Title: Joyful are the Waterdrops
Author: kim1013
Series: Sequel to Folded Like A Saint and The Present Implies Presence.

Summary: After 10 years apart, our heroes struggle with knowing each other again. Rebuilding is hard to do.

As soon I saw him in the doorway, I realized knowing him again would be like putting my mouth to a crack in a glass order to put out a raging fire. Going back would be a futile exercise; going forward would be a challenge. I saw from the way that he looked at my children - our children - the wind was knocked out of him - out of his soul. He narrowed his eyes just a fraction and I knew he hurt. There was a deep gash in his psyche.

I could almost hear his mind whirl about, trying to fit the puzzle pieces together. What was he thinking?

How could an infertile woman have children? Did she adopt? But how could they look so much like her?

We stood speechless, staring at each other, daring the other to speak. I turned and asked the kids to please go upstairs to their rooms. Melissa and William reluctantly left me in the presence of the intriguing stranger.

I invited him into the living room, and he entered with trepidation. He did not know how to act either. I suppose it's a small comfort to me.

I'm worried about how to even begin talking with him.

I fear we have nothing in common after ten years apart. I mourned his loss long ago and I am reluctant to open my heart and mind to him. He *is* a stranger to me now.

She looked at me as if I were a phantom, a specter who didn't belong in the house of the living. I could imagine how she felt, but it did not feel the same for me. I was in the forest of Oregon just yesterday and the week that followed my search for her was just a waking nightmare. How could I even begin to explain my situation to her?

I stood, without speaking, at the threshold. She took in my appearance with her cloudy blue eyes.

Was my coming here the wrong thing? I didn't expect open arms - that gesture was the farthest thing from my mind. Relief? Well, I saw a flicker of challenge, if only for a moment, but then it was replaced with caution. Maybe she thinks I'm a clone.

I see hesitation in her stance. I know she is wondering what do with me--the unknown variable that must be factored into her life. My Scully, older but still the same. She speaks to me in a husky voice, inviting me to sit down in her living room.

I think it's time for me to speak, to break the hardened space between us.

"This is a nice house. I like the dormer window," I say. How mundane. How plebian. How incredibly stupid. C'mon, I think to myself, is that the best you can do? She stares at me with wonder.

He sits across from me on the recliner while I perch on the edge of the couch. He looks restless. I can tell he's searching for something to say, to make the discomfort go away.

Where has he been?

Such a common compliment from an uncommon man -- but it's so Mulder. I'm trying to smile on the outside while I test different words in my mind, unsure of what I could possibly say to this man. He behaves as if this were the most ordinary thing in the world.

Come to Scully's house and she'll make everything okay again.

But I can't; I don't know how or where to begin.

"Mulder . . ." I begin, but my thoughts stopped abruptly by the blissful, expectant look on his face.

What did he expect from me -- divine revelation?

I try again: "Mulder, how are you?"

I *cannot* believe I said that. It's as bad as him commenting on my house. I shake my head, warning him not to interrupt my befuddled thoughts.

I have no idea what to say to him.

She says my name and her voice trails off. I look at her, hoping for more than my name from her lips. She opens her mouth again and asks me how I've been.

She's struggling. Scully has no idea what to say to me. Her face is slightly flushed and I think I see the beginning of tears in her eyes. She blinks them away as soon as she thinks I've seen them.

And then she asks me how I've been. I open my mouth to answer, but she moves her arms, asking me without words not to interrupt her.

I feel like I've been flattened by an eighteen wheeler. Scully -- my Scully -- has no goddamn idea what to say to me.

Oh, God, why did I come here? She has a *life* now, with the children she's always wanted, and probably the husband and the golden retriever, too, although I don't see them. I'm sure they'll show up soon.

I close my eyes and rub my forehead in frustration as a small groan escapes from me.

"Scully, I'm sorry," I say as I get up from her recliner. " I didn't mean to intrude. Forget I ever showed up. Apologize to your family for me."

I lumber to the door, heartsick and weak with want for things I know I'll never have.

As I reach for the doorknob, I hear the stairs creak behind me. Scully's children are sitting on the steps, eavesdropping and watching me leave. The girl looks like Samantha, but then I'm used to seeing my sister in the face of every little girl I come across.

She looks at me with calm blue-green eyes and her brother sits, unmoving and unspeaking next to her.

"Where are you going mister?" she says. "I don't think my mom is done talking with you."

She looks to the right and I follow her gaze to see Scully standing in the entrance to the small foyer.

The boy remains silent, seeming to contemplate the situation.

I still have no idea what to say to him. He is a miracle I don't dare believe in for fear he will disappear, this time forever. How do I banish uncertainty and hurt go away in a man that is always shadowed with them? What does he expect from me?

I almost have the requisite two and a half children with the twins, my life is sadly lacking in other areas. There's no bounding dog and husband yelling, "Honey, I'm home!" as he walks through the door.

They exist only in my fantasies.

I'm afraid his brave front is cracking; I know so.

He is as uncertain as I am. He sighs - or groans and massages his forehead with trembling fingers. I know what's coming next. Please, Mulder, I think, don't do this to me again: Don't ditch me.

How could he believe I would have the perfect life?

My life changed forever when he did not return from Oregon. Anyway, perfection has no place in a life as haphazard as mine.

He walks to the front door. I follow him and hesitate in the doorway.

I hear Missy speak to him, but I pay no attention.

I'm focused solely him. Please stay, I plead, praying that silent communication of ours still works, I don't know what I would do if you left again. I think my prayer is answered because he looks at me with a lost, sad expression on his face.

I look toward the stairs and shoo the kids. I watch to make sure they are out of earshot. Bless Missy for her nosiness, but I do not want her and Will around if I start to discuss them with Mulder.

I sniffle and rub my hand under my nose like a child who's forgotten a handkerchief.

"Mulder, please come back to the living room with me," I say as I feel more tears form in my eyes. "I have questions and I *know* you do."

I try for a weak smile but I can't.

"We could pretend it was the old days and we're discussing an X-File."

He stands at the door, hand still on the brass knob and blinks slowly at me.

I could never deny her anything.

She looks small and helpless framed by the moulding, but I believe she's as strong as ever. She must be in order to say these things to me. She tries to smile as she asks me to stay.

I will.

I follow her back into the living room. This time I will ask what I have been waiting and wanting to ask ever since I first returned.

"Scully, what the hell happened?" I say. "A week ago, I woke up in my apartment, but things were different.

I could only tell it was my apartment by the number on the door. Those weren't my things, even if the layout was the same, and I sure as hell didn't know the screaming, hysterical woman who opened the door - with her key, I might add."

I stopped to think. "I knew right away something had happened. I couldn't figure it out what. My first thought was of you; I had to get to you. I headed to your apartment, taking in the changes that surrounded me. Then I saw a newspaper rack and noticed that ten years passed while the last thing I remember is searching for a UFO in the forest with Skinner.

"I almost gave up right then but I knew I had to find you, make sure you were all right. I finally got to your apartment; by that time I was a man crazed. My whole world had gone on without me. I banged on your apartment door and disturbed a few people in the process. You weren't there. You had disappeared without a trace.

"Scully," I say, "I cannot tell you how happy I was that I found you at last -- It's enough for me to almost believe in some kind of a God."

I pause to catch my breath and gather courage to continue.

"When your daughter opened the door, a part me died.

I knew you had finally found what you wanted: a life, a family."

I ask her the question I had asked before I began my story: "Seriously, Scully, how have you been? I really want to know."

My brilliant partner does not know, is all I can think to myself. He's still bull-headedly thinking I have the model life. Doesn't he know that dream died long ago when I joined the X-Files? Then I dreampt of truth and justice. When that dream died, I dreampt of his return. Now my dream is real. Mulder is the same inquisitive soul he was when he disappeared, the same as before when he stole my heart from within the confines of a wall of skepticism. He is only older and therefore appears wiser, with his gray temples and deeper lines on his forehead. But he is not wise to the ways of my heart - not anymore.

He told me his tale and I believe him. I stopped being a die-hard skeptic long ago. I wish I could go into his mind and retrieve his lost years. I know how it is: three months taken from me changed my life.

His life changed too, and I can only imagine what he is feeling: it's probably a hundred times worse than I ever felt. He's stalling to avoid talking about himself. His focus is solely on me. I'll allow this for now, but he won't get away with this for long.

"You want to know about me, Mulder?" I've decided just to give him the news that he is a father, after a short introduction there's just no easy way to do it. I practiced for a while the year after he was...gone.

I still cannot think of him as being taken from me.

"Do you remember the time I spent in Oregon? How I kept feeling weak and run-down?" He nodded as his face paled. I thought so:, ten years ago when I began acting sick, he thought my cancer had returned.

I smiled thorough newly formed tears. "I wish you could've been there to hear my news," I say in a whispery voice choked with too much emotion.

"The day after you disappeared, I found out I was pregnant."

The edge of her mouth twitches as if she is about to smile, but she is still and I see more tears in her eyes.

Yes, I want to know about her, about her perfection; I want to know what she's been doing. I want to look at her until I go blind. I want to dwell on her because I cannot dwell on myself right now. When she tells me of her illness in Oregon, I think I nearly faint. I thought those bastards have given her cancer again. But she's here now, alive and healthy.

Thriving, in fact. They have not killed her.

Perhaps when I vanished They felt no need to threaten her anymore. Maybe my leaving saved her life.

She smiles through the new tears dripping from her sky-blue eyes. She's happy. News? What news? The Invasion was stopped? Listen, Mulder: *her* news, I think to myself. She is so lovely, I notice. She was lovely before but now she glows. Getting out of a dark basement sure has helped her complexion a lot.

Then what I hear catches up to my intruding thoughts.

"Pregnant?" I say in disbelief and stare at her.

"What? I thought...they took your ova... How could?" I stop. My brain is frozen. I cannot think. The word keeps echoing in my mind: pregnant, pregnant, pregnant. Was she seeing someone then?

That time is very fresh in my and I don't remember that she was seeing someone. There was that one time when she and I. . . . No. The fates could not, would not allow Fox William Mulder to be a father; I'm not worthy to be a father. That time is tucked away to a sacred place in my heart. She probably doesn't even remember the moment.

I feel a muscle in my jaw tic. Then my face sags.

He is a lucky bastard, whoever he is.

He's just looking at me. I don't know if any of my words are getting to him. He seems in a trance. He blinks once and then again. And I know which word got to him. He seems dumbfounded; no, more like shell-shocked. What must he be thinking? He says something about my ova and then stops. I see his "panic face." Oh, no. Don't black out on me now, Mulder. I get up, grasp his hand, and lead him with me back to the couch to sit beside me.

How could he ever think that I would love someone besides him?

I decide just to continue to tell him my story.

"I told Skinner as soon as I found out and asked him to keep it to himself for a while. After I got out of the hospital, I used the resources of the X-Files to try to find you. I went back to the Oregon forest but it was as though you were never there. No physical evidence could be found to substantiate that Skinner saw a UFO. I had to believe him, he was the one there, because your disappearance under other circumstances would make no sense. CGB Spender was presumed dead and Marita and Krycek had disappeared they apparently wanted no part of whatever had happened.

"While I was in Oregon I searched - and prayed - for clues. I could find none. I was possessed with the thought of finding evidence. I needed to know. I needed some reassurance that someday you would return but that didn't happen. Sometimes it seemed as though you simply ceased to exist. I began to think I had dreamed out life together. The only reassurance I had was the life growing inside me, and the knowledge that I was returned."

I paused and took some deep breaths. I waited for a comment from Mulder, but he just sat, stunned.

"I returned to Washington and as soon as Skinner saw me he made me take some time off. He was of such great support and help to me, I don't know if I could have gone on without him."

Skinner died of a heart attack two years ago. The nanocytes ravaged his body. His perfect health could not save him. I'll tell Mulder this later, he's got too much to deal with.

"After I couldn't hide my pregnancy, I stayed at home and Mom came to stay with me. I wanted to stay at her house. She insisted I stay at my apartment, she said since my life had changed so much already, I needed a place to feel safe. I think she was secretly hoping you'd show up at the door one day.

Needless to say, that didn't happen. Mom gave up hope after a couple of years and I got on with my life. I still carried your name next to my heart.

But Mulder, I believed -- was convinced -- that you would someday be returned to me."

This is remarkable. I've just told Mulder that those children upstairs are his, and he's just looking at me, blinking, saying nothing. I wonder what's going on in his head behind that sphinx-like silence.

The children one floor above me are mine.

I feel a huge smile form on my lips. How could my dream have come true?

"Scully," I say, then stop. You don't call the mother of your children by her last name. "Dana," I say, "you're saying that I'm their father."

I don't know what else to say. But then I've felt pretty flustered this whole encounter and I'm positive Scully has to be feeling the same way. What can I say? I feel like I've been whacked on the head and woke up to an alternate reality. The only one who makes sense here is me. That's a hell of a change.

I decide to try again - and I hope - get my foot out of my mouth.

"Scully, you say these children are mine. How can I believe that when I - for me, anyway - just started dreaming about it yesterday? I wanted to have children with you, but that was more of a fantasy because you couldn't have children. I guess we could get an egg donor and have an in vitro procedure done... you know a few years down the line when our relationship got to that point.

"It seems utterly ridiculous that I have to contend for your affections now, after just coming back."

I stop for a moment when another thought strikes me.

"You know, what's really strange, Scully," I say, slowly, "is that I just got back and I find that I have to get in line for your affection and time. I'm not the only one who needs you now, am I?"

Oh God, I sound like a complete good-for-nothing.

I'm behaving like a husband who had been away on a long and frustrating business trip instead of a person who's just been reunited with his other half.

She's looking at me as though I grew another head.

I deserve to be shot and booted out the door. I grimace to hide my emotions. I actually want this to happen so I don't have to face the Eyebrow and the stony expression that goes with it.

The reaction is not quite what I was hoping for.

But I understand I've just given him two shocks: William and Melissa. He covers his eyes and tries to cower. He doesn't quite succeed. He is too big to hide in the small corner of the couch.

Should I be angry with him? Should I try to understand what is happening in his mind? I don't know the answers; I can only react.

I smile at him for reassurance as he peeks from a small crack in his fingers. I wonder if he knows how hurt he looks - a grown man hiding from me like a child for fear of punishment that won't come. He sees my smile.

"Mulder, this may come as a shock to you, but I don't *want* those things from you." I see fear in his eyes. I should rephrase that.

"What I mean is, I want us to be happy and comfortable with our roles in each other's lives, if we choose to be. I realized the longer you were gone, the harder it would become. I knew that being a father to two growing children would be difficult to comprehend.

"Mulder, you have missed so much of Melissa and William's lives, but now you have the chance to have a life with them," I say, softly. "You have a chance and *they* now have the chance to know the man who is so much a part of their lives in spite of being absent."

I can see the hope in Mulder's eyes, but it fades fast. He can't bring himself to believe that he could ever have a place in our children's lives. I continue, hoping to reassure him.

"I've told them little about you," I say. "I was vague about you and happened to you -- or what was thought to have happened to you. The truth seemed a little too 'out there' for a child to grasp."

That is all I can think of to say to him. Difficulty is nothing new in his life.

How could I tell him that I didn't want to show weakness and humanity in front of those two representations of my feelings for him?

How could I tell him, that when they were new-born, it hurt me so much to look at them and to know that they may never know the remarkable man that is their father?

How could I tell him it took me a better part of a year to want to smile at them and think of what we could've had together?

Pain is a part of living, and struggle is nothing new in his life, but it was new to me when Melissa and William were born. My life became a lie, my pretty picture of their father a deception. The biggest lie of all was to myself: denying the absence of a man who had so much presence, denying that he was dead because my heart and soul demanded that he live; yet the truth was not nearly so concrete.

Mulder does not need to know these things now-I will save these truths for foggy nights beside the fireplace when we hold each other and whisper our fears under the covers, in darkness.

She has not told them much about me? I can understand that. What can you say to children -- how could they possibly grasp a farce of a life like mine? I have been a non-entity for ten years. What could they gain from knowing about me?

Scully trails off . . . Her eyes deepen in color.

She's thinking not-so-pleasant thoughts. I recognize the look of uncertainty and fear because I have felt it many times and am intimately acquainted with the feeling.

I wish I could take her pain, ball it up, and throw it in a trashcan with a three-point shot. I wish she would open up to me more. But she is an enigma - a smart, challenging enigma - is part of what draws me to her.

"Scully," I say to her, needing to assure her - and myself - "why don't we do this like we have done everything else: We take it one day at a time. I can't make promises, *and neither can you*, on how things'll turn out. But I do know that I will give it my best. If that doesn't work - I'll try even harder. I want this life with you. I don't know when I realized it but I know that I have wanted this for what seems like eternity."

I pass my hand through my hair and on down my face.

I see a twitching in her lips. Does she want to smile or cry? I think either would be a catharsis for my Scully.

Continuing on I say: "This isn't how I pictured us, but that's the way things are with us. How many times have things been difficult for us and how many times have we shoved those times aside and walked on, only to find some happiness further on? We may have paused for a rest but we never gave up."

I feel drained. 'Checking out' after a ten year stay in oblivion takes a lot out of a man. I'll never get those years back. It angers me; all I can do is look forward. Scully and those kids - my kids - upstairs are the only things keeping me sane. My life has become a joke. I never thought I would become my own X-File.

I am the only one who can give him peace. Melissa, William, and I are the only people to whom he is tied now. We may be the only things that are holding him here, preventing him from running after his own invisible demons. Even though his speech has said all of the things that I need - wanted - hear form him. His acceptance has lightened my heart and eased my fears.

No more conspiracies. No more lies. No more search for elusive truths. No more questioning your own motives. I decide then to give him a life he can be happy in; a life where he doesn't need look over his shoulder constantly and wonder whom to trust.

I get up and go the entrance of the living room. His eyes follow my movements.

"Missy, Will, come down here," I call up the stairs.

"There's someone you need to meet."

FINIS

Thanks: To Melissa for beta-ing and recommending.

Also a great big, huge, gigantic THANK YOU!! :o) to the Mentors in X for the suggestions/corrections.

They made my work better. And to Velvit for a last look through.

Dedication: This for my sister, Kerrie.