#doggett

Ways to approach the poll if the character isn’t a royal:

She thinks about him every day.

It comes as easily and involuntarily as breath. Some memories arrive soft and warm, like small hands she almost remembers holding. Others strike hard and sudden, sharp enough to leave her dizzy. But she welcomes all of them, every version of him her mind can still hold, because remembering is the only way she still gets to love him. She carries his memory the way she once carried his small body: carefully, tenderly, terrified of dropping something precious. Too afraid to let go.

Sometimes she sits in his room and traces the outline of his life. The small bed with the faded blue blanket. The shelf where picture books lean against one another. The stuffed bear with one loose button eye. Every object feels like a sentence cut off halfway.

She opens his dresser drawer and lifts one of his shirts. The rocket ship one. Soft at the collar from being pulled over his head again and again. She presses it to her face and breathes in. There is no scent left. Time has taken that too. Still, she imagines him warm from playing outside.

There are days when she wakes up and for one quiet second her heart expects to hear him in the hallway. A small voice. Movement. Life. Then the silence hits.

She keeps his shoes where he left them. One upright. One on its side. Sometimes she kneels and touches the heel where the rubber is worn smooth. The dirt on them feels like the last proof that he existed in the real world and not just in her mind.

She dusts his toys. Straightens the books. Replaces batteries in the flashlight he loved, even though no one will turn it on again. These small acts are what motherhood looks like now. Invisible caretaking of a child who is no longer here.

She knows there are children who could wear these shirts, hold these toys, read these books. But letting go of these objects would feel like letting the world become a place where he was never here at all.

Barbara is a mother without a child. The world does not know what to do with that. Some days she doesn’t either. But she knows this: her love did not end. It has nowhere to go now, so it settles into the careful maintenance of a life frozen in time.

It took her a long time to understand the way John carried his grief. Stillness hurt him. Quiet made the loss echo. So he searched. He hunted for leads, records, suspects, theories. If there was even one unanswered question or unexamined possibility, he chased it because it was the only way he still knew to be a father. Justice became the only future he could imagine for their son, even if it meant tearing himself apart to find it.

She understood wanting answers. But every new suspect forced her to picture things she could not survive thinking about. Men with hollow eyes, who hurt children for pleasure. Every time John spoke a name, she had to imagine that kind of man touching her son, and something inside her caved in. She knew it hurt John as well, but he kept going, as if the pain itself mattered. As if suffering was the only appropriate response to the fact that he had not been able to stop what happened. He was hunting for punishment. For truth. 

Their grief became two separate languages no one could translate.

The distance came quietly. First in sleep. Then, in careful, shortened conversations. Later in the rhythm of their days. He lived in pursuit, and she lived in the aftermath. Over time, she stopped expecting the sound of his key in the door.

When the space between them finally became permanent, it felt less like a decision and more like inevitability. Love remained, but love was not enough to hold up the weight of everything they had lost.

And yet, despite the distance, when she stands beside him on the beach with the ashes in his hands, she feels the same instinct she did when their son was small and frightened. She wants to protect something tender and breaking.

The box in her hands is light. Too light. Nothing about it resembles the boy she carried or the laughter she knew or the future she imagined.

John opens it with unsteady hands. Her chest rises and locks, and for a moment she isn’t sure her body remembers how to breathe. The world keeps moving. Indifferent. Unchanged. Her son’s absence is enormous, but the world refuses to notice.

When the wind lifts what remains of their son and carries it out over the water, the pain is sharp and deep and strangely calm. Her eyes follow them until they’re lost in the sky. The tears come slowly at first, and then without hesitation. 

This is motherhood now. Loving what cannot return.

When she looks at John, his posture is different. The tightness he’s carried for years has eased. His shoulders are lower. His expression isn’t hardened or braced. He looks exhausted, but free.

Near the dunes, Monica waits with her hands folded in front of her. She doesn’t intrude. She doesn’t look away. Her presence is steady, and John seems to draw a breath he hasn’t taken in years. Barbara feels a quiet gratitude then, knowing he won’t have to walk forward alone. He needs someone who isn’t tethered to him by the same wound.

She pulls the empty box close and rests her hand over the lid the way she once rested her hand over a small sleeping back.

“I love you, Luke,” she whispers. “Mommy’s here.”

The ocean keeps moving. The wind keeps blowing. The sorrow is still there, familiar as breath, but it no longer feels final. It feels like a thread woven into a larger life she is still learning how to live.

She will always be his mother. That truth is enough.

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I believe in God the Father almighty, Creator of heaven and earth. And in Jesus Christ, His only Son, our Lord, Who was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried. He descended into hell; the third day He rose again from the dead; He ascended into heaven, and sits at the right hand of God the Father almighty, from thence He shall come to judge the living and the dead.

I pray to You in all times, in all my actions, even when it may not look that way, but I am still lost. What is good? What is evil? How can we decide when it is You and your son who are to judge? I live my life in faith, focused on the good, following in your footsteps and in your plan. I ask for guidance and for strength as I start this new life outside the walls of the prison that had been my home for far too long.

I believe in the Holy Spirit, the holy Catholic Church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body and life everlasting.

Amen.

I suffer through this life, unable to control what happens around me when my desire is only to follow in Your teachings. I strive to love my neighbors as myself. I never seek to harm. I devote myself to prayer, to my faith, holding my rosary as I repeat the familiar words.

Our Father, Who art in heaven, Hallowed be Thy Name. Thy Kingdom come. Thy Will be done, on earth as it is in Heaven.

My intentions are pure. I never intend to hurt a living creature– be it a fly, a cat… another person. I only strive to be worthy of Your love so that I can join You in the kingdom of heaven.

But my life has been marred with a darkness that follows me no matter where I go. How much I pray.

Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.

Amen.

The evil is not mine. It is of another man, one who will not give me rest. He intends only to harm, to kill, and the things he has made me do… the people he has taken from this earth and left for me to…

I am disgusted by what I have done in service to this man, when I only want to serve You, Lord. I don’t want to be present in such evil, cleaning up after such sins.

Hail, Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou amongst women and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus.

Your son died for our sins– to free us from ourselves and grant us Your forgiveness. I pray the mysteries– always the sorrowful. The Agony in the Garden, The Scourging at the Pillar, The Crowning With Thorns, The Carrying of the Cross. The Crucifixion.

I tried to protect them. I tried to save them. I returned their bodies to the earth as their souls, by Your grace, moved on to a better place.

I beg Your forgiveness.

I don’t have the power to stop this man. I am trapped in a world of his violence. His evil. I pray that You take him from me and free me from his grasp. I pray that You forgive me for my part in the story of these people’s lives. I pray that You have not lost faith in me, one of Your children here on Earth.

Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death.

Amen.

…

The end is near. I can feel it closing in, and the evils around me will not cease. I look forward to being in Your presence and free of the weight that has followed me through this life. I will walk through the pearly gates, greeting St. Peter, the angels, and saints, and finally be at peace.

Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, And to the Holy Spirit, As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, World without end.

Amen.

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St. John of the Cross 

Catholic Hospital 

Falls Church, VA

Retreating into her mind started when Audrey found the unfinished wooden house under a dusty sheet in the hospital’s basement. Pieces of the miniature hospital building yet to be glued together, abandoned by whoever built its full-sized version, had called to her. It took a long time to get the tiny windows on the outside of St. John’s right, but Audrey didn’t mind. Seeing the pieces come together made her feel good because she did it. No one helped. Not like they do upstairs when she delivers the patient’s flowers. Not like they’ve always done:

“You’re just not capable, honey,” her mama would say.

“Can’t you read?” the kids at school teased. 

“Nursing just isn’t for you, dear,” her teachers said. 

“Let us help you,” the nuns here had told her.  

Audrey sighs. After she delivers flowers and helps the nuns with simple tasks, she comes down to her small room in the basement, kneeling in front of her wooden building in the center of the room, and lets the real world slip away. 

Until people had started showing up in the hospital world inside her head. Patients. Ones who were hurt badly and whose families would cry beside them upstairs at the same time Audrey would talk to them in her mind. They’re all good people who love each other. Like Monica and John.

“Monica?” Audrey bites her lip as she approaches Monica’s spirit sitting on her mind’s hospital floor. Audrey can see she’s been crying. “John wanted me to tell you something.”

Monica stands. “You gave him my message?”

Monica called John a dog person, and with the way he’s fighting for Monica now, like the loyalty of a barking dog, Audrey believes it. 

“He says you don't have very long. He says you have to give them some kind of sign.” Guilt at bringing her bad news upsets Audrey as much as the words do Monica. “I know, I... I-I'm sorry.”

“Are you really going to leave me here to die?” Monica’s desperate. Audrey wants to help, but she can’t. 

She’s just not capable. 

“I can't… do... anything,” she tries explaining. Hot tears of frustration well in her eyes as she paces. “There's... there's something wrong. You know, up here. And I can't help anyone. I deliver the flowers. It's all I do! And I have to even get help with that because I-I can't read what's on the little cards.”

“You can't read?” Monica’s voice is gentle.

“I see it all jumbled up.” Audrey hates this. Hates how she can’t see things the way everyone else does. Hates being the one who just can’t do anything right!

Monica grabs a chart at the empty nurses' station and shows it to Audrey. “This is your hospital. It's you who created it. It's all you, Audrey.”

Tears are still falling as Audrey looks. The letters are mixed up, but Monica’s words make sense. 

“This place is all you,” Monica says with a confidence Audrey admires. “And that means you can make the rules work any damn way that you want them to.”

Something clicks inside Audrey then. A sense of hope that she really can help someone else begins to build. 

Monica’s hand covers hers. “You can help me escape.”

Audrey steps out from the St. John’s in her mind to reappear in the one in the real world when her bedroom door suddenly opens. 

Dr. Prejiers walks in, shutting the door behind him. 

Audrey doesn’t move while the doctor talks about being accused of killing his patients. Her heart’s racing, feeling something terrible is about to happen. She may not be good at some things, but she is good at reading people. At seeing the bad and the good beneath still faces. And Dr. Prejiers is a bad man. She’s never liked the way he looks at her, like a bug crawling down hospital halls. 

And now, Audrey knows, he’s here to kill her like one. 

“You're not going to yell out, are you, Audrey?” he says as he holds up a syringe with yellow liquid inside. 

Audrey wants to scream. For John, for God… but nothing comes out before the bad doctor lunges forward, wrapping his arm around her, stabbing her in the neck with the needle. 

Audrey gasps. It burns as she sinks to the floor. The real world darkens as Dr. Prejiers looms over her. Her head lolls and her arms and legs are so heavy as she stares at her wooden hospital. Her escape…

“Audrey, what's happening?” Monica says as she suddenly appears within Audrey’s mind. 

“You have to go.” Monica follows Audrey outside to the edge of the building. “This way.”

“No. If I do that, I'll burn up,” Monica panics. “I'll die.”

“No. Not now.” That confidence that Audrey admired from Monica just minutes ago is within her now. “But you have to hurry.”

“What about you?” 

Audrey knows Monica can tell something terrible happened to her elsewhere. But time is running out, and Audrey will not take her last breath without finally helping someone else. 

“I know now. I know who told me to build it,” she says as Monica looks down into the shimmering void. 

Monica takes a deep breath, and jumps into the darkness, to the life waiting for her on the other side. 

Audrey closes her eyes, feeling the pulse of peace for the first time. This is her creation, her world, and she’d made it with her own mind after a gentle push of a higher being. Maybe this was God’s plan. The wooden hospital had called to her for a reason. Audrey could never be a nurse, but she’s still saved a life today.

Even if it has cost her her own.

Staring down at the mist below, she decides to step forward — no longer out of fear, but faith. 

Audrey smiles as a bright light warms her face. With arms outstretched, Audrey is ready now to slowly, peacefully, join the other side.

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Members of the group pace around the dome of the spacecraft, whispering their concerns, quietly judging their leader, Josepho’s, plan in his absence. Two of their dead members, now burnt to a crisp within the iron belly of the craft, surely felt the same uncertainty. 

Janine paces now, too.

She has done everything right. Has followed every instruction, every calling made of her. And yet, the plan is unraveling. Josepho had told her, told them all, that this would work. That stealing Agent Scully’s child in order to protect him from his future path of rebellion is God’s prophecy. 

Janine looks down at the baby cradled in her arms and frowns.

She’s never wanted children of her own. God has not given her the urge to go forth and multiply. Yet while staring into the depths of William Scully’s hazel eyes, Janine inconveniently feels a stab of guilt for taking him from someone who so desperately does want him. 

A drop of doubt seeps through her skin.

With a shake of her head, Janine wipes that feeling away, remembering how God spoke to Josepho of a miracle child born to lead. A future saviour coveted by forces of good and evil. How this beloved boy belonging to an enemy of the Soldiers of God will change the world with his mere existence. 

Or ruin it.

It all depends on the beating heart of Fox William Mulder. 

Josepho says so, at least. He has heard the word of God — believes that the miracle child of two genetically unique abductees will follow in his father's footsteps to try and stop the aliens’ return. Unless his father was to be killed. That is the prophecy. 

William fusses, so Janine stops pacing, shushing the boy as she wonders how his mother is taking the demands for the fate of her partner. Mulder must die, and Josepho wants Scully to bring him the head of the man she loves. 

A terrible feeling stirs Janine’s gut. 

The redhead will never do it. Never will a woman who’s survived terminal cancer, buried her partner once already, and birthed their miracle in the middle of a desert will so easily give up this fight. Alien DNA or no, this plan may fail. 

The baby wails in her arms, waving his clenched little fists in protest, as if he knows it, too. 

All of a sudden, the spacecraft makes a loud noise, and the earth vibrates beneath her. Members gasp as the craft hums to life. Janine stiffens, refusing to voice her escalating fears. She’s concerned that the spacecraft has regenerated, like others have before it, protecting itself against all outside interference. It’s a concern that cannot be ignored.

“What is it?” Josepho re-enters the tent in a flurry. “What's happening?”

“The baby started crying… and it just came to life.”

The charred scent of death wafts through the air as the belly of the craft lights up Josepho’s face as bright as the sun. 

Alien DNA…

Janine’s wide eyes lock with Willam’s teary ones when the possibility slams into her. Before betraying the cult, Agent Comer had pulled FBI files on Mulder, showing his anomalous brain activity triggered by God’s words written upon the craft’s surface. The sudden thought of William sharing this same otherworldly gift shoots panic through her veins. The boy continues to cry and it’s almost as if the craft itself can sense when the presence of unique blood is near. Maybe it’s why Mulder could hone in on the craft’s energy the way his child does. Maybe it’s why the ship killed her fellow group members in an act of self-preservation: they were not worthy. Maybe only those with the unique DNA shared by Mulder, Scully, and their son are.

Janine opens her mouth to warn Josepho, but it’s too late. 

A blinding light shoots upward with incredible force, bursting through the tent. Its heat sears her skin, sending her stumbling away from the craft’s center, clutching the squalling child to her chest. 

Then the world goes black…

Janine suddenly wakes to sharp pain rolling through her body like boulders. She’s burnt, badly. And everyone is dead. Through the breath rattling her singed lungs, Janine hears a voice echoing around her. God, perhaps, calling her home. 

“William!” 

The boy cries after his mother. Loud wails tear through the silence. 

He lives. 

Janine slowly, painfully, turns her head, witnessing Agent Scully sprinting toward her screaming son as her fiery hair billows alongside the burning rubble. “Behold, a whirlwind… came out of the north… and a brightness was about it,” Janine rasps, repeating the Bible’s passage coveted by Josepho. 

“Oh my… William?”

Scully instantly scoops him up and holds him tight. She’s sobbing, kissing her baby’s forehead, his face, his hands that grip her shirt as tears of relief stream down her cheeks. 

She shouldn’t be surprised, Janine muses as her vision blurs and breath stutters to a stop, that God’s miracle child will always fight to be found just as fiercely as his parents fight to find one another.

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They brought the American after nightfall. He came in steady, unafraid, eyes already taking measure of the room. The two men who escorted him lingered by the door. They didn’t want to stay, and Caballero could feel it in the way they kept their shoulders turned toward the hall. Their loyalty was a fragile thing, held together by the dread of what he could do to them.

He told them to wait outside. Once the door shut, the silence settled thickly.

Caballero crossed to the table and filled a glass from the sweating pitcher beside him. The fan above made a slow circle, pushing the heat from one side of the room to the other but never truly cooling it. A fly drifted through the current, battered by the weak blades, fighting against the lazy wind that never quite let it land.

The American stood upright, hands at his sides. His clothes were travel-worn, dust still clinging to the cuffs. There was a faint chemical smell from the road. Caballero studied the way he placed his feet — deliberate, balanced, never quite relaxed. It was the stance of someone trained not to give anything away.

“You came to ask questions,” Caballero said. “About a banker named Hollis Rice.”

He nodded once. “He’s missing. People are pointin’ to you.”

“That word means different things here,” Caballero replied. “Missing. Sometimes it means gone. Sometimes it means free.”

“I’ll decide which one he is when I find him.”

Caballero let the remark hang. He’d heard this kind of voice before. Military, but softened by years of bureaucracy. The confidence of someone who believes the world is still ruled by rules. He admired that. It was foolish, but admirable.

“You traveled a very long way just to be disappointed,” Caballero said. “The men you’re chasing don’t fear your country’s law.”

The American’s eyes narrowed slightly. “You think I scare easy?”

“You strike me as the type that doesn’t scare at all. That’s rarer.”

Caballero watched the pulse at the man’s neck. Steady. Even. A body under perfect command. There was nothing frantic or weak in him. Not the usual tremor he saw in men brought here by mistake or desperation. This one stood as if he could wait out the world.

“I was told you help people disappear,” the man said. “You make ‘em forget.”

Caballero smiled faintly. “I help them live without the weight of what they remember.”

“Sounds like the same thing to me.”

The words were precise, not angry. This American was a man who measured every syllable before letting it go. Caballero thought about how uncommon that kind of discipline was, especially in someone alone and far from home.

“Tell me something,” Caballero said. “When you find your missing man, what then?”

“I bring him home.”

“To face what?”

“Whatever’s waiting.”

The answer came without hesitation. Duty, stripped to its core. Caballero wondered if that same conviction would survive what came next.

He rose from his chair and walked closer. “You have no idea who you are dealing with, Federales.”

His chin lifted slightly, an act of defiance for a reserved man. “Guess I’m about to find out.”

That calm. That restraint. Caballero almost regretted what he had to do.

He motioned to the guards in the hall to stay where they were, then gestured for him to sit. The American didn’t move. His eyes stayed fixed on Caballero’s.

“There’s no need to test how far this can go,” Caballero said. “No pain. No fear. Only quiet.”

“You talk too much.”

The smallest spark of humor there, or maybe resolve. Caballero couldn’t tell which. He reached forward slowly, giving the action deserved reverence.

“Then let me be silent.”

His thumbs found the temples. Warm skin, pulse strong. The resistance came at once: a flex of every muscle, the instinct to fight even when the mind couldn’t name the threat. Caballero pressed harder.

The air thickened. The contact opened, and the first surge hit him.

He expected the usual—a scatter of names, images, disconnected moments. What came instead was a wall of feeling. Laughter, sunlight, the weight of a small hand gripping a larger one. A child’s voice, high and bright. Then a scream, sirens, a body in grass. A grief so sharp it made his own breath falter as an uncomfortable knot in his throat threatened to choke him.

He had seen death in many forms, but never love carried this fiercely into loss. It was blinding. For a heartbeat, he nearly pulled away.

He only stopped when the man’s legs gave out. Caballero steadied him with one hand until the tremor stopped. The eyes lost their focus. The tension was gone. The body still stood like a statue, but the man inside had stepped away.

Caballero released him and drew a long breath. The room smelled of sweat. He rubbed his temples, feeling the echo of the stolen memories still burning there.

He bent down. “What is your name?”

John Doggett’s mouth opened, but nothing came. The question didn’t land anywhere. It was as if the word “name” itself had no meaning.

Caballero studied him, still caught between admiration and unease. A man built on discipline, hollowed out by loss. What would be left now?

“Desaparecido,” he said quietly. “You are one of them now.”

The guards entered. They took what remained of John Doggett by the arms and led him out toward the street. He didn’t resist. His feet moved in uncertain rhythm, like someone learning to walk again.

When they were gone, Caballero leaned against the table. His hands were shaking. He looked at the silver skull charm waiting beside the glass of water. It gleamed faintly under the bulb.

He slid it onto his bracelet, filling the newest space. The metal clicked shut, and with it came the faint sound of a child’s laugh, bright and distant, echoing somewhere he could not reach.

He closed his eyes and waited for it to fade.

It did not.

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