A Rose by Any Other Name - Dead_Raccoons13 (2024)

Chapter 1: Prologue

Chapter Text

Scully

Port of New Orleans, 2000

Special Agent Dana Scully rushes forward.

"Rose -!" she screams hoarsely. The small woman coughs to clear her lungs and then shouts again: "ROSIE!"

Her reddish-gold hair swirls around her head in a bright halo as wind whips her viciously on all sides. Scully squints through the mini-tornado of grit and small debris, struggling to see through her matted eyelashes the tall, dark-haired young woman standing in the midst of the chaos … Rose. Special Agent Rose Winters. Who had been assigned by Assistant Director Skinner to the X-Files office seven months ago. Rose stands now with her long, shining black curls whirling all around her, her eyes closed and her brows pinched in a deeply pained expression.

"Rose!" Scully tries to yell again, but her voice is drowned out by an ear-splitting crack that makes her cringe. Then there is a deafening explosion, an unbelievably hot flash of white light that temporarily blinds Scully and the petite redhead is thrown backwards like a ragdoll.

Thankfully, something soft - relatively so - breaks her fall. When Scully hears a low groan beneath her, she realizes what - or who - did it. "Mulder?" the redhead calls to her FBI partner, and lover, Fox Mulder. "Are you all right?" she demands of the man she loves.

"Yeah," the male agent groans. But, as usual, there is a note of wryness in his New England drawl. "I think I broke my ass breaking your fall, Scully," he forces out a chuckle. Forcing levity into a dire situation. Typical Mulder, Scully thinks with a sharp stab of love for the man. "Otherwise, I'm OK!" he adds brightly between coughs and grimaces.

Another wave of … what Scully can only describe as pure PSIONIC ENERGY barrels towards them with the intensity of a tsunami. Scully's brilliant blue eyes water as the sheer power of the invisible tide ripples towards them, causing the atmosphere to crackle and snap like air in a deep freeze.

Mulder, hunkered down beside her, lets out a moan as the wave of energy fills his and Scully's heads with indescribable pressure. Scully loses her battle fighting back a scream of sheer pain and terror as it feels as though her very cells are being torn apart.

The beautiful redhead focuses every scrap of consciousness she has on what Rose Winters taught - over the past seven months - to Scully and Scully's very best friend, Special Agent Monica Reyes.

Focus your power … Focus your energy … Dana … Rose's voice ripples through Scully's brain like the sweetest song. Believe

Tears fill the redhead's eyes. Scully can hear Rose's internal thoughts inside of her own head! She wouldn't have believed it possible seven months ago - when Dana Scully first met the remarkable young woman known as Rose Winters.

I am here, Rosie, Scully answers mentally. Please … The redhead takes short, painful breaths through her nose. Please, Rose, let me help you …?

No -! The intensity of that thought from Rose almost topples Scully over again. No, Dana - Please! Please, go away!

Scully rolls to her flank, shielding her face with one arm against the terrific force of the psionic cloud descending upon them all. The redhead narrows her streaming eyes; she sees three dark figures - all of them unnaturally tall - approaching Rose. Scully knows it then. At the very bottom of her aching heart she knows it … THEY are the ones causing this terrible psionic wave that has rendered her almost incapacitated.

Almost.

Dana? Dana! Where are you? Monica Reyes' voice, low with fear and worry, rings through Scully's head. For Monica, just like Scully, has been tutored in the art of psychic-group communication by Rose for the past several months.

Mon, I'm not sure! But Mulder is with me and he is safe! Scully replies with a swift and silent thought. Everything is hazy; debris everywhere! I can barely see - or breathe.

And your head is on fire, like mine? Monica whispers through her mind. Scully can sense the horrific pain, the same pain Scully feels ripping through her skull right now, drumming through her best friend's thoughts like acid rain.

There is a brief break in the whirling cyclone of dust and debris that circles Rose and the three tall figures closing in around her. With a massive effort against the pain drilling through her skull, Scully turns her head.

She can barely make out the two huddled shapes of Monica Reyes and her FBI partner, and lover, Special Agent John Doggett. The two are hunkered down behind a wrecked shipping container about twelve yards away. Monica's face is terribly pale. Her big velvety-brown eyes are enormous with fear and her raven-black hair whirls around her in the cyclone of dust and debris, but she hovers over the prone form of Doggett with fierce protectiveness.

Scully feels her breath freeze in her chest. Doggett. Monica's love and one of Scully's own closest friends, appears unconscious. Mon … Monica, is John -?! Scully shoots out a frantic psychic message to Reyes.

John is OK! Monica answers emphatically. A piece of flying debris knocked him out. He is in and out of consciousness, but his pulse is strong. I think he is going to be all right!

Dana? Reyes adds in a panicked mental whisper. WHY aren't you helping Rosie?!

Scully battles with everything she has to just remain conscious against the mind-numbing pain coursing through her head. She tries again, desperately, to reach out to Rose through her thoughts. But Scully staggers backwards, almost as if she's been rudely shoved by a giant invisible hand.

Dana - I told you to go! You and Monica - take John and Fox and run! Get OUT OF HERE! Rose's angry thoughts, tempered by fear and a deep affection for her four fellow FBI agents, explode like bombs in Scully's head.

We are not leaving you here, Rose! Scully shouts back telepathically.

Yes. You. ARE. Scully feels a blast of psychic power as the sheer force of Rose's mind sends the female agent reeling backwards, knocking the small redhead over.

Mulder gives a final moan as he loses whatever scrap of consciousness he was clinging onto.

Mulder -! Scully feels a new bright fear blossom like blood from a fresh wound inside of her chest. The man she loves more than her next heartbeat - the man who will someday father her children - has stopped breathing!

Scully raises her head, trying desperately to see through the dark brown cloud of dust blotting out the dingy shipyard all around them, the dark Mississippi River snaking its ponderous way towards the Gulf, the sun, even the tired, white sky. She can barely see the figure of Rose - the willowy-tall young woman is dwarfed by the three impossibly tall, black figures surrounding her. But Agent Winters, as always since the moment Scully met her seven months ago, does not even show an ounce of fear in her stance as she bravely faces the three figures down.

When Scully focuses on the three tall figures, her vision goes dim as her mind tries to cut to black. No! The petite redhead fights hard against the black abyss trying to swallow her. She glances to her right. Monica has finally crumpled, unconscious, beside her partner Doggett, unable to resist any longer the horrific pain turning her brain to mush.

Scully is Rose's only hope now.

With a Herculean effort, Scully rises. She stands. She takes first one step. Then another towards Rose and the three mysterious figures. They have one chance. Scully must join her mind to Rose's in the same way the dark-haired young FBI agent taught the redhead during the months they have known each other.

In a flash, Dana Scully recalls the past year - how this young woman, Rose Winters, happened into the lives of the four FBI agents in the X-Files office at the Bureau, and absolutely stole their hearts. Scully loves Agent Winters - or "Rosie" as Scully, Reyes, Mulder and Doggett have come to know her - with a love as deep and profound and platonic as the love she had for her own dear sister Melissa. In fact, Rose - with her willowy stature, bright bouncy curls and snapping aquamarine-blue eyes - reminds Scully of Melissa in more ways than one.

And, during that time, Scully and her friends had learned quite a bit from Rose. One being Agent Winters' knack for joining her mind to that of other telepaths - telepaths like Scully. And Reyes - to make an almost impenetrable wall of psionic power. This is what she and Scully must do now.

Scully reaches out her thoughts to Rose's in sheer desperation. Rosie - please?! Let me help you! Let me join my mind to yours the way you showed us -!

Dana … Dana … Rose's sobs echo through Scully's head as she replies. She is no longer furiously angry, demanding Scully leave. No. Rosie is grieving now. Scully can see the young woman standing before the three tall figures with her head bent low in defeat and sorrow. Please leave me alone … Dana

Dana Scully, however, just as tenaciously stubborn as Agent Winters, throws all of her raw mental power against the invisible wall of the enigmatic figures' psionic shield as well as the telepathic barrier Rose erected against her. Rose actually staggers under the force of Scully's own psychic tsunami! Despite everything telling Scully this is so, so very wrong, the redhead forces Rose's mind to link with hers out of sheer desperation to protect the younger female agent from the three horrifying figures surrounding her.

And then …

Then … As she becomes privy to all of Rose Winters' most private thoughts and secrets, it suddenly occurs to Scully why Rose did not want to link her mind to the redhead's. Scully suddenly understands why Rose taught Scully and Monica to link their minds together, but Rose never allowed them to marry their brains to hers.

Rose did not do this out of malice or malevolence. She did it out of deceit, yes. But only because the young woman Scully had come to know as Rose Melissa Winters is guarding a terrible secret inside of her remarkably powerful mind. "Special Agent Rose Winters" is actually a young woman named Rosemarie Scully-Mulder-Doggett-Reyes.

And this young woman is Dana Scully's daughter.

To be continued …!

Chapter 2: The New Girl in Town

Notes:

Hey, ya'll! I want everyone to know that, in this AU, Doggett and Reyes meet Mulder and Scully and join them in the X-Files office around Season 3 of the series. Great? Great!
~ Raccoons

Chapter Text

Mulder

FBI Headquarters, seven months earlier …

Special Agent Fox William Mulder swears that time is moving backwards. Or, at the very least, the minute-hand on the austere government-issued clock - which is perched rather disapprovingly on the wall of the basement office, over the motley detritus of serial killer mugshots, blurry UFO photos and black-and-white pictures of cryptids and mutants - is at a standstill.

No, Mulder decides, narrowing his storm-green eyes at the long, narrow, offending hand of the clock. Nope. That little bastard is just straight-up TEASING me! He swears he sees the minute-hand make the pretense of creeping forward to the "12" at the pinnacle of the clock. Then it thinks better of it and remains stone-still.

Mulder feels like he is about to pull his goddamned hair out.

"Agent Mulder, if you throw another pencil up into the ceiling tiles, you'll make FBI history," murmurs Agent John Jay Doggett in his trademark gruff New York detective accents. The other male agent, hunched over his desk as he simultaneously pours over a case file and scribbles on a notepad, does not glance up at Mulder seated at his own desk across the room. "You'll be the first man assigned to the X-Files to be murdered by his fellow agent with his bare hands."

Mulder scowls at the top of Doggett's sandy head. He does not, however, send the No. 2 pencil poised in his hand up to join the other twenty-five sticking points-up/erasers-down into the spongey ceiling tile above.

Mulder - awaiting five o'clock on this fine, crisp October afternoon with the air of a man counting down the seconds he is released from prison - is in a pretty foul mood, but his many tics and fidgets are making Doggett's mood fouler. And Mulder sees no reason why both of them should be miserable. Although Agent Doggett doesn't seem especially chipper either this afternoon, Mulder thinks privately…

The two male agents respective lady partners, Dana Scully and Monica Reyes, ditched them - AGAIN. OK. Mulder knows he is a hypocrite getting so riled up about it. After all, until recently he was kind of the poster-child for FBI agents thoughtlessly and cruelly ditching their partners. And Mulder tells himself he wouldn't feel so jealous of Scully's bond with Monica … if the two beautiful female FBI agents weren't always sneaking off to do strictly "best-friend" stuff. Stuff Scully used to reserve to do with Fox Mulder and Fox Mulder alone.

Stuff like catch a movie on a Friday evening or grab beers at Hutchinson's, a famous watering hole near the Bureau Headquarters, and play darts after work. Mulder just knows that right now, for example, Scully and Reyes are seated opposite each other at that cute, little Mediterraneum restaurant on M-Street that his pretty, petite partner is so crazy about, with their heads bent close together in conspiratorial chatter.

And, the thing is, Mulder believes he would actually be fine with all of that, if his current, rather tense "situationship" with Scully isn't entirely his fault.

Even after Agent Doggett and Agent Reyes joined Mulder and Scully in the X-Files office two years ago - and despite Scully and Reyes becoming the very best of friends at that time - Mulder and his partner remained extremely close. For they, very like Doggett and Monica, seemed attached at the hip. One rarely went anywhere without the other. At that point, Mulder was already head-over-heels in love with Agent Dana Katherine Scully. In fact, during those heady days of 1996, he even seriously considered getting down on one knee and requesting her delicate-yet-capable, lily-white hand in marriage. And the thing was - Mulder was more than sure that Scully's bright blue eyes would have lit up at his proposal as she breathlessly said, "Yes!"

And then - like the jackass I am! Mulder thinks angrily - he had gone and seriously fucked it all up. He had spurned the love of the same woman who had stood by his side faithfully for better or for worse, for monsters or for mutants in favor of the affections of his ex-wife, Diana Fowley.

That is the point things started to change between Mulder and Scully. Of course, Scully, hurt as she was by Mulder's betrayal, is also loyal as the day is long. She had remained by his side. However - though he and Scully's camaraderie has fully recovered from that terrible time - they are now definitely more coworkers than friends. And Mulder knows at the bottom of his heart that his chances at a romance with his graceful FBI partner are done.

And, though Mulder admits - if only to himself - that every bit of it is his fault, it still hurts like all hell.

"What is a word that rhymes with 'raven?'" Doggett asks, startling Mulder out of his angsty reverie.

"Umm?" Mulder hums.

"'Raven?'" Doggett echoes. "I can't think of a word that rhymes with it!"

Mulder glances up curiously at the other man. Despite having gotten off on the wrong foot when they first met, in more ways than one, Mulder likes John Doggett. The man is about Mulder's height of six-foot-two and only about a year older than him, with close-cropped sandy hair showing a hard-lined military past, pale blue eyes and two very intriguing scars - one on his bottom lip, the other on the bridge of his nose. Whereas Mulder is exceedingly lanky, however, Doggett is lean with a wiry torso, arms sinewy and strong with dark-blue veins perforating his big hands. The man is also a research MONSTER (evidenced by Doggett insisting on researching an X-File from two years before he was born on this gorgeous powder-blue-skied day in October) with a finely-honed sixth sense that only comes from being a seasoned New York cop, which is why Mulder keeps the guy around. Also, John Doggett is hella easy on the eyes, which, Mulder thinks wryly as his fog-green gaze roves up and down the other man's lean body, certainly doesn't hurt… especially when their beautiful respective women leave them with nothing else to do on this fine autumn afternoon than to stare across the basement office at each other.

Mulder puts his own ropelike, sinewy arms behind his head as he studies the other male agent thoughtfully. "Hmm … Hmm … lessee … 'raven,' uh, 'maven,' 'craven?' Why do you ask, Dog?"

"Don't call me that," Doggett grunts absently in his usual reply to the nickname Mulder insists on calling him. Then the man chuckles in a vague way: "Typical Fox Mulder … answering a question with a question."

Mulder crosses his arms across his deep chest and leans back in his swivel chair as he eyeballs his fellow male agent. Doggett is scrawling words on the legal pad with the kind of intensity seen only in world-class chess players. Mulder cannot resist a smirk. He rises - noting how Doggett stiffens apprehensively - and crosses the room. Mulder makes a pretense of opening a filing cabinet behind the other male agent's desk. While doing so, Mulder "accidentally-on-purpose" peers over Doggett's shoulder. Mulder chuckles to himself. Yep … he thinks with amusement. He should have known.

"Working hard, Dog?"

"Piss off, Mulder!" Doggett growls, pushing his sinewy sandy-hair-covered forearms, which he has rolled his sleeves up over, to cover the notepad. But not before Mulder sees what the other male agent is actually writing…

"More love poetry for Agent Reyes?" Mulder drawls, seriously enjoying seeing his rather taciturn fellow male agent squirm. "Shit, Dog! When are you going to recite your poems to her?" Mulder leans over Doggett's shoulder to the point he can smell the man's sexy-as-fuck Bay Rum aftershave. He can barely read the words Doggett has written there before the other male agent covers them with his muscular forearm. "Ummm-hmmm … 'her tresses like a raven's wing?'" Mulder recites. "This is some seriously GOOD SHIT, Dog!"

"I said fuck off, Mulder!" Doggett warns him, his iron-forearm tensing as Mulder tries to tease it away from the notepad it is covering.

"Awww … com'on! Lemme see?" Mulder wheedles.

It is an ongoing conspiracy in the X-Files office at the Bureau. Doggett just keeps "secretly" penning progressively soppier love-poems to the pretty, pert raven-haired Special Agent Monica Reyes and the other lovelorn male agent in the office - Fox Mulder - just pretends he doesn't know about it to spare Dog's pride. But, shit, on a day as gorgeous as this one - a crisp, clear fall day definitely not made for sitting cooped up in a basement - Mulder just feels too restless not to try and get a rise out of Doggett.

Doggett tries, in vain, to shove Mulder away as the other handsome male agent peers over his shoulder at his poetic tributes to the lovely Monica Reyes. "Com'on, Dog!" Mulder whines, pushing against Doggett's steely forearm. "Lemme read it! I am a bit of a poet myself!"

"Go away, Mulder!" Doggett snarls at him as they begin to scuffle like two adolescent boys.

"AGENT MULDER! AGENT DOGGETT!" AD Skinner's voice booms abruptly over the phone speaker. The two male FBI agents, locked in an impromptu wrestling match, freeze at the irate sound of their boss' voice. "Get in my office, RIGHT NOW!"

"Shit!" Mulder swears, his head locked in Doggett's embrace. "Skinman sounds pissed!"

"Has anybody ever told you that you have that effect on most people, Agent Mulder?" Doggett, hugging Mulder's head in his steel-strong arms, growls.

~**~

Arlene, Skinner's little, slender busybody of a secretary, stares straight ahead at her computer monitor screen, a slight smirk playing around her bright-red lips, her equally brilliant scarlet nails scurrying across her keyboard, when Mulder and Doggett arrive at the little antechamber, AKA Arlene's office, outside of the Assistant Director's office.

The strawberry-blonde gleefully punches a button on her telephone dial-pad. "AD Skinner? Agent Doggett and Agent Mulder are here to see YOOOOU!" she says in her irritating sing-song voice, not glancing up at the two male agents standing in front of her desk.

Mulder narrows his eyes at her. He knows good and damn well that Arlene talks shit about the "Spooky Squad" in the X-Files office - just like everyone else at FBI Headquarters, Mulder muses as he suppresses an eyeroll. Arlene, however, is, unfortunately, a special case because she has a direct-line to AD Skinner and, therefore, often is the exclusive outlet for hot gossip about the four agents in the basement office at the Bureau. And - for the sake of his own pride as well as that of Monica, Scully and Doggett - Fox Mulder really does not appreciate that.

"Send them both in!" Skinner's voice barks over the phone's loud speaker in a tone that could make any FBI cadet wet their trousers, but does not even faze Mulder and Doggett. No, no. These two fellows have been yelled at enough by Walter Sergei Skinner to be quite desensitized to it.

Arlene gives her tawny head a little, smug toss and murmurs: "You two may go in now!" She adds as a parting shot as Mulder and Doggett walk away: "Good luck!"

"Christ, Mulder, what the hell have you done to piss Skinner off now?!" Doggett hisses to his fellow agent.

"Why is it always me getting the blame for pissing off Skinner?!" Mulder demands in a similar undertone, casting a wary eye back at Arlene, who seems to have sprouted about a dozen more ears.

"Because ninety-nine percent of the time, it's you pissing him off!" Doggett rejoins.

"Step inside, gentlemen!" Skinner's gruff tone beckons to them from inside his slightly ajar office door.

With a final half-apologetic glance at Doggett - because, hell, the guy is right; Mulder is most likely to blame for their boss' foul mood - Mulder pushes his way inside Skinner's office.

AD Skinner is pacing around his desk in front of his enormous, blinded picture-window like an agitated tiger. Yep, Mulder thinks glibly. Pissed as fuck. The male agent - who is, after all, wayward - swiftly runs through a catalogue in his excellent memory of possible trespasses he'd committed recently. But he honestly cannot recall any that warrant a dressing-down by the Assistant Director of the FBI. At least not that Skinner is aware of … Mulder thinks ruefully.

Mulder's eyes, however, are immediately drawn to the three young women standing before Skinner's desk. All of them are incredibly beautiful, but it is the petite redhead - the very smallest - that holds his gaze. Special Agent Dana Scully, his FBI partner. And his beloved … Well, once upon a time, Mulder thinks as he suppresses a sigh of pure sadness.

There is just something about the saucy tilt of her coppery-red head, the bold line of her stance and the brilliant flash of her sapphire-blue eyes as she glances over at Mulder that always draws his gaze directly to her, no matter where they are or how many people are around them. And, once upon a time, when Dana Scully lifted her proud little ginger head to look at him, Mulder would see the glow of warm love shimmering in her impossibly blue eyes. Nowadays, when she glances his way, he only sees the bright spark of camaraderie there. It is really enough to break his heart - if (and, yeah, he understands the fault lies in him, but that doesn't stop it from hurting like hell!) Scully hadn't smashed it all to pieces earlier this year when she walked away from their love affair.

The tall dark-haired woman standing close to Scully is Special Agent Monica Reyes, Doggett's graceful muse. Mulder listens to his fellow male agent inhale deeply beside him, expanding his broad chest slightly in the subtle way he does whenever he sees his lovely, tall, slender partner. Mulder only has eyes for Dana Scully, of course, but he can certainly see why Doggett is so crazy about Monica. Agent Reyes, with her smooth light golden-brown skin and long straight curtain of jet-black hair, has eyes as deep and soft and darkly-brown as velveteen. And just as soon as she turns them soulfully on someone, they're blabbing away about every secret they have.

The third woman, standing somewhat apart from the two female agents, is a stranger to Fox Mulder. She looks to be in her late twenties, early thirties - around the same age as Scully and Monica. This girl is taller than Scully's five-foot-nothing, but falls short of Monica's storkishness, despite her willowy stature. The stranger has an attractively oval face, fair of skin and dark of hair. But where Monica's tresses are bone-straight, this girl's curls twist into barely-controlled ringlets. Kinda reminds Mulder of Scully's glistening red curls and how beautifully riotous they become when she doesn't coif them into submission.

She isn't much on eye contact, Mulder thinks as he watches the young woman's eyes dart from one corner of the room to the other, gauging her surroundings with wariness, but not meeting anybody's gaze. She also doesn't much behave in the way a young, unseasoned agent - which Mulder is almost certain she is - usually does. She is not falling all over herself to impress or fawn over the more experienced agents. And she isn't chattering on in excitable bursts or brooding in a sullen, calculating manner that many a young agent considers quite cool. Nope. This new girl seems to have other things on her mind …

Only what? Agent Mulder can only guess. He immediately stiffens with suspicion, thinking of Alex Krycek, the young agent who was assigned to the X-Files office back in 1994 and who promptly betrayed Mulder. Hmmm … the new girl isn't exactly making a case for herself as far as having nothing to hide.

"Ah, yes, Agent Fox Mulder. Agent John Doggett," Skinner says gruffly, waving a hand at the two male agents. "May I introduce Special Agent … um …?" The big, broad-shouldered, balding Assistant Director clears his throat. He glances expectantly at the young stranger.

"Rose!" the dark-haired girl pipes up like she's been pricked with a pin. "My name is Special Agent Rose Summers - uh! - W- Winters - I am Special Agent Rose Winters."

All four of the other FBI agents simply stare at her. Skinner heaves a sigh, mopping his face with one big hand.

Oh-Kaaaay, thinks Mulder. The new girl is a tad odd

Not that he's bothered by oddballs. Hell, oddness could almost count as a prerequisite to working in the X-Files office. What worries him is what exactly this girl is hiding? And, make no mistake, this young woman is harboring some kind of secret … Some kind of secret that might impact the X-Files? Mulder wonders silently. Is Agent Winters - like Krycek - some kind of a mole? A spy?

Well, that has certainly happened before. Hell, Krycek specifically had a secret agenda to tamper with (at that time) Mulder and Scully's work on the FBI case files concerning the paranormal.

Mulder gives the girl a curt nod, his expression impassive and cool. She scowls furiously at him. "Well, gee, don't fall all over yourself making me feel welcome," she growls. "Agent Mulder!"

He gives the girl his most dashing, sarcastic smile. "I apologize for being so overbearing, Miss Winters!" he gushes, bowing in an exaggerated manner to the much shorter young woman. "How ungentlemanly of me to force my attentions onto a lady!"

The girl practically spits venom at him. "Jesus, you're a cad! I'd always heard what a churl you were before M - b-before Agent Scully actually did the unimaginable and reformed you!"

Mulder didn't think it possible for that room to get quieter, but he could hear a pin drop in that moment. He stares back at the young woman, as dumbfounded as the rest of them. Then, with the musical sound of a little bell, Agent Reyes starts to giggle in her charming way.

"Oh, God! I like her - she is FIERCE!" says Monica, flashing Mulder her trademark dazzling - yet, at times, quite obnoxious - smile.

Scully, Mulder notes with a dart of irritation, smothers a little laugh behind her hand. For, even during the days of their love affair, Scully never missed an opportunity to put him in his place. "Oh, don't worry, I haven't reformed him … yet. Though sincere attempts have been made," the redhead says with all her usual dry humor.

Mulder huffs, pissed, as even Doggett gives an appreciative chuckle. He can tell that his three colleagues genuinely like this newcomer Rose Winters. But Mulder still doesn't trust her.

He frowns at Skinner. "Well, now. Isn't this just cozy?" Mulder says acidly.

"And it's about to get cozier, Agent Mulder," his boss rumbles in reply. The big man's broad shoulders twitch as he glances over at Rose. "Because I have assigned Agent Winters to the X-Files office."

~**~

Reyes

"What?!" Mulder shouts. "Hell, no!"

"Please, for the love of all things HOLY, keep your voice down, Agent Mulder!" Skinner snaps. He whips his glasses from his bald head and pinches the bridge of his nose. "Arlene gossips bad enough as it is …" he adds in a bad-tempered grumble.

Agent Monica Reyes cuts her eyes mischievously at Mulder, grinning in delight. "What's the matter, Fox? Scared of being outnumbered by the fairer sex? Afraid of ..." She takes a gusty breath in mock-horror. "Cooties?!"

The tall, beautiful brunette had been assigned to the X-Files office two years ago for a variety of reasons, including her uncanny ability to gauge and interpret people's "energies" - auras of psionic power emanating off of human beings. But Monica also likes to believe that AD Skinner assigned her to the basement office to keep Agent Fox Mulder humble. A task Agent Reyes is only too happy to oblige.

Mulder confirms her theory by shooting her an irritable look. "I am only considering the practicality - or impracticality - of stuffing five FBI agents into a one-hundred-and-seventy-five-square-foot basement office with no heat or A/C."

"If you boys feel at all threatened by too many women encroaching on your territory, we girls could always set up shop in the urinal down the hall from the X-Files office," Dana Scully says with all of her usual deadpan humor. "I guess we female agents could at least improve upon the smell in there."

The short, petite redhead shoots Monica a look of pure delight over the curly head of Agent Winters. Monica replies with her sunniest smile. A silent message crackles between the two young women - Another female FBI agent! In a field dominated by toxic masculinity, another woman - especially another woman around their age - is a beacon and a boon to a female FBI agent. That was one of the reasons Monica and the notoriously reserved Scully became such fast friends when they first met in New Mexico in 1996.

Rose Winters is very pretty, Monica notes, her deep velvety eyes taking in the young woman. Winters has the kind of black, shining curls that cannot be tamed, but only restrained into a messy bun on the back of the girl's head. Her eyes are wide, serious and the same aquamarine-blue as the ocean, with flecks of dark indigo glimmering in the orbs of her irises. Winters gives Scully a shy smile and her smooth white cheeks dimple in the most charming way.

As with most people, Monica can feel the girl's aura of emotions coming off of her in waves. Agent Reyes can sense a deep sadness in the young woman's heart, a regret she feels painfully responsible for. Guilt, as heavy as a rotten wet blanket, seems to cover Winters in a smothering cloak. Monica tilts her head slightly at the girl. She feels a surge of puzzled sympathy and compassion for the young woman. Monica wonders what horrible sorrow befell a girl so young?

"Trust me; I've worked in only male-dominated fields. Men are savages," Doggett intones in his usual sincere, somewhat folksy manner, Monica thinks with a glow of affection for her partner. "Ladies only bring blessed civility anywhere they go. Woman officers are an asset; worth five fellas, if you ask me. So, coming from one of the two male agents assigned there, you're more than welcome in the X-Files office, Agent Winters."

Monica beams at her FBI partner. That's John all over … she thinks with a deep pulse of loving pride for the man. Stepping up to make a new agent - a new young woman agent - feel welcomed and secure. When young Agent Leyla Harrison arrived at Bureau Headquarters last autumn, and aided the "Spooky Squad" in the basement office on a couple cases, Doggett took it upon himself to check out Leyla's new apartment appliances, her "new" used car and her new boyfriend. Doggett is just naturally protective of younger people … especially younger woman agents. And Monica Reyes doesn't have to be psychic to see that her stalwart FBI partner is going to do the same for young Agent Winters.

Yep. That's MY GUY …! Monica thinks with a warm glimmer of love, and a sultry beat of hot arousal, for John Doggett. Then she stops herself from thinking that thought.

John Jay Doggett is not her man. He is not her lover, no matter her profound feelings for him. No matter how much she wants him to be, he never will. He has made that VERY clear to her.

Doggett warmly shakes Winters' hand. The young woman looks up to meet his gaze. Monica feels Winters' startled jolt as she looks into the male agent's eyes. Monica sees the expression in Winters' eyes … recognition. But how does she know Doggett? Monica wonders. The girl looks much too young to have run in any social or professional circles the male agent did before he joined the FBI.

Doggett too seems a bit confused by Winters' reaction. But, being a man very familiar with working alongside a woman who is renowned for her odd ways, Doggett only smiles back at Rose in a friendly, if puzzled, manner. Doggett cannot see and perceive people's auras, Monica knows, but the man has a sixth-sense and a judgement of character that has been honed to a very fine point during his years as an officer of the law. Though Monica trusts in her own intuitive abilities, she certainly respects her partner's opinions. And she knows if Doggett had sensed anything shady about Agent Winters, he would have relayed his thoughts to Monica in a mere glance…

His pale blue eyes flicker up to meet hers. And Agent Reyes suppresses a sigh. Sometimes she thinks her heart wouldn't ache so if her partner didn't gaze at her this way - like he can't make it one more breath without putting his lips on hers. He certainly knows how to give a kiss … Monica recalls with an accursed clarity how tenderly, how knowledgeably his lips worked hers, how his sweetly sensual tongue rushed into her mouth to dance with hers. She remembers closing her eyes as his big rough-yet-gentle hands palmed her cheeks and his thick fingers caressed her face with the softness of the raindrops sprinkling down around them, getting caught in her raven hair like glistening stars, when John kissed her in front of her apartment earlier this year.

The very memory of it seems to fill Monica up with a warm, golden light. And then she remembers how he told her the very next morning that he would not - he could not - pursue a love affair with her. And then that lovely, sustaining light in her soul goes dark.

"Agent Winters comes to us from the New Orleans field office," Skinner grunts.

"Really?" cries Monica, her angsty thoughts on her partner, who she is hopelessly in love with, vanishing, at least for the moment. "Me too! How is Agent Harry Murdoch? Phyllis Shaw? Artie Knottsberry?"

In Monica's periphery, she sees her best friend, Dana Scully, smirk at her. Dana sometimes refers to her best friend as the X-Files office's "Rey of Sunshine," never able to stay down or focus on a pessimistic thought for more than a moment. Scully has gently cautioned Reyes that the brunette's extremely sunny earnestness is sometimes a bit overwhelming to newcomers. Winters does look a bit dazed, with her round sea-blue eyes and tousled black curls, but Monica suspects Rose's disheveled state comes from all her new experiences today, what with arriving at FBI Headquarters and meeting older, more seasoned agents.

"Ummm, well, that - that was before my time," Winters replies. The girl's eyes, once again, flick to another corner of the room. She seems so nervous, so tense. Endearing herself to Monica like a small, frightened, yet fierce little kitten. "WAY before my time, actually," Winters gives a little unhumorous laugh, like she is privy to an inside joke she does not find particularly funny. "Though, uh, I have heard stories about them, of course!"

Then the girl glances up at Monica, making direct eye contact with the other woman for the first time. Monica wonders at the strange, unbelievably sad expression in Winters' proud blue gaze. Winters looks as though she wants something very, very badly … and only Agent Reyes can give it to her.

At any other time, this would have put Monica on edge. But the girl's atmosphere of energy - which, from Monica's point of view, hovers around Winters in a pulsing bluish-white halo - in completely void of any malice or malevolence. The aura surrounding Agent Rose Winters is tinged only with indescribable sorrow.

This poor girl is carrying around a grief that she can't seem to let go of. And that makes Monica, like her partner Doggett, feel protective of Agent Winters. Scully as well is feeling a bit big-sisterly towards the younger female agent.

"Well, you're going to do just fine, Agent Winters!" the auburn-haired female agent hums encouragement.

Scully flashes her contagious smile, which those aside from her closest friends rarely see, at the little curly-top. This gentle side of Agent Dana Scully reminds Monica why the beautiful redhead is her very best friend! Scully is notoriously reserved - aloof even - towards any man who is not Fox Mulder or John Doggett. Around women, however, especially young women, Scully is compassion incarnate, always lending herself as a vessel of encouragement and hardheaded advice for (what Monica sadly knows is) the too few female agents at the Bureau.

Agent Winters finally makes eye contact with Scully, giving her the same unintentionally woebegone expression. Monica can tell that Scully is taken aback as well by the raw sadness and longing in Winters' gaze.

If anything at all, Monica thinks this new girl needs a hug. Which is exactly what the tall, sunny, beautiful brunette does; Monica slips her long, slender golden-brown forearm around Rose's waist and gives the girl a little squeeze of encouragement. Winters almost seems to melt against Monica's side as the younger agent leans into the innocuous, yet affectionate embrace.

"Com'on!" Monica chirps. "Let's go and get you settled among the 'FBI's Most Unwanted!'" She takes Rose's hand to lead her out of Skinner's office.

Doggett and Scully follow cordially. Only Mulder stays behind to grumble his disapproval of the whole affair.

"Relax, Agent Mulder," Skinner rumbles. The broad-shouldered Assistant Director has returned to work at his desk, not looking up at his most wayward male agent who is leaning impatiently against the wall with his arms crossed beside the framed portrait of Janet Reno. But Skinner's deep growl in tinged with humor. "If you haven't caught a nasty case of the cooties yet working down there with the 'FBI's Most Unwanted,' then I seriously doubt you're going to."

To be continued …!

Chapter 3: Playing Cupid?

Chapter Text

Doggett

Hutchinson's Tavern, Alexandria, Virginia

"So what do we think of the new girl?" Scully shouts to Mulder, Doggett and Reyes.

She has to raise her voice over the bustle and chatter of patrons enjoying afterwork drinks at Hutchinson's, an old saloon on the Potomac waterfront. The four FBI agents are huddled around one of the bar's perfectly semicircular "Rat Pack" tables. A "Huey Lewis and the News" song blares over the jukebox.

"Weirdo!" Mulder drawls in reply.

"Talk about the pot calling the kettle black!" Agent Reyes giggles in her high, musical laugh. "Isn't Fox Mulder-levels of weirdness a prerequisite to be assigned to the X-Files?"

Doggett turns his head to gaze lovingly at his partner. Even watching her soft tawny skin glow in the dingy light from the Tiffany lamps overhead and her sweet umber lips (which John Doggett fantasizes hourly about) move in a playful smirk as she teases Fox Mulder is the closest Doggett has ever come to believing in honest-to-God magic. Skeptic though he is, Doggett simply has no other way of explaining Monica Reyes' otherworldly beauty, grace and charm than supernatural forces at work.

Mulder's handsome face - with his dark brooding brows, sensual pouty lips and sexy-as-hell mole on his lower jaw - falls into a frown when both Doggett and Agent Dana Scully, the object of Fox Mulder's undying affection, join Reyes in her teasing laughter.

"Mon has got you there, Mulder!" Doggett chuckles. "Don't be complaining - 'cause YOU made it our brand!"

Finally, however, there is a crack in Mulder's glare. He grins back at the beautiful brunette. No one can resist Monica Julieta Reyes' million-dollar smile. When she turns it on Doggett, he secretly pretends, as he does every time she does it, that she reserves that dazzling smile just for him.

Scully leans back against the plush, faded velvet booth, sipping at her dark-brown, thick-as-cream stout. The petite redhead's expression is as grave as usual, but her blue eyes twinkle mischievously up at Monica.

"It is true, I suppose," Scully observes in her usual calm, unruffled manner. "We all certainly each have our own eccentricities. Mulder likes chasing cryptids. Monica has her energy force fields …"

"And you have your premonitions of the future!" Monica interrupts with an impish grin at her best friend.

"None of which have been substantiated …" Scully says, quirking a humorous russet eyebrow at the other woman.

"Except by all coming true?" Monica plows on cheerfully. She turns to look fondly at her partner. "And, of course, John here -"

"John here writes the most disgustingly adorable Star Trek fanfiction!" Mulder proclaims, throwing an arm of camaraderie around the shoulders of the other male agent. "Star Trek fanfiction in which he inserts himself and Mon-! YOW!" Mulder yelps in pain as he is kicked hard and swiftly - and mysteriously - in his shin under the table.

"This is a really great song!" Doggett declares, smiling down into his Sprite, the very picture of innocence. "Is it from the album 'Sports?'"

"Yeah …" Mulder grumbles, massaging his leg.

Monica downs the last of her gin and laughs. She leans back, snuggling against Doggett's arm which he's stretched as casually as possible across the booth behind her. He feels a ripple of pure gratification at his partner's subconscious gesture of trust and affection. And Doggett notices Scully doing the same, drawing unconsciously closer to her partner's powerful arm which Mulder has put behind the redhead's shoulders with about as much subtleness as Fox Mulder can manage. (Which isn't very much, Doggett thinks with a beat of sympathetic amusement for his fellow male agent.)

It's nice like this … Doggett muses. He closes his eyes, taking in a deep breath of Monica's distinctive fragrance - gardenias and the soft, woodsy scent of her favorite cigarette brand - as she cuddles closer to his side. Oh yeah … It's times like these he can forget that Monica Reyes is not his girl. And Fox Mulder can forget that Dana Scully isn't his.

The four agents' positions certainly seem to have an effect on the other patrons. More than one young man passing by their table shoots looks of pure resentment at the two male agents lounging beside their graceful partners. It makes Doggett positively rigid with aroused pride. (Even now, he is nursing a painfully hard erection in his trousers.)

But, the male agent ponders, smothering a sigh in his glass, if only it were true …

"We should all go and catch the 'Exorcist' re-release!" Mulder suggests brightly as he finishes off his whiskey with a flourish. He turns to glance at Scully, adoration flashing in his greyish-green eyes as he looks at her. "I know it's your favorite movie, Scully."

Doggett can't help but allow himself a little smile at Mulder's expense. For Mulder, like Doggett, has a lengthy list committed to memory of his lady love's likes and dislikes. Doggett, for example, doesn't have to be reminded that Monica likes her coffee with lots of milk and sweetened with honey, coatis are her favorite animal, she utterly ADORES babies and tiny dogs, she refuses to kill spiders that sneak into her apartment, she tips baristas profusely and prefers old science fiction novels from secondhand book shops.

"Oh, you know it is …" Scully replies with a little smile.

Her blue eyes flash up at her partner in a coy way. Mulder grins back at her gallantly. And Doggett sees the shadow of his two friends' lost love affair. Once upon a time, Fox Mulder and Dana Scully had a romance for the ages - a love affair that comes along once every millennium, if that. And John Doggett, a certified sucker for a good romance, was deeply saddened to see it end.

Hell, he still is

Scully's sapphire-blue eyes snap away from her partner and her cheeks pink slightly, as if she'd caught herself slipping into her and Mulder's old romantic banter. Mulder's gaze follows her, frustration and sadness shining in the man's stormy green eyes.

Doggett clears his throat, attempting to break up some of the tension in the air. Fox Mulder and Dana Scully are two of his closest friends; it breaks his heart to watch them both suffer this way.

"Now, that sounds on brand for us!" Doggett says. "I'm game."

Scully flashes him a tiny, grateful smile. In her typical brisk, reserved, businesslike way, Scully doesn't draw any attention to her broken heart. But Doggett has noticed that - while prior to their falling out, Scully and Mulder were practically attached at the hip - the beautiful redhead is very careful not to let herself be alone in a room with her dashing partner if she can at all help it.

"How 'bout it, Mon?" Scully asks her best friend.

Monica - who Doggett is very pleased to note has only cuddled closer to his warm, strong shoulder - casts her pretty mahogany-brown eyes down in an apologetic way. "Uh, well, y'know I'd like to …" she hums. "But …"

Doggett instinctively tenses, his muscles drawing up as he anticipates what Monica is about to say. He wishes to hell that he'd get used to hearing the words fall from her lovely, sleek umber lips without also tasting the sting of them, but, as Agent Scully is so very fond of saying, that must be an X-File

"But you have a date with Brad?" Scully says.

Scully speaks in her usual unruffled monotone, but Doggett can hear the disdain and vitriol dripping from even her voice. Unlike Doggett, who has tried (and spectacularly failed) to reconcile his feelings for Monica with her rekindled romance with Assistant Director Brad Follmer, Scully has never made any pretense of liking her best friend's suitor.

Monica shrugs a smooth, bare, golden-brown shoulder. "We can all have fun this weekend!" she chirps brightly, but she doesn't make eye contact with Scully.

Monica doesn't even turn towards Doggett to gauge his response. He's never said anything to indicate that he disapproves of his partner's love affair with Follmer, but the male agent cannot seem to control the contempt he seems to inadvertently exude when Doggett is anywhere around the young, arrogant Assistant Director. And Monica, being Monica, absolutely picks up on it.

"It's not that we're worried about having a good time with you, Mon," Mulder drawls in his easy, cavalier manner. "We're all more worried about you having a bad time with that jackass Brad."

For all her teasing him, Mulder has grown quite fond - and fiercely protective - of Agent Reyes over the past two years. And, though he and Scully disagree on just about everything else, they both agree that Monica's boyfriend is a certified slimeball.

Monica turns her pretty smile up at Mulder gratefully. But Doggett notices that most of the bright sunniness has gone out of it. That's the way she looks when she is talking about or thinking about Follmer. Her beautiful, dazzling smile doesn't reach all the way to her eyes, the way it does when Monica looks at her two best friends, Fox Mulder and Dana Scully. And, of course, when she turns her liquid gaze on John Doggett, he can see her unconditional love for him shimmering in her big, dark, velvety eyes.

A slim yet powerfully built young man with blondish hair and a perpetual sneer on his dashing face is making his way through the afterwork crowd towards their booth. Scully's expression sours immediately like she just smelled a foul odor. And Doggett feels Mulder's arm tense next to him.

Follmer. They all seem to feel his presence the same way a horse does a rattlesnake. The young FBI Assistant Director swaggers with the sort of confidence that achieving a position such as his at such a young age and dating one of the most beautiful women in the Bureau brings.

Doggett steadily hates him.

"Well, well! Hello, 'Spooky Squad!' Looks like the gang's all here!" Follmer remarks in his trademark superficial way, walking smilingly up to them like they are his very best friends in all the world. Mulder returns his smile with the kind of innocuous sarcasm the man is known for.

"Well, y'know Follmer, it was," Mulder returns pleasantly.

But his emerald-grey eyes tell another story; Doggett has worked alongside the man long enough to note the contempt and disdain simmering in Mulder's gaze as he looks at Follmer. Doggett understands that Mulder takes Follmer dating Monica very personally. No. It is not enough that Follmer - according to Fox Mulder, at least - has to try and undermine their work on the X-Files at every turn; he is also dating one of their "Squad."

"So what brings you down from on high to mingle with us commoners?" Mulder asks.

"Just dropped in to get my girl," Follmer replies, his lips cocking into a lopsided smile, as his blue eyes find Monica. "And walk her home."

"Hi, Brad," she says softly.

He extends his hand to her. The lovely, tall brunette takes it and rises, smiling up at her boyfriend. And Doggett is quite pleased to note that the warmth of it does not reach her eyes in the same way it does when she looks at him. Doggett can sense that this is a sore subject for Follmer because, just for a heartbeat, his smug expression clouds. But then he makes up for it by throwing Doggett a look of pure, arrogant triumph.

As the young Assistant Director turns arm-in-arm with Monica to exit the saloon, Follmer lowers his voice directly to Doggett in an undertone - but clearly enough so he is sure the male agent hears it over the general din of the bar. "And, who knows, Agent Doggett? I just might stay the night as well …"

Monica doesn't hear - as far as Doggett can tell - but she glances at him in concern. She saw his stricken expression when Brad said it. Throughout their day-to-day lives as FBI partners and close friends, Doggett can hide his true feelings for her. But NOT when he sees her arm-in-arm with Follmer. It is just too painful.

"Get going somewhere you are welcome, Follmer," Scully growls.

Follmer gives the redhead a grin, but a nervous flash sparks in the young man's blue eyes. Follmer seems only too prepared with bravado and swagger to try and intimidate Doggett and Mulder. However, Follmer never tries it on Scully. Doggett nurses a private opinion that Brad is more than a bit scared of the tiny female agent - as is any male agent in the Bureau who knows what is good for him. John Doggett and Fox Mulder very much included.

Doggett is unsure if Scully believes Follmer is working against the "Spooky Squad" in the X-Files office as wholeheartedly as Mulder does. No. Her hatred of Follmer comes more from him dating her best friend.

"Viper!" Scully hisses at Follmer's back as he and Monica walk away. Then she finishes off her dark stout in one angry gulp. Scully turns her beautiful sapphire-blue eyes on Doggett. "I am so sorry, John," she murmurs with great sympathy. "Follmer is an asshole."

"Follmer resents us because he and that assclown Kersh can't shut the X-Files down no matter how hard they try," Mulder adds. He bumps Doggett's elbow with his in a kindhearted, brothers-in-arms kind of way. His greyish-green eyes are very sympathetic. "But mainly Follmer hates you, Dog, because Monica looks at you in a way she never will him."

The same way Dana looks at YOU, Mulder? Doggett thinks, giving his fellow male agent a tiny smile of amusement and gratitude.

But it belies how truly terrible he is feeling. He narrows his eyes at Monica's retreating figure as she exits the bar with Follmer. Are you sleeping with him? Doggett longs to call out after her.

It. Is. None of his business if she is spending the night in the arms of AD Follmer. Doggett himself made good and damn well sure of THAT.

Scully confirms this when she reaches across the polished mahogany tabletop to gently clasp his forearm. "John, you told Monica you couldn't be together when she kissed you," the redhead reminds him in her most thoughtful, compassionate way.

Doggett meets her gaze. He sees the deep concern for both Monica and him swimming in her soft, cornflower eyes. He knows how much it deeply disappointed Scully when he rejected Monica's love.

"But tell me what the hell kinda choice I had?" he replies angrily. The same words he'd spoken to Monica earlier this year when they kissed stick in his throat and burn his lungs. "Follmer can give her a better life, a happier life … than me."

Scully glares back at him. Then she pushes herself up and away from their booth, shaking the glasses on the table slightly in her frustration. "You could give her the happiest life in the solar system if you only would!" she snaps.

The redhead storms away, marching away across the barroom floor, causing several people to jump out of her way, as she makes her path towards the ladies' room.

Mulder nudges his shoulder sympathetically in the way only a man who has lost his true love can. But, for once, Doggett is not jollied by his fellow agent's efforts to cheer him up …

~**~

Rose

Special Agent Rose Winters, seated at a table in a shadowy corner, watches like a hawk the four FBI agents - Dana Scully, Fox Mulder, Monica Reyes and John Doggett - conversing around the semicircular booth across the smoky barroom floor. The young dark-haired woman doesn't even pretend not to stare at them, her big ocean-blue eyes wide as they follow the agents' every move and gesture.

Jesus Christ! she muses, beginning to panic. This is even worse than I first thought!

When she was introduced to them earlier this afternoon in AD Skinner's office, Winters' instincts had warned her (and AD Skinner had warned her beforehand of as much as well) that the atmosphere in the "Spooky Squad" at FBI Headquarters would be … er, tense and awkward to say the very least.

But … But … goddamn! The young female agent had no earthly idea she'd be walking into a proverbial lion's den of sexual tension and frustration. Why the hell would she?! The love affair of Agents Mulder and Scully - as well as that of Agents Doggett and Reyes - is the stuff of romantic legends. Dear Lord, in the eyes of Agent Winters at least, they are like Romeo and Juliet. Tristan and Isolde. Pyramus and Thisbe. Star-crossed lovers destined to be together.

But - THESE people?! Rose thinks in utter despair. Fuck, what the hell is wrong with them?

Just in the short amount of time she has spent with them this afternoon, Winters can see very plainly that there is trouble in paradise … Mulder and Scully will barely make eye contact. Mulder, as headstrong and cavalier as ever Winters knew him, seems to have hurt his partner very badly. And, for all his desperate attempts to reconcile, the graceful redhead is just too proud to run back into his arms. And Doggett?! Jesus, the man will simply not give himself any credit where credit is due. He is obviously perfect for Reyes. But Doggett, one of the most bullheaded men Winters has ever had the pleasure of knowing, is just content to sit back and watch that snake Follmer steal his girl out from under his nose?!

It is all a bit too overwhelming for Agent Rose Winters. She takes a hard swig of Patron to settle her jangled nerves. When she made the (albeit rash) decision to take this secret mission, the young woman had no clue that reconciling the agents' respective love affairs would be a part of it.

Before he sent her away, Forge had warned Rose with great sternness not to meddle in the lives of the people where she was going. That was Forge's First Rule: Do no harm, Rosie, the thin, bearded inventor had told her in his crisp, lively voice. Do not influence these people's lives. That could have irreversible consequences.

Shit! Rose is already breaking that promise, in a way, by being here at Hutchinson's spying on the four blissfully-ignorant-to-their-audience FBI agents.

Rose, however, reckless as the day is long, only considers Forge's advice for a hot second. For it is very obvious to her that her mission's objective is impossible to complete if Scully and Mulder and Doggett and Reyes never fall in love in the first place! Not to mention her very own existence!

Rose quickly and frantically glances down at the pale, cream skin of her forearm, dotted with gingery freckles. Will she start fading away like Marty McFly in "Back to the Future?!" The girl gives her flesh an experimental poke and is greatly relieved when her fingertip feels only the elasticity of her skin.

Good, she thinks with a sigh.

Rose looks back up at the "Rat Pack" booth where her new coworkers had gathered. Reyes has left with that jackass Follmer. And Scully - seemingly as fed up with Mulder and Doggett as Rose is - has marched furiously away to the ladies' room. The two male FBI agents are hunched over their table, gazing sorrowfully down into their empty glasses like the sad-sacks they are.

Rose does some quick mental arithmetic. She was born in the summer of 2000! And her brother, Will, is just ten months younger than her! That gives these four crazy kids … umHoly shit! … Less than one year to fall in love?!

Rose suddenly wants to faint. And scream. And vomit. Preferably all at the same time.

Her mission suddenly just got a lot more difficult. On the outset, she thought her objective was to rescue her mother from an untimely death. Now, however, it looks like Special Agent Rose Winters is going to have to roll up her sleeves, so to speak, and play Cupid!

Her very life depends upon it. Death isn't her reward if she fails. No. Rose will have a fate much worse. She'll simply never be born. She will simply cease to exist.

Because Rose Winters is, in reality, a young woman from the year 2030. Her name is actually Rosemarie Summers. And she is the daughter of Fox Mulder and Dana Scully AND John Doggett and Monica Reyes.

To be continued …!

Chapter 4: The Girl From Tomorrow

Chapter Text

Rose

Marathon, Florida, 2030

Black umbrellas seem to blossom everywhere overnight like creepy ominous flowers - on the veranda of the two-story weatherbeaten white house, on the sugary banks of sand hugging the emerald-blue shoreline, in the gritty front yard full of faded pastel fishing boats in various stages of repair as mourners (dressed also in black) stand on the scraggly, tough grass there. From that day forward Rosie hates the color black. It will forever remind her of today, the very worst day of her life … The day of her mother's funeral.

The young woman stands in her old childhood bedroom, upstairs in her parents' house in the Florida Keys, gazing into the oversized floor mirror in one corner of the cream-painted East gable.

I hate you … Rosemarie Summers, called "Rosie" by just about everyone she knows, wants to scream until her throat is raw at the petite twenty-nine-year-old woman with wild, shining black curls in her reflection. The "Rosie" in the mirror, however, only gazes back at her with the same heartbroken, bewildered expression Rosie herself has worn since the night her mother took her last breath.

The young, dark-haired woman squeezes her eyes shut, too ashamed to look at her own reflection, as she remembers. Her mother's final warning still rings in her ears …

Rosie, stop! Please! You're making a wild and reckless decision!

Rosie's mom - Dr. Dana Scully - did everything in her power to persuade her headstrong daughter not to pursue Dr. Hannibal Lecter. Scully warned her girl not to play the murderer's sick and twisted mind games - it would very well spell out Rosie's demise. He had tricked many a more experienced person into his snare. The young woman, however, was the daughter of her two fathers - Fox Mulder and John Doggett (AKA the two stubbornest men to ever live) - and she wasn't backing down from Lecter's challenge.

Lecter had kidnapped Rosie's little brother, Will. ("Little brother," she called the wiry, slim, handsome young man of twenty-nine years who had his sister's same shining black curls and who was only ten months her junior.) And nobody - not nobody - threatened her sensitive, tenderhearted younger sibling. Lecter, and his associate Dr. Bedelia Du Maurier, had attempted to abduct both Rosie and her brother William when the siblings were both just twelve years old. The sister and brother had eluded them … somehow, though even Rosie isn't really sure how they did it.

But now Hannibal looked to have returned for a spot of revenge; though Rosie's parents', who had all danced Lecter's dangerous waltz before during their younger days as FBI agents, theorized the seemingly immortal serial killer and his femme fatale Du Maurier had far more sinister plans for Will.

And Rosie sure as shit wasn't going to sit on her hands and wait to see what they were.

Only two nights ago, the young woman had stormed furiously around this very room, pacing and raging like a caged tiger as Scully stood with her arms folded across her small breasts, watching her quick-tempered daughter with discerning, compassionate eyes.

Rosie had shouted at her little mother:

You can't stop me from going after Hannibal Lecter! Will is MY brother! It is MY right to bring the man who took him to justice!

Rosie is not a tall woman, but she seemed to tower over her mother's five-foot-nothing. Not to mention the brunette's willful, reckless personality made her appear bigger than her own petite, modest five-foot-three. Even so, Scully didn't even flinch in the face of her daughter's rage. And the steely look in Scully's ice-blue eyes even made her daughter pause mid-step.

Scully begged her:

Rose … Rosie … Rosemarie …!

The young woman shakes her head at the memory as if to rid her mind of it, but it persists, driving thorns of guilt into her heart. Only her feisty little redhead of a mother called her by her full given name, "Rosemarie," and only when Scully desperately wanted her hotheaded daughter to listen carefully to what she had to say.

Rose had turned to study her mom. Scully was of middle-age and she had always been quite slender, light of frame and fine of feature. Some would mistake it for the onset of frailty, but the intensity burning in Scully's sapphire eyes told them a very different story. The details of her aging - the white streaks anointing her long, rippling mane of reddish-gold tresses, the laugh-lines around her still incredibly plush and ruddy lips, her beauty marks on her upper lip and left temple - just seemed to enhance her legendary beauty. Furthermore, Dr. Dana Scully's great courage, intelligence and tenacity gave her, like Rosie, the appearance of being much bigger than she actually was.

The small doctor spoke to her daughter with the kind of gentle gravity only a loving mother can:

Please … Please, Rosemarie … I have lost my son. I CANNOT lose my daughter!

Rosie peered hard at her mother, as if seeing her clearly for the first time. Scully's beautiful face is lined with grief; her cheeks - which are still soft as rose watered silk - are tracked by her tears. And Scully's eyes shimmer with desperation. Sorrow. But also gut-wrenching terror. Rosie saw it then … Her mom was grieving for Will - as if he was truly gone with no hope for return! - just as Scully was terrified for her daughter and wanted to keep her one remaining child safe.

Rosie was torn between the horrifying sadness she felt for her mom … and the girl's overwhelming frustration that Scully, to Rosie's mind at least, was giving up on Will.

Rosie screamed at her mother:

H-How can you even dare think that way?! My brother is not gone for good! I WILL bring him back … And I will bring back the cadaver of that Hannibal bastard!

The young woman marched out of the bedroom, past Scully whose head was bent in mortifying heartbreak. On the landing, Rosie was stopped by the tall, slender figure of Monica Reyes, her other mom. Monica - with her long raven-black hair hanging well past her waist and her big, soulful mahogany-brown eyes - is as different from Scully as can be. But the incredible love teeming in Reyes' gaze for the young woman before her was the same as that of Monica's lifelong best friend and lover, Dana Scully.

Rosie stiffens as she faces the beautiful middle-aged woman treading up the staircase to meet her. Silver streaks of hair are startling against her long, straight jet-black tresses and her lovely face is as worn by worry and sorrow as Scully's, but Monica Reyes walks with the graceful, effortless gait of a woman twenty years her junior. And Monica's liquid-brown eyes are still the same ones that could coax her headstrong daughter out of just about any of her notorious temper tantrums.

Monica called out to the girl in her gentle, diplomatic manner, which (Rosie might have thought if she wasn't so agitated) was very impressive given the circumstance of her missing son:

Rosie! Listen to Dana, please? She and I have dealt with Lecter firsthand. We were both almost his last two victims. We know what a deadly and intelligent psychopath he truly is -

Rosie, perched on the landing, glared down at the middle-aged woman on the stairs with hair as darkly shining as her own and with eyes as wide and soulful. Except Rosie's are the same emerald-blue as the Gulf of Mexico shimmering just outside of the East gable's big bay windows. The same color as the sea. The same stormy hue as the tumultuous ocean her mother Dana Scully so loved.

Rosie spat at her other mom Monica Reyes, Dana Scully's sweet and gentle beloved.

You don't think I know all of that?! You don't believe I can take him on? You don't believe I have the ABILITY to beat him, Mom? I sure as hell did when I was twelve years old!

Monica's soft voice trembled.

I know, Rosie. I know of your abilities. I wholeheartedly believe in them … and in their power to stop madmen like Lecter. But - but - the first time you saved your brother, you were able to stop Hannibal purely by luck. You are just too inexperienced to face a killer as clever as him. And, now, I am afraid he knows what you can do, mi corazon.

Rosie could hear her mother's throat was thick with and saw her big brown eyes brimming with unshed tears for her son Will. The poor beautiful woman, who feels every person's smallest pain as though it is a gaping wound, could not even grieve for her precious boy. Since she was feeling all of the fear and sorrow of her daughter and of her three lovers and Rosie's other three parents: Dana Scully, John Doggett and Fox Mulder.

But Rosie storms down the stairs, pushing cruelly past her mother. She yells back at Monica:

I'll show you then! I'm going to get Will! I am going to bring him BACK!

What happened afterward is all a hazy blur with moments of mind-numbingly painful clarity … Rosie recalls the horrific memories like half-remembered moments from an especially vivid nightmare. She remembers Bedelia Du Maurier's beautiful fine-featured face lit up in a sinister smile. Rosie remembers the small figure of Scully running towards the other woman. Rosie recalls the horrifying flash of light and heat. She recalls the sickening odors of burning flesh and hair.

Rosie recalls awakening from unconsciousness in a hospital bed to see the face of her father, John Doggett, peering down at her. The look in his pale blue eyes was simply heartbreaking as she learned what he already knew: Dr. Dana Katherine Scully was dead.

Poor John. Buried his little boy Luke long ago, long before Rosie was born, only to bury his youngest son Will and one of his dearest friends, Dana Scully.

Rosie remembers desperately wishing for the sweet blackness of unconsciousness again.

But not one of these horrifying memories even compared to facing her other father, Fox Mulder, and informing him of Scully's death. Rosie isn't a coward. But she never wanted to run more from a task than she did that one.

Scully's death broke Mulder. Dana Scully was so much more than his partner, his friend, his lover or the mother of his children. She was the bright, brilliant, beautiful sun in his lonely little solar system which he happily orbited around. She was the woman he had sacrificed so much - even his famed life's work on the X-Files - for. And her love and approval are all he ever strove for since the time he was a young FBI agent with a head hotter than his daughter's.

Now, Rosie's father is of middle age. Salt-and-pepper hair tints his otherwise dark head and full, soft, dark beard. But his body seems as fit and trim as ever with the same powerful, sinewy arms that could wrap Scully up in a bearhug in a heartbeat. And his eyes are same intense greyish-green as the sky right before a hurricane. Mulder's gaze had the same mischievous shimmer it always had … until the day his lovely Scully died.

Now, all of that is over. The brilliant star in Fox Mulder's universe has gone out. Dana Scully is no more. And Fox Mulder sees no reason why life should go on. It isn't the sorrow in her father's stormy-green eyes that shatters Rosie's heart; it is the downright puzzlement in Mulder's gaze as he looks at the world turning as usual around him. The poor man, who is always ready with an unconventional theory to explain away the mysteries of the universe, just can't seem figure out why the sun still rises and sets or why the waves keep pawing against the beach like always.

Mulder hadn't been able to look his daughter in the eye since Scully's death. The only words he'd spoken to Rosie since that terrible night were:

Scully went looking … She went after you …

In an empty, hollow voice, so different from Mulder's usual cavalier New England drawl. Even through her fog of grief, Rosie understood his meaning: Scully went after her daughter - unbeknownst to Mulder, Doggett or Reyes - to keep them safe from Lecter. It was just the sort of selfless thing Scully would do.

~**~

Now, Rosie Summers peers at her hated reflection in the mirror. Impulsively, the young woman smashes her hand into the glass. Spiderwebs radiate through the mirror away from Rosie's fist like rings on a pond. She grimaces at the pain of her cut and bleeding knuckles. But she is also grateful for the distraction it brings.

"Seven years of bad luck, kiddo," a deep voice observes.

She looks up. Walter Skinner, her beloved "Uncle Walter," is standing in the doorway to her bedroom.

Rosie doesn't hesitate even an instant before running into the same big, strong arms that would catch her and hug her tight when she was a little, petulant girl. Rosie weeps against his deep chest.

Skinner rubs her back with one big hand, murmuring comforting words into the top of her dark curly head.

"I just … I just … want to go back …" the young woman sobs. She feels her heart cannot contain all the sorrow and guilt it holds. It is going to burst and kill her. Which is nothing less than she deserves. "I just want to go back to that night. I just want to stop myself from going after Lecter. I …" Rosie pauses as she chokes on a sob. "I just want to tell Mom I'm sorry!"

Skinner gently strokes the girl's hair. "Now, now," the big man soothes her.

"But I - I can't!" Rosie shouts, pushing away from him furiously.

Skinner, however, only stands calmly off to one side of the bedroom. His wise, sad light brown eyes follow the girl as she paces. Her soul tortured and her heart torn to shreds, she is almost mad with guilt. Skinner is grieving hard the death of Dana Scully, who was every bit his surrogate daughter. But the sorrow of the former FBI Assistant Director has been tripled by watching Scully's daughter mourn the beautiful redhead. Skinner might be Rosie's loyal "uncle," but the big man - whose arms and torso have not lost their sinewy steel-like strength to age despite the snow-white beard now hugging his chin and cheeks - loves the girl with the same fierce, unconditional love as her two fathers Mulder and Doggett.

"Nobody can! You can't change the past!" Rosie wails. Unable to even stand, her legs buckle and she finds herself violently sobbing face-down into her arms like an inconsolable little girl on her childhood twin bed. "You … You … can't change the past …" she whimpers.

But even when she closes her eyes, Rosie sees the face of Scully's corpse, her fine lovely features still at last. Her blue eyes - once so expressive and twinkling and gay - are empty now.

And it is all your fault! the tortured voice in Rosie's head shrieks at her.

The young woman has no idea how long she lies there. But at some point, she feels the mattress of her little twin bed bow down beside her as Skinner sits down by her miserable form.

"Rosemarie …" he hums in his deep baritone voice.

"Shut up …" comes the muffled reply. Her given name coming out of anyone else's mouth beside Scully's just sounds so wrong. Rosie's heart twists, as it always does, when she remembers she'll never hear her mother say it again.

"Rosie, listen to me," Skinner murmurs with the utmost gentleness.

Walter Skinner was a longtime, seasoned and gruff FBI agent who did not suffer fools gladly. But, Rosie being one of the few people to see it, the man has a tremendous capacity for tenderness - especially towards the curly-haired young woman he considers every bit his granddaughter.

The gently insistent tone in his voice - so very different from the empty, hollow voices of the mourners invading the yard and the house with their drab clothes and black umbrellas - actually makes Rosie lift her head from the tear-soaked nest of her arms.

Skinner squeezes her shoulder. "Maybe …" The man gets a peculiar, distant expression in his eyes, as if trying to catch a memory that has somehow escaped his steel-trap of a mind. "Maybe there is a way …"

Rosie slants a dark skeptical eyebrow at him. Skinner, for all the misery and sadness swirling around them now, cannot suppress a smile at the girl. Rosie is often compared to her quick-tempered father Fox Mulder, but there is a great deal of Dana Scully's impassive skepticism sparkling in the young woman's aquamarine-blue eyes.

"To change the past?" Rosie whispers. She squints up at Skinner. "As in … t-time travel?" Her Uncle Walter is usually sincere to a fault. The girl makes an impatient motion with her hand. "Com'on, Uncle Walter, you sound like Dad!" Rosie doesn't have to specify which dad she refers to; John Doggett would never believe in such a thing. "Besides, you can't change the past," she adds miserably. "No matter what you do …"

Skinner, however, replies in the gravest of voices. "Maybe you can, Rosie."

"But how?" Rosie, a woman after her mom Scully's own heart, demands of the big man. "How do you know that?"

But Skinner only gives the girl an enigmatic smile. "Because I've seen it done before."

To be continued …!

Chapter 5: Back in Time!

Chapter Text

Rose

Big Pine Key, Florida, 2030

Rosie is dwarfed by Skinner's big, broad-shouldered figure as the young woman and the old man step inside of the weather-rusted-brown shipping container in which the old inventor, Forge, has made his laboratory and his tiny Spartan living quarters. Rosie, falling back on her instincts, looks around at the drab grey walls, untouched by the brackish salt air outside, made bright by the virtual wallpaper of crumbling maps, blurry old black-and-white photographs and diagrams of machines and devices that even Leonardo Di Vinci himself couldn't dream up. It reminds Rosie of the way her father, Fox Mulder, will collect similar articles to paper the walls of his office at her childhood home in Marathon. Prior to Scully's death, this detail about her father would have made Rosie smile. Now, just like everything else attached to her mother, that happy memory is tainted with sadness.

Forge, the old inventor himself, sits at the rear of the old shipping container, hunched over his work. He does not glance up at Skinner or Rosie as they enter his peculiar little workspace and home, but instead peers straight down at some mysterious object on the scratched desk before him from which many strange bangs and squeals emit.

Forge hangs his shaggy head, reminding Rosie of a wild horse's tangled mane. His beard is equally long and wild with a dribble of startling white hair shooting through it all like a thin stream of milk. A ragged, dirty bandana that was once red holds back the old man's long crop of silver-streaked black hair.

"Forge …" Skinner speaks out, his deep voice reverberating around the tiny home.

The old inventor sighs, shaking his bushy head. "I knew you were coming, Walt. I knew it as soon as I heard the news that Dana is dead."

Skinner, usually grim and gruff even in his mellow old age, speaks gently, patiently and very respectfully to the other man. "Yes, Forge. You are right. We've come to ask your help."

Forge rises, placing both of his big yet nimble-fingered hands on the desktop. Hands that could create just about any device Forge dreamed of. Bracing his arms against the desk, he hangs his head over his work, refusing to turn around and look at his old friend Walter Skinner. Forge gives a laugh so dry and humorless, Rosie mistakes it for a ragged cough.

"You're too late for that, Skinman," Forge replies.

He finally turns around; Rosie notices, as she always does, the old man's pronounced limp. And she thinks, as she always has, how much he puts her in mind of Hephaestus, the mighty forge of the gods. She has known him - this mysterious, kindly, old man known only as "Forge" - her entire life. He has always existed on the edges of her own life's periphery. A lifelong neighbor and family friend, Forge is the familiar, friendly, hairy face at family barbecues and at big holiday dinners. He designed and built Rosie and Will's triple-storied playhouse when they were both just three years old. And Forge helped Rosie's father John Doggett get his boat motor repair business off the ground. He would bring her family over casseroles and fresh bread and make the most delightful little mechanical toys for Rosie and her younger brother when they were kids.

Rosie had always taken him for granted, this gentle unassuming old man who has always quietly been a part of her life. But she has never viewed Forge as anyone of real consequence. And she cannot imagine why Skinner has taken Rosie to see him on today of all days?

"Old friend, it isn't too late and you know it!" Skinner chuckles in the same way he would at an old friend, piquing Rosie's rabid curiosity. Her uncle has always been friendly towards Forge, but Rosie had never assumed their bond was anything more than casual acquaintance.

Does her Uncle Walter have some mysterious past with this guy?

Forge hobbles forward, still shaking his shaggy head. But Rose sees a smile twitching the old man's thick beard. Forge limps up to Rosie and Skinner.

"Hi, Rosie," Forge murmurs, extending his wrinkled yet surprisingly steady hand. Despite his age and his old leg wound, he still stands tall. His deep brown eyes are very gentle as they peer down at Rosie.

"Hi," she responds, somewhat stiffly, shaking his hand. It is cool and smooth, like a snake.

Rosie has known Forge since she was a baby; she has never had any reason to fear the gentle old inventor. But her instincts tell her that something is afoot here she isn't entirely aware of - something Forge and Skinner very much are - and so she narrows her eyes suspiciously at the old bearded man.

"You seem to know all about why I am here," Rosie states. "While I am still pretty clueless."

"Discerning," Forge murmurs. His bushy beard cannot hide his very sad smile. "Just like your mother Dana …"

Impatience, hot and strong, rankles the young woman. "I'm more interested in - in preventing her death than being compared to her!" Rosie says sharply.

Though she isn't really sure if she believes what she is saying. Is time travel truly possible as Walter Skinner - of all people! - believes it to be so? Is there even the ghost of a chance that Rosie can go back in time to stop Scully before she follows her daughter to face Lecter? Rosie, feeling desperation claw at her heart like a trapped animal, sees no choice but to believe in it as well. Especially if Skinner does. Rosie trusts her uncle implicitly; he has seen almost as much of the supernatural and unexplainable as her own parents have. But Rosie never thought that included something as surreal as time travel!

Forge gazes directly into her blazing sea-blue eyes. "Even if by doing so you alter the very fabric of time and space?"

Rosie is prepared with her answer. According to theory, time travel is a "monkey's paw," so to speak. She knows that in order to reverse the course of history - according to Einstein's Twin Paradox - irreversible possibly catastrophic changes could be made to time and space itself.

As a scientist like her mother Scully, Rosie is painfully aware of this. And as an officer of the law like all of her parents once were, the young woman agonizes over the lives of innocent people who could be affected by her decision.

These thoughts are what her head is in misery over. But Rosie's broken heart only says: Wouldn't it all be worth it to hear your mother's voice one more time? Wouldn't it all be worth it?

"Yes."

Forge's gentle, sad dark brown eyes slowly break her gaze. The inventor glances over her curly head at Skinner who nods ever-so-slightly.

"I believe if anyone can do it, Rosie can," Skinner murmurs softly.

"I have a similar theory!" Forge chuckles. "What with her … er, abilities!"

Then he looks back at the young woman. His old eyes are bordered by countless lines and wrinkles, but his gaze is still the lively, excitable one belonging to a much younger man. "Are you ready?" he asks the girl.

"N-Now? Like r-right now?!" Rosie replies, startled. She had expected … what? More time to prepare herself? To say goodbye to her surviving parents? To say farewell to her newlywed husband Nathan Christopher and all of their friends? In case … The dark-haired girl swallows hard, taking deep breathes, steeling herself.

In case I don't survive? she wonders. But now isn't the time for indecision. Or cowardice. Rosie knew about the risks when she accepted this mission.

"Well!" Forge replies with a hearty laugh. "There is no time like the present!"

~**~

Skinner

Crystal City, Virginia, 1999

Walter S. Skinner has had a very, VERY long day. The tall, balding FBI Assistant Director, with his deep chest and broad shoulders, trudges inside of his high-rise penthouse, tossing his keys down on his living room coffee table with a weary clink. He reaches inside of the mahogany liquor cabinet, set cunningly inside an antique bookcase, produces a chilled bottle of Jim Beam and holds the frosty bottle up to his aching temples as he recalls his long, exhausting workday…

Agent Fox Mulder - by and far Skinner's most wayward agent - just returned from a case in Snowshoe, West Virginia … in which the eccentric male agent accused half of the honest townsfolk there of being grotesque, horrifying and, depending on who you talk to, mythical fleshgaits. (Skinner had his serious doubts about putting four FBI agents down in the basement office at the Bureau, but one upside to assigning Doggett and Reyes to the X-Files alongside Scully means that there are at the very least three federal agents keeping an eye on Mulder at any given time. Even so, Mulder isn't anything if he isn't slippery and he will occasionally ditch the trio in favor of his wild hairs.)

Listening to the fallout of Mulder's latest exploit, however, is only the least of Skinner's troubles. In fact, the big man preferred listening to the Snowshoe Police Chief chew out his ass because Mulder body-checked him in the small town's Piggly Wiggly to sitting in an eight-hour-long budget meeting with his two least favorite fellow Assistant Directors - Alvin Kersh and Brad Follmer.

Kersh, a smug old contemporary of Skinner's, seems to have made it his personal mission to shut down the X-Files office - if not through drawing attention to Mulder's erratic behavior then by pointing out the travel expenditures of the "Spooky Squad," as Mulder, Scully, Reyes and Doggett have come to be known at FBI Headquarters. (Though shoving in Kersh's startled face the fact that the team of agents in the basement office are actually saving the taxpayers money because - as the two female agents and the two male agents each share a motel room while on the road - the Bureau can send four officers on an investigation now for the price of TWO was well worth the mind-numbing budget meeting today.)

As for AD Follmer …? Skinner squeezes the cut whiskey glass in his big hand until he almost shatters it. Well, Skinner would have hated the slender, blonde, dashing, arrogant, young Assistant Director on the fact that he is dating Monica Reyes, who (like Scully) Skinner considers his surrogate daughter, alone. But the fact that the kid is a certified slimeball does not help his case.

However, Skinner might have salvaged the day if his old miliary crony Jack Crawford hadn't "accidentally-on-purpose" bumped into the Assistant Director when Skinner dropped by Quantico this evening for an autopsy report. Crawford - looking every bit of his handsome old self with his "silver fox" hair and his warm, twinkling brown eyes - was, as usual, inflated fit to burst. The man's ego alone could power Washington D.C., Skinner thinks, rolling his eyes behind his glasses. So naturally Crawford, now head of Behavioral Science at FBI Headquarters, doesn't need any encouragement to brag about his or his agents' exploits to Skinner … or how Skinner's agents' deeds paled in comparison to those of Crawford's.

This afternoon was no different. Crawford, dressed in his usual dapper beaver-brown greatcoat and fedora, gushed all starry-eyed about his AMAZING, his INCREDIBLE criminal profiler Will Graham.

"MY criminal profiler Will just closed the case on the Minnesota Shrike, Walter. Did you hear? You didn't? I can't imagine HOW! It is literally all over the papers! Oh yes …" Crawford pretended to ponder hard on something, as if he hadn't "bumped into" Skinner at Quantico just to tell him THIS: "I think I remember reading about your Agent Spooky Mulder in the papers? Something about him declaring infants born in a small Minnesota farming community are all El Chupacabra?"

Ugh, thinks Skinner. The man is utterly insufferable.

But, somehow, Skinner could have handled all of that from his old contemporary if Crawford hadn't delivered the news to Walter he had really planned to tell him.

"On the subject of Will Graham …" Crawford said, swelling up like a conceited bullfrog. "The old boy is about to give me a grandchild! Or he might as well be! Will and Molly are going to have a baby and I, OF COURSE, will be just like the little tyke's grandpa! Isn't that SWEET?"

Then, because Jack is Jack, he gave this as a parting shot:

"All those attractive young FBI agents all crammed together in that tiny secluded basement office at the Bureau -where no one could hear them make any kind of noise even if they really TRIED - and you STILL haven't gotten one grandkid out of them, Walt?"

Jesus … he cannot stand that guy. If Walter Skinner could somehow go back in time and stop his dumbass from fucking Jack Crawford … (Because, seriously, as soon as he tapped that guy's admittedly fine-as-hell ass it opened up a Pandora's Box of troubles upon his life more than Fox William Mulder ever could.)

Hmmm… Skinner hums to himself, swirling his old reliable pal Jim Beam around in his cut-glass and reclining back on his spotless bone-white sofa. Go back in time …? The big man chuckles. Now, he is starting to sound like Fox Mulder!

A giant crash suddenly slams into the flank of Skinner's apartment building. The high-rise shudders like a horse shedding flies, causing objects around the living room - as well as the big man himself to tumble to the floor with various crashes and thuds. Then an ear-splitting crack, louder than the most deafening artillery the seasoned veteran had ever heard, causes him to grimace, clutching the sides of his head.

Then, just as quickly as it had started, the quaking and howls of unidentifiable noise just … stop. A thin, plaintive voice - the voice of a young woman - suddenly cries out: "H-Help me …? Please …? Somebody …!" from the direction of the upstairs master bedroom.

Skinner is baffled, but, of course, he does not panic. And he doesn't let any of his assumptions on the source of the explosion (A plane crash? An earthquake? A bomb?) or the mysterious girl in his bedroom (he hopes to God that Mulder, teasing rapscallion that he is, never hears of THIS as Skinner would never hear the end of it!) cloud his decisiveness on what he should do next - Help this young woman calling out to him! He can figure out an explanation for it all and what he should do about it as soon as he is sure she is safe.

"Ma'am - Miss?!" he calls up the staircase as he rolls to his feet. "I am a federal agent! I am coming to help you!"

Skinner pulls out his gun and holds it at the ready, however. He doesn't have any good explanation for the mysterious woman upstairs or the strange explosion that shook his building. Something is … off here, his finely-honed instincts tell him. Being the Director in charge of the X-Files office often means Skinner himself experiences as much paranormal occurrences than the "Spooky Squad" down in the basement at FBI Headquarters. So there isn't too much that spooks or surprises Walter Sergei Skinner.

The response from upstairs, however, delivered in a weak voice, sends a shiver down his spine like he is a green teenager of seventeen …

"W-Walter? WALT! Walter Skinner?!" the mystery woman calls out. Her voices grows stronger, brighter with relief and recognition.

But Skinner does not recognize this young woman's voice!

His lean torso and ropelike arms tense and ready for action, the big man moves cautiously up the stairs, ignoring the pain of a cut on his forehead he received when the strange explosion tossed him off of his sofa and into the coffee table. Skinner holds his nine millimeter out and down, but points the gun into his upstairs master bedroom as he swiftly glances inside and ducks back down behind the doorway again.

What he saw - or more accurately who he saw - in his big, low white bed makes his heart pound with bewilderment.

There is a naked woman lying on top of his snowy comforter. But Walter Skinner is not a married man. Nor does he have a girlfriend.

In the split-second it takes him to glance back inside the bedroom, the young woman has attempted to rise out of the bed.

"Walter!" she cries. "Uncle Walter!" The unmistakable joy and relief in her voice as she calls out his name freezes his heart. He has no idea who this young woman even is, let alone why she is in his bed!

But she tumbles back down to the crumpled sheets on the mattress, clutching her temples and moaning in pain. It is very easy to see she is unarmed and - as far as Skinner can tell - helpless.

Coming to this conclusion, he thinks: first things first! Skinner snatches a warm fleece blanket draped across an ottoman and holds it by its corners, spreading a makeshift curtain between himself and the young woman.

"Here," he tells her gruffly.

He wraps the blanket around the girl's petite, birdlike frame. She is trembling violently, giving the big man enough reason to hold her until she warms up … if she didn't just throw herself into his big, strong arms, sobbing hard.

"Hey, whoa, now!" Skinner grunts, startled.

But he feels his arms tighten instinctively around the girl. He senses that she is in a monumental amount of distress, of course, as she weeps against his deep chest. But there is something else about this young woman … some kind of familiarity he can't explain. He doesn't know this woman from Adam, but his arms hug her like they have a million times.

"Uncle Walter, I did it! I made it! I'm here!" the girl gasps. She can't seem to draw breath fast enough to pant out all the words she apparently has to tell him. "I …" Her weak voice trails off as she gazes up at him.

Her large, sea-blue eyes open wide in a very strange expression. She looks at Skinner with both recognition and endless confusion. "But … But … you aren't Uncle Walter? But you also ARE!"

His big hands very gently grasp her shoulders to hold her out and away from him. He doesn't mean to be cruel; he longs to comfort the distressed young woman. But Walter S. Skinner is grappling with extreme bemusement, an emotion he's never dealt very well with.

"I - I - I don't understand you," he murmurs as he gazes back into the girl's wide aquamarine eyes. The despair in her gaze twists his heart, but he does not know how to help her. "I am sorry, Miss …?"

"ROSE! Rosie! I am Rosemarie! Don't you remember who I am?!"

The poor girl pounds weakly at his chest with her white fists, but she is so feeble that it has no more effect than a kitten would. In fact, the young woman can only wobble on her feet and only because she is leaning against the big man. Skinner gently catches her wrists in his hands and narrows his eyes at the young woman behind his round glasses. He feels their delicateness like twigs in his fingers. He finally gets the opportunity to get a good look at this girl - Rose, apparently - and finds a very wan young woman in her late twenties with two enormous ocean-blue eyes set in a very appealing heart-shaped face surrounded by a riot of shining black curls. There is just … something in the shade of her eyes, the texture of her hair, the fineness of her cheekbones and chin that only deepens Skinner's feelings of familiarity and confusion towards her.

The equal confusion in her bright blue eyes becomes clouded with sadness. "You - You really don't know who I am?" she whispers. The sorrow in her gaze is heartbreaking as she clutches Skinner's shirtfront in her curling fists and cries.

"I am sorry, no," he replies.

Skinner is trying to force businesslike gruffness back into his tone - if only to cope with this exceedingly strange situation - but the grim FBI Assistant Director just can't seem to speak to this girl in anything but a soft and gentle tone. This poor young woman is obviously confused, probably mentally unwell. Though how she broke into his apartment to be discovered nude in his bed is beyond him.

And Skinner isn't any closer to figuring out what caused the explosion that rocked his building …

The girl, Rose, squints up at him. Then, unexpectedly, she reached up to put one small, cold white hand on his cheek. He is startled, of course, by such a forward gesture from a stranger. But, even more bizarre, the big man feels absolutely no desire to pull away from her … as if she is an old and comfortable friend.

"Y-You look … so much younger, Walter," she murmurs, the sorrow in her voice tempered by awe. Then her gaze sharpens as her eyes light up. "Tell me, please - w-who is the President of the United States?"

Skinner tilts his head. But why not humor this poor, lost young woman? He feels so very sad for her. "Uh, Bill Clinton, of course."

To be continued ...!

Chapter 6: It's a Girl!

Chapter Text

Skinner

Crystal City, Virginia, 1999

"You have got to be joking!" Skinner growls.

His brown eyes watch Rose intently as she tears a hunk off of a loaf of bread and hardly chews it before swallowing the enormous mouthful and sinking her teeth into the loaf again. Skinner pours the girl a mug of water and slides it across his marble-topped kitchen island. Rose downs it thirstily.

She wipes her mouth with the back of her hand and burps daintily. Skinner quirks an eyebrow at her. She suddenly and inexplicably sits up straighter and mutters an apologetic: "Excuse me" as if Skinner had scolded her for bad manners before.

"No joke!" Rose says between bites. "I meant to travel back in time seventy-two hours in the Year 2030. Instead," she gives a sigh and, for the first time since Skinner met her, doesn't look hungry. The girl gazes down at the black-flecked countertop with an expression of deep regret. "I landed in the Year 1999… thirty years in the past."

Skinner pushes his glasses to the top of his head and pinches the bridge of his nose. "You have GOT to be joking!" he echoes. Then he gives a half-hearted chuckle. "Frankly, this sounds like something Fox Mulder would say!"

The young woman looks up to meet his gaze. "Well, everybody I know says I take after my father …"

Skinner, somehow, wears an even more bemused expression. "Fox Mulder - MY Special Agent Fox Mulder - is your father?"

"One of my fathers. John Doggett is the other one," Rose replies briskly. "And my two mothers are Monica Reyes and …" The girl loses a bit of her cocky tone as she peers down at her half-eaten meal, suddenly and mysteriously not hungry. "And … Dana Scully."

"I don't believe you."

Rose sighs impassively. "Gee, I was more worried about convincing Dana and John, skeptics as they are, than you, Uncle Walter."

Skinner chuckles, crossing his sinewy arms across his broad chest and leaning back on his stool. "Well, if you'll beg my pardon Miss Rose, your story sounds a bit fantastical. And …" he adds with a dangerous rumble, narrowing his eyes. "I don't know you from Adam."

Rose crashes her hand palm-down on the counter, making their water glasses shiver. "But you do! You do know me, Uncle Walter! You were there when I was born! When I took my first steps! You gave me my first haircut! You punched that creepy magician out at my and my brother's fifth birthday party!"

Skinner twists his head at the girl. Yes, her lazy left eye and her habit of tucking an errant lock behind her ear all belong to Scully. And the girl's blazing hot temper could be attributed to Fox Mulder's seed.

But, strangest of all, there are traits in this girl that belong to John Doggett - like the way Rose can cut someone with a mere glance - and Monica Reyes - how the young woman's eyes are just as round, persuasive and soulful.

No … he thinks as he studies her. There is just no way. But these habits, tics and characteristics he sees in his four agents in the X-Files office are so familiar to Skinner he'd recognize them anywhere … and in anyone.

"You say that you have two sets of parents - Fox Mulder and Dana Scully and Monica Reyes and John Doggett. How is that possible?" the big man asks the girl.

Rose shrugs. Suddenly famished again, she tears back into the loaf of bread. "I don't know," she says between huge bites. "I only know that I and my younger brother share DNA with all four of my parents. Don't believe me? Do a DNA test."

~**~

Jimmy

FBI Academy, Quantico, Virginia

After an inconspicuous visit to Jimmy Price - an FBI forensic pathologist, instructor at Quantico and an old chum of Skinner's - the Assistant Director has his unbelievable answer…

"It's a girl …" says Jimmy in his usual glib manner.

But even the tall, skinny, iron-haired, seasoned pathologist - who has had more than one brush with the paranormal himself and isn't fazed by very much - looks a bit in awe of the circumstances. He glances from the series of tiny smudges on the transparent page of test results over at his old friend Walter Skinner. Skinner, who Jimmy swears could melt stone with his trademark glare, looks like he's seen a ghost…

Or perhaps, thinks Jimmy, the big man has just seen the opposite of one.

Jimmy's soft grey eyes flit from Skinner over to the young dark-haired woman standing beside his laboratory's lightboard with her arms crossed. For all her dainty femininity - her black curls and wide blue eyes - there is an air of "do-not-fuck-with-me" hovering around this young lady.

"I can't explain it, Walt," says Jimmy, tugging at his bowtie with a nonplussed finger. "But Miss … er, Rose here is the daughter of two sets of parents!"

"Told you so!" Rose snaps in a tone that makes Jimmy almost cringe.

He can count on one hand the times he's heard anybody speak to Assistant Director Walter S. Skinner that way. Whoever this little black-haired, blue-eyed she-devil is, she sure does have moxie in spades!

Furthermore, wonder of all wonders, Skinner doesn't turn to bite her head off for such insubordination. Instead, he shoots the girl a rather annoyed expression, but holds his peace.

"To be frank, Walt, this sort of thing is more up Agent Mulder's alley than mine," Jimmy says nervously. "If you'll ask Mulder -"

"Ha! Ha! Jimmy! Com'ere!" Skinner forces a laugh. He throws an arm the size of a side of mutton around the much shorter and thinner pathologist and sweeps Jimmy into a conspiratorial conversation in hushed undertones - which the girl Rose watches intently with raised dark eyebrows. "Listen, pal, if you could do me the supreme favor of NOT mentioning this to anybody … but especially not Agent Mulder?"

Jimmy peers over Skinner's massive forearm at the young woman watching them impassively. She looks to be in her late twenties, early thirties? Around the same age as Monica Reyes and Dana Scully - who, as everybody at the Bureau is very well aware - are Walter Skinner's precious surrogate daughters. A slow, sly smile starts to spread across Jimmy Price's face as he starts to get - or at least he thinks he starts to understand - what is going on here…

Hmmm … the skinny, middle-aged pathologist thinks with amusement. Well, well, Skinman! Huh! Walter Skinner never seemed like the type that would father a child out of wedlock and then act secretive and ashamed when his illegitimate child finally found him. But … Jimmy muses. It is truly impossible to really know what a man does in his private life, isn't it?

Jimmy, however, only gives an enigmatic smile to show his old friend Skinner that "MUM" is the word. "My lips are sealed, Skinman!"

"Don't call me that!" Skinner rumbles as he turns to exit the lab with the petite young woman by his side.

Jimmy shakes his head. He still can't figure out how this one kid Rose can have four biological parents, but Jimmy leaves that mystery to the likes of Fox Mulder. It isn't like Agent Mulder is ever short of a theory explaining away a supernatural occurrence. And, besides, the young male FBI agent has far more experience in the field dealing with ghosties, aliens and beasties than Jimmy Prices ever will.

Just give me a nice, straightforward, psychopathic serial killer like the Chesapeake Ripper to chase! Jimmy thinks. I do not fuck with the paranormal if I can help it!

~**~

Skinner

"Now do you believe me?" Rose demands of AD Skinner as they march down the fluorescently lit, sickly bluish-white corridors of the FBI Training Academy.

Skinner sighs, mopping his face with a weary hand. "It is incredibly hard to argue with DNA test results," he concedes.

Rose has to jog occasionally to catch up with his great strides. It almost amuses Skinner how much that reminds him of Agent Scully. The big man suddenly turns to face Rose. He appears irate and incredibly tired, but his brown eyes are no longer so skeptical as they study this strange young woman.

"All right …" he growls, tilting his head to one side. "If you had the technology to travel back in time thirty years … then why not seventy-two hours in the past?"

Rose hangs her head; the look of shame and guilt on her face twists Skinner's heart. Not for the first time, he wonders exactly what kind of sorrow is pursuing one so young. This young woman is visibly carrying around some great burden of regret.

"B-Because I failed!" Rose replies, her voice rising and then cracking dangerously.

Two young male FBI cadets round a corner to come marching in their direction. Rose's exclamation grabbing their attention, the young men raise their eyebrows in interest at Rose who, Skinner can very easily see, is a beautiful young woman. Skinner gives the cadets a glare that could melt rock; the pair gives a startled little jump and hurries on down the corridor.

"I … uh, I have this … ability," Rose confesses.

"Ability?" One eyebrow slants up Skinner's forehead.

Rose nods, refusing to make eye contact with him. "I … I can, well, teleport - for lack of a better word - for short distances." Skinner's expression remains neutral, giving nothing away, so Rose, feeling encouraged, forges ahead: "But really what I am doing is moving so fast it only looks like I magically disappear and appear from place to place. Forge, the inventor who sent me back through time, theorized that my, um, power is the only thing that would keep me alive on the journey back through time. It would have killed a 'regular' person."

Skinner leans back against the wall of the corridor, closing his eyes. This is just WAY too much for eight o'clock on an ordinary Tuesday night. But maybe, when you are the Assistant Director in charge of the X-Files, this is just par for the course?

"So you … ran too fast?!" he asks, exasperated. "And that pushed you back too far in time?"

Rose sighs. "As … bananas as that sounds - Yes. That is the long and the short of it."

Skinner, still leaning his head up against the wall, starts to chuckle. Rose's eyes go wide in a no-nonsense glare that reminds him so much of Agent Reyes, he laughs harder.

"Well, I'll give you one thing, Rose, you certainly are as reckless as your father Mulder ever was!" Skinner chuckles, not knowing really what else to do.

Rose rewards him with a tiny smile, causing a very charming dimple in her left cheek, just like Scully's. Skinner can see that the girl has found an ally in him. He doesn't really understand what is going on. But, as Agent Scully is very fond of saying: the science doesn't lie. Skinner had tested Rose's DNA against that of Mulder, Doggett, Scully and Reyes. And it is just as the girl says - she is the daughter of all four agents!

"Yeah … That's what my Uncle Walter in the Year 2030 would say too," she says with a small, sad, little laugh.

Skinner, shaking his head at the girl, replies wearily: "You can stay the night at my apartment. It is past time to turn in. You look like you could use a good night's rest. And if I deal with this conundrum anymore tonight, I'll have an aneurysm. Tomorrow, I'll 'introduce' you to Mulder, Scully, Reyes and Doggett …"

"No! No!" Rose exclaims.

"Why?"

Rose glances away guiltily. Christ, this poor kid is carrying around enough guilt and shame to power a metropolis! Definitely the child of Fox Mulder then … Skinner muses glibly. John Doggett too, come to think of it!

"Please! I am breaking my promise to Forge just talking to you, Uncle Walter. I wouldn't have if you hadn't found me. If my parents were to know my true identity, it could alter the very fabric of time and space!" Rose explains.

"So you're just going to hang around for thirty years until you get back to your own time as a middle-aged woman?" Skinner asks wearily.

"You got a better idea?" Rose replies in a bleak voice. "A way I can keep an eye on my parents while I figure out a way to get back to my own time?"

And then, suddenly, Skinner does. "Actually, I think I might have the perfect idea … Have you ever wanted to be an FBI agent, Rose?"

To be continued …!

Chapter 7: A Hunting We Shall Go

Chapter Text

Scully

Georgetown, Washington D.C.

Dana Katherine Scully leans up against the back of her spotless, cream-colored sofa. She nurses her mug of Folger's-and-honey as she gazes out of her townhouse's big (equally spotless) picture window. Several plants nod dreamily on the windowsill before her - including a charming little batch of velveteen-soft African violets. They bask in the warm, syrupy golden sunshine spilling in a big square across Scully - gilding her coppery-red hair gold - her sofa and her (you guessed it, spotless) beige living room carpet as well.

Scully shuts her eyes, holding her mug - which proclaims "Show Us Your Bobbers!" with two red-and-white fishing bobbers emblazoned there - up to her plush, ruddy lips which quirk into a rare smile. She lets the steam from her coffee cup wrap around her face in a hazy white wreath; Scully inhales the earthy aroma, as well as the peaceful atmosphere inside her apartment, deliberately and happily.

Working on the X-Files is certainly never dull and, with her three very best friends on this rock alongside her, it is sometimes even enjoyable. But the job, what with chasing UFO's, cryptids and mutants (not to mention managing the emotions of three incredibly high-strung coworkers), doesn't exactly afford Scully much downtime. When she does get what precious little she does, she savors each and every moment of it like the honied sugar crystals in her morning coffee melting on her tongue.

Queequeg, her pert burnt-orange Pomeranian, jumps up on the sofa's backrest and balances beside his mistress like a dandelion puff. His tiny pink tongue hangs out in an inquisitive expression and his beady black eyes miss nothing of the comings and goings of the sparse Saturday morning traffic rumbling quietly down her street. Scully reaches down to affectionately ruffled his sharp, foxlike ears. On his many adventures with his mistress, Queequeg has survived getting almost-eaten by plesiosaur (or an alligator, depending on who you ask), almost-offed by a fortune-teller-murdering serial killer and accidentally abducted by a very tender dog-loving lizard-man who mistook Scully's Pomeranian for his own beloved, fluffy, tiny dog. So Queequeg, naturally, has become something of the mascot of the X-Files' "Spooky Squad," as the four FBI agents are now called around Headquarters … much to the chagrin of Fox Mulder, who loathes dogs, especially small ones.

John Doggett is the unusual kind of person who gets along really well with both dogs and cats. Scully gets the feeling, however, that the taciturn male agent is fonder of cats - one of the rare topics he and Scully do not agree on - as he has been deliberating for months over the kind of kitten he wants to adopt. Scully allows herself a grin; that man Doggett has so much of a tender soul, it is practically coming out of his ears!

Monica Reyes, Scully's very best woman friend, adores Queequeg, of course. (Though, Scully muses with an indulgent smile, show Monica any living creature reminiscent of a baby's rounded head, squashed nose and big winsome eyes and the dark-haired female FBI agent utterly folds!)

The Pomeranian leaps down to a spot on the sofa cushions where he reaches over with a curious foot to paw at his mistress' telephone receiver. Scully laughs in delight at the charming little dog. "Ha! Ha! Cut that out!"

But Queequeg knows his mistress well; he knows exactly what Scully wants to do - pick up the phone and call Monica. Make sure she is OK. Scully can tell when her best friend is upset. It did not take a psychic to sense that Monica was not very happy last night as she walked out of Hutchinson's Tavern with Brad Follmer.

In fact … Scully thinks, taking an angry pull on her coffee. Mon hasn't been very happy AT ALL since that wiener Follmer asked her out!

You should REALLY be cleaning your apartment, Dana, while you have the chance! Scully scolds herself as she reaches for the phone receiver. Relying, as she often does, on manual work to distract herself from messy emotional situations and not even giving a thought to her townhouse being sparkling clean and in apple pie order as usual.

The second she picks up the receiver and runs her thumbnail along the buttons to call her best friend, the phone lets out a loud bleat. The name "Mon" flashes up on Scully's caller ID. The pretty redhead laughs aloud. It is one of the many, many experiences she's had in her young life that the plucky little scientist cannot explain away with her precious science. But the moment Scully locked her sapphire-blue eyes with Monica's mahogany-brown ones on a windy, hot desert plain in New Mexico two years ago, the two women have become, for lack of a better term, soulmates. It always makes Scully chuckle at the serendipitousness of the whole situation … that she would find a friend in Monica as strong as the one she HAD FOUND (the redhead thinks as sadness clouds her sunny musings) in Fox Mulder. And then John Doggett … to a degree … Scully thinks with a little smile for her taciturn, yet loyal friend.

The whole affair always made Scully shake her head and wonder that most people live out their entire lives searching for their soulmate … And here she, little Dana Katherine Scully, found THREE!

Or … Scully thinks with a flicker of sorrow for her and Mulder's lost once-in-a-millennium love affair. That is the way she once believed …

"Hi, Mon!" she answers brightly, stifling her next words: Are you OK?

All right, she thinks, feeling somewhat guilty - for snooping into Monica's personal affair, not for Brad's benefit, THAT'S for damn sure. Shoot me, but I don't trust that Follmer bastard to keep his hands to himself and OFF my best friend!

To be honest, protective Scully does not trust any man to touch her best friend if his full name isn't Special Agent John Jay Doggett.

"Hey, Dana …" comes Monica's soft, bright, but quietly subdued reply.

Scully immediately tenses at the tone of her best friend's voice. Monica uses it subconsciously when she is anywhere around Brad. And, Scully thinks in exasperation, it is certainly easy to see why! Follmer seeks to control every aspect of Monica's life. Including her friends. And for a free-spirit like Agent Reyes, this makes her incredibly uncomfortable.

"How'd the rest of the night go with the boys?" Monica asks humorously, sounding a bit more like herself. Scully smirks. "The boys" is a title she and Monica now refer to when discussing the male half of the X-Files office. But Reyes' next question makes the redhead quell. "Did you and the boys catch the Exorcist re-release?"

"Um, well, no," Scully stammers. "John decided to call it a night, after all. And Mulder and I … we, um, well … we just decided to go home to our apartments …"

She lets the sentence dangle. For, like predicting the exact moment her best friend is about to call, Monica can finish Scully's thoughts as well, it seems. In the same way Scully has almost a window into Monica's mind. And the brunette goes quiet as she silently completes her best friend's sentence in her head: "…because I don't want to be in the same dark theatre alone with Fox Mulder, because I do not trust my hands or my lips to stay off of him."

Monica, unlike Doggett, makes a point to not discuss Scully's doomed, star-crossed love affair with Mulder or how the redhead's broken heart is still desperately beating for the man. And Scully is eternally grateful to her best friend for that.

"Is, uh, is John OK?" Monica asks in that way she does now when she discusses her partner John Doggett - as if she is trying to sound as casual as any agent asking after her platonic coworker. The care and concern of a lover, however, laces Monica's voice when she mentions her FBI partner.

"John didn't see much of a point in sticking around once you left with Follmer, Mon," Scully replies.

She tries to keep the vitriol out of her tone. But, goddammit, it is almost impossible whenever she thinks about Monica's smarmy boyfriend… And about how John Doggett could be Reyes' lover right now instead of that human phlegm-ball Brad.

Monica's tone grows both defensive and weary as she responds: "John let me down, Dana, in case you have forgotten," the brunette murmurs in a sad voice.

"I haven't forgotten, hon," Scully says in her gentlest way.

The redhead remembers with great vividness that night almost exactly one year ago when Monica arrived breathless at her townhouse door, her brown eyes wide and her long, lean body positively trembling with excitement … and love for her partner Doggett. For the dark-haired female agent had just come from Doggett's apartment. There he had kissed Monica after she had professed her love for him.

The two female FBI agents stayed up for the rest of the night, whispering excitedly to one another in front of Scully's fireplace in the way only two woman friends can. Scully hugging a throw pillow to her small breasts as Monica lay back on a hassock, her dark gaze sparkling and her long raven hair spilling all around her as she spoke of her love for John Doggett and her hope for their future together.

Scully had been very satisfied with her best friend's selection. Scully couldn't name a man gentler than John Doggett - unless that man's name is Fox Mulder. And Doggett was, without a doubt, the only man Dana Scully would ever trust with the lovely and tender heart of Monica Julieta Reyes.

And then that man Doggett had turned around and let that beautiful woman down, giving some contrite answer that Reyes could do better. That she deserved better than whatever future he could give to her. That she deserved a man who could give her the moon like the princess she was…

"And who is 'THAT MAN,' Agent Doggett?!" Scully snapped at him, blue eyes blazing, when she confronted him the very next morning after he broke her best friend's heart. "AD Follmer?!"

The following week, Follmer began courting Monica, with the sole intent and purpose of marrying her someday soon. And Reyes and Doggett - who had a steel-strong bond akin to that of Scully and Mulder - have been drifting further and further apart ever since.

"We could ALL do something fun today!" Monica suggests, desperate to change the subject, Scully can easily see. "Us and 'the boys!' The Torpedo Factory has a new-age art exposition!"

"Sounds right up your twisted little alley," Scully giggles. "But I think Mulder might be happier if we all just made a weekend road-trip of it to catch a Yankees game."

"Ew, sports!" Monica exclaims, pretending to gag. Both women erupt into laughter. "Though John would really prefer if the 'Spooky Squad' just crashed at his apartment and watched 'Top Gun' for the billionth time!"

Scully rolls her eyes. She is seriously fond of Doggett, but if she has to watch that horrid Tom Cruise movie ONE MORE TIME she is going to scream!

"Or we could all get together and go house-hunting with Agent Rose Winters?" Scully says, surprising herself.

Huh! The notoriously reserved redhaired FBI agent muses. Now, that seems more like something Monica would suggest! Scully wonders why she is so readily accepting of Agent Winters? Is it because the newly transferred agent has the look of a little, lost lamb and Scully, ever the "mother hen" of the Spooky Squad, positively cannot resist such a waif? Or is it … something else?

Scully can't explain it, but the instant she locked gazes with Winters this afternoon in Skinner's office, the redhead saw … what she can only describe as recognition in the eyes of the beautiful, young, curly-haired agent. Though Scully is puzzlingly positive she had never laid eyes on the girl before. She wonders exactly what her partner Fox Mulder would say to that and she is very happy now that she did not mention it to him. Mulder, ever the paranoid one, does not trust Winters in "his" basement office. Though Scully can sense the girl is hiding something like Mulder suspects, the redhead believes it is some horrific sorrow from the young woman's past … though what Scully can hardly imagine. Was it some terrible childhood trauma, like Mulder's. Or something far more recent, but just as heartbreaking, like Doggett's?

Reyes laughs at Scully's eagerness to help Agent Winters. "Hello? Who are you and what have you done with Agent Scully?" But then the warmhearted brunette's voice turns more serious. "Did you feel it too? That … connection with Agent Winters when Skinner first introduced her?"

Scully wouldn't dare have disclosed her … unexplainable connection with Rose Winters to Mulder. Or even to Doggett. Ever since the redhead became fast friends with Monica, however, the ever-pragmatic Scully has become accustomed to discussing her and Monica's … what Scully can only think to describe as (though she cringes to even think it) telepathic tendencies.

Scully cannot even start to explain it, but she and Monica share some kind of a mental bond. At first, Scully believed her close connection with Agent Reyes is because they work in a male-dominated field where a fellow female agent is hard to come upon. Now, however, the bond of friendship and love has grown so strongly between the tall, lean, lovely brunette and the short, petite, gorgeous redhead that the two friends can virtually read each other's thoughts.

And, currently, Scully knows that Monica is eaten up with curiosity about the young Agent Winters.

"Is it possible that Agent Winters could share our, uh, bond, Dana?" Monica asks. For even the brunette, who believes wholeheartedly in psychic abilities (very much including her own), is hesitant to call what she and Scully share by a specific name.

"I don't know, Mon …" Scully hums. She curls her index finger around her upper lip, the way she always does when she is deep in thought. Unlike Monica, Scully has never felt completely comfortable with her psychic abilities that cannot be defined by her precious science. But Dana Scully, whether she admits it out loud or not, has come to rely on her instincts and intuition … And she has come to trust in her mental abilities that, she is well aware, most other people simply don't possess. "B-But I felt it too. When my eyes met hers, it felt almost as though I recognized her?!"

"No friggin' way! I felt that way too when I met her!" Monica replies. The brunette's gentle tone softens dreamily. "Like I'd passed her face a million times on the street and only just recognized her when I walked into Skinner's office!"

Scully feels that now-familiar glow in her chest when she realizes that Monica feels and thinks in the same way she does. For two oddballs like them, it isn't easy finding a soulmate…

"Let's do it!" Monica chirps. "Do you think we can convince the boys to go house-hunting with us and Agent Winters? John seems all right with her …" The brunette observes, her voice sparkling with humor. Scully smiles too; it is very easy to see that Doggett, who watches after Agent Leyla Harrison like a protective older brother, is going to do the same for Winters. "But Fox seems to be on his high-horse as 'the agent in charge of the X-Files office!'" Monica finishes with a giggle.

Scully cannot resist a laugh. Monica has made it her personal mission to keep Mulder, whose ego could admittedly (thinks Scully, despite her great love for the man) power a city, humble. And, in the two years since Reyes joined the other three agents in the basement office, she has certainly been doing her job in that respect! One way she does that is by pointing out how Mulder likes to throw his authority as "the official agent in charge" of the X-Files around … while the other three agents in his office pretty much laugh at him when he tries to tell them what to do.

"I believe between 'the girls' and Doggett, he'll have to behave himself!" Scully says wryly.

~**~

Reyes

Bennett Avenue, Washington, D.C.

Monica feels a bolt of happiness shoot through her chest as she hangs up the phone in her apartment. She tingles with the excitement that always comes when she is about to set out on some (no matter how seemingly inconsequential) adventure with her three best friends. Today's quest, helping a new agent find a suitable apartment, won't be quite as glamorous or intriguing as chasing down an alien spacecraft or some obscure cryptid. But, hey, Monica thinks with a beat of amused love for them, with a trio of friends such as wayward Mulder, whip-smart Scully and, of course - Reyes muses as the most charming dimple appears in her left cheek - her dear and devoted Doggett, well, even the most mundane of missions can be so exciting!

"Monica …?" a man's voice, smooth as velvet, ripples behind her. "Up early, baby?"

The pretty woman, dressed in only her indigo muslin slip and matching laced panties, struggles not to jump in a guilty fashion at the sound of her boyfriend's voice. Why the hell does she grimace every time Brad catches her chatting with her friends? The answer - at least according to Scully - is very simple: Brad wants to control every faucet of Monica's life, including who she is friends with.

She glances over her shoulder to see her boyfriend Brad Follmer. The handsome, young Assistant Director, shirtless and only wearing pajama trousers pitched into a very big tent, takes her into his strong arms covered in their blondish sheath of body hair. He pulls the beautiful woman back into his embrace. Monica sighs happily as she feels her shoulder-blades rub against the soft nap of Brad's chest hair. She smiles when his gentle breath tickles the nape of her neck and he buries his nose into her raven locks to drink in her gardenia fragrance …

But then his hand very assertively grabs Monica's hip and draws her graceful body down closer to his own. She prickles with uncomfortableness as she feels Brad's insistent manhood making a rock-hard ridge along her ass-cheek. His eager lips nibble a desirous path along her smooth, golden-brown neck. Monica feels her body easing away from him on its own accord. She hadn't noticed this subconscious habit of hers until Scully pointed it out to Reyes. And Monica's body, as much as she hates to admit it, does not seem as willing and comfortable to accept Follmer as her lover as she does.

When Doggett touched her, it seemed so, so natural. Monica never felt in any way afraid, tense or even uncomfortable in his arms … though her FBI partner never made love to her. Brad has yet to as well, but not from not seducing her. Whenever he holds his beautiful girlfriend, it is always with the end game of sex. And that is a step in their romance Monica simply isn't ready for.

How is it so easy to convince her head that she wants Brad as her lover, but not her heart? Or her soul? Monica, however, has never forced herself to do anything against her own nature. Well, not until now, it seems. But she trusts Brad; he has been her devoted friend for many years. And his prospects look good; he is, after all, one of the youngest Assistant Directors in FBI history. He really can give her the moon. Now, he's romancing her with talk of European trips and fine jewels to adorn her throat and night-black hair like stars in the sky.

But do you LOVE him?

Dana Scully's question rings through her head. Does Monica love Brad - does he make her stomach flutter with the same butterflies - as Agent John Doggett?

NO. Of course not … But, the beautiful woman feels the now-familiar stinging pain in her heart when she remembers how her FBI partner let her down, figuratively and literally, for the very first time since they met all those years ago. Doggett rejected her love … even after he kissed her; he made it very clear.

And now Brad just seems like … like the other option? It seems cruel to think of her old friend in this light, but Monica cannot gaze into the depths of her own heart and say truthfully that she loves Brad with the same passion and fervor that she still does (she thinks as she suppresses a sigh) her FBI partner.

Brad's powerful yet dexterous hands release Monica's hips, travel up her lean belly. His fingers slip beneath her dark blue slip. "Ahhhh!" Monica gasps as his hands gently but firmly knead the round, smooth globes of her breasts.

"That's MY girl!" Brad whispers against her sleek tresses. "Isn't that right, Monica? You are all mine?!"

Monica yelps softly in surprise as he pulls her down into the curve of his loins. His massive erection digs into her lower back.

"Ahh - Brad!" she whimpers. "Fuck!"

"Good girl … that's my good girl," he answers. His frenzied kisses turn to bites on her long, slender neck and the smooth, golden-brown skin of her chest. "Now … come to bed with me!"

Monica feels a sensation like a hard kick in her stomach. Brad Follmer - with his perpetual smirk, elegantly handsome manner and boyish blonde hair - is a very desirable man. But the thought of him penetrating her makes her quell. Monica KNOWS she should trust Brad, such a longtime friend, with this precious part of herself. But every time he sensually propositions sex, she simply cannot submit to his desires.

He feels her tense in his arms. But still the blonde man doesn't let go; he continues to hold her just as tightly and knead her tits just as passionately with his very eager hands. His rigid, long dick becomes unignorable as it stabs her.

"Brad -! Stop!" Monica gasps as she breaks a kiss he has assertively, and unbidden, put on her burgundy lips.

Brad gives a great sigh of frustration which makes Monica internally cringe. He backs off, very reluctantly, eying Monica with such disappointment it makes her prickle with guilt.

"Monica, we've been a couple for almost a year! And here I am STILL spending nights on your sofa like you're my sister!" he chuckles, but she sees the supreme sexual frustration simmering in her boyfriend's eyes.

The tall, slim female agent has only ever had women for lovers, but Monica isn't naïve enough to not know exactly what is on Brad's mind when his blue eyes rove up and down her body in that hungry way. She knows exactly what he wants to do to her …

Brad's sexual desire for her sends off a wave of energy so fierce and intense it almost makes her take a step back, afraid the invisible wall of his emotions might singe her. Monica had felt the same atomic pressure of passion and desire radiating off of her partner John Doggett as he held her and kissed her wine-hued lips last October.

Unlike with Brad, however, cossetted in the powerful arms of John just felt … so RIGHT. Like that is the exact place she was always meant to be - wrapped up in the sensual security and love of her partner's warm embrace.

Monica struggles not to squirm in Brad's arms. She repeats the mantra silently she's been singing to herself for the past year: Brad is GOOD FOR YOU. This is RIGHT. This man is the one you'll share your future KIDS with!

And yet, when Monica peers deeply into that possible future with Brad, she thinks she sees only emptiness… and it truly terrifies her.

"I'm just … I'm not ready for that … uh, yet," she murmurs.

Brad leans back against her sofa, untidy with the crumpled blankets under which he slept last night. "Right. OK. I respect that," he replies. But his easy answer belies the exasperation glimmering in his light blue eyes. "Just the same way I respect your, um, choice in friends."

His comment rankles her. "What is the matter with my friends?" she asks him, tilting up her chin defiantly.

"Not one thing," Brad answers. But Monica knows he is lying. She doesn't need psychic powers to tell. Her boyfriend rolls his eyes and laughs, knowing he is caught. He has known this captivating woman long enough to know he can't smuggle an untruth past her. "If … If you aren't the girlfriend - and soon-to-be fiancee - of an Assistant Director of the FBI."

Monica's prickle of annoyance flares up into anger, both at his judgement of her three best friends in this world and his arrogant presumption that she will so readily accept his future proposal of marriage. "So what you're saying is something is also the matter with me?"

"Oh, of course not, baby!" he croons, cupping her cheeks in his big hands.

But when he won't look her in the eye, her frustration grows. Monica can sense that, although Brad worships her, he also feels a bit of bewilderment and even embarrassment towards his girlfriend's oddness. Strangely enough, it never really bothered Monica before Scully pointed it out to her.

"But our future together - and our kids' future - depends on my position in the Bureau," Brad adds somewhat hesitantly. Monica knows that he loves her with his whole heart. He admires her great beauty, her empathetic heart and her beautiful diamond-sharp mind. And he is having a very difficult time reconciling his affection for Monica with his utter bemusement over her stranger eccentricities. "And, well, appearances being what they are …"

"You're saying, appearances being what they are, that the girlfriend of the Assistant Director shouldn't be hanging out with the 'Spooky Squad?'" she asks, her dark eyes, usually sparkling with good humor, are serious.

Brad presses his forehead to hers. His light, blonde stubble tickles her face. "Look, it's not like you're even going to be down in that basement office for very much longer, Monica," he hums. "Not with me in your corner."

Monica draws back, narrowing her eyes at him. She feels anger quake through her body. How could he even dare suggest that she would abandon Scully, Mulder and Doggett? But all Monica says in a brittle voice is: "Dana and I are going house-hunting with Agent Winters."

Brad chuckles. "The newest Missus Spooky in the basement office?!" Monica stiffens; it is one thing when she and Scully jokingly call each other "Missus Spooky." It is quite another when Brad does. "AD Kersh told me of Skinner's new hire." His blue eyes sharpen at his girlfriend. "You're already friends with her?"

Monica smiles in reply. The woman makes friends so easily … Follmer muses, almost with jealousy.

In fact, Monica takes it a step beyond that. To her, the old cliché rings true: a stranger is simply a friend you have yet to meet. For Brad - who deals in intrigue, infighting and the subtle alliances, betrayals and plays for power within the Bureau - Monica's warm and open heart and gentle and generous nature are an anomaly to him. He wonders now, as he so often does, how she can retain every ounce of her goodheartedness in a field that simply beats it out of people? How the hell does she keep from losing that soft sparkle of lovely light in her deep brown eyes?

"It feels as if we've been friends forever!" she laughs, just as Brad expects.

Just as it was with Dana Scully … Follmer thinks in disgust. Monica and Agent Scully have been practically inseparable since they met two years ago. And it only took one winsome glance from Monica's big, soulful brown eyes to win over the notoriously prickly pathologist. Brad should know; that's all it took for him to fall head-over-heels in love with Monica too.

But it isn't Scully or even her obnoxious partner, Fox Mulder, that worries Brad about this house-hunting excursion. It's another male agent - lean and sinewy with sandy hair and piercing blue eyes - that seriously worries the young Assistant Director. A certain taciturn male agent that always makes Monica laugh and that makes her eyes sparkle in a way Brad has NEVER been able to achieve. A man named John Doggett. A man, Follmer knows at the bottom of his shrewd heart, that still holds Monica's heart even though she had given Brad her hand.

"Are the two 'Mister Spooky's' coming along?" he chuckles, but he is unable to keep the suspicion out of his voice.

Monica is not the type of woman to cheat on her boyfriend. Even as he says it, her brown eyes round in puzzlement that he would ask. "Of course Fox and John are coming along," she says in a confused "now-why-wouldn't-they?" kind of way.

It is one of the things he so loves about his girl, thinks Follmer. There is no coyness or deception about Monica Julieta Reyes. What you see is what you get.

That characteristic also frustrates him in a way, however. Follmer is a bit … embarrassed by the way she simply doesn't know any better. That maybe spending more time with another man - a man Brad suspects his girlfriend is still very much in love with - reflects poorly on him?

"Go out to dinner with me?" he asks her, before he leans forward, palming her cheek as he kisses her. Brad tastes her sweet tongue thick with the flavor of honey. THAT at least is one thing Doggett doesn't get to enjoy!

She giggles her musical laugh. "You're on, Assistant Director Follmer!"

Chapter 8: Full-nesters

Chapter Text

Rose

Crystal City, Virginia

Rose tosses on AD Skinner's sofa. She turns. She struggles to get in some way comfortable. She tries hugging her knees to her chest. She attempts the elusive sleep-on-her-belly position. When she pulls the covers up over her body, her skin feels sweaty and disgusting; when she tosses aside the quilts, she is suddenly shivering. Rose shuts her eyes, but instead of meeting sweet slumber, she only sees darkness.

The girl tosses aside the borrowed quilt with a hiss of frustration. She'll be rubbish tomorrow if she doesn't catch at least a few winks, but with everything she's been through during the past twenty-four hours - or the past thirty years?! - a good night's sleep is hard coming.

Rose pushes herself up. As she stands, she catches a glimpse of herself in the mirror hanging opposite the glass coffee table. Her black curls, more tousled than ever, frame a very pale heart-shaped face into which are sunken two very mournful blue eyes. The young woman leans forward to peer into the looking glass. Ugh … Rose thinks wearily, fighting against yet another dizzy spell. I LOOK just as horrible as I FEEL.

Forge had warned her of this. Similar to jet lag, the old inventor told her. Your very atoms will be altered traveling through the time-space continuum … The only reason I theorize YOU will survive is because of your teleportation powers.

Yeah, Forge - that's just GREAT! Rose thinks in exasperation. But what good have my powers done me flinging me thirty years into the past?!

Rose's stomach trembles with nausea. Uggggh! she groans softly, not wanting to wake Skinner. Rose is feeling guilty enough obligating her beloved uncle - or the man who will become her beloved uncle - to keep her terrible secret. She seriously does not want to bother him with her quest; Rose knows she never would have if Skinner hadn't found her out.

Giving up her last hope for sleep, Rose looks around Skinner's ultra-tidy living room. It is SO tidy, a place for everything and everything in its place, that it makes Rose's skin crawl slightly. A woman after her father Mulder's own heart, Rose usually operates her own personal space in a constant state of controlled chaos. In fact, very tidy places like this makes her a bit nervous.

Rose chuckles softly to herself as she remembers her childhood. As she recalls the countless scoldings her pig sty of a room received from her fastidious mother Scully who hoped to impress upon their daughter their own excessively tidy ways. Scully bemoaned the fact that Rose took after her messy dad Mulder.

There are some characteristics, however, Rose inherited from her other dad Doggett … Maybe I can do some research! Get a better idea of what exactly I'm up against? Rose wonders to herself.

From where she is standing right now, things appear rather bleak. She is thirty years behind where and when she needs to go. And, to make matters worse, her parents in this time are such lost balls in high weeds, as her dad Mulder is so fond of saying, that Rose is seriously starting to wonder if she will ever even be born.

So all she has to do is make sure the four most stubborn people in this or any universe fall in love. No biggie.

OK … she thinks. First things first. She has to gather as much information as possible about what exactly she is getting into here. See, Uncle Walter …? Rose thinks with a soft, wry chuckle. Not so VERY reckless.

Rose feels for the long, flat, hard rectangle of her smartphone in the pocket of her baggy, borrowed pajama trousers. She has a sudden, fierce moment of sheer panic. This … This is the Year of Our Lord 1999! … Would her smartphone even work in this time and place? Rose pulls it out, taps the blank, black screen with her thumb and gives a tiny sigh of relief. Yep. Her trusty lockscreen pops up, its blue brightness illuminating her wan face. The time, however, still reads "11:32 a.m./Wednesday/10-31-2030" Halloween 2030. And when Rose taps in her security code on the keypad, the photograph that flashes up before her as her phone's wallpaper knocks all the wind out of her.

It is the last photo she snapped of her entire family … on the beach on Boot Key just one week before Scully died. Just one week after Rose married Nathan. Just one week before her brother Will was abducted by Hannibal Lecter. Rose gazes back at her mom's beautiful face, more freckled and sun-kissed in the photograph than this past 1999 version of Scully. And the faces of Monica and Doggett, smiling their love for one another, and Mulder … Rose feels a sharp stab in her chest as a sob suddenly chokes her. Her dad looks so happy in the photo on her phone's homescreen; his handsome face lit up with all its usual suaveness as he gazes down at his tiny redhead with such affection and adoration shining in his storm-green eyes.

Rose remembers the last time she saw her father in the Year 2030. Fox Mulder was a shattered man - broken and compass-less without his Scully. Rose recalls seeing the younger 1999 version of her dashing father yesterday afternoon, with his same smug swagger and twinkling greyish-green eyes, and all she wanted to do was throw herself into his strong arms and weep out her apology against his chest.

Well, she isn't getting anywhere just sitting here feeling sorry for herself, is she? Rose studies Skinner's personal computer sitting in a spacious corner of the living room. The big, blocky monitor and tower look quite antiquated to Rose's eyes, which are used to the sleek, rounded, streamlined designs of technology in her day. But she can see that the clunky machine is quite state-of-the-art in the Year 1999 as it has its own personal place of honor next to a fancy antique lamp and roomy, comfortable desk and swivel chair.

Rose eyes it with suspicion. Then she glances back down at her trusty smartphone and sighs. The tiny icon in the righthand corner has no bright bands radiating away from its fanlike figure. No wi-fi. Of course not … Rose thinks, annoyed at herself. There is no wi-fi here. Or ANYWHERE, in fact. It is 1999.

The young woman rises, battling another bout of dizziness, and staggers over to the computer. Oh good Lord … Rose thinks, biting down hard against a groan of frustration as she attempts to simply wake up the damn ancient monolith! This thing might as well belong to the Flintstones!

Suddenly, the device gives a long, loud moan as if it is in horrific pain. Rose jumps almost out of her own skin.

"Brrrrr …! BRRR …! Bra-OWWWW!" the computer screeches, making the girl grimace. "Oooooo-Huhhhh!"

"Stop! Stoppit! Shut up! Goddamn you!" she hisses at the machine.

What the hell is wrong with this antiquated technology? Has it become possessed by some sort of disembodied spirit?!

Desperate, she jabs her finger at the circle-shaped "POWER" button on the monitor. With a final ear-splitting whine, the computer falls silent.

Rose leans back in the swivel chair with a sigh. She spins herself counterclockwise with a frown. Ohhhh-Kay. It seems simply navigating in this strange "old" new world is going to be a challenge!

A knock at Skinner's front door startles her. Rose glances frantically around, not sure how to find the exact time in a place where smartphones do not work. The young woman's gaze lands on a grandfather clock ticking calmly in a darkened corner of Skinner's downstairs. The elegant hands point out … 7:03 a.m. … Rose decides after it takes her a moment to decipher what the hands pointing to the numbers on the white face mean.

Oof! After a night like last night, who is up this early to pester the beleaguered Walter S. Skinner?

When Rose hears Scully's voice calling out so fresh, tenacious and full-of-life, the girl cannot help but smile. When Reyes joins her best friend's call of: "Hey, Walter! Anybody home?" Rose's smile turns into a full-blown grin. Only the two female agents who Skinner has adopted as his two surrogate daughters would dare to bother him at this ungodly hour on a Saturday.

Rose tries to wipe the smile off her face by the time she's padded to the door, but she just can't seem to be rid of it. Just the sound of her mothers' voices fills her up with sunshiny optimism. I can do this! Rose tells herself with great resolve. After all, I am just the daughter of the two cleverest, loveliest women to ever work for the FBI!

Rose pulls open the heavy front door to see Dana Scully and Monica Reyes standing there in the building's hallway. Both regard Rose with sparkling eyes full of life … and perhaps a bit of mischief too. Monica, with her dark bewitching gaze and hair, seems to be the towering, tall shadow of the fiery-tressed female agent.

Rose has to restrain herself from dashing into the arms of her two moms. All the young woman wants to do is wrap herself up into the cozy security of their embraces and forget about everything else. Rose wants to sob against their comforting breasts in the same way she did when she was a little girl with a bumped knee until everything is right in the world again. It tears Rose's heart out that she can't even indulge in this miniscule comfort.

All she can do is beam at Scully and Monica like they are the very last women on Earth. Monica, of course, full of her usual earnest and sunny enthusiasm, returns Rose's eager smile with twinkling deep brown eyes. Scully does as well, but Rose notices the puzzled flicker in the redhead's gaze at Rose's easy, familiar greeting. There is absolutely NO WAY Scully could know her daughter's secret, but, still, Dana being Dana, Rose knows her mother's diamond-sharp intuition is humming.

Rose struggles to act casual. "H-Hey, it's the girls!" she says, then cringes at how lame she sounds.

Monica shoots Scully an expression of pure glee. Scully grins in reply, eyes sparkling, as if they share a private joke.

Monica giggles. "Didja hear that, Dana? Rose called us 'the girls.'"

Scully laughs in reply. "Hah! If she calls us that, she is going to fit right in the Spooky Squad!"

"Scully … Reyes … what are you two doing at my apartment door at this godforsaken hour except keeping me from getting my beauty rest?" AD Skinner rumbles threateningly as he pads down the stairs.

He is dressed in pajama trousers and a white t-shirt. The big man paws sleep from his eyes with one veiny hand. The other struggles to put his wire-rimmed glasses on his head.

"We are taking Agent Winters apartment-shopping, sir," Scully announces in a bright tone. The redhead turns her brilliant azure eyes, flashing with playfulness, on Rose. "Unless you want to keep on as AD Skinner's new roommate?"

"Are you kidding?" Rose replies with a laugh, sweeping her arms around at the penthouse downstairs, the gleamingly spotless floors of which you could build computer chips on. "I can't find a damn thing in all this mess!"

"Hilarious …" Skinner growls, pinching the bridge of his nose. "I believe you will fit right in the basement office, Winters."

The big man, however, seeks out Rose's gaze and shoots the girl a very meaningful "be careful" expression. As soon as Scully and Monica turn their backs to leave, Rose glances back at her Uncle Walter over her shoulder to give him a wink.

I got this … she thinks. All I gotta do is outfox the two smartest, most perceptive - and definitely PSYCHIC - women in the Bureau. No biggie.

But then Rose remembers, in her own future time, how she never could get anything past her two moms. No matter how she schemed as a child, she could never deceive two psychic female FBI agents! Can she do it now, in a time before Reyes and Scully even know they have a daughter?

Skinner watches the trio of young women walk out the door, all of them with their heads bent together in the warm, friendly, conspiratorial chatter that springs up between girls of the same age. Off to rope his two male agents into moving Rose into a new apartment? Seems par for the course for his two female agents…

Walter Skinner shakes his head. But he can't suppress an indulgent smile. He's heard of an empty-nester, but a full-nester? Well, then, the big man thinks with a soft chuckle, he supposes that is what he is!

~**~

Mulder

Fox Mulder awakens in his bed in his - extremely tidy - bedroom in his Alexandria apartment. The same bedroom he cannot open the door of because if he does all kinds of junk, stacked almost to the room's ceiling, will tumble out and hit his head. That is the male agent's first tip that something is not quite right here.

"Mulder?" a shy, soft, feminine voice purrs to him from the doorway.

Mulder, stretching his sinewy brown arms up over his head, peers over his thick mat of chest hair at the pale, petite figure standing at the threshold. She is Agent Dana Scully. His FBI partner and friend for many years. Only now, she is standing trembling and almost completely nude in the doorway of his bedroom.

"Scully …!" he sighs.

He is unable to lift his voice above a whisper in reverence to her supreme beauty. For, now, his partner, usually so professional and put-together in her pantsuits and kitten heels, wears nothing but a sheer nightie that hides exactly zero of her lithe, graceful body. Scully is pale and trim, her see-through chemise accentuating her small yet pert breasts, rosy little nipples and slightly flaring hips which she usually keeps hidden beneath layers of lab coats, jacket blazers and baggy sweaters… to the point that Mulder had concocted many a fantasy about his partner's elusive nakedness. Now, however, all of her nude beauty is on display right before his very eyes - and the sight beats any sultry day or wet dream he's ever had about Scully hollow!

She shyly approaches his bed. "S-Scully … what - what …?" he stammers.

The small woman glances away, her long fernlike red eyelashes batting down against her fine white cheeks in a particularly timid gesture. Mulder's erection, which has been pitching a fucking circus tent in his thin pajama trousers, hardens to the point of painful insistence. Seeing his tough-as-nails lady partner - who will face down a murderer without so much as flinching - so soft and shy and gentle-spoken turns him on like nothing he's ever experienced.

"Ssshhh!" she whispers.

She mounts his bed - and HIM - climbing atop his big, lean body, pressing her small but strong hands down on his rippling biceps to hold him. Mulder gasps in utter shock and delight as his pretty partner leans over him, stroking his hard masculine thigh with the soft brush of her kinky red pubic hair. Her sleek, silk-smooth legs wrap around his torso. She presses her small, dexterous fingers to his lips - right before pressing her own plush, ruddy lips to his. Scully's long, rippling mane of fiery hair comes down around them like a curtain, sending a wave of her alluring vanilla perfume over him which Mulder drinks in greedily along with her kisses.

Mulder can barely believe it. Since she ended their love affair a year ago, Scully hasn't so much as touched his HAND, let alone the rest of him! But, fuck, if her grinding her muff hard against his thigh is any indication … Mulder shuts his eyes, wincing in supreme pleasure, as he feels the very erect and eager nub of Scully's clitoris rubbing against his skin.

The man reaches up to tenderly cup her beautiful face in his big hands, breaking the kiss regretfully, but he has to know before this goes any further … before he can't trust himself to hold his gorgeous nude partner in this way without making love to her.

"Scully, do you … do you still love me?" he asks her in a husky whisper.

The redhead sits up, straddling him, with a little, girlish laugh. "Oh, Mulder, of course I don't!"

His heart freezes in a coating of cruel ice. "B-But …? Wha …?" he answers vaguely.

He isn't sure what bewilders him more - the infamously reserved and proud Dana Scully approaching his bed with the intent of hot and heavy makeup sex OR that the little scientist with the compassionate heart would ever say something so cruel to anybody - but especially the man who has been her partner and friend for many years … as well as her lover for a brief golden time.

Scully tosses her long coppery-red hair around her slim white shoulders; she gives another nasty, little laugh. "Oh, Mulder …" she sighs. She shakes her head at him, making a face as if he is supremely silly and ignorant. Mulder feels his heart quell inside of his deep chest. The sneering cruelty is so out-of-place on Scully's beautiful face that it almost seems … grotesque. "Don't you know? I am in love with Special Agent Dale Cooper!"

"WHAT?!" Mulder shouts as his stomach drops.

"Hi, Fox!" a very, some would say achingly, familiar masculine voice hails Mulder cheerfully from the doorway. "Long time, no see!"

Agent Dale Cooper - handsome, slender and tall with his darkly twinkling eyes and open, winsome smile - strolls into Mulder's bedroom … wearing those fucking sexy cowboy boots with the girdles strapped to Cooper's toned brown legs … and not one thing else! Cooper's body is lean and brown, his deep chest covered in tight curls of black hair as are his wiry-yet-sinewy biceps.

Cooper's very generous, uncircumcised cock - Mulder notes with an intense stare - has a slight, very appealing curve to it. Cooper is one of the few men Mulder has ever known with a length and a girth as great as his own dick's. Mulder, however, had only ever found this incredibly ALLURING in the earnest, eccentric and drop-dead handsome Agent Cooper - until, that is, Cooper started to show pronounced interest in courting Scully. And with Dale's charming charisma, sunny demeanor, tender soul, hardened physique and easy good looks, the dashing male agent has certainly piqued the redhead's interest.

And Fox Mulder is left in the awkward position of a rival to the man he also has a raging crush on!

Scully, still astride Mulder, turns to smile at Cooper … and draw the male agent into her eager embrace. Slipping her smooth ivory arms around the neck of the dark-eyed male agent, Scully draws Cooper's head down to press his lips to hers.

"S-Scully …? N-No …" Mulder gasps, feeling utterly helpless.

"You couldn't satisfy me, Mulder," Scully replies in a cold voice. "You kept prioritizing your quest for the Truth over the woman you loved. And now …" The beautiful redhead gazes up at Cooper with sheer adoration. "Now, Dale is my lover."

Mulder cannot find words. In fact, he is having a very hard time locating AIR in his lungs as Cooper - trailing his enormous, uncut cock and an eager, glistening string of pre-cum along the female agent's shapely ass-cheek. "Mmmm … Yes, Dale … Please!" Scully hums in approval,

Scully closes her eyes (and swirls her index and middle fingers around her eager little clit) in extreme pleasure.

"Dana, I do believe if sunshine itself was personified, it would take the form of a little lady with the initials D.D.K.S.M.D!" Cooper says in all his usual congenial, frank, quaint manner.

But his voice, and his liquidly dark eyes, are sultry as he nibbles his mouth down her alabaster neck and breasts and then goes quiet for a moment as his sensuous mouth takes one of her rose nipples between his lips to suckle.

Mulder listens to his heart shatter.

"See?" Scully says, her voice rising in cruel defiance and her blue eyes glinting like chips of ice. "Dale can give me the love and life I need - a life with a HOME. And CHILDREN. The only thing you've ever given me is a life on the run that has robbed me of any joy I had to begin with!"

"B-But Scully …" Mulder whispers, too bewildered and heartbroken to even raise his voice any higher. "Y-You're my - my one-in-five-billion. You - You make me a whole person! You're … You're the only woman on this rock who will ever BELIEVE me …!"

"No, Mulder," Scully answers. "Not anymore. Dale is my man now."

Her cold monotone sends a lance through his heart, especially since her icy response is followed by her high-pitched trill of pleasure as Cooper burrows his big fingers through her curly bush to tease the redhead's clitoris. He swirls the pad of his big digit around her hard little button until she shrieks out his name: "C-Cooper! YES! YES - YES!"

"NO!" Mulder yells in desperation. "NO … NO!"

~**~

Falls Church, Virginia

"Scully … Scully … NO!" shouts Fox Mulder.

The male agent flies up into a sitting position even before he opens his eyes. Mulder blinks, running his fingers through his dark slightly-longer-than-FBI-protocol hair, making it more tousled than ever. His heart races, frantically trying to outrun the terror of his nightmare. His skin beads with a cold sweat, making the sheets of the bed stick to his toned brown legs and make a clammy pit in the valley of his lap. His penis is fully erect, despite the horrifying nature of his dream; the image of Dana Scully and Dale Cooper completely nude in one another's arms is still freshly titillating in his sleep-addled brain.

"Umm … Bad dream?" a deep masculine voice rumbles out beside him in a drowsy murmur. Two powerful arms - as strong as they are leather-tough - encircle his waist.

"Terrible …" Mulder replies. However, he eases back down into the firm-maybe-a-bit-too-firm mattress. Mulder sinks his head back on the pillow and allows himself to relax back into the arms of Agent John Doggett.

"You, uh, you wanna talk about it?" Doggett asks, his sexy voice growling pleasurably against the other man's eardrums as his veiny hands slide down Mulder's torso, tightening their gentle hold on him.

"Nope." Mulder tries his damnedest not to, but he can't help but smile as his fellow agent's warm, bee-balm flavored breath ruffles the hair on the back of his neck. That is one thing Mulder likes about Doggett - how the man can seduce him and get him off without even really trying.

"Scully?" Doggett asks, his voice sharpening with sympathy as he becomes fully awake.

Mulder scowls. "Really, Mister FBI? What exactly led you to that deduction? Me screaming 'Scully? Scully?' in my sleep?"

Doggett chuckles. "Mulder, if you aren't ever Charlie Brown pining after his little red-haired girl!"

Mulder is still feeling jittery from his nightmare; he wants to give Doggett attitude in their usual "funny-guy-versus-straight-man" schtick. But instead, as the other man's warm breath tickles his cheek, Mulder finds himself slipping into that warm, secure sense of camaraderie he's almost always felt with Agent Doggett - despite all their base differences - and especially when Mulder finds himself in the other agent's bed.

"Then I suppose, Dog, that you fit the analogy of Good Ol' Charlie Brown getting the football yanked out from under him by a certain pretty brunette," Mulder replies. "Only, in your case, you're the one yanking the ball out from under yourself!"

Instead of rewarding his shitty joke with a chuckle the way he is wont to do, Doggett lapses into silence. Mulder rolls over in the other man's arms. He faces the other male agent. Mulder has always admired the … handsome ruggedness of his fellow agent. Doggett is rough-around-the-edges; he is a man who does not suffer fools gladly. He is a New York cop from the Old School. Easy on the polish and pomp. Very heavy on the grit. But there is also a profound capacity for tenderness in this man. A sort of gentle sincerity that Mulder very rarely encounters in his line of work - especially among men. Doggett is a man who has operated for most of his adult life in an incredibly dire field of toxic masculinity while still holding onto his powerful sense of chivalrous fidelity. Not to mention all of Doggett's sinewy leanness makes him hella easy on the eyes … And right now, the man's ruggedly handsome face is wearing an expression of such wistful sadness that it twists Mulder's heart.

"Lookit the two of us, Mulder," Doggett murmurs, forcing out a humorless laugh. "Aren't we just a pair of sad-sacks pining for our two long-lost women!"

Mulder leans forward, cupping the other man's face in his big hands and kissing him long, hard and deep. Doggett falls without protest into the kiss, working his tongue against Mulder's in a sweet and savage dance. Mulder hums his desire as he feels Doggett's cock, just as long and rigid as it was the night before, snake its way along his leg.

Fox Mulder sometimes ponders how an Oxford educated New England aristocrat and a Southern gentleman turned New York cop could end up in each other's arms. And the conclusion Mulder always comes to is that both men share, at their core, a fundamental Truth … both Fox Mulder and John Doggett share an unswerving love and devotion for their respective women, Dana Scully and Monica Reyes.

Well … they aren't "our women" now. Not exactly, Mulder thinks with a beat of heavy, almost paralyzing sadness.

But, really, looking back … it was both men's loneliness over their ladies' leaving them that finally persuaded them to sleep together. Of course, a kind of sexual tension had simmered between Doggett and Mulder almost as soon as the former New York cop set foot inside the basement office at the Bureau two years ago. Mulder, rankled over having another agent (let alone another MALE agent!) in his territory, showed a great deal of high-handedness towards the other man. (And, looking back, Mulder guiltily admits that a great deal of his obnoxious baiting of Doggett stemmed from John rescuing him the year prior to Doggett and Reyes being assigned to the X-Files office.) Doggett, buffaloed by no one and nobody, put Mulder in a headlock for his trouble.

From that point on, the two agents found themselves in a "work-together-or-kill-each-other" dynamic. The two men - both as stubborn and proud as the day is long, but also willing to see sense when there is no other way - finally settled on working together, both finding traits in the other they found admirable. Mulder, for his part, was deeply impressed by Doggett's sense of faithfulness towards those he held dear - the sunny and charming Monica Reyes being first and foremost, of course, in Ol' Dog's heart. Though, eventually, John came to view Scully - and then finally Mulder - with the same overwhelming protectiveness and quiet affection.

It was around the time that Mulder betrayed Scully's heart and she left him and Doggett let down Monica that the two male agents began seeking comfort in each other's beds … or Mulder's leather couch, as the case may be. Now, Mulder and Doggett are spending at least one night a week making love to one another. And at least one lazy Saturday morning per week waking up in the other man's arms.

And Mulder cannot imagine better lovers to take the edge off each other's loneliness than two men pining their hearts out over their respective ladies…

Doggett is the one to break the kiss, chuckling a bit at the deep, hungry passion of Mulder's lips. There is affection, of course, shining in John's ice-blue eyes, but there is also lust - at its purest, most distilled form - simmering in Doggett's gaze. Mulder loves the smug feeling it gives him when his fellow male agent looks at him that way.

Mulder has always had a thing for good-looking men and, fuck, if Special Agent John Jay Doggett doesn't fit the bill! The guy's biceps have biceps, for heaven's sake, and Mulder could scrub his dirty socks on the man's stomach. Mulder's eyes, equally hungry, note Doggett's many defining marks on his lean body … Ooooooh, that intriguing livid-white scar running from his hip all the way up his ribcage, the faded-navy-blue tattoo that proclaims "semper fi" in washed-out curving letters, that cute-as-all-hell mole right beneath his lower lip and that tiny pink scar on the bridge of his nose. And then, of course, there is Doggett's huge erection, stabbing Mulder's ass-cheek, which is growing bigger and more insistent by the second.

Mulder laughs softly, snuggling deeper and more comfortingly into the curve of Doggett's body. "Well, Dog, if we're going to commiserate, better not to do it on one's on, right?"

"You said it," Doggett replies.

This time, it is the blue-eyed agent who leans forward to catch up Mulder's pouty lips in his own. Shit! The man can give a kiss, thinks Mulder as his cock gives another powerful twinge of desire. Doggett works his lips methodically, but also with red-hot passion, as his tongue - hot and savage, but also exquisitely gentle - teases Mulder's. In bed, Mulder has noticed that Doggett has a way of walking that line between the softest kind of tenderness and almost rapturous sexual desire.

Mulder breaks the kiss. Then stretches forward to whisper against the other man's cheek: "You were wound pretty tight last night, Dog. I really appreciate that …"

Doggett blushes, which, Mulder thinks, is pretty damn adorable. It is true; Agent Doggett has a reputation at the Bureau for being a no-nonsense kinda guy. (And, when he is paired with a man full of nonsense like Fox Mulder? Well … with enough "opposites attract" energy to make a hydrogen bomb, one thing was just bound to lead to another with the two handsome, red-blooded, very bisexual male agents in the basement office.) There definitely are times when John IS wound so tight that dogs couldn't hear it if he farted. However, this is a boon for Fox Mulder … Doggett seems to get all of his pent-up feelings out in the sack - by making love to Mulder with equal parts incredible intensity and extreme tenderness.

"I certainly wouldn't mind returning the favor …" Mulder growls suggestively against the other man's ear.

Doggett responds with another firm kiss. Mulder snakes his hand down between them to grasp the other man's phallus in his hand. Doggett draws back, gasping: "Fuck, Mulder!"

"That's kinda the idea …" Mulder murmurs back with a little laugh and a nibble on the other man's earlobe.

Mulder runs his hand up and down Doggett's shaft until the other agent flings his head back on the pillow shouting several loud expletives. Mulder gets unending amusement from the dirty looks Ol' Dog's neighbors shoot them when the two male agents come and go from John's apartment building in Falls Church; Mulder knows how much sleep John's neighbors have lost since he became the lover of the otherwise quiet-living John Doggett.

That is another thing Mulder really likes about Doggett - for a man so taciturn in his day-to-day life, Doggett does not hold back any part of himself in the bed. Mulder has had many male lovers in his lifetime. (As a matter of fact, barring a certain enchanting redhead, he prefers them to women.) And, on the whole, he has found them, during lovemaking, either withholding of any sensitivity or emotion or complete and utter savages, striving after their own hedonistic urges and not at all considerate of their partner's pleasure. Doggett, while being an extremely considerate and gentle lover, certainly doesn't hold back from showing Mulder just how deep of a wellspring of lust and passion he can tap in the other man.

Mulder hums with supreme pleasure as he feels Doggett's fingers catch in his hair. The other man very gently grips Mulder's scalp and tugs … Doggett knows well and good that hair-pulling is a giant turn-on for his fellow agent. Even so - as John always does, Mulder thinks with great affection for the man - Doggett checks in. "OK, Mulder …?" he asks - Between pants. Already, thinks Mulder with a smug glow.

"Keep it up, Dog," Mulder chuckles. "You know how I like it."

"Don't, ahhhh, don't call me that! Ahhh!" Doggett adds as Mulder slides down the other man's torso to go down on him.

The majority of Mulder's lovers, like himself, have been uncut men. And, because of this, the agent generally had a dim outlook on circumcised dicks… circumcised dicks like John Doggett. Mulder had fostered the slightly ignorant impression that just because a man has no foreskin he is lousy in bed. John Doggett is living, breathing proof positive that a cut dick can fuck just as well, and more often than not BETTER, as an uncut one. John's sexual stamina is incredible; as a man who has suffered from premature ejaculation, Mulder is always impressed by it.

Even Agent Doggett, however, has a very hard time holding back when he gets a little taste of Fox Mulder.

"Goddammit, Mulder! Y-Yes …"

Mulder, smiling to himself, slides his tongue along the other man's generous shaft, before taking Doggett's exposed glans into his mouth and sucking liberally. Mulder pushes down, taking the entirety of the other man's dick down his throat. He tastes the other man's heady pre-cum; Mulder swallows, savoring the rich flavor of Doggett's spunk.

Doggett tightens his hold on Mulder's hair as the blue-eyed agent groans out his passion and pleasure. Between gasps, he laughs: "It's game over, Mulder, if you keep that up!"

Mulder emerges with an impish grin … before ducking back down to jack the other man's penis in his large, veiny, yet exceedingly gentle hand and then cupping Doggett's testes in his palm and squeezing them tenderly. Doggett puts his hand on the back of Mulder's neck; his fingertips digging pleasurably into Mulder's flesh makes the dark-eyed agent hiss out his extreme pleasure. John brings his forehead to Mulder's. And, for several moments, the two men - two male agents of the FBI, two dicks who love nothing more than the two prettiest women in the Bureau, two guys who sought solace for their heartbreak in each other's arms - just lock gazes, each panting from exertion and desire.

"D-Do you … Do you mind …?" Doggett asks softly, gently. His very tender, almost shy, request - coming from a man who is a complete and total hardass in the field - almost makes Mulder chuckle.

"Thought you wouldn't ask!" Mulder purrs seductively.

He pulls Doggett into another deep kiss with plenty of tongue. Doggett moans out his passion and intense pleasure straight into Mulder's mouth as the dark-eyed man brings him to climax. Doggett cums … spraying his creamy, hot load all the way up to get tangled in Mulder's soft brown mat of chest hair.

He falls back on the mattress, gasping for air, laughing softly between pants. "Dammit, Mulder …" he gasps. "T-Thank you… Thank you …"

"Hey, what are friends for?" Mulder replies with an answering chuckle before he strolls off to urinate in Doggett's scrubbed and sparkling upstairs bathroom. (Seriously, Mulder didn't think he'd ever run into anybody as fastidiously tidy as Scully, but this guy is a clean-freak!)

Mulder sighs out his pleasure as he feels his bladder being emptied - and as he studies a really cute little ceramic green toothbrush holder shaped like a frog giving the "peace-sign" perched on the shelf below the medicine cabinet mirror. Mulder laughs softly; it is just this sort of shit that endeared him to Agent John Jay Doggett, the hardboiled New York cop with a cinnamon roll where his heart should be. If ever there was a man custom-made for the sweet and gentle-hearted Agent Reyes, it is John Jay Doggett. And it exasperates Mulder daily that his good friend and fellow agent Doggett sold himself short of her affections and let down the beautiful brunette, driving her directly into the arms of that jackass Follmer!

"What are 'the girls' up to today?" Doggett calls to him from the bedroom, which only a latticed door separates from the softly green-tiled bathroom.

Mulder laughs in reply. He jiggles the tip of his dick, squeezing out the last few drops trapped beneath his foreskin. He struts back inside the bedroom. Doggett is lying prone in the nest of linens, his lean brown muscular arms in direct contrast with the snowy sheets. Mulder gets that smug glimmer in his chest he always gets when he notices Doggett's blue gaze tick down the other man's figure to quietly admire his generous, bobbing rod of manhood.

"Well, knowing Monica, she has most likely started some sort of campaign to smuggle young Agent Winters into the 'Spooky Squad,'" Mulder grumbles. "No matter what the agent in charge of the X-Files office has to say about that!

He still feels exceedingly paranoid, defiant and, overall, just plain territorial about a perfect stranger such as Agent Rose Winters being suddenly and unceremoniously assigned to the basement office without so much as an explanation by Skinner. And yet … Mulder feels a very odd tightness in his chest as he remembers the way the pretty, young, curly-haired agent looked at him when Skinner first introduced her to him. He recalls the way her enormous sea-blue eyes rounded in an expression of complete and utter desperation and fear. And Mulder, despite his mistrust of the young woman, felt an overwhelming and inexplicable desire to protect this girl - and to take her into his arms and comfort her, though he, shockingly, felt absolutely no sexual desire for the beautiful, brunette and feisty Agent Winters.

That is because … Mulder shakes his head slightly with a frown as he remembers the sensation her frightened gaze gave him … That is because Rose gave him the exact same look his little sister Samantha did when they were kids and she was terribly scared about something and ran to her big brother for protection. Of all the sad and terrified people Mulder has encountered in this dark and often hellish field, nobody else has ever given him that look.

It confuses him. Bewilders him. But it also, for a man who often foregoes fear in favor of wonder and curiosity, piques Mulder's interest. There is just something ABOUT Special Agent Rose Winters. And he is bound and determined to find out exactly what it is. He is determined to find out exactly what secrets she is hiding.

Doggett, however, only laughs, which rankles Mulder. None of his fellow agents in the X-Files office seem to consider Winters a threat. Something Mulder considers kinda strange. OK. It makes sense if Reyes is ready to take the little waif in under her wing. And his sweet Scully has a tendency to be a bit of a mother hen when it comes to young female agents. (Hell, the woman became a big-sister-like figure to Agent Leyla Harrison overnight!) But Mulder surmised that Doggett would at least attempt to be suspicious of the petite little curly-top… if only as a show of solidarity with the ONLY OTHER male agent on the X-Files!

John seems to be perfectly content to let a stranger, a young cocky lady stranger, barge into their basement office and take over things! Well, Special Agent Fox Mulder is sure one swinging dick who isn't going to be buffaloed by any little slip of a girl …!

"She seems so sad …" Doggett murmurs thoughtfully, startling Mulder out of his indignant reverie. "Agent Winters. She seems so … so lost …"

Mulder gazes back at his fellow agent. Even for the renowned profiler Fox Mulder, John Doggett is a tough nut to crack. And yet Mulder, through the camaraderie that has blossomed between the two men, has come to know Ol' Dog's nonverbal tics quite well. And, right now, the deep "worry-line" between Doggett's eyebrows tells Mulder that the taciturn agent is rather concerned - concerned about Agent Winters. Now, that doesn't shock Mulder even one bit. Doggett is more protective of young Agent Harrison than even Scully.

Mulder smirks at Doggett and is rewarded by a scowl from the other man. "You did notice, right?" he grunts at Mulder.

Mulder meets the other man's gaze. There is a very powerful shimmer of soul-crushing loss in Doggett's pale blue eyes. It is there and then gone in a heartbeat. But it is there. Mulder has come to recognize it. And that look in John Doggett's eyes always breaks his heart … That look Doggett gets when he is thinking about his little son …

Mulder's smile disappears. He has always taken others' trauma very seriously. And Doggett's is no exception. It almost makes him wonder … Did Agent Winters somehow trigger the same emotional response in Doggett? And why? Why would a twenty-nine-year-old female federal agent remind Agent Doggett of his seven-year-old son? Some things are just not adding up with Special Agent Rose Winters. And Mulder, being Mulder, is reaching for some paranormal explanation.

"I noticed her tongue could use a little curbing," Mulder grumbles.

Doggett chuckles. "You like her!" At Mulder's furious scowl, the other man just laughs harder. "You DO! I can tell!"

"Yeah …?" Mulder replies, crossing his arms across his bare chest. His frown deepens. "And how do you figure that?"

"Because, Charlie Brown, Winters is just a bit too much like a certain fiesty little red-haired girl you're head-over-heels in love with - uuumph!"

Mulder feels a little bolt of satisfaction when the pillow he was holding makes direct contact with John's face. But, OK, if Mulder is being completely honest with himself … as annoying and suspicious as he finds Agent Winters … well, Doggett is right (as much as that irks Mulder). Winters' vim and verve and fiery tongue are very similar to those of Dana Scully! And those are characteristics Mulder admires very much in his lady love.

"And Winters' big soulful puppy-dog eyes aren't even a tiny bit like those of a particular bilingual brunette you fancy?" Mulder asks sweetly. He grins as a pillow smashes into his head.

Doggett's bedside phone chirps from the nightstand. Both men, hoping for a call from their ladies, snap their heads around towards it … then they make eye contact and both agents chuckle sheepishly. Mulder and Doggett are constantly trying to outdo each other in proving they are not owned body and soul by Scully and Monica respectively … and, every time they do this, it only reinforces just how utterly whipped both men are.

"An apartment?!" Mulder replies to the familiar lilt of Scully's voice on the line. "For Agent Winters?"

"Yep! Ellen's niece's boyfriend's old roommate Bryan is leasing condos in Georgetown … Which, as you know, are as scarce as rooster's teeth! And …" Scully's tone rises in girlish delight. "The best part is - they're less than a block from my apartment!"

"Yeeeeah," Mulder says flatly. "That's just dandy."

"And the rate isn't bad!" Monica's sweet voice chimes in the background. "Especially in such close proximity to Gaye Park. The only trouble was the down-payment requirement - three hundred dollars up front?"

"That is highway robbery!" Doggett, who has been listening to the rather conspicuous phone conversation intently, growls. He rises up off the bed and prowls, completely nude, over to the telephone. He leans over Mulder's shoulder to speak into the receiver to his FBI partner, his New York accents becoming quite apparent as his indignation escalates. "Who the hell is this Bryan guy anyway? Taking advantage of a young woman in that way -?"

Mulder stifles a smile at his friend and fellow agent. Doggett acted in the same way when the "Spooky Squad" all went house-hunting last October to find an apartment for Agent Leyla Harrison. Doggett spent most of this quest intimidating and shovel-talking the young female agent's prospective landlords.

"Calmate, carino," Monica says to her partner with a little laugh. Doggett blushes adorably. Mulder has been around his bilingual officemate long enough to know what that phrase means. Mulder has also been around Reyes long enough to know that she doesn't call anyone else that! "Dana haggled him down - You know!"

"Please! I hardly had to do any of the talking," Scully chuckles. "All Monica had to do was turn on the old Reyes' charm and Bryan was as good as lost! We dickered him down to one-hundred-and-fifty dollar deposit. Though Monica could have brought down the fee to zero!" Scully says, her generally monotone voice light with glee.

"Well, yeah, I guess I could have!" Monica relents with a laugh. "But, of course, that didn't seem very honest for an FBI agent to do!"

Both women erupt into conspiratorial giggles. Like a pair of schoolgirls, those two, Mulder thinks as he rolls his eyes… but with a warm, indulgent glow. True. He is more than a little jealous of the remarkably tight bond Scully shares with Reyes. But - though Monica shares with Dana the incredible close, almost mystical, bond between two women - Mulder has held out hope that someday he might be Scully's man again. The gorgeous redhead has, after all, not taken another man as a lover since she left Mulder. The male agent, lovelorn and desperate, rallies his poor aching heart around this hopeful fact.

"So what you're saying is you girls had all the fun intimidating and manipulating Winters' new landlord WITHOUT me and Dog?" Mulder asks. "Doesn't leave us with very much to do!" he adds in a low grumble.

Not like anybody asked him - the agent in charge of the X-Files office - if he feels comfortable giving this mysterious and suspicious young stranger Agent Winters such a warm welcome into their group?

"Oh, no! There is still plenty for you fellas to do!" Scully replies, voice slick with mischief. "Rosie didn't have much money left to hire movers, so we need a couple big, strong studs to bring her furniture up?"

"Great. We fellas got demoted to grunts! Goons! Cheap laborers!" Mulder growls to Doggett.

The dark-eyed male agent has a couple more questions for Scully, however, like: "And just where did Agent Winters get her suspiciously ready-to-move furniture which Mulder is willing to bet his boots looks remarkably like the furniture in Scully and Monica's respective apartments?" and "Just when did Agent Winters get on a first-name-basis - hell, a nickname-basis - with Scully?!"

Doggett, however, laughs heartily as Mulder hangs up the telephone.

"Better get dressed, Agent Mulder! Hope you stretched! Because it looks like the two of us are going to be loaning two pieces of furniture and appliances apiece to Agent Winters. Whether we agreed to that bargain or not!" John observes with humor as he retrieves his crumpled trousers from the bedroom carpet where Mulder discarded them last night in his rush to unzip Doggett's fly and release his giant circumcised cock.

A Rose by Any Other Name - Dead_Raccoons13 (2024)

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