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Date: Wed, 17 Jun 1998 00:26:32 +0000
From: Lyle Bontrager <lbontger@wmcstations.com>
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Subject: The Way VI: Wednesday
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The Way VI: Wednesday
Author: RocketMan >lbontger@wmcstations.com<

see part one for other

Notes: I am listening to the movie soundtrack at the moment and it is so
depressing. Esp. Filter singing "One." Yikes. So this may reflect that.
PS> Is Mulder supposed to be Flower Man???

The Way V: Wednesday

=====
"And now I will show you the most excellent way."
--1 Corinthians 12:31
"It's just no good anymore since you went away."
--"One" Filter (previously sung by Three Dog Night)
=====

It was a relief to get out of the heat and into the air conditioned day
care, with its screaming kids and frazzled workers.

The odd thing was: it looked normal.

It looked like a functioning day care with thread bare carpet and groups
of kids and a nursery for the youngest. There was a woman working in the
office, but she was talking to a little boy and drying his eyes,
soothing him after a nasty fall. Scully noticed that the boy's scrapes
had been sprayed with antiseptic and Band-Aided.

It seemed all right.

Mulder led her into the office and waited for the woman to finish
handling the child, then smiled with his usual charmed look.

"Ms?"

"Banks. Karen Banks. Call me Karen. And what can I do for you, sir?"

"I'm William Miller and this is my wife, Dana. We were thinking about
sending our little girl here. We thought we could come in, see the
place."

"Do you have an appointment?"

"Well, we thought if we surprised you, we'd get a better picture of how
it really is."

Karen Banks smiled and shook her head. "No need to worry about that Mr.
Miller. We have an excellent care facility here."

"Do you think we could wander around?"

"I can show you around, let you know what's going on. How's that?"

Mulder gave her another beautific smile and she walked before them and
out to the actual day care center.

"What's you little girl's name?" she said suddenly.

Mulder's mouth opened and shut and he blurted out the first name he
thought of.

"Emily."

A flicker went over Scully's face and he shot her a beseeching look.

"Emily? What a pretty name," Karen said, oblivious to the war raging
behind her.

"Thank you," Scully said, and her voice came out in a ghost of a
whisper.

Mulder took her hand and threaded his fingers through hers, squeezing
tightly.

"Here's the common room. All the kids gather here at lunch time to have
their meal. . . ."

She droned on and Mulder was busy ignoring her and focusing on the doors
leading out of the room. One went to the playground and one went to an
unnamed hallway that none of the kids touched.

The door leading to the playground was not the one the boys had been
taken through the other night.

"What time do the kids go out an play?" he asked suddenly, interrupting
the woman without even realizing it.

"Oh. Various times. The older ones are sent outside as soon as they get
in from school during the season, but right now, they go in shifts."

"Shifts? Why?"

"Well, it's pretty unfair for three year olds to have to compete with
ten year olds for the swings."

Scully gave a faint smile as was expected of them, and Mulder beamed his
fake, I understand smile.

"So how late do the shifts go? I mean, will you still have kids out
there at three, four, five in the afternoon?"

"Well we close at six. So six, really."

Mulder looked expectantly at Scully who merely shook her head as if to
say, "that doesn't prove anything."

They were taken around the entire place, shown various activities for
the children to do, and stared at by little three year olds with peanut
butter sandwich smeared on their faces.

"How old is your daughter? I can show you where she'd be."

Mulder sighed and licked his lips. "Three. Almost four."

Scully was clenching his hand tightly and he looked down at her with
strength in his eyes.

She nodded and he flicked his eyes back to the untouched door off the
common room.

Scully nodded imperceptibly and snagged Karen Banks' arm. "We uh, also
have a baby. Could we see the nursery?"

The nursery was in a different section and cut off from the rest of the
kids. Mulder nodded with relief and Karen looked surprised.

"I got the impression there was just the one, Emily."

"Well, we didn't realize you had facilities for babies." Scully said
smoothly. "And I need to go back to work as soon as I can."

Karen nodded. "Well, I'll show then."

She led them back through the rooms and to the other section.

Suddenly Mulder made a noise. "Uh, do you have a restroom I can use?"

Karen smiled and nodded, then pointed out where to go. Luckily, the
bathrooms were close to the common room.

He could always say he got lost; the woman's directions were somewhat
confusing anyway.
~~~~~

Scully had been stalling for ten mintues, playing with one of the
eighteen month old babies in the room and hoping that Mulder would be
coming back very soon.

Karen didn't seem to notice, she merely laughed with her and carried
around a one year old in her arms.

As the little boy she held squirmed, Scully kept looking back to the
door, glancing out and trying not to attract Karen's attention.

"These kids look well loved here." she murmured.

Karen's smile brightened. "Well it's funny that you mention that. See,
we
have a group of students here that are researching the effects of love
in the care of a child."

Scully's eyes narrowed. "How do you mean?"

"Well, this group had been over in Bosnia and other war torn places
where the orphanages are overrun and none of the kids get the kind of
attention they need. Within months half of the children died because
they don't have love."

"Aren't they getting proper medical attention?" she said, shocked.

"Of course. But no love. No one over there can pick them up and hold
them and rock them. Some kids start to scream if they're touched,
they've been so long without human contact."

"So this group is watching the kids here?"

"Yeah, they've asked the parents and are simply seeing how much
healthier these kids are."

"Oh."

Scully frowned and kept the little boy in her arms distracted with a
foam football he immediately stuck in his mouth.

The research didn't sound any good. There was no basis for comparison.
These kids went home every day and the scientists would have no control
over how much attention they got. It wouldn't work scientifically as a
study unless they had groups they could control.

So what was this?

"Ah, sorry. I got a little distracted on the way back."

She looked up and saw Mulder, holding in his arms a little girl with
wide eyes. She smiled at the comical look he was giving the child; he
probably scooped her up off the floor to have a good excuse.

Karen sighed. "Was she running off?"

"Yes, but I caught her."

"Thanks, Mr. Miller. I appreciate it."

She took the little girl from his arms and said, "Follow me. We'll take
her back where she belongs then get you some papers to fill out."

Mulder went to Scully's side and bent down to whisper in her ear.

"I found out a lot."

She looked up at him with dark eyes. "I did too."
~~~~~

Their room was dark when they got back and she didn't attempt to pull
open the curtain either.

He sank down onto his bed and looked at her for a long time.

"I think I should go first," he said.

She watched the nervousness creep across his eyes and settle in his
stomach as he leaned back into the headboard.

"Should I sit?" she joked.

He nodded and she paled, sinking to his bed.

"I found a long hallway, leading into nothing, basically. There were
three doors off the hall. One led to some stairs that I explored later
and the other two were huge freezers."

She could see where this was going. "Was it like that fertility clinic?
With the . . . clones?"

He nodded. "I . . . I found yours again."

She chewed her lip but showed no outward signs that this was upsetting
her.

He took a deep breath. "But, Scully. There was more . . ."

She was locked in his eyes, unable to move, to clamp her hands over her
ears and just not hear him like she wanted to do.

"A whole entire wall of shelving had . . . well, embryos? I think that's
what they were. Fetuses. Something like that. Devoloped enough so that I
could tell they were . . . babies, but not if they were human."

"Frozen?"

"No."

Her breath hitched and she turned her eyes away from him. "What . . .
what else was there?"

"Names. The uh, unwilling donors."

She paled and he didn't need to say it. She could tell by his eyes that
he had found her name there.

"What else, Mulder? What else?"

She didn't know why, but she had an overwhelming need to know why this
had happened, what was there.

"I stayed there a long time, looking, making sure I wasn't dreaming it
or something. The other name . . . with yours, I mean. It was mine."

She stared at him.

Stared.

"What. . .?"

His face grew red and his eyes pulled away from hers. "I'm sorry."

She shook her head and pretended it didn't matter, that it didn't change
anything.

His mouth was dry; he couldn't, he wouldn't tell her what he did.

He had killed it. Shut down the computers and moniters next to it and
drained it of that green fluid. He didn't care. His child . . oh, no . .
. he wouldn't let it be like that. Ever.

But he couldn't tell her.

"I went and started down the stairs and I heard all these funny sounds.
I stopped halfway down and realized I'd been gone a long time, so I
turned back around. But I heard something, Scully. Like a child crying.
I think those boys were down there. Those boys and kids a whole lot
younger."

Presented with this information, the only conclusion she could draw was
that these children were being grown, harvested by abductions similiar
to her own, and tested for some reason.

Tested. It made her shiver.

"The . . . that room, Mulder. With my name and yours . . . what did you
do?"

He was startled and stared at her. "What do you mean?"

"I mean . . . Mulder. . . much as I value human life . . . that is no
way for a human, a child, to live. Did you . . . I need to know-"

"I killed it." he whispered and with his words, he let his head fall
forward onto his chest.

He heard her choke back an agonized sound and he couldn't look at her.

Hearing this, she could not say he had done the right thing, yet she
could not blame him. She was only glad he'd had the courage to do what
he believed was right, the courage to stop something they'd never get a
chance to really stop entirely.

She couldn't condone what he'd done, but she couldn't condemn him
either.

His hand was on the bed, and she reached out for it, holding his fingers
tightly.

He glanced up at her and nodded softly.

"I should tell you what I found," she began and proceeded to fill him
in.
~~~~~

Her bed was a mess of his junk food and her attempts to clean it off.

She sighed and simply let him stay sacked out there, turning instead to
his bed and pulling down the covers.

"Are you going to sleep, Scully?" he asked.

"No. It's only eight. I'm getting comfortable."

"Well, come over here. We can talk and then I'll let you have your bed
back."

She crawled over to her own bed and snuggled down into the covers,
wrinkling her nose.

"I think I'll take yours. It smells like Dorritos."

He smiled. 

She could see his mind was not on Dorritos. 

"Scully, I think we ought to sneak in there tomorrow night."

"I think so."

He looked at her with surprise. "Why are you agreeing with me?"

"Because, foolish as this is, I want to see it for myself. I need to see
it."

He tilted his head. "I have some theories, Scully."

She groaned. "More Children's Crusade?"

He gave her a tiny smile. "Yeah, in a way. From what you told me, I
think they really are testing kids down there. I think maybe they're
seeing how much of a difference a supporting family makes to a kid. If
they see it's necessary in order to have the best . . . whatever it is
they're breeding for, then they might start setting up little families."

"Mulder, that's off the wall."

"But Scully. Think how important love is. They did that famous
experiment with the baby monkeys, remember? They set up a cloth dummy
monkey that gave no food and a cold, wire one that had a bottle. And the
monkey went to the cloth one for comfort and to sleep, even to feed,
balancing in its lap to reach the food offered by the wire monkey."

"So, what does that have to do with this?"

"If they found that depriving a child of love made him or her a better
soldier, do you think the army wouldn't take advantage of that?"

"How do you know that for sure?"

"Why the hell would there be a baby in there with our names on it? Why
else, Scully?"

She jerked away at his loud, harried voice.

"To make a good soldier?" she pressed, still not buying it.

"Or to make a good colonist."

She shuddered and buried her nose into the bedspread. "Do you really
think they're doing that?"

"We won't know till we find out, huh?"

"I'm not sure I want to find out," she murmured and slipped over to his
bed, ignoring his silent pleas for her to stay.

She clicked off the light. 

"Good night, Mulder." she whispered.

After a long, long silence she heard him speak: 

"I'm sorry I killed our baby."
~~~~~

end Wednesday
adios
RM