoa, I'm late. Is there any sausage left?"

"I kept the wolves off the last two slices," Matt said. "So, what, we're just waiting on Casey?"

"Oh," Will said. "She left."

There was a hush, broken only by Monica dropping her soda bottle. "She left," she said, flat and incredulous.

"Um, yeah." Will was wrestling with the tiny plastic buckle on the shoe. "She said bye a little bit ago."

"Really," Monica said. "Just, that's it, bye."

"Um, she said she left you stuff on your desk. That you should look there."

"That's..." Monica ran out of words and made an expansive gesture with her hands. Doggett handed her a stack of napkins, which she threw at the rapidly expanding patch of soda in front of her.

"Oh, and Dad," Will said, with a kind of false calmness. "She said to tell you you're an idiot."

For a second, Mulder didn't process it, because he was handing Monica more napkins. Then he connected through. "Wait, what?"

Will shrugged. "She said it, not me. I don't know why. She's pretty weird sometimes."

For a minute he was annoyed. What was she doing, judging him for not having better magic alien powers? And what was he an idiot about at the moment? Because there was usually a list going around, between Sadie and Scully, and he wanted to know what she had to contribute. Seriously, would he ever have a life where he wasn't inherently a disappointment to all the women in it--

Oh shit. His head snapped up. "Will?" he said.

Will looked up and caught his eyes. He heard the whisper in the back of his mind. She's just leaving now. If you run you could catch her I think.

Thanks, he thought, and hoped he could transmit. "I'll be right back," he said, and stood up.

"Mulder, wait, we need to have this meeting," Scully said.

"Just tell me about it later," he said as he headed out the door. "I mean, I haven't really been necessary to this whole thing since 1999, at the latest."

The elevator was just closing. He jogged down the hallway and threw his shoulder between the doors. Once he managed to squeeze in, he jammed the surface button until the elevator started moving. Why hadn't he seen it earlier? She'd been telling him all along. He should know by now to expect the impossible. He bounced on the balls of his feet.

The doors opened, and he jogged through security. "Mr. Mulder?" the kid on the desk said.

"Casey, she just came through, yeah?"

"Um, yes sir, do you want help?"

"No, I've got this." He kept going out the door.

She was walking away, towards where the drive which lead out to the major road, puffs of smoke around her head. "Casey!" he yelled, but she just kept walking. He tried running, but the snow was slippery, and his head was beginning to pound as his blood pressure rose. He stopped and caught his breath, and watched as she kept walking.

Come on, Mulder, he told himself. You do this 20 times a day. And he straightened up, put his hands on his hips for added effect, and yelled, "Cassandra Scully-Mulder, you get back here right this minute."

Twenty feet away, Casey stopped walking.

She looked back over her shoulder, and why the hell didn't he see it before? Because that is the look she gives him whenever she hides his keys ten minutes before they have to leave the house. And the smile she gave Will as she put his helmet on in the helicopter was the one she reserved for small furry animals, and-- oh, the look on her face as she leaned over him and held his mind in her hands, that was the look he got that time he spilled a pot of hot soup on his arm and was hopping around the kitchen trying not to teach the word motherfucker to his two-year-old--that was her look when someone was suffering.

She turned around to face him, the wind whipping snow around her face, and tucked a lock of hair behind her ear with the hand holding the cigarette. It was such a Scully gesture, and he saw it now, the eyes, the shape of her jaw, the nose. "Sadie," he said, and couldn't help the smile of recognition.

She laughed and looked away. "What?" he said, and began to approach her, crunching through the snow.

She flicked the butt away. "No one's called me that since I was twelve," she said, and crossed her arms.

"What's wrong with your name?"

"You try being Sadie Mulder at St. Mary's Academy for Girls. Gets old real quick."

I let Scully send her to Catholic school? he thought. "Well, we'll talk about that in nine years."

Her face got sad and wistful for a moment. "Yes," she said. "We will."

"But seriously? Time travel?"

She laughed. "You know, you shouldn't be surprised. You and Mom worked a case about it, remember? In Boston."

He stopped in front of her and contemplated for a minute. "Oh, yeah. I tend to forget the boring ones." She was taller than Scully, which she must enjoy. "So, what. You couldn't leave the family business alone? Just had to come see what the fuss was about?"

She licked her lips and avoided eye contact. "Exactly. No fun being the baby of the family."

God, she even lied like Scully. "No," he said, and thought about her pulling a gun on the Van de Kamps, lying to Monica for months, shooting Bill and that commando without blinking. Sadie, for all her casual violent impulses, cried when she stepped on a spider. This girl in front of him is hardened. He gets a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach. "Did we--did we not win? Is that it?"

"No, no, I'm not post-apocalyptic Sadie," she said, shaking her head. "World saved. You're a hero."

He studied her face, looking for it. Her voice in his head whispering don't die, you're ok, the odd look she gave him in the elevator that morning, the way she always seemed to be watching him out of the corner of her eye. He sucked in his breath as he put it together. "It's me," he said. "I died, didn't I?"

She was staring at his throat, as if she were unsure where to look. "You weren't prepared," she said quietly. "When Bill blew out the software, and you--compensated--you didn't know what the effects were. Neither of you did."

"And you and Will were in the shelter, and couldn't help."

She looked up, seemed to weigh whether to tell him something, and looked away again. "I didn't cause the raid," she whispered. His eyes closed involuntarily: the Van de Kamps with their one little shotgun against three helicopters. OK, yeah, he's fine with them alive. When he opened his eyes she was studying his face. "I don't remember you," she said, and he could see instantly regretted it--it had been involuntary, like the first time Scully had told him she loved him. It came from the id, and the superego hated it.



"I don't remember you," she said, and he could see she instantly regretted it.

Her arms were still crossed. He took her by the elbows, leaned down, and kissed her forehead. She sagged into the embrace, as if she didn't know what else to do. "Thank you," he said aloud. I love you, he thought, and hoped she heard.

She took a long shuddering breath and pulled away. With one hand she wiped her cheeks dry, and smiled up at him. At least someone had gotten his mouth. "I'd love to stay and chat. But, sadly, I've got an expiration date. I've got to go catch my ride back home."

"How old are you?" He brushed her hair off her forehead.

"Twenty-six. So, you know, try not to get hit by a bus for the next twenty-three years, okay? Because I have a life."



"Try not to get hit by a bus for the next twenty-three years, okay? Because I have a life."

"I'll do my best," he said, and kissed her again.

"I'm sure you will," she said. She turned and began walking back towards the road.

He watched her, and thought, achingly, of what these past days had been like for her. "Hey," he called out. She looked back at him. "Sorry. About the whole..." He made a gesture that he intended to mean imprisonment, distrust, and attempts to shoot.

"Punching me in the fucking face thing?" She grinned.

"Yeah, that too," he said, and crossed his arms.

"Mmm hmm. I deserve, like, a pony for that shit."

He laughed. "I think I can do that."

"Well, all right then." She tucked her hands in the pockets of her leather jacket, and trudged off in the snow.

He watched her disappear. When she was lost to him, he looked up at the cloudy sky and closed his eyes. Safe, they were safe, and somewhere not too distant his son and daughter played together in the world they'd saved.

"Mulder?" Scully's voice broke through his little reverie. He didn't turn around as he heard her boots crunch in the snow. "Jesus, it's freezing. Are you okay?" She slung his jacket around his shoulders.

"I'm fine," he said, and thought, we did it.

"Did you find what you needed to find?" she said, gently.

"Yeah," he said, and smiled at her.

"Are you going to tell me?"

"Depends," he said. "You going to believe me?"

"Depends," she said. "You got any evidence?"

He couldn't help it. He tipped his head back and laughed. The world was a beautiful place on a morning like this. He was about to suggest they go back inside, but then he looked at the ground and saw it.

A single cigarette butt, cooling in the snow.

He squatted and examined it for a moment. It was still warm when he picked it up from the burned side. Just faintly, he could see a lip print on the filter. Scully squatted next to him, and he turned to look at her with a grin. "Hey, Scully," he said. "Did your PCR machine survive the apocalypse?"



Click here for Scooly's post-Machines illustration.

Click here for Author's Notes
Click here for Illustrator's Notes
Click here for Machines of Freedom: The Soundtrack.