Title: A Moment in the Sun
Author: prufrock's love
Rating: R
Keywords: historical au, msr, novel, angst, mytharc, 
light 'other'
Summary: Autumn, New York City, 1953.  A baseball 
player past his prime and a beautiful woman with a 
secret.
Archive: link to
www.geocities.com/prufrocks_love/moment.html
Website: 
www.geocities.com/prufrocks_love/prupage.html
Disclaimer: not mine; don't sue
Silver spoons: Spooning: yes; Skinner's head: 
attached; Jenn: keep reading, you'll be fine; angst-
o-meter: 5.9 out of 10; Snortameter: 7 out of 10 
 
*~*~*~*
A Moment in the Sun
By prufrock's love

The metal tray hit the floor, making Mulder jump and 
sending stainless steel instruments scattering, 
clattering loudly across the polished floor of the 
examination room.  Nonplused, the overhead bulb 
continued to glare down, sullenly illuminating the 
scarlet splatters on the crumpled white shirt on his 
lap, and adding an atmospheric touch to an otherwise 
lackluster All Hallows Eve.  

Staring at the tangle of ruined sutures, swabs, and 
unnamed torture devices, Mulder reconsidered his 
decision to seek medical treatment: a nice, oozing, 
jagged scar might give his face some character.  A 
little blood loss never killed anyone. 

"Idiot girl!" the red-faced doctor exploded at the 
nurse, not acknowledging he had been the one who had 
tipped the table over as he lumbered around. "Get a 
fresh tray and then clean this mess up!  Christ, I 
can't stand incompetence."  
 
Never glancing at the patient, he ordered the nurse 
to call him when everything was ready to proceed; he 
would be in the lounge.  Despite the trashcan beside 
the exam table, Dr. Zucker purposely dropped his 
gloves on the floor for her to pick up and teetered 
out through the swinging doors, taking his Napoleon 
Complex and his three-martini after-dinner snack 
with him.

Mulder and his Oedipus Complex just sat, embarrassed 
to have been witness to such a scene and done 
nothing, hiding under the ice pack pressed to his 
forehead and watching his long legs dangling idly.  
The nurse used the toe of her white shoe to nudge a 
few gloves, sponges, and tweezer-looking things 
aside without comment, and then tilted his face to 
the light so she could see the small cut, sighing to 
herself.   

"Um, nurse?"

"Yes, sir?" she replied, not seeming to notice how 
awkward he felt in his undershirt now that he was 
alone with her.  

"Is another doctor working tonight?  Dr. Zucker 
seems to be, uh, well-"  

'Drunk' would be the missing word.  'Asshole' would 
substitute in a pinch.

"Dr. Zucker is usually-" She cleared her throat. "Do 
you want me to stitch this up so you can go?  It 
looks worse than it is and your x-rays are fine."

"Instead of a doctor?  Can't you just get another 
doctor?"

She leaned back against the cabinet, crossing her 
arms and alternating her weight between her feet.  
"Mr. um, Martin: it's one in the morning on a 
Sunday.  I can get you some Jell-O and Aspirin and 
you can wait for Dr. Willis to come in at six or you 
can let me put three stitches in your head and be 
gone before whoever it is you're trying to avoid 
gets here.  It's up to you.  I'll tell Dr. Zucker he 
did it and he'll never know the difference."    

There didn't seem to be a choice, so he watched 
warily as she readied everything, flicking the 
syringe with her finger to get the bubbles out.  No 
matter how many times he was cut or sewn for various 
injuries, and there had been many over the years,   
he still hated this part: the waitin', knowin' it's 
gonna hurt part.

"Just a little prick, then it will be numb and I can 
put the stitches in.  Come back here, big guy."  

He hadn't realized he was leaning away from her, 
eyeing the needle, until a warm hand took him by the 
shoulder and guided him back under the light.  
Mulder found himself eye-level with her breasts as 
she worked, which he made a great effort not to 
stare at.   Apparently, he still wasn't staying 
where she placed him, since the nurse kept a firm 
grip on his chin while she cleaned and sewed one-
handed.

"So tell me, patient to nurse, what really happened 
to you, Mr. Martin," she began, trying to distract 
him from the big fishing hooks she was about to jab 
into his flesh, "Because this looks more like a 
blunt trauma than- What was that story you came up 
with?"

"Slipped on some ice," he mumbled. "I thought that 
was pretty good, actually."

She tossed a few used pieces of gauze in the trash 
and picked up the first suture. "Close your eyes, 
sir."  He did, gladly. "First, it's October: there 
is no ice.  Second, people generally fall backward 
when they slip, or else they have marks on their 
forearms where they catch themselves if they fall 
forward.  And the angle is wrong.  I'm guessing this 
is a-" She paused to readjust his head: without his 
homing nipple, he was drifting again, "Lead pipe, 
maybe?  A pool cue?"

"Do you promise you won't tell anyone?"

"Promise.  Stop squirming."  

"My kid accidentally hit me with a bat.  Well, a bat 
he let go of.  We were at the ballpark and I was 
trying to teach him to swing through instead of 
bunting.  He got excited, swung hard, and let go, 
and it cracked me a good one.  I waited for it to 
stop bleeding on its own, but it didn't, so I 
thought I should get checked out before I drove him 
home.  Back to his mother's," Mulder added for 
clarity. "That's Slugger in the waiting room: the 
kid looking remorseful and uncoordinated."

He heard her pulling the string to open a band-aid 
as she asked, "So what's so shameful about that?  
That's it.  All done.  See: the world didn't end.  
You can open your eyes now."

"When it comes to my son, I like to keep things 
quiet, if I can; out of the papers, especially.  He 
gets enough teasing as it is."

Liking what he saw: her concerned face even with 
his, he smiled self-consciously, but the nurse 
didn't meet his gaze.

She ran her thumb over the bandage to smooth it into 
place, paused to admire her handiwork, and then 
picked up his chart to make notes.  "You get the 
same bill, regardless of whether the doctor or the 
nurse sews.  You can pay as you leave if you don't 
want to give a billing address."

"You honestly don't know who I am, do you?" he 
asked, immediately grimacing at himself for stooping 
to say that.  It was a step away from handing her 
his baseball card with his phone number written on 
the front: pompous, unimaginative, and only 
effective on women who dotted their I's with little 
daisies.     

"Mr. Marty Martin- That's a lousy alias, by the way. 
Injured in- Do you want to have been mugged or won a 
bar brawl?"

"Bar brawl.  May I get dressed now?"

She nodded, either not noticing or ignoring him 
watching her as she wrote. "Keep the wound dry, ice 
it to keep the swelling down, and come back to get 
the stitches out in two weeks.  Stand outside the 
batting cage from now on or learn to dodge faster.  
If you start to get dizzy or confused or the wound 
looks infected, come back immediately."

"I know a doctor who can take the stitches out.  Is 
that okay?"

"Fine.  It was nice doing business with you, Mr. 
Not-Really-Martin."

"Um, thanks, Nurse-"

"Scully," she answered, walking out the door, 
leaving him fastening the top button of his ruined 
shirt, legs still dangling off the edge of the exam 
table, and noticing the room had warmed 
considerably.

*~*~*~*
 
It was always a toss-up: wear the Yankees cap and 
risk being recognized or wear any other hat like a 
normal adult and risk being recognized and called a 
traitor.  After so many seasons in the blue and 
white uniform, Mulder generally went with the 
familiar Yankees cap.  Besides, it did a fair job of 
hiding the bandage just above his left eyebrow as he 
slipped in through the ambulance bay.  

"Mr. Martin," Nurse Scully said, surprised to see 
him wandering around the vast ER again: in search of 
her, but she didn't know that.  "I thought you had 
your own doctor: is something wrong?"

Crap.  Now this was starting to seem like a stupid 
idea. 

"I couldn't sleep, so I thought I'd come here and…" 
he trailed off, embarrassed.  He'd actually been 
sitting across the street in his car for hours while 
he tried to work up his nerve.  He had, too: gotten 
his nerve all worked up and then lost in somewhere 
between the curb and the exam room.  He should go 
outside and look for it and get back to her in his 
next lifetime.

"That's fine.  We're quiet this morning.  No one 
should bother you.  Come with me."  She gestured for 
him to follow her into one of the turquoise-tiled 
exam rooms, which Mulder did, twisting his hat in 
his hands and keeping his eyes open for his mislaid 
nerve.

"Why would anyone bother me?" he asked, trying to 
sound innocent, thinking he would end up fixated on 
the one beautiful woman in New York who didn't 
recognize him.  He hopped up on the exam table, 
trying to look athletic.  Innocent and athletic: 
both tough at almost forty, but he had been a 
professional.

She shrugged, tiptoeing to reach a bottle on the top 
shelf, snapped on a rubber glove, and poured some of 
the clear liquid into her gloved hand.  Mulder's 
eyes widened: the last time someone had done that, 
it had been at his Army physical for WWII, and that 
examination hadn't turned out pleasantly at all. 

"These stitches aren't supposed to come out for 
another few days, but since you're here, it should 
probably be okay if the cut has healed."

"I heal fast; I've had surgery on my knees a few 
times.  What is that you're doing?"  The smell was 
familiar, but Mulder couldn't place exactly what she 
was rubbing, though thankfully she was rubbing it on 
his forehead.

"Baby oil.  Whoever put this band-aid on put it over 
your eyebrow.  If I just yank it off, part of your 
eyebrow is going to come with it and leave you 
lopsided.  If I put baby oil on the bandage first, 
it comes off easier.  Close your eyes in case it 
drips."

"I put it on.  Sorry; I guess I did it wrong." He 
took a deep breath, relaxing and deciding braving 
the Mercy ER again wasn't such a bad idea after all. 

New York Citywas full of unforgettably beautiful 
women who soon blended into a shallow, unforgettably
beautiful blur, but this one was different. Touchable.  
Memorably real.  He was certain there was something 
happening behind her blue eyes, but he was equally 
certain she'd never quite tell him what it was.  She 
was silk-stockings-mysterious in a practical white-
cotton-panties kind of way.  She was deliciously 
contradictory in a world of banal, and as tempting 
as a broken cookie cooling on the baker's rack.  

And he was lonely.   

"I'll have to remember this trick: we tried batting 
practice again, and now my son has scrapes on both 
elbows." 

"How does one get batting injuries on one's elbows, 
Mr. Martin?" she asked, gently peeling off the band-
aid, pursing her lips as she rubbed it to take away 
the sting, just in case. 

"One inherits absolutely none of his father's 
athleticism, Nurse Scully."

*~*~*~*

Yeah, this was low-key.  Following a strange woman 
through the silent streets of the Bronx before dawn 
yelling 'nurse!' after her.  This would never make 
the newspapers.

It wasn't hard to keep pace with her, but Mulder 
couldn't get her to stop or listen to him until she 
reached the subway entrance and he had her trapped 
for a few seconds.

"Go away!  Haven't you had enough fun for one night?" 
She was so angry her cheeks were flushed and her eyes 
snapped blue fire at him.

"I am sorry.  Just go back to the hospital.  I 
guarantee they will give you your job back."

"Sure they will." Nurse Scully fished through her 
purse for a subway token, finally dumping it out on 
an empty bench in exasperation.  A tube of lipstick 
escaped and rolled into the shadows and she didn't 
bother to retrieve it.

"They will.  Look: that doctor was out of line.  You 
don't have to tolerate him talking to you like that."

"You're right: I don't.  But I know how to handle 
it and I don't need a hero.  Thank you so much, 
Superman: you interfering just made it a hundred 
times worse.  Not only do I not have a job, now 
I don't have a reference."

"I swear to you the hospital will give you your job 
back.  They'll fire that doctor and rehire you."

"Why?  Because you'll tell them to? I don't need 
some mobster who happens be nice to his kid to look 
out for me."  She finally found the fifteen-cent 
subway token and fed it into the turnstile, leaving 
him standing on the other side.

"Hey!" he yelled after her, his voice echoing 
through the tunnels over the roar of the train.  
"Hey! I'm not a mobster!"

"Go to Hell, mister!"

"I'm a ballplayer," he informed her as the doors of 
the subway car closed. "I played in the World Series 
ten times!"

"I won nine of those!"  Mulder told the back of the 
subway train.  "I'm in the damn Hall of Fame!"

"Shit!" he said to no one in particular.  A whole 
city full of models and actresses and he gets hung 
up on one mouthy, hardheaded, redheaded nurse.

*~*~*~*

She better show up soon or Nurse Scully was going to 
find a remorseful Mulder-shaped icicle on her 
doorstep, he thought, glancing up from his seat on 
the cracked cement stoop and then huddling deeper 
into his winter coat.   

"You don't understand 'no' very well, do you, 
mister?" said the owner of the unhappy shadow 
suddenly looming over top of him, her head outlined 
golden by the sunrise.

"I got your address from the hospital.  And I 
brought your lipstick," he replied, his teeth 
chattering.  Brilliant, Mulder; very smooth.  Brace 
yourself, she'll be throwing herself into your arms 
any second.  "Please: I don't want to bother you; I 
just don't want you to lose your job because of me."

"It was a lousy job, anyway.  And no man drives all 
the way from the Bronx to Brooklyn Heights out of 
the goodness of his heart or to return a dime store 
lipstick, Mr-" she paused expectantly.

"Mulder.  How did you know I drove?"

She cocked her head in the direction of the out-of-
place black Cadillac parked down the block, which he 
hadn't wanted her to notice, juggling the groceries 
she carried. "Are you a murderer, a rapist, or a 
mobster, Mr. Mulder?"

He shook his head 'no.'

"Married, insane, or a communist?"

Another 'no.'

"Then hold these groceries while I find my key and 
we'll call it even." She handed him two bulging 
brown paper sacks, balancing the third on her hip as 
she opened the security door.  

Not sure what was happening, or his role in it, 
Mulder followed her into the foyer and ended up 
holding all three bags while she went to the door of 
the first apartment.  There was a brief exchange 
between she and the older woman who answered, and 
a sleeping girl in pajamas was passed into her arms.  

"Put those bags down," she told him over the child's 
blond head. "I'll get them.  Thank you for going to 
so much trouble, Mr. Mulder, but it's really not 
necessary.  We'll be fine."  
 
"I'll carry them up if you want.  How could you 
manage three bags and her," he nodded to the limp 
child, "at the same time?"

"The same way I've managed for years." She waited 
for him to move, then shrugged. "Suit yourself."

"Which floor do you live on?" he asked when they 
reached the fourth set of steps and she hadn't 
slowed her pace.

"The top. We have a view."  The child stirred 
against her shoulder and blinked sleepily at Mulder.

"So do I, but I also have an elevator."   

Nurse Scully seemed to have difficulty keeping track 
of things in her purse, because she shifted the 
groggy girl from hip to hip and then set her down on 
the mat while she hunted for her door key.  Finally 
unlocking and putting her shoulder against the 
warped door to push it open, she herded a half-awake 
daughter inside the small apartment and then turned 
to Mulder to take the bags.

"I'll carry them to the kitchen for you.  Just leave 
the front door open."   

She glanced behind her at the racks of children's 
clothes and her own stockings, housedresses, and 
undergarments hung up to dry in the living room, 
probably decided he'd seen laundry before, and held 
open the door for him.    

He was setting the groceries on the table and trying 
to figure out another excuse, short of bleeding 
again, to hang around, when the little girl wandered 
in wearing her footy pajamas and began examining her 
mother's purchases.  

"Why couldn't you have woken up five flights of 
steps ago, Em?" her mother asked, her head deep in 
the icebox as she rearranged the bundles of her 
washed, starched and waiting-to-be-ironed nurses' 
uniforms to make room for her purchases.  Mulder 
supposed yesterday must have been washday.     

"Who are you?" the child asked, a little fist 
digging into her eye as she stood precariously on a 
kitchen chair.

"Mulder," he replied, leaning down so they were face 
to face.  This was always a good step: making 
friends with a woman's kids.  Not that he'd ever 
dated a woman with kids.  And he wasn't really 
dating this woman; he was following her.  Hell, he 
was still trying to make friends with his own kid, 
and he'd had fourteen years to do it.

"Are you a nice man?"

"I try to be." That was a very subjective question.

She looked him up and down, her eyes full of serious 
four-year old thoughts and decided, "You can feed my 
cat."

He supposed that was a vote of confidence.

"Dry food, honey.  I didn't buy tuna."  A hand set a 
bowl of fish-shaped cat food morsels on the table 
and Mulder noted it lacked a wedding ring.

"We're poor again?  Why?" 

"Because we're so good at it," Scully replied, going 
to the living room to pull off her shoes and 
probably trying not to moan in pleasure.  "It will 
be fine, Emily.  Mr. Mulder-" she began as she 
unpinned her nurses' cap.

"Let me buy you a drink."  That was the first thing 
he could think of and it generally worked.

"It's barely morning.  Try again."

Well, at least she hadn't thrown him out yet.  

"Breakfast?"  Stretching out his fingers to help pet 
Emily's scruffy calico cat, Mulder asked, "Em, would 
you like to have breakfast?  Aiello's will be open 
soon."

The look on the woman's face actually made him 
flinch.  Rooking in the kid hadn't been a good idea. 

"Aiello's is at Coney Island," Scully informed him, 
frowning, a little crease appearing between her 
eyebrows.

"And by the time we get there, they will be open," 
he responded, feeling bold. 

"Let's hear the pitch, Mr. Mulder.  Tall, dark, and 
handsome doesn't get very far with me.  You can 
leave out the part about being obsessive and awkward 
around women, because I already know that."

"My name is Fox Mulder," he began, having mastered 
that phrase early on in life. "I used to play ball, 
but I quit after last season.  Um, I'm divorced, 
with a teenage son." He paused to consider for a 
second. "I think that's it.  Not a mobster, 
communist, or murderer."

She crossed her arms, focusing her gaze on him until 
he began to fidget. "An out-of-work, divorced 
ex-ballplayer?" She raised an eyebrow at him.  

"You make it sound so negative."

*~*~*~*
        
"You're late," Langly informed him tersely as Mulder 
burst through the office door, slightly out of 
breath. "We were about to start without you."

"Feel free," Mulder replied, crossing immediately to 
the liquor cabinet, opening the wooden doors, and 
squatting down.   

His press agent, accountant, and attorney exchanged 
worried looks as Mulder rummaged through the glass 
bottles.  He was sober now, after an extended 
retirement party last month spent at the bottom of 
an old-fashioned glass.  Days that had once been 
occupied by baseball had quickly become filled with 
scotch and a few questionable women, but Mulder had 
been wise enough to find a wagon and stay on it when 
he saw where he was headed.  As with many things in 
his life, Mulder had said very little about it, but 
everyone around him had breathed a sigh of relief 
when he stopped drinking and became himself again.    

Finally, it was Frohike, press agent extraordinaire, 
who said it: "It's ten-fifteen in the morning, 
Mulder; tell me you're hunting for canned orange 
juice."

"I'm good, boys.  Go ahead: I'm sure Byers is antsy 
that we're behind on his agenda for the meeting.  
Heaven knows my life isn't interesting enough that 
we need an agenda, but I'm sure he has one."

Byers, Mulder's attorney for more than a decade, 
frowned.  He did indeed have an agenda: typed up 
with mimeographed copies for everyone.  "Item one: 
ex-wife," he said, raising his voice over the 
clinking of the liquor bottles. "Phoebe wants your 
son for Christmas and says you can have him for New 
Year's." 

"No," Mulder replied, now lining up rows of 
decanters on the rug as he cleaned out the cabinet 
in search of whatever he was searching for. "Will 
and I are going to Aspen with you; Phoebe already 
knows that."

"That's what I thought.  I'll deal with it.  Item 
two: also ex-wife.  Phoebe-"

"We do this every week, Byers." Mulder interrupted, 
abandoning his search of the liquor cabinet and 
beginning to investigate the junk drawer of Langly's 
desk.  "I'm tired of Phoebe being items one through 
five on the memorandum of my life.  As long as I get 
to see Will, just give her whatever she wants.  I'm 
not fighting anymore.  Ah ha!" Mulder announced, 
triumphantly holding up the bottle of Rolaids. "I 
knew you'd have them.  I'm not the only one with an 
ex-wife."
 
Mulder flopped in the leather chair in the corner, 
making a face as a nasty taste of coffee mixing with 
stomach acid made its way up his throat. Swallowing 
several times, he shot the three men a puzzled look, 
as though he hadn't just made the most bizarre of 
announcements, and opened the antacids. "Move on.  
Item three "

"You've eaten?" Frohike observed, familiar with the 
ulcer-acting-up expression. "You're telling us to 
give your ex-wife whatever she wants, and you're 
eating again?  And you got your stitches out.  I 
detect a new lady in your life.  A nurse, maybe?"

Mulder shrugged self-consciously. 

"He has it bad," Langly commented. "God help us all." 

"Well, it's about damn time." Frohike nodded in 
approval and picked up his pen, gesturing to Byers. 
"Item three."  

*~*~*~*

Mulder was caught up in the impromptu game of street 
ball, vicariously reliving a few moments of glory, 
and didn't notice her watching him as she 
approached.  He helped Emily swing and sent her 
running for first base, her oversized snow boots 
something of an impediment.  Nurse Scully was a 
'you'll grow into it' kind of mom.  From the window 
of the apartment building, her babysitter applauded, 
nodding in approval.  

"You're like Em's cat, Mr. Mulder," came a woman's 
voice from the sidewalk. "I let you in once because 
you looked pitiful and now you keep showing up on my 
doorstep."   

He grinned, handing the bat off to one of the 
neighborhood boys, and walking to her eagerly.  

"Friday night.  You said we could have dinner Friday 
night.  It's Friday, it's almost night." He'd been 
here since four-thirty, just in case her definition 
of 'night' was early.  What Mulder lacked in charm and 
tact, he made up for in doggedness, and he turned on 
his pleading Border Collie eyes for emphasis.

"When you asked me at breakfast, I thought you meant 
next Friday." She was folding those arms again and 
he could feel a forehead crease coming on.  His 
puppy-dog eyes weren't working, damn it. "Two meals; 
one day: I don't know, Mr. Mulder."

He waited, adding a sad eyebrow as her gaze shifted 
between him and her daughter, who was waving proudly 
from first base.  He'd known he meant next Friday, 
too.

"I've been at work all afternoon.  I'm not sure I'd 
be much fun this evening if I fall asleep in my 
soup."

"Did you go back to the hospital?"  Mulder asked, 
noting the stiff nurses' uniform peeking out from 
underneath her coat.

"No.  One of the agencies needed a private duty 
nurse.  I called and they had a job for me this 
weekend; I thought I'd better take it now and 
sleep later.  I'm sorry, but if I don't spend time 
with Emily tonight, I won't see her again until 
Sunday, and maybe not even then.  I honesty didn't 
think you meant this Friday.  Can I get a rain 
check?"

"Bring her."

She rubbed her temples, obviously very tired.   

"Thank you for your offer, but no. And thank you for 
being nice to her, but we're used to our lives the 
way they are.  I don't want to confuse her by having 
men tramping in and out of her life.  You and I can 
have dinner next week, if you still want to, but-" 

"My ex-wife left me when our son was a baby," Mulder 
replied, speaking so quickly his frosty breath 
didn't have time to dissipate in the cold air. "I 
was traveling constantly with the ball club, and she 
spends a lot of time in England: that's where 
she's from.  Then the war, then more baseball, and  
before I knew it he was five, and then ten, and now 
a teenager I barely know.  Every time I want to see 
him, it's a fight, and I don't know what to say when 
we are together: I mostly just buy him things.  Your 
daughter Emily: I can talk to her.  I don't mind 
her at all."

"You don't play with people's lives, Mr. Mulder, 
especially not my daughter's."

"I promise you I'm not playing," he replied, his 
voice low and soft, watching mesmerized as the 
season's first snowflakes landed on her eyelashes.  

*~*~*~*

"Mrs. Osborne, this is Mulder.  There was a message 
at the front desk that Mrs. Scully had called.  
Could I speak to her please?"

"Of course; let me get her, Mr. Mulder; she's about 
to burst if she doesn't tell you her news soon, so 
just excuse her for being so forward," Emily's 
babysitter replied, as though women weren't 
beginning to call men left and right these days.  

Knowing what was coming, he held the receiver away 
from his ear as Mrs. Osborne bellowed, "DANA!" out 
her apartment door loud enough to carry up five 
floors.

As usual, there were numerous clicks as everyone in 
her apartment building picked up their phones to 
listen on the party line.  Mulder was, for reasons 
beyond him, was 'one of New York's most eligible 
bachelors:' an endorsement almost as deep as the 
society page it was printed on.  Her neighbors 
tended to conjure up mental images of a tuxedo-clad 
Mulder sipping champagne on a balcony in Paris 
rather than a blue jean-clad Mulder, alone in the 
suite at The Plaza Hotel that he called 'home,' 
drinking flat ginger ale and picking at the hole in 
his right sock.     

"She's coming, Mr. Mulder."

"Thank you."

He stretched out on the sofa, watching the snow 
began to blanket Central Park outside his living 
room window as he waited.

"Mr. Mulder," Scully said, slightly out of breath 
from having run down the stairs.  "Hello."

"Yeeesss, Nurse Scully." he replied, letting his 
head rest comfortably on the arm of the couch. "I 
understand you have news.  We have an audience, 
though."

There were a few guilty clicks as a couple of eves-
droppers hung up, but their conversation was still 
being shared with the majority of Brooklyn Heights.  

"I got the job," she said, still breathless.  "In 
pediatrics.  Regular day shift: no midnights and no 
weekends.  I'll even have insurance for Emily and I 
can be home for dinner every night."    

"That's wonderful!" Mulder replied, not as shocked 
as he tried to sound.  He'd been watching her 
struggle through twenty-four and thirty-six hour 
shifts as a private duty nurse for dirty old men for 
a month now.  Enough was enough. "When do you 
start?"

"Monday.  They want me as soon as possible."  She 
paused, and Mulder heard her take a long, shaky 
breath. "Did you do this Mr. Mulder?  I don't have 
any experience with pediatrics; I'm a trauma nurse."

"So you think they shouldn't have hired you?" 
 
"No: I can do it.  I just don't understand why the 
hospital would even interview me.  A well-paying job 
close to home just falls in my lap: this has Fox 
Mulder-meddling written all over it."  
 
There was a long pause.  This was a touchy subject; 
Dana Scully was as independent a woman as he'd ever 
met.  Too independent, sometimes.

"So I care enough to meddle," he finally admitted.  
"You deserve a break.  If you can't do the job, you 
won't keep it.  And no hospital is going to hire a 
nurse who isn't qualified."   

Another silence, so loud Mulder could hear the 
traffic from Seventh Avenue below him as he and 
everyone else listening in to their private 
neighborhood soap opera waited tensely. "You 
don't owe me anything," he added.  "I called a 
friend and got you the interview, but you got the 
job on your own merits.  Congratulations."

"You can't buy me, Mr. Mulder."

"I wasn't trying to," he responded meekly.

Her neighbor's cuckoo clock on the second floor 
announced the hour and a teakettle and a toddler 
were both shushed while the neighborhood held its 
collective breath.

"Thank you," he finally heard her exhale.     

*~*~*~*

"You had a great career, Mulder.  I saw every home 
run you ever hit at Yankee Stadium," he said, 
patting Mulder on the shoulder with a fatherly air.  
Mulder registered the older man as someone faintly 
familiar: maybe a regular guest at the hotel or a 
business acquaintance.  He must be important or the 
headwaiter, familiar with Mulder's reclusiveness, 
would have already escorted him out of the 
restaurant.  "You hit 131 triples and 389 doubles in 
6,820 at bats," he continued, "I remember that and I 
forget my wife's birthday these days.  Yes, you 
certainly had your moment in the sun.  We're all 
very proud."

Mulder forced a smile, wishing the man would just go 
the hell away and let then enjoy their dinner.  It 
was wonderful, at thirty-nine years old, to be 
talked about in the past tense, as though his life 
had ended when he stepped off the ball field.  And 
it was 6,821 at-bats.

"Tough to keep up with those nineteen-year old kids, 
isn't it?" Mulder received a few more sympathetic 
pats as he begin to grit his teeth. "No one blames 
you; you're a legend, Mulder.  And you quit while 
you were ahead."

They'd never been out without Emily, and fans were a 
little more reluctant to approach 'a family' having 
hotdogs.  This was supposed to be their first 'big 
grownup date,' as Em called it, but it meant Scully 
had to endure the full brunt of the adoring public 
for the first time.  Mulder had chosen The Oak Room, 
one of the restaurants in The Plaza, hoping this 
would be a gentle introduction into the spotlight 
for her.  In the dark, almost medieval atmosphere, 
New York's elite old-boys-club shaped history while 
their respective, decorative wives cast sideways 
glances and whispered over their cocktails, eyeing 
the new competition.    

Taking a long drag off his cigarette, the gentleman 
continued, "Life goes on, though.  It's good to see 
you have new interests." He gestured to Scully, who 
was staring at her lap, red-faced. "Lovely."

"If you will excuse us," Mulder growled, laying his 
knife across the back of his plate, standing, and 
squaring his shoulders.  He was fair game; Scully 
was not.  Catching their waiter's eye, he mouthed 
'back room' and offered his hand to Scully.  His 
suite upstairs would be much nicer than the 
employees' dining room, but he didn't want Scully to 
get the wrong idea about his intentions, especially 
since she was still antsy about his role in her new 
job.  

Two waiters appeared instantaneously, picking up 
their plates and glasses without comment and heading 
to the back of the restaurant. 

"My apologies, Mr. Mulder: I didn't mean to 
intrude," the smoking man drawled, not looking the 
least bit apologetic. "Please, you and Miss Scully 
stay."

"You're not intruding.  We were just leaving.  Have 
a nice evening," he managed.  This man must know 
Scully.  He knew her name, but Scully didn't seem 
too fond of him.

"Have a nice evening," the man replied, stubbing out 
his cigarette in their previously unused ashtray and 
reaching inside his expensive suit coat for another, 
watching as Mulder hurried Scully away.   

The kitchen staff were used to Mulder getting tired 
of living on room service and wandering down to eat 
with them, but they weren't quite sure how to react 
to Scully, assuming she was a starlet or a model.  
They had her wait while the old magazines and 
ashtrays were cleared away and a white tablecloth 
was unfurled over the battered card table.  As a 
final touch, the head chef appeared with a bud vase 
containing a single white rose and Scully's quiet 
smile reappeared.     

"I am so sorry," Mulder apologized, pulling out the 
metal folding chair for her.  "He doesn't mean any 
harm.  People don't even think about what they're 
saying."   
 
"It's okay," she replied, trying to arrange her full 
silk skirt so it didn't drag on the less-than-
spotless floor. "Our dates so far have been 
adventures."

"Adventures?" He rested his hand tentatively on top 
of hers on the table. "You spend your evenings with 
an over-the-hill, divorced ballplayer and you think 
that's an adventure?"

"It suits me," she replied, casually dropping her 
napkin on her lap, then looked up at him with those 
shining eyes.   

A little flustered, he stuttered, "That's, that's 
good," before he lost the power of intelligent 
speech and just kissed her.  Back.  Kissed her back.

*~*~*~*

"Hey, Dad," William said, tossing his book bag into 
the back seat and slamming the passenger-side door 
so hard the window rattled.  "Mother's gonna kill 
you: it's not Friday yet."

Mulder decided it wasn't worth it to tell him not to 
slam doors. "I just wanted to talk to you.  About a 
few things.  I already called your mother; it's 
okay.  You want to get a milkshake?"  

He glanced in the rearview mirror and then eased the 
car back onto Joralemon Street, driving slowly as 
the other children streamed out of the elite prep 
school and into waiting cars.   

"There's a soda shop a few blocks over: I'd rather 
get a cup of coffee."

Switching lanes, Mulder asked, "When did you start 
drinking coffee?"

"Is this about why you married my mother?  She said 
that's why you left school to play ball; because she 
got knocked up and baseball paid the bills.  Is that 
what you wanted to talk about, because I already 
know all about it."  

Will was nothing if not direct.

"Mother's been on a rant this week," he added. "Hey!  
Honk the horn; I know this girl!"

Mulder felt his ulcer awakening as William leaned 
precariously out the car window to flirt at the 
stoplight.  Trying not to be a pervert, Mulder 
checked his son's latest interest out of the corner 
of his eye: tall, blonde, seventeen, and bright as a 
burnt-out light bulb: Will definitely had a type.

"You know none of that is your fault, don't you, 
Will?  William, can you sit back down and roll up 
the window, please?  If you want to talk about this, 
then act like it.  What happened between your mother 
and me is not your fault.  Both of us love you very 
much."  

Sighing, the boy threw himself down in the seat, 
sprawling the too-long legs and too-big feet he 
hadn't yet grown into and tilting the mirror to 
check his hair. "I know that.  Don't get all hyped 
up about it; your ulcer will start bothering you.   
And Mother wants me to ask you if she can take me to 
London with her for the summer.  She says I can't 
stay with you all three months because you're an 
incompetent bum."

The incompetent bum who'd been paying her bills 
since the late 1930's, but Phoebe probably left that 
part out of her lectures.

"And what are you supposed to tell her when she asks 
you to tell me things, Will?"

"To have her attorney call your attorney and not to 
put me in the middle," he rattled off, making his 
'this is stupid' face. "I don't really listen to 
her.  It's always the same speech anyway." 

"How in the world did you end up this normal, son?"  
   
"Maybe because my Dad's a living legend," William 
replied in his British accent, grinning at him 
around a mouthful of braces.

Mulder grinned back.  "Nah.  That can't be it."

*~*~*~*

"You're not supposed to be drinking that," William 
informed him, as though Mulder didn't know that.

"I'm not drinking it; I'm smelling it." He had to 
put the cup of coffee down to sign autographs for 
three giggling teenage girls while Will rolled his 
eyes, looking too much like his mother. "So what 
was the girl's name on the corner: the one in 
the red coat?  She seemed, uh, interesting."

"That is not why you picked me up today," the boy 
responded, pouring so much sugar into his coffee 
that Mulder's tongue started to salivate in protest.  
Clearly, William wanted to appear he enjoyed 
drinking coffee much more than he actually enjoyed 
drinking coffee. "Spill it.  Is this about the 
woman in the newspaper pictures with you?  Mother's 
already checked her out, you know.  Dana Scully, 
right?"

Lovely.  He added a little more cream to his own 
cup.  Even if he couldn't drink it, Mulder found it 
comforting to have his coffee flavored correctly.  

"That's right: Dana Scully.  I'd like you to meet 
her.  And," He swallowed, "I'd like to ask her to 
come to the Byers' house in Aspen with us for 
Christmas."

"You're that serious about her?"  

Like Scully, Mulder didn't waltz people in and out 
of his son's life, so this was a first.  He nodded, 
focusing on thoroughly stirring his coffee.  "I'm 
that serious."

"The paper says you've only been seeing her a few 
months."

That hit a nerve: the pinched one connecting his 
heart and conscience.  "You don't need to keep track 
of your father through the society pages.  Just pick 
up the phone and call me, Will."  He tapped his 
spoon harder than necessary on the rim of his mug 
and the soda jerk appeared, thinking Mulder wanted 
something.  "I'd love to talk to you on a weekday.  
Just about whatever: school, movies, girlfriends.  
Whatever you want to talk about."

"Mother makes it-" William started and then stopped, 
tearing his napkin to bits as the counter boy 
hovered. "It's hard to call you from Mother's 
apartment.  It causes problems."

"I'm sorry," Mulder mumbled, wondering where his son 
learned such a messy habit and began to shred his 
own paper napkin while he looked for a straw to gnaw 
on.

Will, recovering faster, asked lightly, "So tell me:
what isn't in the papers about Dana Scully?"

"Um, she has beautiful red hair; you can't tell that 
in black and white.  Well, neither of us could tell 
anyway, but she does.  She was the nurse that patched 
up my head at Halloween and I've been seeing her since 
then."  He stirred his coffee thoughtfully, trying to
 gauge the boy's reaction. "She has a young daughter 
named 'Emily.' We've been keeping that out of the papers."  

Will nodded, understanding.  That was one of the few 
restrictions his father placed on the press: taking 
pictures of his son or hounding him when they were 
in public together was not allowed.  Any reporter or 
photographer who forgot that didn't stay employed 
very long. 

"Widowed or divorced?"

Mulder raised his eyebrows.  "She was an Army nurse 
until her daughter came, so I assume her husband 
died in Korea.  I've never asked her.  I'm sure it's 
not an easy subject for her to talk about.  He must 
have died when Emily was a baby; Em doesn't seem to 
remember him at all.  They've probably been alone 
for a long time."
 
"You smile when you talk about her.  Do you know 
that?"

Mulder actually blushed, sloshing his coffee over 
the side of the mug.   
          
"Sure: bring her.  Them.  We need more people who 
can't ski.  You wanna help me with my history 
homework?" his son asked, saving him from sinking 
under the table in embarrassment. "It's British 
history and I hear you went to Oxford."

*~*~*~*

"Does it make me a bad father to occasionally think 
my son is insane?" Mulder asked her, tugging self-
consciously at his borrowed black turtleneck as he 
returned to his place on the couch beside her.  Will 
had insisted he couldn't wear an undershirt with it 
and he felt half-naked. "Or is that me going 
insane?"

"Is that still Bill Haley he's playing or that other 
man?" Scully said, shifting comfortably as he wrapped 
an arm around her shoulders. "I think that's a clear 
sign of insanity for both of you: him for buying the 
rock-n-roll records and you for letting him play 
them."

"I have 'Rock Around the Clock' and 'Shake, Rattle, 
and Roll' permanently burned into my brain, taking up 
space that could be used for Ella Fitzgerald and 
Count Basie," Mulder sighed.  William had brought his 
new 45's to Aspen with them and had been playing his 
Hi-Fi at top volume for the non-skiers for the last 
two hours. "He's sane," he decided. "Probably ruining 
his life by listening to that music and going to end 
up hooked on marijuana and riding motorcycles, but 
sane at the moment."

"What's with the snappy outfit?" Scully asked, 
offering him a sip of her tea.   

"It's Will's.  He says it makes me look like a 
beatnik."  Mulder tilted his head to whisper in her 
ear, "I don't know what a beatnik is."

"I think it's a good thing," she replied, squirming 
adorably as he nuzzled her neck.

"Uummm.  I hope so.  This," Mulder tilted her head 
back to access her pale throat, "This is a good 
thing.  I like this, Scully: just being with you."

There was the sound of a man clearing his throat as 
Mulder's attorney and Susanne came in from the 
slopes.  Their twin daughters and Emily followed 
them, cheeks red from the cold and looking like 
Indian warriors with the stripes of zinc oxide Scully 
had painted on them against the winter sun.   

It said something about the sum of his life, Mulder 
thought, at forty years old, to spend Christmas with, 
excepting Scully and her daughter, people he paid.  
Even his son, in a way, was bought and paid for by 
major league baseball.  And worth every penny.

Scully, as he watched her wipe up the new puddles and 
peel her daughter out of her snowsuit, was clearly 
not for sale, though.  

Mulder just watched, sipping his borrowed tea, 
thinking this was very pleasant: just being together 
with friends and family in front of a warm fire.  It 
was very pleasant, very normal, and very unfamiliar 
and welcome territory.  

*~*~*~*

"Is everything okay?" Mulder asked, as Scully quietly 
carried Emily into the kitchen, both of them wearing 
their pajamas. "Another bad dream?"

Scully paused, scrutinizing him.  She obviously 
didn't like him either knowing about or commenting on 
her nightmares.  He'd been up late the previous night 
and heard her cry out, but been hesitant to wake her, 
uncertain as to how she would react to finding him in 
her bedroom. "I heard you last night," he finally 
said, and Scully looked away. 

"We're fine; just getting something to drink.  Why 
are you still up?"

"My roomy says he can't sleep without someone called 
'Elvis' playing on the Hi-Fi.  Again and again and 
again.  It was okay the first twenty times, then the 
sofa started to call.  Is Emily feeling okay?"

"I think she's just overdone it: too much excitement 
this weekend and now she can't relax.  Can you hold 
her while I find a cup?"

Scully probably had no idea how erotic it was: to be 
so close to her in the moonlight while wearing 
nothing but a few layers of cotton as he took the 
child from her.  There were plenty of girls that 
'did', but it was the ones who 'didn't' who were 
still sexy padding around a kitchen in their slippers 
at four in the morning searching for the milk.  The 
girls who 'did,' in Mulder's experience: those 
needed some lace or satin or at least a few strong 
drinks to dull his brain first.

"Look out there, Em," he told her, carrying the 
child to the kitchen window to see the lights on the 
mountain so she wouldn't notice that 'Santa' and his 
attorney had already visited the living room. "Santa 
must be getting close.  He can't come until you're 
asleep." Scully found the bottle of milk, pronounced 
it drinkable, and poured a few swallows.  As the girl 
finished it, Mulder wiped her chin and asked, "You 
think maybe you can sleep now so Santa can come?"  

Emily felt she possibly could, with a story, so he 
carried her down the hall to Scully's room, her blue 
eyes finally getting heavy as he reached the 'moon on 
the breast of the new-fallen snow' part for the 
fourth time.  By the time Santa had 'a little round 
belly that shook like a bowl full of jelly,' or 
something to that effect, she was out cold.       

"If you're trying to impress me, you've done it," 
Scully said, coming up behind him as he tucked the 
blankets over Emily. "I'd about had it with her."

He was a little surprised: the word 'competent' 
always came to mind when he thought of Scully-as-a-
mother.  She made taking care of her daughter alone 
look effortless, although it had to be anything but.  
It made Mulder feel better to know he wasn't the only 
one who occasionally thought he was failing the 
parenthood test. "You can't be too impressed.  You've 
just spent three days with my son.  That should scare 
any woman away."

"I don't scare easily."

"Obviously not," he replied, finding a waist under 
her cotton pajamas and pulling her to him as they 
watched Emily sleeping. "You're doing an amazing job 
with her.  But then," he kissed the nape of her neck, 
searching with his lips until he found her pulse and 
then pressing, feeling it quicken, "You're pretty 
amazing yourself.  You shouldn't have to raise her 
alone."

Scully turned to face him, letting him lead her the 
few steps into the hallway, just in case Emily awoke.  
"And you're wonderful with Will." He was speaking 
between kisses now, his mouth insisting hers open as 
trembling, eager arms went around his neck. "And 
you're wonderful with me."

His pajama bottoms were thin and she was pressed 
against him; Scully pulled back within a few seconds, 
his cue to stop.  This time, though, as she moved 
away, he moved closer, instinctively keeping the 
contact.  

"Stop, Mulder.  This isn't right."

"Yes, it is.  It's very right.  And I'll stop." He 
exhaled, trying to regain control as he rested his 
forehead against hers.  Scully was correct; they 
needed to wait. "I will stop," Mulder repeated, more 
as a command to himself than as an assurance to her.  
"Say you'll marry me, Scully: this is what's right.  
Us.  Together.  It feels more right than anything 
I've ever felt in my life."  

Realizing what he'd said, he punctuated his proposal 
by pulling her face to his, fingers lost in her hair, 
and embracing her with a hungry intensity that 
probably frightened her.  It frightened him: burning 
the way dry kindling became engulfed before anyone 
even realized it was smoldering.

He'd never proposed to a woman of his own free will 
Before: more like a 'guess we hafta get married, 
huh?' He and William had even practiced earlier, 
their conversation concealed by five-dozen 
repetitions of "That's All Right Little Mama" that 
afternoon.  His son, not old enough to drive yet, was 
better at smooth talking than Mulder was.  The part 
that came after smooth talking, Mulder had had a few 
more years to learn, and he was willing to just skip 
to that and finalize the details afterward.  

He thought for a few wonderful moments that she was 
actually going to let him do this, his groin getting 
ahead of his brain.  As his left hand covered her 
breast and his right unbuttoned her top, Scully 
brought her arms up and forcefully pushed him away.

"Sorry," he apologized, trying to catch his breath.  
"Sorry, Scully.  I'm sorry."

She wrapped her white cotton top around her as though 
it was a robe and leaned back against the wall of 
the hallway, not looking at him.

"Scully, look at me." She glanced up, sniffing. "I 
do mean it.  You said it's wrong to play with 
people's lives and I'm not playing.  This isn't a 
game to me.  You're not a game or something that I 
can win, only lose."

Christ, he sounded like a complete idiot.

"Come here."  When she didn't move, he took her by 
the hand and led her to the Christmas tree, sitting 
amidst the new bicycles and train sets he and Byers 
had assembled earlier. "This is Will's idea.  In 
case you still think I'm only trying to seduce you, 
you should know I don't usually ask my son for 
advice." He searched under the tree until he found 
two small boxes he'd brought from Manhattan.   

Scully wiped her eyes, trying to figure out what he 
was talking about.

"I was going to do this when we opened presents in a 
few hours, but now seems fine.  These are pearl 
earrings.  I thought they were pretty," he said, 
holding up one of the velvet boxes. "And this one is 
a ring; my grandmother's.  I do mean it, Scully.  
Pick what you want."

*~*~*~*

"Dad?" William asked, stirring in his twin bed on the 
far side of the room they shared as his father 
entered.

There was a muted sound as a small box was hurled 
into a pile of dirty clothes by a right arm attached 
to a living legend and pictured in the damn Hall of 
Fame.  

"Go to sleep, Will."

"Did you ask her?"

"Go to sleep!  Damn it, I need a drink."

"No you don't," Will replied, much too loudly, as he 
sat up in bed, prepared to intervene if his father 
stepped toward the liquor cabinet.

"You're right: no, I don't," Mulder said, sitting 
down hard on his bed and burying his face in his 
hands.

"Did you ask her?  What did she say?"

Laying back, his feet still on the floor on one side 
of the bed as his head hung back off the other, he 
took one of those deep, calming breaths his doctor 
was always harping on him about.  He'd had a fastball 
hit him square in the chest once, and it felt exactly 
the same.  The doctor had told him to take deep 
breaths then, too, and it never helped one damn bit.

"She said 'no.'"

*~*~*~*

Emily was amusing herself in the front seat between 
Mulder and Scully by having little conversations with 
her new Mr. Potato Head as they drove back from North 
Beach Airport.  Will was still sprawled across the 
backseat and making loud, disappointed sighing 
noises.

Mulder, trying not to lose his temper with the rush 
of holiday drivers as he navigated traffic, asked his 
son for about the fifteenth time, "Will, you didn't 
really expect me to buy you a car, did you?  Next 
year, when you're old enough to drive, we'll see."

The only reply was another sigh, some muttering, and 
a sharp knee hitting Mulder's back through the seat 
as William rearranged himself: probably not an 
accident.

"I'll teach you to drive this summer while your 
Mother's away and then you can pick out the car you 
want, within reason, for next Christmas," Mulder 
offered, hating both the idea that he was ruining his 
son's holiday and that he was getting sucked into 
this stupid teenage game.

He braked suddenly to avoid a pack of shoppers 
delirious with fresh kill from Macy's and threw out 
an arm to stop Emily from hitting the dash. "I'm not 
buying you a car until you're old enough to drive.  I 
don't know where you got that idea, but it's not 
going to happen!  Pout all you want!"

"Mother will buy it for me!" Will retorted.  "She 
said I could have it!"

Mulder managed to keep his mouth shut, his knuckles 
white on the steering wheel.

"You're just being mean!" Will shouted, opening the 
door to get out as Mulder waited for a light to 
change. "I hate you!"

"Don't you dare get out here.  It's another three 
blocks," Mulder ordered, as though Will hadn't spent 
almost a decade of his life in Manhattan and didn't 
know it was another three blocks.
    
"Since I don't have a car, I'll just walk!"  Will 
punctuated his dramatic protest by slamming the door 
and stalking off, looking as dignified as any 
fourteen, almost-fifteen-year old wearing pink socks 
and cuffed blue jeans possibly could.

Mulder angrily rolled down his window and yelled, 
"William!" after him, but his son kept walking.   

Reaching down to retrieve Mr. Potato Head's plastic 
red lips from the floorboards for Emily, Scully gave 
him a look located somewhere between sympathetic and 
amused.

"It's no wonder you said 'no,'" he said, watching 
Will's dark head bobbing through the crowd. "What in 
the world am I doing wrong?"  

"Pick a holiday and give him a car key and an I.O.U. 
redeemable on his sixteenth birthday, maybe even a 
picture of the car.  He wants a Thunderbird, right?  
Make it conditional on his getting his license.  That 
way he knows he'll get it and he can brag, but you 
can stall until he matures enough to be driving."

Wide-eyed, Mulder replied, "How do you know to do 
that?"  

"You weren't around very much when he was a toddler, 
were you?" Scully said, helping Emily climb over the 
seat into the back so she could stretch out after 
their long flight. "Try doing all your shopping with 
a two-year old and you'll learn these tricks.  I 
doubt teenagers are any different."  

"I wonder how I would get a key for next year's 
model?  I'll call the dealership after I drop you 
off."

"No, you've already missed your chance.  If you do 
it now, you'll be giving in to his tantrum."

"New Year's?  A New Year's gift?"

"You try so hard, don't you, Mulder?"

"I guess I do," he said, pulling into a parking space 
in front of Phoebe's building to wait and make sure 
Will arrived safely. "I have a lot to make up for."

*~*~*~*

He glanced in the rearview mirror to check that Emily 
was really asleep under his coat in the backseat and 
not just pretending, and then said quietly, "We had 
to get married."

Scully had been watching the fog roll off the river 
as they sat stuck in a traffic jam on the Brooklyn 
Bridge, and looked back at him quickly.

"I was thinking on the plane ride home that you don't 
know much about me, and maybe that's why you said 
'no.' My ex-wife would be a good place to start."

"I want to know whatever you want to tell me."  

He couldn't tell of she was completely horrified or 
just waiting to hear the whole story.  It wasn't that 
exciting a tale.

"I had a bad week, had too much to drink, and Phoebe 
was just there that night.  It just happened.  I was 
twenty-three; I'd never-" 

He stopped, taking a breath and trying for the less 
explicit version. "I tried taking her home to meet 
my parents once, right after we were married, but 
they were just horrified. 'Oxford' my mother kept 
saying; how could I have thrown away Oxford.  

My father was Boston blue blood at it's best, and 
this was the last straw for him   I had a sister who 
disappeared and he always blamed me.  It didn't 
matter that we never found out what happened to
Samantha, it was still my fault, according to him.  
Marrying Phoebe was just the final screw-up in his 
book.  My mother has seen Will, once, but my father 
died last year without ever meeting him.  He never 
even acknowledged that he exists.  Phoebe's pretty, 
and she can be lots of fun, but she's not-  She was
a waitress at the pub, and she had a bad reputation, 
even then.  My parents didn't miss that.  They thought
I should have just walked away."

"Why didn't you?"

It was a valid question; nice boys didn't marry bad 
girls, not matter what.   

He just shrugged, moving the confession along, not 
wanting to admit how dazzled he'd been at the idea of 
having a family of his own.  A normal family, where 
the mother spoke to the children and the father came 
home, and stayed sober, at night. 

"My original plan was to work part-time and finish 
graduate school.  I only had a few more months, and 
the FBI had already offered me a job, but that just 
wasn't going to happen once my father refused to 
help.  So I came home: to New York instead of Boston 
so my parents wouldn't be embarrassed in front of 
their friends.  When Will was three months old, 
Phoebe had enough, left me, and took Will back to 
England with her for about six years.  I spent about 
five of those years certain she was going to come back
any day."

He took a nervous breath.  

"The minor leagues were having open tryouts and they
were willing to pay me more than I was making loading
trucks at the docks.  I spent a month playing Class A 
ball for New York-Penn before the Yankees made me an 
offer.  I was their star hitter and centerfield for 
more than a decade until, like the man at the 
restaurant said, I couldn't keep up with the nineteen-
year old kids anymore.  I can still throw and hit, 
but my knees have just had too much abuse over the 
years.  That's why I don't ski anymore.  I didn't want 
to make a fool of myself, so I quit while I was still 
ahead."

There was a long silence in the car as impatient 
horns blared mindlessly around them on the bridge:   
drivers furious at having their lives interrupted. 

"End of story, Scully.  Please don't get out of the 
car and start walking yet.  We're still a long way 
from your apartment and it's cold."

To his surprise, he saw tears streaming down her 
face.

"Scully?"

"Was it worth it: not walking away? Not playing by 
everyone's rules?"

"I never looked back," Mulder said, pulling her 
across the seat so she sat beside him, stroking her 
cheek anxiously with his fingertips. "At least, I 
try not to.  It was the right thing for me.  How can
I miss a life I'll never know?  If I would have told
Phoebe tough luck, finished school, and gone to work
for Hoover, I would never have heard sixty-seven 
thousand fans cheering when I walked up to bat for 
the final game of the World Series last year.  I hit 
my three hundred and sixty-first, and last, home run
over the wall at Yankee Stadium and my son saw it.  
Yes, I think it was worth it."

*~*~*~*     

"Are you sure you don't want to go up on the roof 
with everyone else for the fireworks?" Mulder asked 
as they stepped off the elevator, Scully swaying 
against him in her high heels, giving him an excuse 
to keep an arm around her waist. "The band is even 
on the roof."

"I want to see this view you've been bragging about 
for months," Scully replied. 

"In the dark?" he answered huskily, resting his hands 
on her hips, stroking the velvet fabric as he leaned 
his face close to hers. "You just wanted to ride my 
elevator."  

Scully nodded, laughing softly as they embraced in 
the foyer, glad to finally be away from photographers 
and prying eyes in the ballroom.  Caught up in 
exploring the textures and smells of her hair and 
mouth and skin, the first of the fireworks exploded 
before Mulder noticed how much time had passed.   

"Balcony." He slipped his tuxedo jacket over her bare 
shoulders before pushing open the glass doors to the 
terrace.  Not even noticing the pyrotechnics, they 
began their New Year's kiss, or continued the one 
from last year, as the blue and red stars exploded 
over Central Park. "Happy New Year."

"Happy New Year," she replied from just behind his 
right ear as her lips moved across his skin, the 
sensation catching him off guard.  This woman had no 
idea what she did to him, and that made it even worse. 

"Come inside before you freeze," he whispered a few 
minutes later, although neither of them was in danger 
of being cold.  She stayed close to him, kissing, 
touching, keeping hold of his hand as he backed into 
the apartment.  He reached behind her to slide the 
door closed, then pressed her against the glass, 
blood singing in his ears when she didn't object.  He 
kept waiting for Scully to tell him to stop, but she 
didn't, and, although he hadn't had any alcohol in 
months, it made him feel a little drunk to know she 
wanted this.    

Bedroom, Mulder decided.  They weren't two teenagers 
who had to fumble awkwardly on the couch. "You tell 
me when to stop," he told her, "We go as far as you 
want and no further, I promise."    

"I don't want you to stop," Scully said, sitting, 
then watching him as she lay back, still fully 
dressed, the primary colors of the fireworks outside 
the window making patterns on her white shoulders. "I 
want you to make love to me."

"Then marry me, Scully," Mulder whispered, running 
his fingers lightly over the swell of her breast 
as he joined her. "Make this right."

Christ, it was incredible just to see her laying 
across his bed, waiting for him, watching him.  There 
had to be a way to have this happen every night. 

"Please, Scully.  I don't want to wake up tomorrow 
knowing I've done something wrong."

"Make love to me, Mulder," she repeated, wrapping her 
arms around his neck and pulling his face down to hers.

*~*~*~*

"I can't stay," she murmured, nuzzling the underside 
of his neck like a sleepy kitten.

Of course not: God forbid two adults who love each 
other get to spend an entire night together.  People 
would talk.

"I'll drive you home.  Just stay with me for a little 
bit: no one will notice with the party still going."  
Mulder kissed the top the tousled head resting on his 
shoulder, trying to arrange his thoughts in a 
straight line. "Why did you let me do that, Scully?"

"Why did you do it, Mulder?"

"I think you know that."  Perhaps she had 
misunderstood all hundred and fifty-two times he'd 
told Scully he loved her since leading her into his 
bedroom.  Or the fourteen times he'd asked her to 
marry him, including one especially suave 'if you get 
pregnant, then you'll have to,' offer. "I can't seem 
to have you any other way."

Ah: there was the guilt.  He brought his wrist up so 
he could see his watch in the moonlight.  Almost ten 
minutes post-coitus to guilt and Mulder estimated 
another seven minutes until his ulcer awoke.  

"What is it, Scully?  Phoebe got in trouble, yes, 
but- I was young; I'm not like that.  Yes, there have 
been women, especially right after I quit playing 
ball and I was drinking, but I don't go around doing 
this: seducing nice girls.  Is it Will?  That I'm not 
a doctor or a lawyer?  That I'm older than you are? 
That my mother's family is Jewish?  Do you not want 
me raising Emily?" Mulder stared at the ceiling, 
listening to the party-goers still ringing in the 
new year on the roof above them. "Or do you just not 
love me?"

She shifted closer to him, her breath warming the 
skin at the base of his throat as she toyed with the 
coarse hair on his chest. "Of course I love you."

"Then what is it?  Something about you?  Whatever it
is, I don't care.  You've met my press agent.  Frohike
can make anything in your past vanish.  He always says
I'm too boring for his talents.  Are you divorced?  I
always thought your husband had died, but-" Mulder's 
thoughts finally managed to arrange themselves single-
file.  "Did he just leave you?  Are you still married?"

That would make sense: no alimony, child support, or 
widow's pension.  The midnight shift in the ER 
probably paid slightly more and Mercy, a Catholic 
hospital, would be sympathetic and willing to hire-  

"No, I've never been married."

Mulder was busy congratulating himself on his 
brilliant intuition and didn't process her words 
until he realized he wasn't breathing.

"I didn't do anything wrong, Mulder." Her voice was 
trembling.

"I'm sure you didn't, honey," he got his mouth to 
say, trailing his fingers up and down her bare back 
as the rest of his body lay paralyzed. "I'm sure you 
didn't."

"I did all the right things: I went to the home for 
unwed mothers.  I didn't have a choice: the Army 
discharged me and I couldn't find a job in that 
condition.  And I certainly couldn't go home to my 
parents.  When she came, though, I just couldn't 
leave her.  I kept her and I started over." 

Although he could feel her starting to sob, Mulder 
just pulled her closer, not trusting himself to speak 
or look at her.  

"I never lied to you; I never lied to anyone.  
People just assume I'm a widow, but when hospitals 
check my references, they find out why I was 
discharged from the military and that I wasn't 
married."

"Why didn't he marry you?"

"Oh, it doesn't matter, Mulder."  She sniffed, 
starting to sit up. "Let go of me so I can leave."

"If I wanted you to leave, I'd let go of you."  

Decision made.  He'd have to pay Frohike overtime to 
make this go away, but Dana Scully would become a war 
widow for anyone who cared to look. "I just want to 
know what happened.  Was Emily's father killed in the 
war?  Was he already married?  Did one of the 
officers force-"

"I don't know who her father is!" She blurted out, 
jerking out of his grasp and turning her back to him 
in the bed. "There was no one to marry because I 
have no idea who her father is."  

Scully wrapped the sheet around her, picked up her 
evening dress and underclothes from the floor, and 
hurried into the bathroom.  After the door closed, 
Mulder heard her lock it.

By the time she emerged, he'd pulled on his tuxedo 
trousers and found the ring in the pocket where he'd 
put it earlier, just in case.  He was sitting at the 
bottom of the bed, resting his face in his hands, and 
telling himself this wasn't real.  Scully was just 
not like that; he'd just been with her and she wasn't 
like that. 

"Instead of sending me to Korea, the Army assigned me 
to an underground base in the middle of the Nevada 
desert.  They were doing secret experiments with 
technology like I'd never seen, but I was proud to do 
my part.  Except that my part was a joke: they had me 
maintaining medical records and storing tissue 
samples; I never laid a finger on a live person. 
Within a few months I started getting sick and 
fainting and the doctor said I was going to have a 
baby.  There were about a dozen young nurses and 
secretaries and clerks on the base, and we all found 
out we were expecting.  I can't speak for the others, 
but I didn't do anything to get that way.  They gave 
up their babies and I didn't.  I couldn't, even when 
the men from the base insisted.  I don't expect you 
to believe me.  I don't expect you to ever speak to 
me again if you pass me on the street, but I wanted 
you to know the truth.  I did what was right for me."

"Women do not just get in trouble without doing 
something to get that way, Scully.  There is no 
secret base underground where the government is using 
women as brood mares. This is the United States, for 
God's sake, not Nazi Germany.  I fought for our 
Government.  I got shot for our government.  I've met 
President Eisenhower!  There is no big baby 
conspiracy, honey."

"Of course, Mulder.  It all sounds so silly.  Of 
course, I would make up a story like that instead of 
just picking out a late husband off a tombstone." 

"Scully," he managed to get out, not raising his 
face. "Just don't go.  I don't care what happened, 
just don't leave.  I can fix this."

"You don't understand, Mulder: there's nothing wrong 
with me.  There's nothing wrong with my daughter.  
You're welcome to love us, but we don't need you to 
fix us.  We aren't broken."  

Then there was the rapid clicking of unsteady 
stiletto heels across the expanse of his penthouse 
suite and the sound of his front door opening and 
closing softly.  As Mulder sat shaking on the edge of 
the rumpled bed, the party ringing in 1954 on the 
roof above him was still going strong.

*~*~*~*

He hung up the phone, telling himself it was an 
appropriate compromise: he'd called room service for 
a breakfast that didn't include vodka on his orange 
juice, but he was having coffee, damn it.  After this 
long a night, he deserved coffee.   

Shower: Mulder had been avoiding it, not wanting to 
wash the traces of her away.  Shower, and then go 
after her and hope it wasn't too late.  Stand in the 
street outside her building and throw rocks at the 
window until she came out if he had to, but he was 
going to make this right.

If she hadn't gone to bed with him last night, he 
would never have believed her, never even have 
thought to check the story.  Women did not just 
miraculously conceive.  Scully, though: she'd asked 
him if that was supposed to happen, that nice feeling 
like her insides had sneezed.  He'd laughed, at the 
time thinking she was joking, and told her sometimes 
it happened twice.  

The more he thought about it, the more the wheels had 
started to turn.  She really hadn't ever been with a 
man before.  Which meant he had a few more things to 
apologize for.
 
About two in the morning he'd managed to move and 
call Frohike, repeating what Scully had said.  By 
six, Frohike had called back to report that there was 
indeed a Top Secret part of Nellis Air Force Base in 
Nevada called Area 51.  One near where there were 
reports of a UFO crashing a few years ago, he'd said, 
causing Mulder to laugh out loud.  Aliens; there's no 
such thing as space aliens.   

More importantly, and rationally, there was a home 
for unwed mothers conveniently close by where young 
women could have and leave their babies.  He was 
still working the phones, Frohike told him, but they 
couldn't find any record of those children ever being 
adopted.  They just vanished.

"You mean she's telling the truth?  How in the world 
do you get a woman to have a baby without, uh-"

Frohike enlightened him in graphic detail until 
Mulder asked him to stop out of basic decency.

"But why?  Why create illegitimate children? It's not 
like there's a shortage." 

Continuing the German experiments, Frohike 
speculated.  Maybe at attempt to create a superior 
human.  All the mothers were bright, attractive, 
healthy young women who should have been sent to 
Korea instead of stateside.  "There's something else, 
Mulder: my sources are mentioning your name.  Yours 
and Samantha's, both."

"I'm not adopted," he immediately replied, resenting 
even the implication.  "Neither of us are; I 
remember Sam being born.  The government had just 
transferred my father and we had to move.  I remember 
my mother trying to pack all by herself while she was 
so big with Samantha."

"No, not under the adoption records, just as two of 
the people they tracked.  There are other names: 
athletes, artists, scientists, politicians, and 
professors.  Didn't you ever wonder how you could 
take up professional baseball at twenty-three years 
old and make twenty-five thousand dollars your first 
year?  Maybe you're somehow genetically predisposed 
to the game."

"Frohike," Mulder had said, "Have you been into the 
booze again?  Why in the hell would anyone want to 
breed ballplayers?"

"Maybe you weren't supposed to be a ballplayer."

That had taken a full hour to digest.  Mulder had 
then placed a call to a very unhappy Byers, still on 
vacation in Aspen and sound asleep, and ordered him 
to get his hands on these records immediately: Emily, 
Samantha, Scully, him.  He wanted to know what the 
hell the government was doing to people.  He'd heard 
his attorney crack his neck, yawn, and ask from whom 
exactly he was supposed to subpoena these documents? 

"Try Hoover," Mulder had told him, "Maybe Eisenhower.  
Or the Martians.  Beats me; just get them."  

Lucy usually knocked when she brought up meals, but 
maybe she was taking New Year's Day off.  "Thank 
you," he called to whoever had come in the front door 
as he fastened his pants.  There was no response, and 
Mulder assumed he was getting the silent treatment 
from the kitchen staff for ordering a forbidden cup 
of coffee.  He suspected a conspiracy between his 
doctor and the chef.

Frohike and his wild theories were starting to rub 
off on him. Alien babies.  That's it: Emily was a 
Martian baby.  Sure: and men would be walking on the 
moon one day soon.  He smirked and tossed his towel 
at the hook on the back of the bathroom door.

Shirtless and hair still damp, he padded barefooted 
into the kitchen, slipping the ring into his pocket, 
and intending to quickly down his coffee and toast 
before he left to do whatever it was he was going to 
do.  Beg, probably.

"Goodness, Fox; forty suits you well," came a voice 
with a clipped cockney accent as Phoebe looked him up 
and down. "The years are kind to you."

"How did you get in here?"   

"I used a key." She held up Will's, looking 
victorious.  

His throat tightened. "Is Will okay?" Frohike had 
him too paranoid to see straight.

Phoebe shrugged, and did a walkthrough of his 
rooms as though she was Queen of Sheba, pausing 
to peer into the master bedroom. "Bed looks well-
used.  I recall you preferring the couch.  Was she 
here last night?"

He'd actually begun preferring the couch when Phoebe 
was briefly the one he was expected to share a bed 
with.  The novelty of her had worn off very quickly.  
"What do you want, Phoebe?" 

"You don't really have to tell me: people saw her 
leaving the hotel in quite a disarray.  Surely 
you can afford her for the entire night, Fox, 
dearest."

"Phoebe," he warned.  She had to know this was 
dangerous ground.     

"I will not have you bedding that trollop with 
William in the next room.  I will not have my son 
stigmatized by being seen in public with her 
illegitimate brat.  I'm sure the judge, if we ask 
him, would agree.  You're not the big baseball hero, 
anymore, dearest.  You can't show up in court and 
dazzle them into granting you visitation, into making 
me move to New York.  Now you're just an over-the-
hill nobody trying to recapture your youth with a 
girl barely half your age."

"I have no idea what you're talking about.  Either 
get out or I'll call security to help you get out."  
Mulder was fairly certain if he laid his hands on his 
ex-wife at this moment, he would harm her.  How dare 
she stand there, perfectly coifed in her Chanel suit 
and pumps, trying to pass for a lady, and judge Dana 
Scully.  

When she didn't move, he repeated through gritted 
teeth, "Get.  Out."  

"I'm not trying to be mean, Fox.  What or whom you do 
in private is your business, but I will not have that 
woman involved in William's life.  If you want her 
for sport, I could care less, but you're parading 
around like you're actually going to marry her.  What 
kind of example is that setting for William?  Fox, 
dearest-" Phoebe stepped forward, hand raised to 
caress his face, and Mulder stepped back. "Fine," she 
said, her practiced, placid expression hardening, "If 
that trollop or her bastard is ever in my son's 
presence again, I'll go to the papers and then the 
court and make sure you don't see William again 
until he turns eighteen."

She whirled to leave and he slammed his hand against 
the door jam in front of her so she couldn't, his 
face flushed.  

"You say one word and I'll take you apart piece by 
piece for all your pretty, empty-headed friends to 
see." He felt a wave of satisfaction as her eyes 
widened. "I'm 'Fox, dearest,' remember?  I'm the guy 
who's paid for your booze and pills and shrinks and 
abortions for the last fifteen years.  You say one 
word against Dana Scully and we'll go back to court.  
Byers will bring in your eighteen-year old boyfriends 
to testify to what a swell time you were and whether 
or not Will was there to see it.  You think about 
that."

"You won't do that to William."  

"You think he doesn't know, Phoebe?  You think his 
friends don't laugh at him because of you?" Mulder's 
voice was still low, but his face was inches from 
hers. "You think you have the ultimate hold over me: 
you say my son's name and get whatever you want?  I 
think I've more than done right by you.  No one else 
is going to determine my life for me.  Don't cross me 
on this."

He dropped his arm to let her leave and turned away, 
disgusted.  As he waited, the atmosphere in the room 
changed, thickened sickeningly, as Phoebe tried 
another tact.
     
"I know how much you want the best for our son, Fox: 
the nannies, Packer Prep School, an Ivy League 
college, maybe a year in Europe before he marries a 
nice girl from a good family.  I know how much you 
sacrificed so he could have that."  She ran her 
fingernails lightly down his bare back and he 
shivered involuntarily as a memory resurfaced. "He 
idolizes you, Fox.  You'd never endanger that by 
showing him it's acceptable to make the same mistakes 
you did.  There are girls you marry and girls you 
don't.  Do you really want him to confuse the two the 
same way his father does?"
  
*~*~*~*

An empty baseball stadium was not unlike an empty 
cathedral: one could still hear the echoes in the 
silence.  This was the part of the American dream 
that didn't make the papers: the winter after the 
glorious season ended.   

Mulder could always think here: shut out the sounds 
falling down from the stands and focus on doing what 
came naturally.  He tossed the ball high into the 
air, and then swung through, sending it sailing over 
the wall a few seconds later.  

Will's voice called to him from the dugout, "Nice.  
That's home run number three-hundred and sixty-two."

"Three-hundred and seventy-three: you missed a few 
earlier.  What are you doing up here, Will?  Where's 
your mother?"

"I don't know, and you didn't answer at the hotel. I 
wanted to talk to you.  Mother made me give her my 
key this morning, but she hasn't been back since 
then.  Dad, she said some awful things about Mrs. 
Scully."

"I'm sure she did." He picked up another ball from 
the bucket, holding it briefly to his nose to inhale 
the familiar, comforting smell.  Baseballs always 
smelled like innocence.

"They aren't true, are they?  Dad, she says people 
saw Mrs. Scully leaving your hotel room last night, 
but she says you're not going to marry her.  I like 
Mrs. Scully and Emily.  I'd kinda thought-"  

Mulder threw the ball up again, this time hitting a 
line drive past third base and into the outfield in 
perfect form.  Always perfect.  He'd always done 
everything perfectly and made it look so easy.   

"I'd kinda thought if you two were married I could 
maybe live with you instead of Mother.  I guess I 
really don't care if it's true or not: about her not 
being married to Emily's father.  She's a nice lady 
either way.  Do you care, Dad?"

"Do I care?  How do I tell you to do one thing when I 
do another?  How do I tell you to stay away from the 
wrong kind of girls, and to wait when you meet one 
you want to marry?  Trust me, it doesn't feel like 
you want to wait when you're young." He swung again, 
so hard he almost knocked the horsehide off the old 
ball. "It doesn't feel like you want to wait when 
you're forty, either.  You want to know if Scully is 
a nice lady?  Yes, she is.  What kind of example does 
that make me?"

Will stepped over the wall of the dugout and ambled 
to home plate, turning up the collar of his leather 
jacket against the cold.   

"You want to know the big secret, Will?  What 
everyone won't tell you because it's so dangerous?" 
Mulder lowered the bat and stared out at the empty 
stadium. "Love, when it's right, is everything it's 
supposed to be: as wonderful as hitting a homerun and 
as frightening as a roller coaster at the top of a 
hill.  I think that's why people are so cynical about 
it.  Everyone looks in the wrong places to find it, 
but the real thing, when it comes along: that moment 
is worth anything it costs you.  It's just hard to 
wait for the real thing when there are so many quick, 
empty substitutes out there." 

"Like that cheese that comes out of a can.  Mother is 
that stuff.  Cheap and convenient and fake."

"I would never say that, Will.  She's your mother."

"You don't have to say it; I know the difference."   

Still slightly taller than Will, Mulder slung one arm 
around his son's shoulders and carried the Louisville 
Slugger in the other as they walked off the field.  
"How'd you know where to find me?  And how'd you get 
all the way up to the Bronx?"

"You've been my father since I was born; I know you 
pretty well.  There was only one car parked in the 
lot: yours, so I figured I had the right place."

"But how did you afford the cab?"

"I took the subway," Will replied, looking very proud 
as they walked through the gate and into the huge 
parking lot. "It's easy.  You just buy the tokens 
and get on the right train.  Mrs. Scully showed me."

"When?"  

"Mother forgot to come get me one day after school, 
so I tried to find you.  When I called Mrs. Scully, 
she came and showed me how to use the subway and the 
busses, just in case Mother forgot again.  I guess 
she didn't tell you."

There was an awkward silence as they stood in front 
of the car, not looking at each other.  

"Here, Will," Mulder finally said, sliding the spare 
key off his key ring. "This will be your key.  Start 
the car and you can drive to the edge of the parking 
lot.  When you turn sixteen, we'll pick out a car for 
you, but you can only practice with me in my car 
between now and then."

Will's face brightened, and he almost bounded into 
the driver's seat.  Mulder got in the passenger side, 
saying his prayers.  He was fairly sure his son 
wasn't genetically destined to be a chauffeur.

Christ, he had to stop listening to Frohike.  This 
was getting ridiculous.  

"Give it just a little gas as you turn the key. Don't 
flood it.  A LITTLE gas, Will!" he ordered as the 
Cadillac engine roared. "Now, put your foot on the 
brake.  No, you only use one foot to drive this car, 
there's no clutch.  Foot off the gas and on the 
brake and put it in gear." Mulder exhaled. "Very 
easily, touch the gas and the car will move.  If you 
feel like you're going too fast, just put your foot 
back on the brake.  Try not to forget to steer, but 
there's really nothing for you to hit."

William, unquestionably his father's son, floored the 
gas, squealing the tires as though they were drag 
racing, then panicked, slammed on the brake, and sent 
Mulder face first into the dashboard.

"Ah, shit, Will!" Mulder said, rubbing his forehead.

"Sorry."

"S'okay.  Try again.  Easy."

After a few uneven starts, Will had the feel of 
things, actually making a victory lap before they 
reached the edge of the empty parking lot and came to 
a less painful stop.

"Where to now, Dad?"

Noticing a woman's lipstick and Mr. Potato Head's red 
plastic lips had rolled from underneath the passenger 
seat during one of Will's braking fits, Mulder 
replied, "Brooklyn Heights.  I think I should have a 
nurse look at my forehead.  I'll drive, though."

"I can do it," Will insisted.

"I'll drive.  I'll drive and you can help me think up 
what to say to her."  
 
After walking around the car to get in on the other 
side, and, of course, slamming the passenger door, 
Will scrutinized his father's forehead as Mulder 
shifted the transmission into gear. "The bruise 
really isn't that bad."

"Then we have to return her lipstick and," He picked 
up the red lips from the floor, "Whatever you'd call 
this."

Will shook his head; still a bad plan.

"Okay," Mulder said, pulling onto the empty street, 
leaving the stadium behind them. "If we get as far 
as the Brooklyn Bridge without figuring out something 
smooth to say to Scully, I'll pull over and you can 
hit me with the baseball bat again.  That worked last 
time."

*~*~*~*
    
Begin: A Moment in the Sun, Part II

*~*~*~*

"You two are where?" Mulder asked, putting Scully's 
newly-installed phone to his ear as she went back to 
the kitchen.

"Vegas," Scully called over her shoulder.

"Vegas," Frohike repeated, as though it was the most 
logical thing in the world.  "How's it going with 
the little redhead?  You're at her apartment and 
alive, so it must be going at least fairly well."

Mulder shook his head, trying to clear out a few 
thoughts.  The last couple hours had moved much too 
fast for him. "You're where?"

"Las Vegas, Nevada.  So do I get to be a best man?"

"Or a bridesmaid?" Mulder heard Langly chime in the 
background.

"Am I paying for this?  Will!  William!" His son's 
head peaked out from the kitchen. "Stop eating 
Scully out of house and home, and get out from under 
her feet.  You're not starving to death."

Will shrugged and disappeared into the kitchen 
again. Phoebe had never willingly turned on an oven 
in her life, so Will was a little over-excited at 
the prospect of having a stepmother who cooked.  
When Scully had asked him, after opening the door 
and attempting to suck his father's face off, what 
he wanted for a late lunch, Will started making 
requests as though she was his personal short-order 
cook.

"Frohike, am I paying for this?" Mulder asked again.     

"Well, not the shows or drinks," Frohike replied, 
clearing his throat.  

There were a few crackles and thumps as Langly 
momentarily grabbed the receiver. "We're gonna see 
Sinatra!"

"Mulder- damnit, Langly, stop. Mulder, whatever this 
is you asked me to check out, it's big.  Get out 
here and tell me how much information you want to 
pay for, because it seems to be endless and I'm not 
sure what you're wanting to know."

"Define 'big'?  Big as in lots and lots of files or 
big as in you can tell me what happened to Scully 
and Samantha and why someone has been keeping tabs 
on my life?"

"Close tabs, Mulder.  Remember we're on a party 
line, but tell me if these names are what I think 
they are." Frohike reeled off thirteen women's names 
beginning with Phoebe Green and ending with Dana 
Katherine Scully.  Mulder had to think carefully to 
remember a few alcohol-soaked nights, both in the 
States and when he was in France during WWII, but 
all the names were correct: women he'd been with. 
"Tell me I'm wrong; tell me these are just random 
names."

"You're right," Mulder finally whispered, turning 
his back to Scully, Will, and Emily puttering around 
her kitchen.  He felt very dirty.  He and Scully had 
been together barely twelve hours ago.  Who had been 
watching? "It's exactly what you think it is.  My 
God: how would anyone know that?"

"More importantly, why would anyone care, Mulder?"

*~*~*~*

Some honeymoon.  

Mulder pushed his sweat-soaked clothes in a pile 
under the sink and turned on the shower, anxious to 
wash off a few pounds of grime.  Hanging on the back 
of the bathroom door was a sheer ivory nightie-
thingy which had probably had his name on it about 
seven hours ago.

Some honeymoon.  

Scully was curled in a little ball on top of the 
covers, swaddled in one of his t-shirts and her 
pajama bottoms and clutching the phone to her chest.  
He was amazed that she was even still there; any 
other woman would have been on a flight back to New 
York.  At least he'd had the foresight to reserve a 
suite with a nice, comfy couch, because he was sure 
that was where he was going to be sleeping.  The plan 
to get married this evening had been deterred by the 
absence of a groom: namely him.

Some honeymoon.

Her eyes opened a millimeter and she sighed, kissing 
the tip of his nose. "Oh, thank God."  

"I am so sorry, Scully-" he began.

"I think I should take this as a sign," she said, 
yawning and crawling underneath the covers. "Are you 
okay?  What happened?" 

"I'm okay.  Frohike wanted to show me something and 
I thought it would only take a few minutes.  You 
want me to stay or go?"  They weren't technically 
married yet; she might not even want him sleeping on 
the couch, provided she still wanted to be in the 
same room with him at all.

Scully took his hand and pulled him down on the 
mattress beside her. "I want you to stay, Mulder   
but are you sure that's what you want?  This is all 
happening pretty fast," she asked softly.  

Scully had no idea he'd been checking out Frohike's 
theories and sources as opposed to losing money at 
blackjack or sampling the Vegas showgirls half the 
night. "I want to stay.  It won't happen again: me 
going off and leaving you.  I promise."

She ran her warm fingers over his cheek, bringing 
her face close to his. "I was so afraid.  I thought 
maybe," she swallowed, "I thought the military had 
done something because I told you about Emily."

"No.  No one's going to do anything." He touched his 
mouth tentatively to hers, barely brushing instead 
of kissing. "Just business."

"Those men will kill you and not think twice.  I 
shouldn't have told you."

She closed her eyes and he kissed each eyelid as he 
felt her exhale against him. "I'm glad you told me."  
Scully tilted her face upward, opening her mouth for 
his and arching her back as his hands ran over her.  
"Nothing bad is going to happen: not to me and not 
to you." He took a shaky breath, already far too 
aroused to hide it. "Scully, the other night: I 
didn't know- I thought you'd been married or I would 
have done things different, slower."

"It's okay."

"No, no it's not.  That couldn't have been nice for 
you." He'd been ruminating on this, analyzing all 
the things he would have changed and trying to 
figure out how to tell her that. "I mean, some parts 
were, I think, but some weren't and that's my fault, 
not yours."

Keep talking, Romeo.  Maybe he could call Will long-
distance and have his son explain this to her more 
eloquently.  

"You're so good at guilt, Mulder," she whispered, 
kissing across the thinnest skin on his neck so his 
stomach quivered expectantly. "I wanted you.  I 
wanted to be with you, and I thought you'd never 
want to see me again after you knew about Emily.  I 
kind of-" she searched for the right word, "Ached, 
but that's all.  Not awful.  Not like you're 
thinking.  But I ache now." She kissed him again, 
this time exploring his mouth with her tongue. 

She made a contented sound in the back of her throat 
was he pulled her hips against his. "That kind of 
ache?" he asked, his breathing shallow.

"Oh, God."  

He laughed softly, pulling up her t-shirt so he 
could caress her breasts, lightly rolling the erect 
nipples between his fingers. "When I said you were 
amazing, I had no idea.  You set the pace, Scully: 
whatever you're comfortable with."

He glanced up at her, and saw her licking her lips, 
her face already flushed.  Jesus Christ give him 
strength if she wanted to stop.  When she opened her 
eyes to meet his gaze, her pupils were enormous with 
arousal, huge pools of black oil in a sea of blue.  
"Maybe a little slower this time," she requested.

"You still swear you'll marry me?" 

There was Mr. Guilt making his evening appearance.

"Um-hum.  First thing in the morning, provided you 
don't go off and leave me again."   

*~*~*~*

His first thought was that Scully was going to kill 
him, but then he realized the female form thrashing 
on the other side of the bed was Scully, so he 
breathed a little easier.

"Nightmare, Scully," he mumbled, not really awake 
himself. "Wake up.  You're having a nightmare."

"You leave me alone!  Don't touch me!  Emily?" she 
cried, "Don't you take her!"

"I won't touch you.  Emily is in New York with Mrs. 
Osborne.  She's safe.  You're safe; just having a 
bad dream."  

It took a few seconds for her to find consciousness, 
but she finally stopped struggling, her breath still 
coming in gasps. "Sorry."

"S'okay.  What was your dream about?" He asked, 
reaching out to stroke her hair, then pulling his 
hand back, not sure whether to touch her or not.  

"I don't remember.  Lights, men, tests."

"Tests like math tests?"

"No, medical tests," she mumbled, wiping her eyes on 
her sleeve. "A needle going into my belly. And a 
drill like a dentist would use."

He grimaced at the image, clinching his stomach 
muscles in sympathy and realizing he was completely 
undressed under the sheets.  Scully must have gotten 
up at some point during the night and put pajamas on, 
but he was very nude and very, um, awake.

"Is this the same dream as before?" he asked, 
pulling a blanket over them both, but leaving a 
large no-man's land in the middle of the bed.

"It's worse when I spend the night someplace new, or 
if I sleep without Em.  It's not you, so you can 
start breathing again."

On command, he exhaled, turned his face toward her 
on the pillow, and found her staring at him.  Her 
hand reached out, fingers running lightly, 
delicately over the angles of his face.  Mulder 
closed his eyes, relaxing his body and savoring 
every sensation.

"You are," She hesitated, trying to find the words.  
"You are precious to me.  Losing you would be losing 
a part of myself.  No more trips to the desert, no 
more asking questions, no more buying information, 
please.  If it were there to be found, I would have 
already found it.  All you're going to do is get 
hurt."

Obviously, Mulder wasn't as good at stealth as he 
thought he was.
    
*~*~*~*

He closed the car door and crouched down, arms wide, 
to pick up Emily as she ran across the street to 
tackle him.   

"Where's your mommy?" he asked, surprised to see her 
outside without her winter coat or supervision.  
Scully wasn't one to just let her daughter run loose 
and Em had been so sick two days ago that they'd had 
to postpone getting married yet again so Scully could 
fly back from Las Vegas. "Is she still packing?"

"Mommy had to go," Emily informed him, standing
on tiptoe to press the buzzer for Mrs. Osborne to 
let them into Scully's building.  Obviously, Mrs. 
Osborne was supposed to be watching Em and wasn't, 
which was odd.

"Go where? I think I found an apartment and I want 
her to look at it before I sign the papers."

Emily just shrugged, so he followed her inside and 
up the now-familiar squeaky steps.  Scully's door 
was ajar, and half-packed boxes were scattered 
around the normally immaculate apartment.   

"Em, where is your mom?"  

"She had to go," Emily repeated, as though that was 
an explanation, and wiped her nose on her sleeve.

"Go where?  To get more boxes?"

"She had to go with the men."    

*~*~*~*

When there was no sign of her by eight o'clock, he 
left Scully a note and took Emily back to The Plaza 
with him.  By ten, Mulder was carrying the phone with 
him as he paced so he didn't have to stop to check 
that it still worked.  For the two and a half months 
he'd known her, Scully's life had been her daughter, 
home, work, him, and, lately, trying to civilize Will 
a little.  There were no afternoons spent casually 
shopping, no ladies' teas or bridge clubs.  The woman 
didn't even have her hair done, for Christ's sake.

He went over every detail in his mind, trying to find 
something that might help the police, who were doing 
him a 'special favor' by searching for Scully this 
quickly.  Well, a 'special favor' after Mulder had 
called the mayor, a big baseball fan, at home.  The 
detective asked if Mulder was missing any cash or 
jewelry: in other words, had his pretty young 
girlfriend simply taken some money, abandoned her 
daughter, and taken off with another man?

They'd only decided to get married a few days ago, 
and spent most of that time acting like they were 
already married, in spite of what Mulder kept 
swearing to himself.  He was looking for a place to 
live that didn't have the word 'hotel' in on the 
building, while Scully packed.  And as soon as Emily 
was well enough to play bridesmaid, there was that 
trip to the courthouse and a few vows he and Scully 
needed to get around to saying.     

Even if there was a reason for Scully to run off, 
which there wasn't, she never would have left Em 
wandering around the neighborhood.  The police 
detective didn't seem to believe that.

Emily insisted there were 'men' that 'Mommy had to 
go with.' Mulder's skin had started to crawl when 
she added, 'Just like before.'

Beyond that, Emily was as helpful as any other four-
year old.  Before New York, she and Scully had lived 
in 'a brown building' and Grandma's name was 
'Grammy.' Grammy lived 'near a big bridge.' Mulder 
knew Scully still kept in touch, very quietly, with 
her mother and sister, but he had no idea how to 
contact them or, given what they probably thought of 
her, if they wanted to be contacted at all.

Will had a good idea, and a midnight search of 
Scully's apartment turned up a carefully balanced 
bankbook, Emily's birth certificate with a strange 
man's name listed as the baby's father- he guessed 
she had to name someone- and Scully's diploma from 
nursing school.  Beyond that, and some random pieces 
of mail, there was just nothing.  He had left Scully 
and Emily to finish packing their things while he 
went to look at yet another apartment possibility.  
Three hours later, Scully had simply vanished.  

*~*~*~*

"Mulder?" Emily asked, appearing beside his bed in 
the pink pajamas he'd put on her after a very 
tentative bath.  Actually, it had been more of a 
soak than a bath.  Mulder wasn't sure which parts he 
was supposed to wash and which parts he wasn't, but 
the child had been starting to look like a street 
urchin.

"Em?" he blinked, reaching to turn on the lamp 
beside the bed.  Mulder hadn't been asleep, but he 
hadn't really been awake, either. "Are you sick 
again, honey?"

She shook her head 'no,' clutching her stuffed kitty 
and sniffing.

He yawned, pulling the covers up a little higher.  
"Thirsty?" he guessed. "Bad dream?"   

"Is Mommy coming back?"

Mulder considered a moment, and then said weakly, "I 
hope so.  We're looking for her."

Emily thought it over while she watched him 
with big, frightened eyes. "Can I sleep with you?"

"Emily, I don't know-"  

The little girl interpreted that as an affirmative 
and scrambled onto the bed, nestling contentedly 
beside him.  He stared at her, trying to decide what 
to do, and then finally lay down and rested his arm 
on her protectively.  Dr. Spock might not say it was 
all right for a little girl to do this, but it made 
Mulder feel better.

"Dad?" Will asked from the doorway. "It's hot in my 
room.  You gotta call the front desk tomorrow 
morning.  Is everything okay?"

"You really want me to answer that?" Mulder 
responded. "Come on, Will; it's a pajama party."

"It's cooler in here.  Below roasting, anyway.  I 
heard Emily get up," Will insisted, flopping across 
the foot of the big bed with an 'ooph.' "I was just 
checking on her."

"Sure you were.  Here," Mulder tossed the spare 
pillow at him and Will caught it one-handed.  

"I'm going back to my room so I can toast to a 
tempting, even, golden brown.  I was just-" Will 
trailed off. "Oh, move your big feet, Dad.  I can't 
sleep with you jabbing me in the kidneys."

Mulder moved his big feet.

*~*~*~*  

"I don't think that's the best plan," Frohike told 
him again. "I don't think it will help." 

"Do it.  Go to the papers, the television, anyone 
you can think of.  Offer a reward: just have Langly 
transfer the money.  Monitor the hospitals and-" he 
stopped, then stuttered, "Th-the morgues."

"I've had that covered since you called me, Mulder.  
She's not-"

"Flights.  Any flights out of New York," Mulder 
suggested.  "Train passenger lists.  Any-" 

"Mulder," Frohike said sharply, "Stop it!  You pay 
me to know what I'm talking about and I'm telling 
you she's not in New York and there's no record of 
her or any woman fitting her description leaving the 
city.  Either she's run so far even I can't find 
her, which would be unlikely for several reasons, 
not the least of which is that she adores you, or-"
   
"Or the 'men' Emily is talking about are military 
men and they took her because she told me about her 
daughter," Mulder finished for him.

Frohike nodded.   

"Then why leave her daughter?"

"Because Emily doesn't know where she came from, but 
Dana does," his press agent offered.    

"And so do I.  Why am I still here?  Why am I not 
missing?"

"You and me and Langly and probably Byers," he 
answered. "We all know something was happening out 
there in the desert.  I'm not sure Mulder; I got the 
impression that lots of unmarried women on that base 
were becoming pregnant and their babies weren't 
adopted through the usual channels.  There could be a 
number of explanations for the pregnancies, but none 
involve consent.  Then, they have files that have 
something to do with vaccinations for anyone I 
thought to ask about: me, you, your sister, the 
President, Hoover: everyone.  In your file was 
something not in mine: a list of women.  I never saw 
the files; I just paid to have them read to me over 
the phone.  And, there are some top-secret aircraft, 
which makes sense, given that it's an Air Force base.  
How that all ties together, I have no idea, but give 
me a few more weeks and I will."

"Byers said he just went in circles when he asked 
questions."        

"So did I, but I'm still looking."

"What if that's it, Frohike?  What if it's not that 
Scully told me at all?  What if it's that I'm high 
profile and still asking too many questions, which 
is exactly what she told me not to do?"  Mulder 
thought for a minute, trying to get his brain to 
focus on the three hours sleep he'd had in the last 
five days. "Back off.  Have Byers reverse everything 
he's done legally and you back off everything you've 
done illegally."

"But-"

"No 'buts.' Stop looking.  If you can't find Scully 
any other way, at least stop antagonizing the men 
that took her."

"There is something going on that the government 
doesn't want people knowing about!"

"And I don't care!" Mulder shouted back, more out of 
tension than anger. "I'm a baseball player, not an 
FBI agent, okay? I made my choices a long time ago.  
Let someone else spend their life chasing after 
Martians or conspiracies or whatever you think is 
out there on that base." He leaned forward, resting 
his face in his hands. "Maybe if it was different, 
maybe if there wasn't so much to lose-"

Frohike walked around from behind his desk to sit in 
the armchair beside the one Mulder was occupying.  
"Mulder, I've always told you that you don't get 
your money's worth out of me.  You have to be the 
most decent, boring, professional athlete I've ever 
known.  When that Private read me the list of women, 
I was surprised it was that long.  Hell, Mulder, 
you're the one client I can count on to be home in 
bed, alone, with a book by ten o'clock every night." 

"Do you have a point, Frohike?"  

"You don't fit in.  You're bright.  I know you 
don't like people to know how bright, but you're the 
only person I've ever seen do the Times crossword 
puzzle in pen and not make a mistake.  And it's 
almost spooky how much you know about people when 
you've barely met them: almost like you can read 
their minds.  Then there's that memory thing you can 
do: names, numbers.  What if you'd never met Phoebe, 
Mulder?  What if that night was just a fluke that 
ended up causing you to do something with your life 
you were never meant to do?"

"My son is not a fluke," he said through clenched 
teeth. 

"I understand that.  I understand you're a nice guy 
and a good father and you did what you thought you 
had to do, but what if this is a second chance?  
What if you're supposed to ask questions about what 
the government is doing? You are different, Mulder-"

"Yes, I'm different.  Take away my bat and glove and 
I'm just the brainy, obsessive kid with no friends 
who lives inside his own head and stutters when he 
gets nervous and can't ever say the right thing, 
anyway.  I finally got more than that, and I'm not 
losing it because of some hollow quest."            

"What if there's a reason for that, too?"

Mulder raised his face to peer at the little man. "I 
don't follow."

"Let's say the U.S. government is continuing, or 
even begun, the Nazi eugenics experiments.  They 
choose the smartest and the healthiest men and women 
and make sure they have children together, by 
whatever means necessary.  Then their children have 
children and they start to create a superior race.  
I think you're one of those 'arranged' children, 
just like Emily is."

"I think you're insane," Mulder replied, standing.   

"They're building a better human: smarter, 
healthier, more athletic.  And they're doing it 
against people's will.  Scully was easy: the 
government had no trouble with her.  You are more 
difficult to control, so they keep track of the 
women you're with, probably even arranging a few and 
hoping they'd conceive."

"So we're all just lab rats?" Mulder spat out.  
"First of all-" He lowered his voice to a growl, 
mindful that Emily was just in the next office being 
entertained by Frohike's secretary, "First of all, 
Dana Scully is a long way from easy.  Don't you dare 
say that!"  

Frohike opened his mouth to explain that Mulder had 
misunderstood, but didn't get a chance to speak.  

"And no one 'arranged' for me to be with any woman.  
Aside from the one I married and the one I'm gonna 
marry, I was either drunk off my ass or in the 
middle of a war getting shot at and scared to death 
I was going to die." Mulder was pacing now, as angry 
as Frohike had ever seen him. "So Emily and I are 
somehow superior humans, but Will is just some fluke 
that screwed up my life?  Go to Hell!"  

"You need to sleep, Mulder.  My secretary can watch 
Emily and keep tabs on Will for a few hours while 
you get forty winks."

"I don't sleep," Mulder replied, suddenly deflated 
after one of his rare outbursts. "Not anymore."   
 
*~*~*~*

Will fidgeted when he knew he was in deep trouble, 
just like his mother did, which meant it doubly 
annoyed Mulder.  He banged his knees into the 
dashboard, jostled Emily beside him in the front 
seat, which he had already been warned twice not to 
do since she was sick, and then started to change 
the radio station.  

A quick glance at his father's face in the driver's 
seat and Will decided to just suffer through a 
little more jazz.  After meeting with Will's school 
principal thirty minutes earlier, Mulder had 
achieved a shade of scarlet seldom seen in humans.

"The next time you come to school to pick me up, 
could you not wear that old baseball cap and jersey, 
Dad?" he whined, exhibiting the Mulder-family 
tendency not to know when to quit. "It's not like 
you actually play anymore, so it looks stupid.  
Everybody else's father is a senator or somebody 
important.  They don't have to know you're just a 
ballplayer.  I mean, it was kinda cool right after 
you won the World Series that last time, but now-"

Mulder tilted his head a quarter-inch to the left, 
the muscles of his jaw contracting, and Will closed 
his mouth.

"I'm sorry, okay?" Will tried, crossing his arms on 
his chest and slouching down. "It's not like we 
really did anything."

"Don't-" Mulder looked at him and held up one 
finger. "Don't speak.  In case you don't realize it, 
you're about two words away from a boarding school 
in Siberia, so do not say a word!" That order lasted 
almost three minutes before Mulder exploded, "What 
where you thinking?  Did you even think what the 
consequences of your actions could have been?"   

His son, if possible, managed to look even more 
miserable. "But she's my steady," he insisted, 
wondering if tears would be useful. "I really like 
her, Dad.  Really," he added with a surge of teenage 
hormones.

"Then act like it.  If you care about her, then 
respect her."   

Will shrugged, his chin digging into his chest as 
his shoe made angry scuff marks on the dash of its 
own free will.  

"I don't even know what to say to you.  Whoever 
this-" 'tramp' he thought, "girl," he said, "is, 
neither of you are old enough to be doing what you 
were almost doing.  You're not an adult, Will, and 
this isn't the way to become one.  You don't show a 
girl you care by-" 'getting her pregnant and ruining 
both your lives,' he thought, "ruining her 
reputation," he said. 

"But she's not-" Will hesitated, realizing Emily 
was hearing every word. "She's had other steady 
boyfriends.  I don't care, though, just like you 
don't care about Miss Scully.  I still think she's a 
nice girl, no matter what anybody else says."

He looked to see if his father understood, but found 
Mulder staring intently at the car in front of them.  
Two minutes later, Mulder was out of the Cadillac in 
front of The Plaza Hotel before the valet could 
reach the door. "Come on, Em," he said quietly, 
reaching back to pick up the miserable child, still 
in her pajamas at noon.    

"Can I drive the car to the garage?" Will asked from 
the passenger seat, aliens obviously having sucked 
out his brain.  Parking the car had been one of the 
perks of turning fifteen, but any perk not a 
mandatory bodily function has been revoked the 
moment the principal had explained to Mulder what 
his son and some girl had been doing while skipping 
third period.

"Out, Will.  Get out, go upstairs, go to your room, 
and don't come out for a long time."

Will got out, remembering for once not to slam the 
door, and followed his father and Emily through the 
revolving door to the lobby, trying to figure out 
what he had said now.
 
*~*~*~*

"So what did he do?" Frohike asked, still sitting at 
the polished-within-an-inch-it-its-life dining room 
table with Byers and Langly, pouring over stacks of 
papers, just as Mulder had left them an hour ago.  
Their weekly meeting had been relocated to his rooms 
at The Plaza so Emily would be more comfortable, and 
so Mulder would be there if Scully called, but no one 
had the nerve to admit that.  

"He made a mistake," Mulder muttered, as Will's 
bedroom door slammed and Emily settled herself on 
the couch in front of 'I Love Lucy.' After draping a 
blanket over Em and her stuffed kitty, Mulder resumed 
his seat. "Thank you for waiting," he said, 
indicating no further discussion of Will's escapades 
was forthcoming.

Byers took the hint, tapping a pile of typewritten 
pages into a neat stack against the tabletop. "Only 
a few more things, and then 'the three stooges,' as 
you call us, will be out of your hair." He looked at 
Frohike, not liking this next item at all.  Someone 
needed to say it, though. "The kids, Mulder: you 
don't have legal custody of Emily, and Phoebe let 
you have Will with the understanding Dana would be 
here to take care of him."

"They're okay.  Em's okay." Mulder answered, 
spinning a paperclip nervously.  Scully's definition 
of 'okay' would not include Em staring at the 
television in her pajamas all day or Will getting 
caught half-naked with a girl in the janitor's 
closet. "Why can't I just keep her?"

The three men tactfully ignored that question. "I 
found a grandmother in Washington D.C.," Byers said 
quietly.  "I should have contacted her a long time 
ago, but, well, you know why I didn't.  She wants to 
talk with you and it sounds like she might be willing 
to take Emily.  Like she might be open to the idea, 
anyway.  Talk to her, Mulder.  Emily needs a home, 
not a hotel.  Margaret Scully is a nice lady and she 
was very concerned about her daughter.  If nothing 
else, maybe she would take Emily for a week.  You're 
coming apart at the seams, Mulder, and it's showing 
in the kids."    
        
Focusing his eyes on the mahogany tabletop, Mulder 
held out his hand for the phone number, crumpling 
and shoving it into his pants pocket. "And Will?" he 
asked tiredly. "I thought Phoebe agreed he could 
live with me if I'd keep paying child support to 
her."    

"She's changed her mind," Byers answered softly. 
"She's his mother.  That counts for quite a bit."

"And I'm his father," he insisted, desperately 
grasping at his dream of a family as it dissolved
into mist.   
 
"You know what Phoebe's going to say." Frohike 
dropped his voice still lower. "You didn't even see 
William again until he was six.  Don't tell me that 
wasn't your fault, because I know it wasn't, but 
it's still true.  Phoebe's attorney is going to say 
you're a playboy with a history of alcohol problems- 
which means 'a drunk' to a jury- who's seldom 
spent more then twelve hours at a time with his son 
in fifteen years.  Will's getting in fights; he's 
skipping school-"

Mulder opened his mouth, but Frohike held up his 
hand. "I know, but it's my job to tell you what 
would happen if you went back to court right now.  
I'm certainly not saying he's better off with Phoebe, 
but I'm saying a judge might.  Especially now.  After 
Dana.  Do you realize how bad it will look when 
Phoebe's attorney says Dana abandoned her daughter?  
An illegitimate daughter that you let your son be 
around?  It would be a long, messy custody fight and 
you might come out not being able to see him at all."

"I don't care.  Will's not going back to her."

"Phoebe doesn't want him, Mulder.  She just doesn't 
want him with you.  She could care less about hurting 
that boy as long as she can use him to get back at 
you." 

Langly cleared his throat, and the men suddenly 
became aware of a teenager standing in the doorway.

"You're supposed to be in your room, Will," Mulder 
finally said shakily. "I thought I told you to stay 
in your room."

"I-I came to see if I could watch American 
Bandstand," Will mumbled, a crease appearing between 
his eyebrows. "I guess not, huh?"

"No."

Will turned away and walked quickly back to his 
bedroom without looking back.

Mulder laid his head down on the cool table, closing 
his eyes. "Shit, he heard that."

"I am so sorry, Mulder," Frohike apologized. "I'll 
talk to him.  I'll call him-"

"Out," Mulder replied, not looking up or possessing 
the energy to yell and cry at the same time.  It was 
one or the other, and the men suspected Mulder was 
leaning toward crying.

Frohike stood, his chair squealing across the wooden 
floor, and Byers and Langly followed his example, 
not knowing what else to say.

"Come to dinner tonight," Byers offered desperately.  
"I'll send our nanny over for the kids and Susanne 
can get some food into you before your clothes start 
falling off."

"Out," Mulder ordered.

*~*~*~*

Emily was running a fever and the raw air was not 
what she needed, so they waited inside the DC 
airport terminal.  Mulder shifted her on his hip as 
he looked around, trying to imagine what Margaret 
Scully might look like. He knew as soon as they 
stepped through the doors: a small, composed brunette 
woman with a tall, powerfully built redheaded man.  
Margaret touched her son's shoulder, wanting him to 
wait, as she walked toward Mulder and Emily. Behind 
her, Bill leaned against a wall, folding his arms in 
disapproval.

It looked like a wild west showdown.  It felt like a 
wild west showdown, except a child, not guns, was 
involved.

"Mrs. Scully?" Mulder asked, just to make sure. "I'm 
Fox Mulder. Look, honey: Grammy," he encouraged 
Emily, who kept her head buried against his shoulder. 
"She's a little shy these days.  And she's not 
feeling well."

"Thank you so much for bringing her.  She's gotten 
so big," Margaret said awkwardly.  

Mulder smoothed Em's blonde hair. "It's Grammy.  
Grammy doesn't know Kitty. Can you show her Kitty?"

Emily shook her head 'no,' clutching the threadbare 
stuffed cat and sniffing. "Thirsty," she insisted.

"Is your throat hurting again?"

She nodded, still keeping her face against the dark 
fabric of his trench coat.  Mulder signaled Will, 
who left his assigned seat across the terminal and 
came to take the child. 

"Get her something cold to drink while I talk with 
Mrs. Scully," he told his son, so on edge he forgot 
to introduce William. "Juice, maybe," he suggested, 
setting down Emily's new suitcase to dig out his 
wallet. "Go with Will, Em."

Will betrayed his cool exterior by picking up Emily, 
looking every inch the protective big brother he had 
wanted to be. "Come on, Squirt."

"She's sick?" Margaret asked, watching them walk 
away.

"She's been sick since New Year's.  There's um," He 
pulled the envelope out of his coat pocket. "I took 
her to my son's pediatrician, who referred her to a 
specialist in Allentown, Pennsylvania.  She's been 
to see him once, but Dr. Scanlon thinks it has 
something to do with her immune system. He wants her 
to see a Dr. Klemper, who's a geneticist.  They're 
still running tests, but their cards are in here.  
Her appointment with Dr. Klemper is in a week.  
There's also a number for Richard Langly, who 
administers her trust fund: he'll take care of her 
medical expenses, your travel arrangements, and 
anything else she needs; just call him or send him 
the bills."

Mulder examined the polished floor for any flaws, 
knowing better than to look directly at Margaret 
Scully.  

"You don't need to pay me to take care of my 
granddaughter, Mr. Mulder.  We've always been proud 
of Dana, and whatever mistake she made, it's not the 
child's fault."

He shifted his feet, shoving his hands deep in his 
pockets. "There's also a card from an FBI Agent 
named Arthur Dales here in DC.  He's been working 
with the NYPD to find Dana, so if you can think of 
anything that might be helpful-"

"Are you her father, Mr. Mulder?" Margaret asked 
softly, taking the envelope.  

"No. I'm not." He swallowed, glancing at Will and 
Emily at the counter in the airport cafe.  Mulder 
had even asked Dr. Scanlon to run his blood type 
against Emily's, just in case there was a match and 
he could lie to a judge.  No match.  

"My son and I are going to Boston for a few days: 
we'll be at my mother's house.  The number is in 
there, or you can contact John Byers: my attorney.  
And, um, sometimes Em just likes to talk on the 
phone, so call and reverse the long distance 
charges."  

Will returned, leading Emily and making his way 
across the terminal as slowly as possible. "I got 
her grape soda.  That was as close to juice as they 
had."

Mulder squatted down, buttoning up Emily's coat and 
putting on her red mittens. "You're going to stay 
with Grammy.  Okay?  Remember, we talked about it?"

Emily nodded, her purple lips pursed and a familiar 
furrow appearing between her eyebrows.  He frowned 
back, shoving his lower lip out clownishly and 
reaching in the pocket of his trench coat.  Putting 
his old Yankee's cap on her head, then twisting it 
around backward, he whispered, "You have my hat and I 
have Mommy's necklace.  When Mommy comes back, we all 
trade: you get the necklace, I get the hat back, and 
what does Mommy get?"

"Kisses," she managed, her chin starting to tremble.  
Emily pulled his shirt collar to the side, looking 
for the gold chain he'd shown her earlier.  

"Big kisses," Mulder said softly, pressing his lips 
against her warm forehead. "Go on with Grammy. 
Hurry, before it starts raining again." 

"You're gonna find Mommy?"

"I'm gonna keep looking," he nodded, his eyes 
getting moist.  Behind Mulder, Will cleared his 
throat, announcing their flight to Boston was 
boarding.

"Ready, Emily? You can call Mr. Mulder tonight.  
It's time for him to go. Is that all right, Mr. 
Mulder?" Margaret asked.

He nodded again, standing up and blinking as Emily 
took her grandmother's hand.  Bill picked up her 
suitcase, making a point to glare at Mulder before 
he turned away.

*~*~*~*

He was three-quarters of the way through his sixth 
repetition of 'Night before Christmas,' slightly 
modified for Emily's amusement, when Margaret Scully 
picked up the phone.  

"She's asleep, Mr. Mulder."

"Good.  Is she doing okay?" he asked hesitantly, 
rolling his tired neck from side to side.   

"Considering the situation, I think she's doing very 
well."

There were several seconds of awkward silence, and 
Mulder opened his mouth to say 'goodnight.'

"I don't think I said 'thank you,' Mr. Mulder.  I 
appreciate what you've done.  You seem to care for 
Emily and Dana very much."

He worried his lip until it started to throb, not 
sure how to respond. "They're important to me."

Another pause, then, "We'll call for a story 
tomorrow night, all right?"

"That would be great. Goodnight."  

"Dad?  You okay?" Will asked, looking up from the 
homework he was supposed to be doing while he was 
expelled from school.

Mulder exhaled, ran his fingers through his hair, 
and got up from the couch.  Going to the mantel, he 
looked over the framed photos his mother had 
assembled, noting they all predated Samantha's 
disappearance.  Life had stopped after Samantha, and 
hadn't really restarted until Halloween 1953 in the 
Mercy Hospital ER. 

"Yeah.  Just getting Em to sleep.  It sounds like 
she's doing fine.  Yeah, I'm okay."

"Good," Will answered, closing his textbook. "It 
shows."

*~*~*~*

"Try it again," Mulder requested from underneath the 
hood, re-tightening the plug wires. 

Will sighed and turned the key, getting only a 
sluggish coughing noise from the engine, which he 
conveyed to his father by yelling, "It's still just 
making that noise!"

"Are you giving it enough gas?"

"Was I supposed to be giving it gas?"

Mulder peeked his head around, looking at his son 
suspiciously.  He had just spent the afternoon trying 
to get his father's car to start: another in the 
series of projects his mother had assigned him the 
moment they arrived in Boston.  Teena Mulder didn't 
want to talk, but she could still make a to-do list.

"I was," Will admitted. "Had ya."

"Did not," he answered, returning to his mechanics. 
"Go see if Grandmother has a metric socket set."  

Ignoring that request, since it was only for show 
anyway, Will got out of the driver's seat, coming 
around to lean on a fender and watch Mulder 
tinkering. "How much longer before you tell 
Grandmother you have no idea what you're doing?"

"About ten seconds," Mulder said sarcastically, 
giving the distributor cap a well-placed whack with 
the wrench. "We tackle that dripping kitchen faucet 
after dinner.  Bring a mop."

"You are not able to fix it, Fox?" Teena Mulder said 
worriedly as she entered the carriage house the 
Mulders used as a garage.  

Mulder wiped his hands on a rag, rolling his 
shirtsleeves back down. "I think it's just sat for 
too long, Mom.  It's going to need new plugs, hoses, 
belts, a battery.  I'd rather a mechanic did it,
just so nothing gets missed.  Dad loved this car."
  
"You will call someone, yes?" Despite leaving Germany 
forty years ago, her pronunciation and bearing 
retained the elegance of the Old World. "Your father 
always took care of these things."

"Sure, Mom," Mulder said soothingly. "It's almost 
dinner time; may Will and I take you out?"

She looked tired, shaking her head slowly so the 
overhead light glinted off her coifed sliver hair. 
"I do not think so, Fox." 

"We could bring something back?  From the deli, 
maybe?" 

"As you like.  Do you need money?"

Mulder laughed before he could catch himself, then 
tried to conceal it with a cough. "Um, no.  I think 
I can cover it."

"Have a good time." She turned, making her way across
the snow-covered backyard and into the big, empty 
house.

"Wait, Mom-" Mulder hurried after her, catching up 
as she reached the back porch. "What should we bring 
for you?"

"Nothing.  I am tired.  I will go to bed, Fox," she 
dismissed him.

"You said it was okay for me to bring Will to see 
you.  I don't understand what's wrong or why you're 
avoiding us.  He's just having a rough time right 
now.  We both are.  Give him a chance: he's a good 
kid."

"I am sure he is." Teena patted his shoulder, 
then put her hand on the doorknob to go inside. 
"It is nice you spend time with him."

"Is there anything I do that lives up to your 
standards, Mom?" he said angrily, then bit his lip. 
 
She looked at him blankly, blinking a few times.

There was a frantic electrical whirring from the 
garage, two mechanical coughs, and then a warm 
purring ignition sound as Bill Mulder's sports car 
finally came back to life.  Mulder turned, and Will 
appeared in the back yard, ankle-deep in the snow 
and grinning from ear to ear.

"Good job, son.  What'd you do?"

Will shrugged, pretending to be perplexed. "Can we 
eat now?"

"Sure.  Mom-"  

The back door closed, leaving Mulder standing alone 
on the cold porch.

*~*~*~* 
   
"What about a cannon?" Will asked, only half 
listening as he scanned the menu board and daily 
specials.

"I said, don't take it as canon, but the last time I 
was here, just about everything was really good.  
That was twenty-some years ago, though.  Twenty-
three," Mulder figured, looking around at the 
familiar deli.  At less than two miles from his 
parent's house, almost every lunch and dinner his 
last few years in Boston had been ordered at this 
counter.

"That would have made you about sixteen.  What 
happened when you were sixteen?  I know you didn't 
learn to cook."

"I left for Oxford," Mulder said, thinking Scully 
would like fruit salad and a turkey sandwich on 
whole wheat, and quickly pushing that idea out of 
his brain in order to remain sane.

"It took you seven years to not finish college?" 
Will asked skeptically. "Maybe you should lay off me 
about my grades."

"Huh?"

"You left for Oxford at sixteen; you and Mother got 
married when you were twenty-three.  That's seven 
years."

"I have my AB; I was working on my Doctorate," 
he answered quickly. "How 'bout a Reuben, Will?"

Will raised his eyebrows. "Doctor Mulder?"  

"Yeah.  Isn't that funny?" he said lightly.

"How close were you to finishing?" Will pursued, 
moving down the counter so they were next in line.

Six months. "A long way.  Hey: they still have 
milkshakes.  They have the best-"

"You quit because of me."

"I quit to play ball for the Yankees; it wasn't 
exactly a hard choice," Mulder lied. "Come on, Will: 
figure out what you want to eat.  Emily's going to 
call in half an hour and I want to get back to the 
house."

"How is it your American League batting stats start 
when I was three months old, but your and Mother's 
wedding was six months before I was born?" 

"Come on: tell her what you want." Mulder gestured 
to the cashier, pretending he hadn't understood 
Will's math.

"You know, I'm not going to see her anymore when I 
go back to school. The girl I got in trouble with," 
Will said quietly, as they waited for their food a 
few minutes later. "I'm not going to cause any more 
problems."

Mulder had been scanning the room for something to 
talk about, and looked quickly at Will, only hearing 
the parts about 'girl,' and 'in trouble.'

"You what?" he said sharply.

"I'm not gonna get in any more trouble at school. Or 
at home.  I promise.  Can we just go back to New 
York?"   

"We'll go back in a few days.  I'd like for you to 
get to know Grandmother."

"Oh, she hates me!" Will insisted. "She treats me 
like I'm invisible."

"She doesn't hate you.  She's just been like that 
since my sister disappeared.  That was really hard 
on her."   

"Dad, am I not supposed to know Mr. Byers and 
Mother's attorney met today?  I grew up with my 
father on the front page of the newspaper, and I'll 
see the headlines in Boston the same as I'd see them 
in New York." 

"You know, maybe you should go to work for the FBI, 
Will," Mulder said, angrily picking a few napkins in 
anticipation of whenever the hell they finally got 
their food. "I can at least keep you away from the 
reporters.  Except for The Three Stooges and the 
Scullys, no one knows we're here."    

"What do you think anyone could say about you or 
Mother that I don't already know?" Will pleaded. "I 
want to go home.  Miss Scully isn't in a South End 
deli, Dad, and she's not in Grandmother's garage, 
either. How are you gonna find her if you're not 
even looking?"

Mulder stared at the short-order cook, psychically 
willing him to hurry, while he didn't answer Will.  
The truth was there was no place left to look.  No 
place to even begin looking: Scully had vanished 
without a trace.

The bell on the foggy glass door jingled, and a 
woman asked, "Fox?" sounding surprised. "I thought 
that was you.  Fox, so good to see you again."

Mulder blinked, as though he couldn't quite place 
her.  Fans often did this: assumed he knew them 
because they knew his face, but almost no one called 
him 'Fox.'

"Diana," she reminded him. "Diana Fowley.  We met 
last year."

He thought another moment, then nodded, not entirely 
pleased at the memory. "Diana.  Good to see you 
again.  It's been a long time."

"It's been too long," she said, sounding a little 
too warm for Will's taste. "What brings you to Boston 
again, Fox?"

"We're visiting my mother," Mulder answered, glancing 
again to see if their food might be ready. "Diana, 
this is my son, William."

"Hello, William."

"Good to meet you, Mrs. Fowley."

"Miss," she corrected, then turned her attention and 
chest toward Mulder.  Behind her, Will made a rude 
face at his father. "We should get together, catch 
up, Fox."

"Oh, my life's pretty boring.  Not much to tell," 
Mulder replied, gratefully grabbing the bag of soup 
and sandwiches off the counter. "It was good seeing 
you again, Diana."

"You know where to find me if you change your mind. 
It's still the same hotel," she said, smiling and 
turning to get in line. 

Mulder nodded hastily, backing out the door and into 
the snowstorm.

*~*~*~*

"Take your foot off the gas before you flood it," 
Mulder suggested, watching through the driver's side 
window of the Porsche to see what the boy might be 
doing wrong. "Is the clutch in-"

"I know how to do it, Dad," he shot back, 
exasperated. "I'm telling you it won't start!"

"It's been running fine.  Let me try."

Will hopped out of the driver's seat, angry at being 
second-guessed, and stood beside Bill Mulder's silver 
sports car with his arms folded.   

Mulder turned the key several times, not even getting 
the engine to turn over. "It won't start, Will."

"Gee, really?"

"Yes, really," Mulder answered with an equal amount 
of sarcasm, popping the hood so he could stare at 
the engine knowingly before he gave up and walked 
back to the house.

"Are you having car trouble?" the woman from the 
deli asked, clutching a steaming cup of coffee. 
"What a beautiful machine.  Is this yours, Fox?"

"My late father's.  Will and I got it running this 
afternoon, but now-" He leaned over the engine, 
looking for things to fiddle with.

"He just decided to do a quick tune-up," Will-the-
smart-ass answered, flashing a winning smile.  This 
Miss Fowley looked like one of those women Will 
wasn't supposed to know about when his father had 
been drinking. "While we're waiting for our soup to 
cool." 

"Fuel line's frozen," Mulder announced, slamming the 
hood down as Will mouthed, 'Yeah, right,' from behind 
Diana. "I guess we walk."

"I have a car," Diana offered, gesturing across the 
street.

"No, that's all right.  It's not far.  Come on, 
Will." Mulder pulled his gloves on and buttoned up 
his coat, picking up the bag from the deli and 
locking the car.

"Really, it's no trouble." She leaned close to 
Mulder, whispering. "For pity's sake, I don't bite. 
No hard feelings, okay?"

Mulder shrugged, realizing he was going to miss Em's 
call if they had to walk home. "Um, okay.  Thanks.  
It really is just a few blocks."

Will put his hands on his hips, looking like he 
smelled something rotten, then slunk after his 
father.

"Would you mind driving, Fox?" Diana asked, handing 
him the keys to the Chevy. "I'm a little afraid to 
drive in the snow and it's really coming down now."

Glancing in the rearview mirror as he slid behind 
the wheel, Mulder saw Will doing his swooning heroine 
impression in the backseat and mouthed 'Stop it now!' 

"The main roads are clear," Mulder answered, slowly 
easing out onto the slippery street. "There's a gas 
station near the house.  I'll stop there and you 
should have no problem after that.  I really 
appreciate this, Diana."

"You can't drive me back to the hotel?"

There was frantic kicking in the small of Mulder's 
back from a William-sized sneaker.

"No, sorry.  I have phone-date with a four-year-old 
who can't go to sleep at her Grammy's house without
her story."  He looked back again to see Will, who 
must have thought his father had just fallen off the 
turnip truck, giving him a 'thumbs up.' 

"How sweet.  I didn't realize you had a little girl, 
Fox.  William, your father talks about you all the 
time, but I didn't realize you had a sister."

"Stepsister," Will piped up. "She will be soon, 
anyway.  Right, Dad?"

"As soon as possible," Mulder replied, making a 
slow, slippery turn onto Columbus Avenue.  

"I have a son who does the same thing: not going to 
bed," Diana said, changing tactics so quickly Will 
could almost hear the gears grinding. "I hate it 
when work takes me away from Gibson, especially 
overnight, but there isn't a choice now." 

Mulder perked up, more comfortable with this topic 
of conversation.  He hadn't known she had a child, 
but there hadn't been much talking that weekend, 
either.  She had been flying up to Boston 'on 
business,' he was going up to check on Mom and feel 
sorry for himself, and the scotch had been flowing 
in first class section of the plane. Of course, they 
were supposed to 'get together' once they got back to 
New York, but that never quite happened.  Actually, a 
few weeks later, Dana Scully had happened. 

"It's hard," Diana continued sadly, "I know he's 
safe with my mother when I'm working, but that 
little face in the window watching me leave-"

"How old is he?" Mulder asked, carefully stopping on 
the snow-covered lot of the closed filling station.

"He just turned six.  He'd love to meet you someday.  
He's a big baseball fan.  It would be a huge thrill, 
and there haven't been many of those since his father 
died."  

Will was already out of the car, holding the 
sandwiches and looking in a hurry to get anywhere 
else.  

"You're sure you'll be okay, Diana?" Mulder asked, 
watching the heavy snowflakes reflecting in the 
headlights. "If you have chains, I'll put them on 
real quick before I leave."

"No, go on." She leaned over and kissed his cheek, 
sliding across the seat and behind the wheel as he 
got out. "You can't keep that little girl waiting. 
I'll be fine."

"You're sure?  Okay.  Um, we'll be back in Manhattan 
in a few days.  Let me know where to find Gibson and 
I'll teach him how to throw a curveball some 
afternoon."

"I'll do that.  He'll be so excited."
 
Mulder hesitated, holding open the driver's door as 
she put the transmission in gear. "Diana- I think I 
misjudged you before. I want to apologize; I'm 
different now. Scully, my fiancee: she's really good 
for me.  I did some things before she came along that 
I'm not proud of, and I'm sorry if you got hurt."

She smiled. "I told you: no hard feelings."

He nodded, closing the door and watching as she 
drove away.  Beside him, Will breathed an audible 
sigh of relief.

*~*~*~*
              
"You know," Frohike muttered, sounding like he'd 
knocked over something spillable scrambling for the 
phone in the dark. "I do have office hours, Mulder."

"You might be busy if I called you at the office," 
Mulder responded, flipping through the book he had 
just confiscated from Will, trying to find the 
objectionable parts: because he was a good father 
and he needed to know these things.  

"Well, I might be busy at eleven-thirty at night, 
too."

"Uh-huh.  What are the odds?"

"Tall, dark, handsome, wealthy, athletic, and tongue-
tied doesn't do it for every woman, Mulder."

"So short, furry, tenacious, and shifty does?" Mulder 
challenged. "Hey, should a fifteen-year-old boy be 
reading something called 'Lolita?"

"Yes, but he shouldn't let his father catch him 
doing it," Frohike replied, yawning. "How did it go 
talking to your mother about Samantha?  Would she 
tell you anything?"

"Well, she told me hello, asked me if I was still 
playing baseball, and then she gave me a list of 
chores."

"Not well, then?"   

"Um, no.  How did the preliminary stuff go today?"   

"We got nowhere negotiating until Byers presented 
his witness and evidence lists for the hearing, and 
then Phoebe's attorney almost had a stroke.  She 
seems to have forgotten to mention a few things that 
Langly and I just happened to come across. I think 
Phoebe may come around." 

"You're an evil little troll, Frohike, and I respect 
that."

"I'm an evil little troll who likes to win.  And I 
take this kid's life personally."        

"So do I," Mulder said softly, fanning the pages of 
the book with his thumb. "Thanks.  I know this goes 
above and beyond."

"Don't thank me yet. It could still go either way if 
she doesn't back down.  If we go to court, it's open 
season on Fox Mulder, and both you and Will are 
going to have to testify."

"Still, thanks anyway."   

"Go to sleep, Mulder."

"Did you find anything new about-"

"If I find anything about Dana Scully, I will call 
you immediately," Frohike assured him. 

"You're still looking, right? You've talked to Agent 
Dales at the FBI?"

"I'm still looking." They had this conversation every 
night for the past three months and the script never 
changed.

"Agent Dales is a little insane, but he seems to be 
the only one willing to help."

"I don't know: some of what he says makes perfect 
sense to me, Mulder."

"And they just let you walk around on the streets?" 
Mulder said sarcastically. "'War of the World's:' 
that wasn't real, Frohike.  It's just a radio show 
and a metaphor for the Russians.  And The Creature 
from the Black Lagoon-"   

"Goodnight, Mulder."

"I don't want to find the Gill-man on my payroll."

"Goodnight, Mulder."

"You know, even Frankenstein got a bride."

"Goodnight, Mulder."

"Night." 

Will, who had been eavesdropping in the next room, 
chose that moment to materialize in the kitchen to 
check for leftovers and news.  Finding neither, he 
proceeded to assemble the most elaborate roast beef 
sandwich in history while he stalled.

Mulder opened his mouth to say something that seemed 
witty, at least to him, when the phone rang. 

"My God.  Who calls people at almost midnight?"

"You," Will answered, the butter knife clinking 
repeatedly against the inside of the mayonnaise jar 
in a way carefully calculated to annoy his father. 
"Me.  And tall brunette models who can't manage to 
find their hotel in the snow without a big, strong 
man to help them, Fox."

Despite himself, Mulder made a strangled snorting 
noise as he reached for the phone. 

"Oh, hello Mrs. Scully," Mulder managed, trying not 
to notice as Will did his hair-flipping, doe-eyed 
Diana impression. "No, I was awake.  Is Emily all 
right?"

There was a pause, and Mulder waved Will away, 
listening closely. "How is she?"

Will stopped his sex-kitten posing against the 
counter and stood still, his brown eyes focused on 
the change in his father's posture.

"I will be right there," Mulder finally said, hanging 
up the receiver with some difficulty, then sitting in 
stunned silence for a few seconds.  

"Dad?"

"They, um, they just found Scully.  She's in a 
hospital in DC."

"Where was she?"

"They don't know.  And they don't know what's 
happened to her," Mulder said shakily. "Just that 
she's weak and the doctors aren't sure- Mrs. Scully 
said I should probably hurry."

"We're never going to get a flight out of Boston in 
this snowstorm."

"We aren't; I am."    
 
*~*~*~*
 
"Nothing?" Mulder asked again, leaning over the 
counter in case there might be a plane hidden on the 
other side.

"The next flight isn't until morning, and that's 
tentative based on the storm."

"It doesn't have to be a direct connection to DC.  
Just get me out of Boston and I can go from there."

"Nothing is taking off or landing in Boston at this 
time due to the storm," the woman said tiredly, 
obviously not grasping the gravity of the situation.

"What about a private plane? Can I charter a flight?" 

"There is nothing taking off or landing-"

"I heard you! Find something! I don't care if I'm 
sitting on a stack of airmail."

"There is-" 

He dropped his head, hands braced on the counter, 
and took a deep breath. "Look: I am Fox Mulder.  
I've flown all over the country with the Yankees, 
and I know there's always some fool willing to take 
off for the right price.  My fiancee is in a hospital 
in DC and the doctors have no idea how to help her.  
Waiting for the eight a.m. flight is not acceptable.  
You have carte blanche: anything the pilot wants. 
Find a plane. And a pilot. And get me off the ground 
so I can tell her goodbye before it's too late."

The woman's face changed, softening. "I will see 
what I can do.  If you'll wait in the executive 
lounge, I will come get you."

"Thank you," he said quietly, turning away.

He looked around the empty bar as he sat down, 
spinning his stool restlessly from side to side.  
The bottles lining the wall were filled with various 
levels of warm, soothing, amber love: the kind that 
burned going down and was gone by morning.  

The wrong kind.  Not the kind he wanted. 

Deciding it wasn't a good idea to test his resolve 
this morning, Mulder moved across the room to the 
huge glass window, sinking into an overstuffed 
leather chair and propping his feet up on a low 
table.  He watched for a while, disinterested, as 
the snow melted off his shoes and made puddles on 
the expensive wood, probably leaving water stains.  
Someone should think to put down heel coasters.  

His mother would have heel coasters.  Scully would 
have the kind of table that didn't get watermarks.

The clock on the wall marked one, and then two, the 
seconds seeming to echo in the over-decorated room.  
He flipped through a few magazines, then tried 
Will's 'Lolita' novel until the words started to 
blur.  Finally, Mulder just stared out at the 
blowing snow as he waited, and, as the clock edged 
toward three, resting his elbows on his knees, 
covered his face with his hands, and cried.

*~*~*~*  
 
He squatted down, stroking the child's hair as she 
dozed amid a patchwork of winter coats on the 
waiting room sofa. "Hi there."

Emily shifted, then tentatively opened her eyes. 
"Mulder," she decided, sitting up and wrapping her 
arms around his neck, nuzzling against his five 
o'clock shadow. "You're scratchy."

"Yeah, I'm scratchy, honey," he murmured, closing 
his tired eyes. "Where's Grammy?"

"With Mommy and Uncle Bill." Then, remembering her 
news, added, "Mommy's back, Mulder. She's sick."

He nodded, and Emily fished through scarves and 
gloves for the Yankee's cap, putting it on and then 
turning it around backward before she lay back down.  

He draped his trench coat over Emily as she drifted 
back to sleep, the stuffed Kitty, now missing an eye 
and part of an ear, clutched tight. In four-year-old 
little girl dreams, Mommy was back and all was right 
with the world.

The hallway seemed to stretch infinitely long as he 
walked: each room a held breath, a skipped heartbeat, 
and another name that was not 'Scully.' His shoes 
echoed obscenely quickly on the polished floor, the 
inevitable Truth with a capital 'T' rushing at him 
much faster than he could process it.  He wanted to 
snatch it back and have time slow into a lazy 
Saturday afternoon lie: to have one more sci-fi 
matinee with Emily clutching the popcorn and dozing 
in the seat between them, or to sit silently with 
Scully in Central Park and just watch the snow 
cocooning the city. 

"Mr. Mulder," Bill Scully said wearily, stepping out 
of a hospital room and closing the door behind him. 
"What are you doing here?"
   
"Your mother asked me to come. How is-"  

"She made a mistake," Bill said coldly. "So did 
Dana."

Mulder started to go around him, but Bill moved with 
him as though they were dancing, blocking his path.  

"Look, my sister's probably nothing special to you, 
but she is to us. You've had your fun, now I'm asking 
you nicely: leave her alone."

"I don't understand.  She's very special to me." 

"I'm sure." Bill folded his arms, but looked away, 
ashamed. "Mr. Mulder, the doctor just told us Dana's 
recently been, uh, that she's been pregnant.  The 
hospital didn't tell Mom when they called, so Mom 
didn't know when she called you."

Mulder blinked, an orange numbness forming at the 
crown of his head and spreading through his body 
until his fingertips tingled.  
 
Faltering, Bill continued, "They're also saying Dana 
didn't lose the baby, that a someone has- That she's 
had an abortion and then been left to die. And she 
almost did.  Once she's better, the police are 
pressing charges." 

Mulder stood in the middle of the hall, slowly 
shaking his head from side to side in disbelief.  
This was not real; this was not happening.  They'd 
talked about it: Will would start college soon and 
Emily would go to kindergarten and maybe another 
baby would be nice.  There was some mistake. 

"I didn't know-"

"Bullshit you didn't know!  The doctor says she was 
at least five months along.  You probably knew when 
she took off in January."  

"No, uh, I didn't. She shouldn't b-be- We'd, um-" 
It took him several seconds to put all the pieces 
together: "Then the baby wasn't mine."
 
Bill finally looked up, jamming his hands in his 
pants pockets and meeting his gaze. "Of course it 
wasn't.  It never is.  You're free to go, Mr. Mulder.  
Just walk away.  Thank you for all you've done for my 
sister," he added sarcastically.

"I want to see her," he stammered. "I want to know 
what happened."

"You can leave or I can kick your ass myself, you 
son-of-a-bitch," Bill hissed. "Make a move, because 
I'd love to have a reason."

*~*~*~*

"One more time: this is a horribly bad idea," 
Frohike protested, his hand poised over the phone in 
his office. "Pending assault charges; restraining 
order: do these words mean anything to you?"

"Dial," Mulder ordered, perching nervously on the 
edge of the chair, chewing the skin off his lower 
lip.

"If Phoebe's attorney gets wind of this, you won't 
stand a chance in court.  And you're going to give 
John Byers a heart attack." 

Mulder pointed at the phone.

He held his breath as Frohike bluffed his way 
through the hospital's front desk, then through the 
nurses' station, and finally to Scully's bedside. 
He waited a beat, then handed Mulder the phone.  

"Mr. Marty Martin," Scully's tired voice said, 
"That's a lousy alias."   
   
"I'm not very creative.  God, it's nice to hear your 
voice," Mulder managed, stabbing the rug with the 
toe of his shoe. He chose the optimistic "Do you 
feel like talking?" over the more appropriate 'do 
you want to talk?'

"Just for a few minutes.  I want to apologize," she 
answered quietly. "Mom said you and Bill got into a 
fight."

"We had a discussion, yes."

"Mom also said you've been taking care of Emily."

"Yeah." He found a nice, new, loose piece of skin on 
the inside of his lower lip and set about slicing it 
away with his teeth. "I don't think I did too bad a 
job."

"And I'm betting you're behind the police dropping 
the charges against me."  

His press agent, hovering close enough to hear that, 
gestured frantically, looking like he was having a 
seizure while being attacked by bees.

"My handler is advising me not to comment. Or he 
wants me to steal second base.  Or bunt: it's hard to 
tell."

"Thank you."

"I missed you, Scully.  I still miss you.  I'm glad 
you're okay.  Are you- um, when are you going to get 
to go home?"

"In a few more days. I'm going to spend some time 
with Mom until I'm up to chasing Emily again."

"You could come-"

"No," she said quickly. 

He swallowed, trying to get the lump in his throat 
to go down, tilting his chin upward with the effort. 
"Okay."

"I'm sorry."

"So am I.  Scully, I don't understand-"  

"And you're not going to understand.  I have to go 
now."

"Can I call you?" he said quickly, and found himself 
talking to a disconnected phone line.  

After listening for a moment, Mulder finally handed 
it back to Frohike, who gently set the receiver back 
on the cradle.

"Take care of her hospital bill," he told Frohike. 
"Anonymously."

*~*~*~*

"I thought you were room service," Mulder muttered 
as he walked back to the living room in his sock 
feet, leaving his press agent standing in the foyer.  

"You're looking better.  That's good."

"How is that good?" He returned to the sofa, turning 
up the game show on television before he flopped back 
down. "Who cares how I look?"

"You're not drunk. You're not standing at home plate 
in Yankee Stadium hitting baseballs in the rain."

"It's still early and it's not raining," Mulder 
answered, helping the contestant on television by 
suggesting, "Belgium." 

'Belgium,' the host announced, and Mulder nodded in 
approval. "What do you want, Frohike?"

Frohike set his briefcase on the coffee table, 
snapping the locks open. "To show you something.  
You know, Agent Dales says this game show is 
rigged."

"Agent Dales also thinks aliens are among us."

There was another tentative knock, and a door 
opened, revealing a bedroom that looked like a 
tornado had just blown through Versailles.  The 
Plaza took pride in her gilded French Renaissance 
decor, and his son took pride in horrifying the 
housekeeping staff.  Will waded through the dirty 
laundry and sneakers, looking even more morose than 
his father, and the waiter made a hasty retreat.    

"Don't take that to your room; we have a table," 
Mulder ordered from the sofa. "We aren't animals-"

Will complied by taking the room service tray back 
to his bedroom and slamming the door behind him.

"Cute kid," Frohike commented, sorting through his 
files.

"He's a peach.  Handel," Mulder informed the 
television, frowning when the contestant guessed, 
'Bach.'  

"What'd you tell him about Dana?"

"That she's back, she's okay, and we won't be seeing 
each other anymore. I didn't know what else to say."  

"And how's he taking it?"

In answer to Frohike's question, Will reappeared, 
holding his plate in front of him as though held 
live crickets instead of an uneaten sandwich.  
Making sure his father was watching, he carried it 
to the kitchen and dumped it into the trashcan. 

"What's wrong, Will?" Mulder asked, already knowing 
the answer.  Will would generally eat anything as 
long as he could add pickles and ketchup to it. "How 
was that not up to your standards?"

"That's not how Miss Scully makes grilled cheese 
sandwiches.  Hey, Frohike," he added.

"Do you want something else?"

"Yeah.  I want to call Brooklyn Heights and tell 
Miss Scully I'd like a grilled cheese.  Bye, 
Frohike." Will slammed his bedroom door again, 
turning his Hi-Fi up full blast.

"Any questions?  And this has been a good week: he 
was only expelled for two out of the five school 
days," Mulder told Frohike, getting up from the sofa.  
He opened Will's bedroom door, said something, and 
the volume of the record player decreased slightly. 
Returning, he nodded to the file, "What did you 
interrupt your Saturday to show me?"

"Dana Scully's medical records."

"Frohike, I thought I told you to leave it alone.  
It's been a month.  She's won't talk to me, she 
won't see me.  Trust me, I've tried.  Whatever 
happened, it's over." 

"Phosphorated hesperidin," Frohike announced. 

"God bless you."

"A synthetic combination of estrogen and 
progesterone.  It's a contraceptive still in the 
developmental stage and it showed up in her blood 
work, along with a dozen other bizarre substances.  
That's why the doctors couldn't figure out exactly 
what was wrong, and why she was so much sicker than 
she should have been.  She'd been given something 
that basically convinced her body it was super-
pregnant."

"A contraceptive?" Mulder said skeptically. 

"Birth control.  Didn't the Army show you those VD 
films?" Frohike asked. "Anyway, it should never have 
been in her bloodstream.  Not in those extreme 
levels.  And she wasn't necessarily five months 
pregnant: the doctors were just guessing by the size 
of the uterus.  She could have been pregnant with 
more than one baby."

Mulder processed for a few seconds, trying to 
separate thoughts from emotions. "Okay, Scully got 
pregnant in January with twins or triplets.  I'll 
buy that.  Are the doctors sure that she, um, about 
the, um.  That she didn't just miscarry?"

"Well, that's another interesting tidbit.  They said 
she had an abortion, but what they really mean is 
the babies were removed very carefully, like they 
were delivered rather than miscarried.  Whoever did 
it did a good job; she just didn't get the care 
afterward that she should have."

Mulder ran his fingers through his hair, scooting to 
the edge of the sofa. "So what are you telling me?" 

"That she was kidnapped, which you already believe, 
and that she was pregnant with your children, which 
you've already said was possible.  I'm saying 
someone gave her drugs that did God-only-knows-what 
to her body and to the babies, and then surgically 
removed the fetuses.  And once they had what they 
wanted, they left her to die, except that she didn't.  
So, they're threatening her: with Emily, with her 
family, even with you, maybe.  It's just like before: 
Scully kept Emily, but there was a price. Now, 
they'll let her live, but she can't see you."   

"Say that's true, which is saying a lot.  Who are 
'they?' Who would know she was pregnant before she 
did?  Who would want the babies?  Those evil aliens 
again?  Were there mind control rays?  UFO's?  Don't 
forget those super-humans they're breeding.  Scully 
got cold feet, took off, and when she figured out she 
was pregnant- I think you're reaching, Frohike."

"I think you're afraid to look any further."

Mulder watched him for a few seconds, then leaned 
back, propping his feet back up on the coffee table 
and crossing his arms. 

"Mulder?"

"Joe Lewis," Mulder answered, staring straight at 
the television and the new game show contestant. 

"Come on, Mulder "

"A boxer who started fighting in 1937: it's Joe 
Lewis."

Frohike sighed, closing his briefcase and standing 
up. "I'm not dropping this.  There's something here, 
and I'm going to figure out what it is."

"The Dutch West India Company," Mulder responded, 
answering the $64,000 Question.

"Keep sitting there. Maybe they'll send you a check," 
Frohike suggested, closing the door behind him.

*~*~*~*

Fifteen year-olds always had the most profound ways 
of summing things up: "You know, I'm not your built-
in excuse to get out of life, Dad."

"I'll owe you," Mulder responded quietly, idly 
fiddling with the baseball and wondering what in the 
hell he was doing here.  
 
In some universe, he was watching Gibson feeding 
bread crusts to the eager, already over-fed ducks 
while Diana went to 'freshen up.' Obviously, this 
was someone's life, and it didn't seem half bad: a 
beautiful Saturday afternoon picnic in Central Park 
with a mostly-normal teenager, a lovely woman, and 
her eerily silent kid.  A perfectly acceptable life: 
it just didn't feel like his, and it hadn't in 
months.
 
And life went on, he told himself, looking for 
comfort in cliches and expanding the metaphor to 
fill up some space in his head.  There would be life 
after Dana Scully; it was just, excepting Will, like 
storing a single leftover pea in a one-gallon 
Tupperware container: a vast waste of space.  

That was it, Mulder decided, waxing philosophical: 
he was a mostly-empty, over-sized waste of space in 
the rusting, tepid Frigidaire of life.   

"So, are you going to start seeing Miss Fowley 
again?" Will asked, "Because I could just kill myself 
now and save some time."

"Oh, don't be so dramatic.  She's an old friend and 
I promised I'd meet her son, that's all.  He's a 
cute kid.  Just play nice for a few more minutes, 
and then we'll go.  And if I say the codeword, come 
down with a sudden case of stomach cramps."

"Do you know how many different ways this is 
traumatizing my malleable young mind?"

"You poor, abused, deprived child," Mulder responded 
sarcastically, watching Diana sauntering back from 
the public restroom, flashing her thousand-watt 
smile at them.

"I think I just felt a pang," Will muttered, 
stretching out on the warm grass. "Could be my 
appendix."

"There isn't any more, honey," Diana told Gibson 
when he ran back to get more bread. "Did you want 
your sandwich, William?" 

"No thank you, Miss Fowley; the ducks can have it," 
Will answered sugar-sweetly. "Something seems to be 
making me nauseated."
 
Gibson looked at the three of them curiously from 
behind his glasses, and then turned away without 
comment, hurrying back to the pond.  Mulder supposed 
meeting the big baseball star wasn't nearly as 
fascinating as feeding the duckies.   
 
"Is it Miss or Mrs.?" Mulder asked as Diana sat 
down, smoothing her skirt underneath her shapely 
legs and looking Life-magazine-perfect in her 
impractical ivory linen suit.
 
"Hum?" she responded, leaning back, bracing herself 
on her hands, and tilting her face toward the sun.  
As she arched her back, pushing her chest out, Will 
put his hand on his abdomen and flinched in pain for 
his father's benefit. 

"I was just curious, Diana.  You told Will to call 
you 'Miss,' but then you talked about being a widow."

Diana blinked, hesitating. "I was married, but 
professionally it's still 'Miss.' It's just easier 
that way: to use my maiden name.  My husband died in 
Korea when Gibson was a baby, and I had to go back 
to work."  
     
"And no one ever asks questions: that you and your 
son have different last names?"

Diana turned to study Mulder, glanced at Will, and 
then said quietly. "Look, I know you've had a bad 
experience.  Manhattan isn't that big. I know what 
happened with your fiancee.  And William is 
obviously taking it hard.  I can't even imagine how 
that feels: letting someone into your life and 
family only to discover they're not who they say 
they are.  I'm not an angel, but that weekend with 
you was the exception, not the norm.  And I don't 
get to spend as much time with Gibson as I'd like, 
but my mother does a good job with him.  There aren't 
going to be any surprises: I'm just as boring as I 
say I am." 

"Me too," Mulder answered casually, finding her face 
so close to his, he could smell her perfume. "I'm 
even less exciting than a duck."

From his seat against the trunk of a shade tree, 
Will moaned, curling into a ball and falling to one 
side in pseudo agony worthy of a B-grade movie star.   

In deference to Will, Mulder cleared his throat and 
moved away. "Where did Gibson go?" he asked, looking 
for an excuse to be somewhere else.

Will interrupted his theatrics to say that he wasn't 
a built-in babysitter, either, and had no idea. 

"Are you okay, Fox?"

He nodded, basing that judgment on some outlandishly 
liberal definition of 'okay.' "I'll go see where 
Gibson went. He must have wandered off." 

"I'm sure he's fine," Diana answered, which struck 
Mulder as an odd answer for a mother to give.  He 
got as far as thinking 'Scully would never have let 
Emily out of her-' before he quashed that thought, 
stamping it out like before it could spread and 
eradicate entire emotional castles in the sky. 

What was the saying they'd taught him at Oxford? 
Neurotics built castles in the sky and psychotics 
lived in them?  He'd always thought his mother 
cleaned those castles.  Scully was somewhere in the 
ivory tower, but it didn't matter, since they'd 
never lower the drawbridge for him, anyway.  

Diana's drawbridge: that went down.

Deciding yet another metaphor had ended badly, 
Mulder tried to think simple, clean thoughts as he 
searched for Gibson.        

After a few minutes, he spotted the boy near the ice 
skating rink, waiting his turn at the water 
fountain, and for an instant, thought he saw Scully 
and Emily in front of Gibson in line.   

He blinked, but they lingered, looking deliciously 
imperfect with Scully's wind-blown hair and the 
grass stains on the knees of Em's denim overalls.  
Emily couldn't reach the fountain, so Scully boosted 
her up, balancing Em awkwardly on her thigh while 
their thumbs battled over whom should hold the 
button down.  Water arced fitfully, and Emily chased 
it up and down with eager, rosebud lips while her 
mother waited patiently.

It was a snapshot out of any happy family album, 
lacking only Norman Rockwell's signature in the 
lower right hand corner.  

Emily spotted him as Scully sat her down, and 
smiled, wiping her dripping mouth on her sleeve.  
While her mother was busy trying to master the 
hydraulics of a NYC fountain, Emily ran to Mulder, 
leaping into his arms in a frenzy of worn, butter-
soft denim and sun-warmed little girl smells.  

Realizing her daughter was missing, Scully looked 
around, calling her name, but stopped short when she 
saw Mulder holding Emily.  Her mouth still open, 
lips still damp, Scully stared at him in shock, as 
though she also wasn't sure if he was real. 'Mulder?' 
she mouthed, looking like she might cry.  Einstein 
was wrong: time paused, and the world was a single 
precious soap bubble moment he could hold in his 
hand.    

"I found something of yours," Mulder finally mumbled 
awkwardly, setting Emily down as he stared at her 
mother.  

"Thank you," Scully murmured politely.  She pulled 
Emily in front of her, putting her hand protectively 
on her daughter's shoulder. "I'm sorry she bothered 
you."

"No bother," he heard his voice say, amazed at how 
steady it sounded. "How are you?"

"I'm fine," she answered, admirably keeping up her 
end of the inane conversation. "We're fine."
 
"Uncle Bill took my cap," Emily informed Mulder, 
looking like he was supposed to do something about 
that. "He says you're a sorry S-O-D." 

"I'll get you another cap. Come on, honey." Scully 
tried, getting neither her feet nor daughter to move.  

It was no accident they'd both chosen this part of 
the park: they'd often taken Emily ice-skating on 
Wollman Rink during the winter.  A few nights, the 
two of them had just sat, watching the snow 
glistening silver in the streetlights and enjoying 
the solitude.  It was full of happy memories of a 
time he categorized simply as 'before.'   

"Scully-" He put his hand on her upper arm, 
caressing it lightly with his fingertips. "Please 
talk to me.  Tell me what happened.  What changed?  I 
thought you wanted marriage, more kids. I thought you 
wanted me." 

"Nothing changed." She paused, noticing Diana 
approaching and Gibson standing close by. "Be 
careful, Mulder."

"No, um, she's not- Her son wanted to meet me," he 
tried to explain, but Scully looked away, not fooled. 
"Come on, Scully.  Don't do this.  Will's ditching me 
this afternoon, and I was planning on going to the 
movies. Would you like to come?  It's either ''Abbott 
and Costello Meet the Mummy,' or 'Revenge of the 
Creature.'  Considering what happened to the creature 
in the last movie, his revenge should be pretty 
good."
 
"Take care of yourself, Mulder." She gave Emily's 
hand a determined tug, refusing to meet his eyes. 
"Goodbye."

"Bye," he said automatically, watching her walk 
away, leading a reluctant Emily. The soap bubble 
moment continued to quiver in the spring breeze, 
reflecting a warped pastel version of life, and then 
was gone.   

"Are you okay?" Diana asked from behind him, making 
Mulder jump and allowing life to return to normal 
speed instead of playing in vivid Technicolor slow 
motion.

"I'm fine," Mulder answered tersely. "Why wouldn't I 
be?"

"That was Dana Scully, wasn't it? And Emily?"

Still on edge and looking for a target, he demanded, 
"How did you know that?"

"I saw the pictures in the society pages.  When you 
were dating her. Calm down, honey."  

Once Scully and Emily were out of sight, Mulder 
turned away, looking critically at Diana. "But how 
did you know her daughter was named 'Emily?"

She shrugged, casually tossing her hair back from 
her shoulders. "You told me."

Mulder considered, folding his arms and stepping 
away. "No, I didn't.  And her name wasn't in the 
papers."

"Oh, of course you told me.  What are you getting so 
upset about?" She moved like she was going to take 
Mulder's hand, but then changed her mind.  

"Diana, I didn't tell you.  I'm sure of it."

"Then how would I know?"

Mulder stepped back, tilting his chin up slightly. 
"I don't know, Diana.  How would you?  Why would you 
drive to the South End of Boston for a cup of coffee 
when your hotel was across town?  Were you following 
me?  Having a child, being a widow: you keep remaking 
yourself into exactly what you think I want in a 
woman.  Jesus, you're even wearing Scully's perfume."   

"Do you have any idea how insanely paranoid you 
sound, Fox?"

He wet his lips, trying to put the pieces together, 
but not quite succeeding. "Yes, I do.  And I didn't 
tell you Emily's name, Diana." 

*~*~*~*

He had spent entire afternoons leaning on the call 
button, trying to get Scully to buzz him in, so he 
didn't bother.  Fortunately, she'd chosen an 
apartment building full of trusting old ladies, and 
he had no trouble shoving his foot in the security 
door and stumbling in after one of them.  
  
"Mulder?" Scully asked, pulling her robe closed and 
staring at him in shock.  As though intoxicated, 
estranged, ex-fiancees didn't break into her building 
and show up on her doorstep every night at exactly 
ten o'clock.

"I, um, I have a splinter," he bumbled, wondering 
how no one had ever revoked his English language 
privileges.  He held out his thumb as proof, 
stretching the skin taut for her inspection. "Hi, 
Scully."

"Have you been drinking, Mulder?"

"I-I have been drinking," he confirmed, poking at the 
sliver of wood in Mr. Thumbkin to make sure it still 
smarted. It did. "Will's spending the night with a 
friend and I was, uh, sitting around this evening, 
you know, fiddling with the phone, so I could call 
you again and you could not answer-"

"You need to leave, Mulder."  

"So, I started fiddling with the phone," Mulder 
continued, leaning against the doorframe to help 
keep the room level and trying not to lose his place 
in the story. "And I, uh, unscrewed the little cover 
on the receiver."  He pantomimed unscrewing the top 
of his thumb for clarification, then just reached in 
his pocket and handed her the small electronic 
device. "I don't think that's standard issue from Ma 
Bell."

Scully examined the bug, then gestured for him to 
come in, closing and locking the door behind him.

"That woman I was with at the park today: I thought 
she was just a fan who got a little carried away.  
But she was bugging my phone, listening to my life, 
and she set herself up as something completely 
different from what she really was.  You weren't a 
set-up, though, were you?"

"No, I'm not a set-up," she said quietly.
 
Scully steered him to the kitchen, parking him in a 
wooden chair and turning on the burner under the 
teakettle.  A calico cat strolled in, hopping up on 
the table and arching his back to be petted.

"Em's cat came back," Mulder mumbled, stroking him. 
"I searched the entire neighborhood after you 
disappeared, but I couldn't find him."

"He just keeps showing up," Scully commented, 
rummaging through the cabinets for the tea bags.

"That's what happens when you feed them." He pursed 
his lips, making sloppy kissy-faces at the scruffy 
cat, who looked at Mulder with great disdain.   

"You're drunk, Mulder.  When you sober up in the 
morning, you're going to realize how bizarre this all 
sounds."

"I know now how bizarre it all sounds now.  How. 
Now." Mulder blinked, sensing something hadn't quite 
been right with that sentence.  He formed a few more 
silent 'ow' sounds with his mouth, just for the 
pleasure of it and the cat's amusement.

Scully sighed, then turned away, but he caught the 
sleeve of her robe, pulling her back to him. "Tell me 
'bout the babies, Scully "

"Babies?"

Still holding her left cuff so she couldn't escape, 
he ran his fingers over the front of her robe, over 
her soft abdomen. "Babies.  Baby.  I wanna know."

"I don't remember.  It's just a blur."

"Then tell me about the blur. Tell me," He pushed 
aside the soft fabric of her robe and pajama top so 
his palm was against her bare stomach. "Tell me why."

Instead of slapping him for being so forward, she 
stepped closer, wrapping her arms around his 
shoulders.  
   
"I found, the, um, Will thought we should search 
your apartment: after you were gone.  I found your 
admission letter.  You start this fall:  Georgetown 
University Medical School.  I didn't really think 
about there being a connection until Bill said you'd, 
uh, you know.  But it makes sense: you couldn't go 
back to school with a baby coming."  He exhaled, 
leaning his head into the curve of her waist. 
"Babies.  With babies coming."

"Is that what you think happened?"

"I thought it was," Mulder mumbled, nuzzling against 
her. "Now I'm not so sure.  Everyone's right: I don't 
know you that well, just like you don't really know 
me, but-" He let his head fall back, then rotated it, 
trying to redistribute the thick liquid in it. "Ah, 
Jesus, Scully: I'm not crazy, am I?"

"Not crazy: inebriated.  And you need to go."

"Why?  Why won't you just talk to me?"

Instead of answering, she helped him to his feet, and 
led him to the back of the apartment, opening the 
door to Emily's bedroom.  Scully had a vaporizer 
going, and the comforting scent of menthol filled the 
dim room.

"She started getting sick right after you were gone," 
he commented quietly.

"And she's going to get sicker.  Today was just a 
good day; that's why we went to the park.  Her immune 
system is malfunctioning: attacking her own red blood 
cells.  The doctors say they can help her, and I want 
to believe them."

"But you don't?"

"The others- No, I don't believe them."

The teakettle gurgled purposefully, and Scully 
hurried back to the kitchen to soothe it, leaving 
Mulder staring at Em's flushed face.  He watched her 
sleeping, her mouth moving in pleasant dreams, and 
then turned away when his chest started getting 
tight.

"I'm sorry, Scully." 

"So am I." She'd lost the sugar and was conducting a 
thorough, focused search of the cabinet. "Sit down, 
drink your tea, sober up, and go home."      

"No."

"No?"

"No, I don't want any damn tea.  I'm sorry about 
Emily, but you didn't answer my question.  Why are 
you avoiding me?"

"You're not going to let this drop, are you?"

"No, it doesn't look like it."

She slammed the cabinet door closed, flushing. "Why 
don't you know when to quit?  Do you know how quickly 
you could become a communist? Or a homosexual?  Maybe 
a pedophile?  If you keep asking questions, it 
doesn't matter who you are: they will get to you."

"But I'm not a communist, homosexual pedophile."

She looked at him, holding his gaze. "You are if 
they say you are."

Emily, awakened by the banging cabinets and raised 
voices, called out sleepily. 

"I'll get her," Mulder mumbled, heading for the 
bedroom.  

"What?" he asked, pulling Em's door closed behind 
him ten minutes later. Scully was standing in the 
hallway, watching him, her expression a mixture of 
longing and sorrow. "She's fine.  A few months ago, 
she was living with me.  Just because you don't want 
me anymore doesn't mean that Will and I don't miss 
her.  And you."

Scully closed her eyes as though she was making a 
wish, then exhaled. "Stay tonight," she whispered, so 
soft he barely heard her. Then, with a little more 
conviction, "Why don't you stay tonight?"

His head started shaking 'no' before his mouth even 
formed the words. He went for the easy out: "My car's 
parked outside. What will your neighbors say?"

"You mean the same neighbors that baby-sit my 
illegitimate daughter? Or the ones that sent me get 
well cards at my mother's house while I was 
recovering from an abortion? I think my reputation's 
shot."

"Jesus, Scully."

She stepped closer, resting her hands on his hips and 
her forehead against his chest. "Please.  Stay with 
me."

"You have no idea-" He put his arms around her, 
trying to protect her from this unnamed, unformed 
'them.' "If you want to go to med school, go to med 
school.  If you don't want to be married, we won't 
get married.  I don't know what I'll tell Will, but 
we won't.  But, um, I want to be careful: about 
another baby."

He followed her into her bedroom, stepping out of 
his shoes as he told himself how drunk he was and 
what an amazingly bad idea this was.

"I won't." She slipped her robe off, helping him with 
the buttons on his shirt before they lay down face to 
face and pulled the blankets over them. "The doctor 
said I'm not going to be able to have any more 
children."

Mulder stared at her, suddenly a lot more sober, and 
finally remembered to take a breath. 

"I'm sorry: that's all I can tell you," she finally 
whispered, avoiding his eyes.

"Okay. I uh, " He touched her soft cheek, then rested 
his hand on her waist. "Okay.  I'm right here; I'll 
be right here. Go to sleep."

"You're sure?"

He exhaled. "I'm sure. Sleep."

Scully scooted closer, shifting several times before 
she found a comfortable position.  Even with all that 
had happened, sharing a bed was still a novelty. 
"There will be a price, Mulder," she murmured, 
already half-asleep.  

"Everything has a price," he answered, closing his 
eyes, feeling the warm night breeze from the open 
window on his face. "The trick is knowing what's 
valuable, what's worth it."

"So what do you think I'm worth?"

"Anything I have," he responded, relaxing.

*~*~*~*

Begin: A Moment in the Sun III

*~*~*~*

It wasn't that he liked to count things, just to 
know how many there were, and counting was a means 
to an end.  Mulder liked to keep track in his head 
of virtually anything: matches left in a box, 
gallons of gas in the car.  If there had been ten 
pairs of underwear in his suitcase, and he had worn 
three, there were seven pairs left and he would be 
fine until he got home.  He knew how many years 
it would be until the sun burned out, leaving them 
all in frigid darkness, and he probably wouldn't get 
all of the orange juice in his refrigerator drunk 
before it went bad.  Not that anyone was likely to 
ask him about either.  Counting was comforting: a 
little game Mulder played with himself to stay sane.

Bill Scully had insulted him twelve times between 
five and five-fifteen.  That was a projected average 
of four dozen per hour, and almost a hundred by 
sunset.  At this rate, by the time they had Scully 
moved into her new apartment, he was either going to 
have another restraining order against him or a new 
ulcer.

Mulder set the parking brake on the moving van, 
climbed down, and handed the keys back to the 
incensed driver, not bothering to say 'I told you 
so,' because that would be petty and childish.  He 
had told them the truck could be backed around the 
corner and into the narrow Georgetown alley so they 
didn't have to carry Scully's things half a block.  
Bill and the movers had insisted the turn was too 
tight, but it was just a matter of slowly seesawing 
and angling the truck so it didn't brush the cinder 
block wall perpendicular to the alley or the fences 
on either side. 

"Nice job," Bill said sarcastically, unfastening the 
latch on the back of the big van and throwing the 
doors open, making Mulder dodge so he didn't get 
bashed in the face. Emily, watching from the window 
of her new bedroom, thought that was hilarious. "I 
thought you just hit the baseballs.  Did you park 
the bus for the Yankees too?"

"No," Mulder deflected, thinking Bill better get his 
next jab in soon or he was going to fall behind. Of 
course, Mulder couldn't hear what had been said while 
he had been parking, so he might have missed a few.  

"If the truck gets dented, Dana has to pay for it," 
Bill persisted, tossing him a box of books too heavy 
to be tossed.

"It didn't get dented." Out of masculine pride, 
Mulder caught the box, his muscles protesting.  He 
handed it off to the movers and turned just in time 
to have another heavy crate hit him in the chest as 
Bill threw it down from the back of the truck.

"Sorry," Bill said flippantly. "Guess my reflexes 
are a little quicker than yours."

"When you drop fifty pounds, it weighs about two 
hundred pounds when I catch it," Mulder explained 
neutrally. "If you'll slide them to the edge of the 
truck and let me pick them up, it would be easier."

"I always wondered what you baseball players did in 
the off season.  Aside from drink and chase women- 
and you seem pretty good at both.  When did you find 
time to become an expert on unloading trucks?" 

"The docks in New York," Mulder answered, feeling 
his ears start to burn.  His patience was wearing 
thin, and little pinpricks of temper were beginning 
to show through. "At the end of the Depression."
 
Scully appeared at the back door of the old house, 
folding her arms and clearing her throat, reminding 
both men they had promised to be on their best 
behavior.  Maggie had nodded in Mulder's general 
direction when she arrived, and then confined 
herself to the apartment, avoiding him.  Bill, on the 
other hand, had asked him point blank what in the 
hell he was doing there.  The truth: that Mulder was 
just helping Scully and Emily move, hadn't assuaged 
her brother. 

"I had a wife and a two-week old baby: it was honest 
work," Mulder said, despite his previous vow of 
silence.  Just for once, he didn't want to come off 
looking like a complete loser in front of Scully's 
family.  
    
"You wouldn't know honest work if it bit you in the 
ass," Bill snapped, glaring down at him and preparing 
to drop another box. 

Jesus Christ, it was going to be a long evening.

*~*~*~* 

"Can you move?" Scully asked, looking down at Mulder, 
who had sprawled on the lawn the second the moving 
van and Bill's Ford pulled away.

"Yes.  I'm just working up to it," Mulder answered, 
wondering which part of him hurt the most.  He 
raised his hand, reaching out to her. "Help: pull."

"You didn't have to keep up with Bill.  He's ten 
years younger than you and he's showing off."

"Now you tell me," he responded, sitting up with a 
moan, then getting to his feet, knees cracking. "You 
always have stairs.  I hate stairs."

"I know you hate stairs," she teased back, her eyes 
moving over him nervously.  "I owe you.  Are you 
hungry?  You could rinse off while I-"

Mulder looked away, knowing she was just postponing 
saying goodbye. "You don't owe me." 

She inhaled, then exhaled silently. "Did you tell 
Will we'd been, uh, talking?"

"No, I thought I'd wait until there was something to 
tell." He hesitated, shoving his hands into his 
pants pockets. "You said that in the past tense, 
Scully: 'we had been talking.' Is that a clue?"  

"No," she said quickly. "But you're going back to 
New York and I'm staying in DC."

"I don't have to fly back tonight," someone using 
Mulder's voice replied, finally looking at her. "I 
could catch a later flight."

Their 'dating,' if it could be called that, had been 
limited to numerous phone calls, mostly from him, a 
dozen or so casual outings, and a few tentative 
embraces in the last three months.  It was like 
living with an announcer counting down the seconds in 
the background: if Mulder wanted to see Will at all, 
he was in Manhattan; if Scully wanted to go to med 
school, it was in Georgetown.  The more he tried to 
rationalize it to himself: she was just a couple of 
hours away by air, she would be out of school in a 
few years, the less rational it sounded to talk about 
being anything more than friends.

"I'm just not ready to say goodbye yet," he said 
awkwardly, shifting his feet.   

"Maybe it would be easier in the morning," Scully 
invited, both of them knowing exactly what she 
meant.

"It won't be."  They weren't married, they weren't 
going to be married, whether she could get pregnant 
or not, they didn't need to be acting like they were.

"Maybe after dinner, then," she offered, holding 
open the back door of the converted Victorian house 
for him.

"Yeah, maybe," Mulder mumbled, stepping inside.

*~*~*~*

"Can you turn the television down, Will?" Mulder 
called into Scully's phone, sitting on the floor 
amid the piles of boxes and furniture. "I can barely 
hear you."

"It's not the TV; Mother's having a party.  Wait, 
I'll close my door."  The music and chattering 
voices decreased a few decibels, and Will picked up 
the receiver of his bedroom phone again. "Is that any 
better?"

"A little.  How are you doing?"

"I hate you, I hate my mother, my life is crap, and 
I want a Corvette instead of the Thunderbird for my 
birthday," Will replied flippantly. "Buy me 
something, Dad: assuage me." 

Mulder declined to tell him to watch his mouth, since 
'crap' was a pretty adequate description. "That's a 
stick-shift, you'll have to learn to drive a manual 
transmission."

"So?"

"I'm just saying-" Mulder sighed, actually not sure 
what to say. "Why don't I fly up to Boston and drive 
my father's car down?  Grandmother wants to get rid 
of it, and I could teach you on Saturday.  You 
already know the basics, but you'll need to 
practice."

"Sure, whatever," Will said sarcastically, as though 
all fifteen year-olds had the right to learn to drive 
in a Porsche. "Are you going to be back by then?"

"Of course I am," he said urgently.  "I'm done with 
my business in DC; I'll be back for your baseball 
game tomorrow."

"You can come to that?"

"As long as it's okay with you.  Yeah, your mother 
will be there, and all I'm doing is watching."

"I'll feel like a dope playing in front of you," 
Will answered, thawing a bit.

"That picture of me dropping the ball in the ninth 
inning a few years ago: the one that made the front 
page?  I'll have it framed for you.  Don't feel like 
a 'dope' until they make jokes about you on Ed 
Sullivan."

"You're sure it doesn't count? I thought the judge 
said-"    

"The judge said we can see each other on Saturdays 
from noon to eight: just you and me.  Eight hours, 
for now," Mulder said, trying to keep the anger out 
of his voice. "Anything else supervised by your 
mother or in public where we don't have any contact 
is fine.  I can come to your baseball games, school 
plays, teacher conferences.  Court appearances," he 
added, trying to make a joke. "And you can be at my 
apartment anytime you want, as long as I'm not there.  
You could even go tonight; just ask your mother and 
make sure it's okay."        

Scully emerged from Emily's bedroom, nodding that 
the little girl was finally asleep, and picking up a 
few forgotten glasses to take to the kitchen.

"Mother's busy.  I'll just leave her a note and go.  
She won't even notice."

"No, ask her," Mulder said sternly. "Be sure.  And 
take a taxi: it's too late for you to be walking or 
riding your bike."

"I don't have cab fare," Will replied, accompanied 
by noises that sounded like he was packing his 
overnight bag.  

"I gave you twenty dollars on Saturday.  What did you 
spend twenty bucks on in four days?"

Scully returned, drying her hands on a dishtowel as 
she stood beside him, probably not sure if she was 
supposed to overhear this conversation or not. Mulder 
reached up for her, indicating he wanted her to stay.

"I had to go to the store for Mother," he mumbled, 
not wanting to answer.

"Your mother can throw a party, but she can't afford 
to give you money to go to the store?" Mulder said 
tensely, wondering if it was the liquor or drugstore 
she had sent him to.  He exhaled, knowing it would 
be unfair to Will to ask. "Never mind.  If she says 
you can go, just have the front desk at the hotel 
pay the taxicab and I'll reimburse them tomorrow."

"You're sure it doesn't count toward our time on 
Saturday?" the teenager asked, belaying his cool, 
nonchalant cover and sounding a lot like a kid who 
missed his dad.

"I'm sure.  Ask your mother, then catch a taxi. 
There's orange juice in the refrigerator if you get 
thirsty."

"Okay.  I guess I'll see you at the game tomorrow 
then," Will answered. "Look, I gotta go find Mother, 
and I'll have a better chance of getting her to say 
'yes' if she doesn't think it's your idea."

Mulder nodded supportively, as though Will could see 
him, said his goodnights, and hung up the phone 
harder than necessary, actually picking it up and 
slamming the receiver back down a few times for good 
measure.  Scully looked at him questioningly, but he 
shrugged.  

"Is he okay?" 

"Yeah, he's going to my place for the night.  Phoebe 
wanted him back so badly, she's throwing a party 
while he sits in his room and mopes.  I guess he's 
there in case someone needs to make a gin run." He 
swallowed, looking down. "He says he hates me."

"He's just angry," she soothed, sitting beside him 
and leaning back against a cardboard box.

"He should be angry.  I said he was going to stay 
with me and then- It's exactly what Frohike told me 
would happen: Phoebe and I are both unfit parents, 
she's just the female unfit parent, so she gets the 
kid."   

"He knows you tried; he knows you love him," Scully 
insisted, stroking his sore shoulder.  

"What would you do?  If I was Em's father and I tried 
to take her away from you, how dirty would you fight? 
Would you put her on the stand? Would you make her 
sit in the courtroom and watch your attorneys tear me 
apart?  Would you show up with the police and take 
her when I wouldn't give her back?"

"You're not her father, so that's not a fair 
question."

"But if I was," Mulder persisted, standing up and 
towering over her.

"You are in a bad mood and you're looking for 
someone to take it out on.  Are you asking if I 
think you're a good father?"  

"Hell, Scully," he said tiredly. "I don't know what 
I'm asking.  I lost Samantha, I lost Will, and I'm 
about to say goodbye to you and Emily.  I'm a forty-
year-old, divorced, out-of-work, ex-ballplayer, as 
you put it.  I wish God would just kick me in the 
face and get it over with."

*~*~*~*

They absolutely, under no circumstances, no-way-no-
how, should be doing this, but that didn't seem to 
be stopping them.

She needed to shower, but the male animal in him was 
glad she hadn't.  Scully smelled like female, 
magnified: hours of lugging boxes in the August heat 
coating her skin, her hair drying in crisp strands 
behind her ears and across her forehead.  A damp 
path of salt ran down each side of her neck, then 
disappeared between her breasts.  Mulder traced it 
with the tip of his tongue, pushing her thin cotton 
blouse off her shoulders and unfastening her bra, 
instinctively seeking where the trail led.

"What are we doing, Scully?" he asked softly, 
cupping her breast in his hand as they lay on the 
bare mattress, Venus watching unobtrusively through 
the open window.  She had unpacked a metal fan first 
thing, and it hummed purposefully in the corner of 
her bedroom, cooling the sweat on their skin.

"I was hoping you would take the lead, so if you 
don't know, we're in trouble." She raised her face 
to kiss him again, but he moved away, sitting up.

"No, I mean, what are we doing?  Are we saying 
goodbye? Am I just supposed to be gone when you wake 
up in the morning?  Is that what you want?  For me to 
treat you like that?"

"You know that's not what I want," she whispered, 
pulling him back down beside her. "But you can't 
pretend I didn't hurt you, and there's a reason 
we've been talking for three months and you haven't 
told your son. Probably, it's the same reason I 
didn't let you put Emily to bed.  There's more at 
stake than just us, Mulder.  We have kids, families, 
not to mention you keep staring at my stomach and 
counting months with that kicked dog look in your 
eyes."

"That doesn't mean I don't love you.  Maybe I don't 
understand everything that's happened, but-" 

She had been nuzzling his throat as he spoke, making 
the hair on the back of his neck stand up, but 
paused, finding the cross he was wearing under his 
shirt.  She stopped moving, he stopped moving, and 
the fan in the corner hummed a little louder. Venus 
twinkled.  Or perhaps winced.

"Em and I had a deal.  After you were g-gone.  We, 
um, I, uh," he stumbled, flushing. "I meant to take 
it off, but I kind of never did."

"You forgot?" she asked quietly, running her finger 
over the gold chain.

"No, I couldn't forget, that's the problem." He 
exhaled, staring at the wall instead of her. "Not 
that I didn't try.  I'm scared, Scully. I guess 
that's what it comes down to.  You make me feel 
alive: like I'm standing in the warm sun, and I've 
never felt that before.  And I'm afraid I never will 
again.  I'm willing to live my life moment by 
moment and take whatever comes.  If you are."  

"So what do we do with this moment?" 

"We, uh, stop acting like stupid teenagers and get 
dressed.  I catch a flight back to New York, call 
you when I get home, and I'll see you over Labor Day 
weekend.  And I'll tell Will."

She nodded, reaching for her blouse on the floor.  
He watched her dress, trying to guess what she might 
be feeling.  Scully's surface seldom gave anything 
away.  For a man who liked mysterious women, she was 
the ultimate enigma.

"Scully, I need a little assurance here."

"Of course I love you," she murmured, buttoning her 
blouse and trying to smooth her tousled hair.  

They absolutely, under no circumstances, no-way-no-
how, should be doing this, but that didn't seem to 
be stopping them.

*~*~*~*

"Yeah: it's definitely a house," Will decided, 
surveying the three-story red brick from the curb.  
"We drove down from New York to see this?"

"Do you like it?" Mulder asked, getting out of the 
Porsche and rocking from his heels to his toes and 
back again, the epitome of nervous energy. 

"Yeah, I guess.  What's so special about it?"

"It's my house, Will.  I bought it."

"Okay," he said skeptically, looking around the 
front yard and pausing to crack his gum. "Cool.  An 
investment?"

"No, it's my house.  When I'm not in New York, I 
live here.  Go inside.  Look around."

"People don't bother you?" Will asked, stepping 
inside the foyer and dropping his overnight bag at 
the foot of the stairs.  The boy was probably 
shocked to find his father inhabiting any building 
that didn't come with a lobby, a doorman, and an 
elevator.

"Not really.  It's a quiet neighborhood.  You know, 
I've never owned a house before," he said, giving 
Will the grand tour. 

"You own hotels, Dad.  A couple of them.  And you've 
probably personally paid for the Byers' vacation 
house in attorney's fees."

"True," Mulder replied proudly. "But this is 
different."

"So why did you decide you needed a house?  
Especially a big house?"

"I've been thinking about it for a long time.  Maybe 
we could have Christmas here.  There's a fireplace: 
a couple of them, actually.  That's nothing, Will.  
Just leave it," he said quickly, as the teenager 
scanned the piles of books and articles on the desk 
in the corner of the living room.  His son had a 
sixth sense for focusing on exactly what he wasn't 
supposed to see.

"What's an X-file?  'Behavior Patterns in Stranger 
Killings?'  What are you typing?  I didn't know you 
could type." 

Will started to open a file and Mulder put his hand 
on top of it to stop him. "Really, Will: leave it 
alone.  It's just something I've been working on.  
These are Agent Dales' files, and they have pictures 
in them you really shouldn't see."

"What are you doing with FBI files?" he asked, 
puzzled.

"Research."  

Will crossed his arms, looking like his mother, and 
waiting for an answer.

"I'm working on a research paper.  A dissertation.  
My doctoral dissertation," Mulder admitted. "To 
finish school, I need to do my oral and written 
exams and my dissertation."

"And then what?"

"And then I'll be finished, that's all," he said 
defensively, feeling foolish. "It's just something 
I've been doing."  

"No, I mean: why bother?  Who's going to care?"

"I'll care."

Will shrugged. "Whatever.  I just think it's a 
little stupid to do all that work for nothing."

Mulder shrugged back, not wanting to ruin their 
first whole weekend together by fighting. "It 
probably is."

His son hesitated, then turned and jogged up the 
wooden steps, indicating the discussion was 
finished.  

"It was built in 1856.  Five bedrooms, four baths: 
three of which work right now," Mulder called, 
following him.  "I thought the front bedroom could 
be yours, but we can switch if you want."

Will nodded, seeming at ease, although not 
overwhelmed.  For a boy raised in Manhattan's best, 
this seemed rather plain vanilla, which was exactly 
why Mulder liked it, right down to the picket fence 
around the back yard.  

"You like it?" Mulder asked hopefully. "I want you 
to like it."

"I like it," Will nodded, pausing at the top of the 
stairs, leaning against the banister. "So spill it: 
you just all of a sudden needed to buy a house in 
Washington, DC, and you chose this one?"

"It has a great view." 

"Of what?"

Mulder cocked his head toward the master bedroom, 
grinning mischievously, and wanting Will to follow.  
He picked up the flashlight on the windowsill, 
blinking it twice at the big house across the alley 
that had been converted into four apartments.  After 
a few seconds, someone blinked back from the third 
floor window.

"At whom are we blinking?" Will asked, his proper 
Queen's English recalling a childhood spent in 
London and contrasting sharply with his usual 
American slang. 

"Emily.  That's her bedroom in the back, and 
Scully's is in the front."  He took a long breath, 
and then added, "They live there and I live here."

"For how long?"

"A couple of months.  Since August." Mulder 
hesitated, worrying his tongue against his teeth. 
"No, we're not getting married right now, but yes, 
we've been seeing each other again.  Scully's in 
medical school, but right now she's at work at the 
hospital.  She works and goes to school.  And 
Emily's been sick." He swallowed, running out of 
plot points and starting to fidget. "Say something, 
Will."

Will shrugged casually, cracking his gum again. 
"Cool."

*~*~*~*

"Come on.  Here we go," Mulder told her, pulling an 
exhausted Nurse Scully out of the passenger seat and 
steering her up the wet sidewalk to his house, 
trying to dodge the puddles in the darkness.  

"I don't think I live here," Scully mumbled, but he 
couldn't tell if she was joking or serious. "Who are 
you?"

"Your chauffeur.  Do you just get in the car with 
anybody, little girl?"

"You looked safe enough."

"Then you didn't look very close," he shot back 
sarcastically, giving her a helpful shove to get her 
up the front steps, his hand almost accidentally 
landing on her backside instead of her back.

She turned to look at him, bleary-eyed. "Why am I 
here again?"

"Emily is here: Will was watching her while I went 
to pick you up. I didn't want to take her out in the 
rain," he explained, putting his arm around her 
shoulders and guiding her inside before she 
collapsed.  

"What happened to the sitter?"

"Oh, she quit about one.  Emily's been over here all 
night."

Scully made an 'umh' noise without opening her 
mouth, shuffling through the foyer and kitchen and 
toward the back of the house.  Mulder paused to pick 
up Emily, still sound asleep, off one end of the 
couch, and thanked Will, also sound asleep, on the 
other end.  Will made a similar, slightly deeper 
'ump' sound in response, and burrowed further into 
the cushions.

"Keep going," Mulder instructed, giving Scully 
another gentle nudge off the back porch and into the 
stormy night. "Almost home."

"It's raining," she observed, plodding through the 
yard and across the alley.

"I'll see what I can do about that."

"Thank you," Scully said seriously, managing a 
relatively good mood for someone who had been on her 
feet for almost twenty-four hours in the ER after 
finishing six hours of classes on Thursday. "Is it 
still Friday?"

"Early Saturday morning." Emily coughed under the 
blanket he had covered her with, and he adjusted her 
against his shoulder, making sure she could breathe.  
"What happened that you had to work overtime?"  

He'd waited to pick her up at midnight, already six 
hours past her normal shift, not wanting Scully to 
walk home alone that late, but, when he'd gone 
inside to ask where she was, someone had said to 
come back at four.  Then, four a.m. Saturday morning 
had stretched to five a.m., and then five-thirty 
before Scully had finally emerged.

"Some nurses called in sick, then a bus wreck and 
a couple of car wrecks.  They offered me double-
time.  Did I miss anything important?"

"Up the stairs," he reminded her, shifting Emily's 
limp body again and following her. "Well, your 
sitter quit: I told you that. Will seems to like my 
house, and he's eaten every scrap of food in both 
our iceboxes.  And if he says 'cool' or cracks his 
gum one more time, I'm afraid I might hurt him."

"Em's okay?"

"She's a little warm, but otherwise she's okay.  
According to Will, she's also 'cool.'"

"And it's Saturday?" Scully confirmed, giving her 
apartment door a frustrated kick when the lock and 
her key didn't work in harmony.   

"Saturday," Mulder answered, unlocking the door 
she'd just locked and turning the knob for her. 
"Very early Saturday."

"I have to be at work at noon on Saturday."  She 
surveyed her apartment curiously, found it 
acceptable and faintly familiar, and headed for the 
bedroom, stepping out of her shoes and unpinning 
her cap as she went.  After tucking Emily in, Mulder 
followed, finding her collapsed across the 
bedspread, still wearing her white uniform.

"Un-uh.  Get up: you're soaked."  

"Can't move," she mumbled into the pillow, looking 
like a rag doll carelessly tossed on the bed. "Wake 
me at eleven."

"Oh, for pity's sake!" he said lightly, sitting her 
up and jerking at the zipper on the back of her 
damp uniform, making every attempt to avert his 
eyes from the lacy slip underneath. "You can't keep 
doing this, Scully.  You're going to make yourself 
sick.  Where are your pajamas?"

She blinked sleepily as he retrieved a towel and made 
an attempt at drying her hair, then decided his chest 
made a good pillow and snuggled up against him, still 
sitting on the side of her bed. "Nice and warm," she 
mumbled, cuddling closer.

"You're not going back to work in less than six 
hours.  The hospital can go to Hell if they think 
that's going to happen," he said authoritatively, as 
though Miss Hardhead might listen to him. "Will hasn't
seen you since January.  Stay home and we'll do 
something with the kids."

She 'um-hummed,' which meant she just wasn't going 
to bother telling him 'no' outright.  No one had 
ever mentioned to Scully that Father, or Mulder, as 
the case may be, Knows Best.

"I'm serious, Scully."  He laid both of them down, 
doubling the blankets back over her cold shoulders, 
waiting for her to stop shivering before he left. It 
was raining that icy autumn rain that might as well 
be sleet, and she felt like a Popsicle.  A very soft, 
musky, pliant Popsicle against him. "You're exhausted."

"I dreamt I was a muffler," she mumbled, kissing his 
neck softly. "The car I was on drove all over the 
place, and when I woke up, I was exhausted."

"My God, that's even worse than some of my jokes," 
he chuckled, lying beside her, their arms and legs 
intertwined. "Are you warm yet?"

"I'm getting there.  Are you?"

"A little too warm," he murmured back, wondering 
what possessed him tonight. "I probably need to go 
stand in the rain for a little bit."

"You go do that," she said lazily, shifting closer 
to him and wrapping her arms around his neck.

"I'm going.  Right now." He slid his hand up her thigh, 
over the silky fabric of her stocking, then garter, 
telling himself he was stopping in precisely two seconds.

"Are you gone yet?" Scully asked, rolling slightly 
to her back so he was lying almost on top of her.

"Long gone," he whispered into her hair, closing his 
eyes.

*~*~*~*  

Something warm and wonderful was draped over his 
bare back and hips, and Mulder nestled against it 
happily.  Little things like whose bed he was in, 
who was behind him, and what had happened to his 
pants didn't worry him so much as having his 
backside all toasty warm.

Something was breathing cornflake breath in his 
face, and he opened his eyes lazily to see what it 
might be, blinking a few times at the morning sun 
streaming through Scully's window.  

Emily greeted him with a frown, solemnly offering a 
spoonful of the cold cereal she was eating while she 
watched he and Scully lying in bed together.  

"No, thank you," that mysterious person who kept 
using his voice said politely, while his hand 
frantically reached back to shake Scully awake.

"Ump, um?  Dilated six centimeters.  What?" she 
muttered, stretching and yawning, then relaxing 
to go back to sleep. "Don't push," she added.

"We have company, Scully," Mulder said, trying to 
sound casual instead of horrified.

"Did you sleep with Mommy?" Em asked, trying to 
figure out what to make of this and not looking very 
pleased about it.  Mulder gaped for a few seconds 
before she added: "I'm getting too big to sleep with 
Mommy now.  I have my own bed.  Don't you have your 
own bed, Mulder?"

"Mulder put Mommy to bed last night and accidentally 
fell asleep here, just like Mommy does in your bed, 
sometimes," Scully said, returning to semi-
consciousness just in time to save him from utter 
humiliation.  "It was an accident.  Mulder has his 
own bed, just like you do."

Emily nodded, seeming appeased, and wandered off, 
still crunching and slurping happily.  As soon as 
she was out of the bedroom, Mulder reached over and 
closed the door, then sank into the pillow, his 
heart pounding.  He stared at the ceiling in 
silence, trying to figure out if there was a proper 
thing to say in this situation.

"Jesus, I'm sorry.  I must have fallen asleep."

"Go ahead and get dressed.  Shower if you want; it's 
past eight in the morning: the neighbors are going 
to see you anyway," Scully murmured calmly. "Tell 
Emily she can come lie down with me as you leave; 
I'm going to sleep a few more hours."

Mulder nodded, sitting up quickly and grabbing his 
boxers and slacks off the floor.  His hair was only 
slightly more out of place than usual, but he rinsed 
his mouth and face in her bathroom, trying to make 
himself as presentable as possible.  He laid her 
pajamas across the bottom of the bed where she 
could reach them, then jerked his still-damp shirt 
over his head, furious at himself for letting this 
happen.

"With any luck, Will should sleep until noon: he'll 
never realize I didn't come back from picking you up 
last night," he muttered, looking around for his 
shoes and socks. "Shit: I can't believe I did that."

"We did that," Scully reminded him quietly from the 
pillow, still not opening her eyes.  

"Yeah." He watched her for a moment, then sat down 
on the bed again.  It didn't seem worth going 
through his usual 'we-shouldn't-be-doing-this-
unless-we're-married' speech.  And 'I'm sorry,' just 
seemed insulting.  "And we didn't do too bad. I 
think," he said uncertainly. "Mostly."

"Mostly," she agreed, then either going back to 
sleep or pretending she was asleep, leaving him to 
hunt for his socks under the sheets and wax neurotic 
about that 'mostly.'  
 
*~*~*~*
 
"That's not a word," Emily agreed, crossing her arms 
and looking like she knew what she was talking 
about. 

"Is to," Will countered, pushing his tiles into a 
slightly straighter line. "Reticulan: someone from 
Zeta Reticuli. R-E-T-I-C-U-L-A-N.  Where space 
aliens come from, right, Dad?"

Mulder nodded, busy thinking of redheaded things.

"It's not a word, Will," Scully repeated. "If it's 
not in the dictionary, then it doesn't count.  I'll 
give you 'Reticuli' because it's a star, but not 
'Reticulan.'"

Will narrowed his eyes, pretending to glare over the 
Scrabble board at her. "Let's vote on it.  Who 
thinks 'Reticulan' is a word?"

Mulder and Will quickly raised their hands in 
unison, and Emily, slightly unfamiliar with 
democracy, but a champion Simon Says player, 
concurred.  Scully sighed, gave Mulder a 'you're 
such an overgrown child' look, and added Will's 
triple-word score to her tallies.   

"It balances out for you not letting me count 
'rock'n'roll,'" Will commented smugly, fishing the 
last few slippery kernels out of the bottom of the 
popcorn bowl. "I can't help it that the game doesn't 
come with apostrophes."   

"You two cheat like crazy," she teased, standing up 
and rolling her shoulders tiredly.  Ignoring 
Mulder's protests, she'd worked from noon to seven 
this evening, meaning she had only slept from about 
six am until eleven, minus time spent on 'mostly' 
adequate lovemaking with him. "And you get my tiles 
all buttery.  I'm taking my game and going home."

Will was eager for another round, having slept until 
lunch, then 'practiced' driving for five hours this 
afternoon, returning with a stack of new records, an 
empty gas tank, and a hickey.  He seemed to enjoy 
this quasi-domesticity as much as his father, which 
was a sad comment on what he must be used to with 
Phoebe, Mulder realized dejectedly.

"I'll make more popcorn, sans butter, if you stay," 
Mulder offered, not ready to have their familial 
evening end yet.  It might be a motley, slightly 
awkward family, but it was all he had, and, on the 
surface at least, it looked damn good. "Come help 
me, Scully," he said, picking up the big bowl and 
purposely telling rather than asking her.  She 
looked puzzled, but followed him into the kitchen, 
leaving Emily and Will in the living room.

"What is it, Mulder?" Scully asked curiously as the 
door swung closed.   

"Just wanted to talk to you," he said casually, 
picking her up and setting her on the kitchen 
counter so they were face to face, putting his hands 
on the tiles on either side of her hips. "Alone," he 
added, kissing her lightly on the lips, tasting 
traces of salt and melted butter.  It was tempting 
to press harder, to press past her rational facade 
and into the comforting, erotic lie of flesh: 
comforting, but not honest.

"What is it you want to talk about?"  She leaned 
back, turning her face away.  She didn't want to be 
intimate this evening any more than she had early 
this morning.  Not yet; not really.  There was too 
much water still flowing under the bridge and she was 
struggling just to stay afloat.  It had been a lie, 
and she was beautiful enough, and he was in love 
with her enough that she didn't have to lie very hard. 

"Popcorn, Scully," he said softly. "I never want any 
until I smell it, but then my mouth starts to water 
and I can't think of anything I want more."

"So make more popcorn, Mulder."  

"You're like that, too," he continued. "It's not 
that I don't notice you, but it's when you're right 
there, right in my arms that I can't think of 
anything else." He swallowed, looking away. "Emily
said her Aunt Tara's baby came yesterday.  Bill's 
wife finally had that baby."   

"I didn't tell you?" Scully responded, feigning 
surprise, but not feigning very well. "A little boy.   
Matthew. Tara checked into the hospital last night."

"And you came home and went to bed with me," he said 
softly, but she still watched him, bewildered. "You 
don't think there might have been a connection?  
Your brother's wife was about as far along as you 
would have been, her baby comes, and you suddenly 
decided we needed to become lovers again."

"I already told you-"

"That you don't want to talk about it," he finished 
for her, already on edge. "I'll add it to the list 
of things you don't want to talk about.  I'm not 
asking you to talk, just listen.  Will you do that?"

She nodded, watching him closely, unaccustomed to 
seeing him anything other than cool, calm, and 
collected.  Frohike had told him once that he had 
the perfect poker face, and it drove women mad to 
never know what he was thinking.  Looking back, it 
made sense: it wasn't that he attracted insane 
brunettes; it was that they went crazy once they were
around him.

"That wasn't right, Scully: what happened this 
morning.  I don't know if I took advantage of you or 
you took advantage of me, but- I know you have 
nightmares; I know you pull inside yourself and shut 
people out, just like I did when I came back from 
the war.  You had to make an awful choice, alone, 
and now you feel numb, because that's all it's safe 
to feel.  I understand all that, just like I 
understand what it's like to be young and dream of 
something more than being tied down to a baby and a 
family.  You want to be a doctor: I respect that.  
And I assumed- Hell, I don't know what I assumed 
last year, but I never thought you specifically 
wouldn't want to have another baby.  Then, after 
that first time, what were you going to say?  It was 
a little late to mention it then-"   

"No, that's not true," she interrupted. "That's not 
what happened."

"Would you like to tell me what happened?" he asked 
tersely, starting to get angry. "Would you like to 
tell me why you just didn't come to me and tell me?  
Jesus Christ, we could have found a better doctor 
than that if you wanted-"

She shook her head 'no,' but murmured, "Not that.  
Don't ever think I didn't want you or any part of 
you."

He paused, stunned at such an open revelation from 
her. "If you didn't want to be alone this morning, 
all you had to do was tell me.  You don't have to 
pretend you want something you really don't," 
he finally said shakily.

"Why do you say that?" she bluffed.

"Because I'm not a complete idiot."

"I'm sorry," she murmured, staring at the kitchen 
floor. "I guess I don't compare to the women you're 
used to."

He made his gaping-fish-mouth face a few times, then 
managed, "Are you serious?  Because you're either 
joking or insane.  You think I'm some sort of Don 
Juan?"

"You're a little intimidating, Mulder," she 
conceded, and he considered going outside to see if 
there was pork in the treetops. "You're older than I 
am; you're more experienced than I am-"

She paused, finding something over his left shoulder 
to watch instead of looking at him.

"You, uh, wanna hear a good joke, Scully?  I don't 
even remember that first time with Phoebe.  I was 
that drunk, or I wouldn't have done it.  I remember 
going to the pub and I remember waking up hung over 
the next morning, but I have a son from a night I 
don't remember a thing about.  So, when Phoebe 
showed up a few months later and announced she was 
going to have a baby, I knew as much about women as 
your average shy, twenty-three year old bookworm.  
Which would have been fine if I'd married anyone 
else besides Phoebe," he added, blushing at the 
memory. "Phoebe can be very, uh, critical.  Does it 
sound silly to say it's still a sensitive topic?"             

"I didn't mean that it wasn't nice, Mulder," she 
said quickly. 

"I know that; I was there.  But it wasn't what you 
wanted, either. All you wanted was not to be alone, 
and you didn't think I'd understand that.  That hurts, 
Scully."

She glanced up, staring deep into his eyes as though 
she could see something no one else did.  "I don't 
want to be alone.  Not at night," she eventually 
whispered, finding whatever she'd been looking for 
in the windows of his soul.

"I'll be over tonight after Will goes to sleep," he 
answered in the same soft voice, then stepped back, 
cleared his throat, and helped her slide down from 
the counter. 

"Mulder," she said urgently as he turned to go to 
the living room.

He whirled around, going back to her eagerly.  Just 
because he was a gentleman didn't mean he was blind 
or dead or any less red-blooded than the next man. 
 
"You forgot to make more popcorn," she reminded him.

*~*~*~*

He'd thought she would have fallen asleep already, 
but Scully's eyes opened as he entered, and she 
scooted over on her bed to make a place for him.  He 
loved her for that: finding a place for him in her 
life, separating 'us' from 'them,' and counting him 
among her 'us.'     

"You're sure?" Mulder whispered, laying on top of 
the covers and curling up to her warm back. As she 
nodded 'yes,' he added, "Sorry it's so late.  Will's 
a night owl and he's found a new 'dish' to telephone 
in Alexandria.  I think it's the 'dish' responsible 
for the hickey on his neck, although if she was my 
daughter, I'd make her get off the phone before 
midnight."   

"Sure you would.  You're not over-indulgent at all.  
Is she 'cool?'" Scully murmured, adjusting her body 
to fit against his.

"No, she's 'hot,' but I'm not sure what the 
difference is.  He's meeting her for sodas tomorrow 
before he 'blows' Georgetown for Manhattan.  She's a 
'hot dish,' which I always thought was a tuna 
casserole, but me being with you is 'cool.'" He 
clicked his tongue against his teeth, imitating 
Will's omnipresent bubblegum. "And you're 'the 
most,'" he added.

"The most what?"

"I'm a little unclear on that," he confessed, toying 
with her hair.  "But we both agree you are.  So, 
doll: I got wheels," Mulder said in his best steel-
jawed gangster impression. "You wanna blow this 
square joint and find some hot dive where the cool 
scene hangs out?" 

"I have no idea what you just said." 

"I think it translates to: if you don't like it 
here, I have a car. Let's go someplace else."

"No, I like it right here," she said contentedly, 
exhaling, lacing her fingers through his.

"So do I."

*~*~*~*

"She's okay, Scully," Mulder said softly, returning 
with two useless mugs of hot tea to find her still 
watching Emily asleep on his couch. "The doctor said 
she was going to be fine.  It's just pneumonia, and 
he said you caught it early."
 
"It's not 'just' pneumonia," she whispered tensely. 
"Healthy, five-year-old little girls do not 'just' 
get pneumonia."  

Mulder shifted, knowing Scully didn't want to hear 
some comforting lie.  This wasn't another case of 
the sniffles: even he realized that.   

"It happened so fast," Scully continued, stroking 
Emily's flushed cheek, her fingers trembling from 
fear and lack of sleep. "One second she had a chest 
cold and the next she was burning up and she 
couldn't breathe."

"And you got her to the hospital, and the doctor has 
her on all that medicine, and she's going to be 
fine.  We keep her warm, give her plenty of fluids-"   

"It's starting, Mulder," Scully said shakily, 
looking up at him with big, frightened eyes.

"I w-would do anything to make her well again," he 
murmured helplessly, and she looked back down at 
Emily.  He just stood there like he had for the last 
three days in the hospital, feeling like an outsider 
who didn't belong, but seemed to be along for the 
ride.  He felt very close to Scully when he could 
slay the nightmares, and very far away when he 
couldn't. 

"I know that."  

"It's warmer here: not damp and drafty like your 
apartment.  It will be easier for her to breathe.  
I'll make up a bed for you, or you can go home and 
get some sleep and I'll watch her."

"I'd rather sleep with you tonight," she said 
quickly, still watching her daughter's peaceful face. 

Mulder swallowed.  There was a subtle and visceral 
difference between his 'staying until you go to 
sleep' and 'sleep with you.' One involved wearing 
pants and the other, done correctly, did not.  

"I'll carry her upstairs and put her in the room 
across the hall from mine.  From ours," he corrected, 
clearing his throat. "So we can hear if she wakes up."

Scully nodded, not letting Emily out of her sight as 
he carried the limp body up the steps and tucked her 
into bed, but not speaking, either.   

"I don't know if I can do this, Mulder," she finally 
said as he began to undress for bed, feeling like a 
nervous teenager instead of a grown man.   

"Do you want to sleep with Em?  Or for me to leave?"

"I don't know if I can watch this happen to her.  I 
don't know if I'm that strong."

When he wrapped his arms around her, he realized she 
was trembling, and he heard her sniffing against his 
shoulder. "You are the strongest person I know."

He backed her to his bed and helped her undress, 
then laid her down, pulling the luxurious blankets 
up to her chin.  His usual routine was to lie on top 
of the covers behind her, which preserved some 
propriety, and avoided embarrassment when his body 
realized there was a beautiful, half-dressed woman a 
few inches away.

"What's happening, Scully?" Mulder asked instead, 
sitting on the edge of the bed, still wearing his 
slacks and t-shirt. "Why is this happening to 
Emily?"

She shook her head, as usual, refusing to answer.  

"No, I love your daughter like she's my own.  You, 
Emily and Will are my life.  I won't ask you where 
you were for three months or what happened with the
babies, but I want to know what's happening to Em," 
he insisted. "I don't think it's fair not to tell me."

"She's an experiment," Scully whispered. "And the 
experiment, for her, failed.  She's something that 
was never meant to be."

"Like the eugenics experiments?  Like the Nazis?" he 
asked huskily. "They breed people like race horses?  
That's what she is: a selectively bred human?"

"Mulder, I can't."

"I saw those Nazi death camps, Scully.  Most of my 
mother's relatives died in those camps."

"I can't," she repeated, avoiding his eyes.

"Am I part of that experiment?" he managed to ask 
after several false starts.  

"You are a part of me.  And I don't know if I'm 
strong enough to lose you, either," she whispered 
hoarsely, then pressed her face into the down pillow, 
her back shaking as she sobbed silently.

"Oh, God, I'm sorry, honey.  I'm not going anywhere.  
I'm right here.  I'm going to be right here, no 
matter what happens." She rolled to face him, and he 
pulled her close, pressing his lips into her hair. 
"I love you, Scully. I probably don't say that often 
enough."

"Love me," she requested, and he did, breathlessly.
 
*~*~*~*

Thankful no reporters could hear him, Mulder leaned 
over the landing and instructed for the fifth time, 
"Don't take your knickers off.  You can't go if you 
take your knickers off!"  
 
"Leave them on," Scully confirmed from the upstairs 
bathroom, putting the finishing touches on her hair.

Emily pushed her bottom lip out, but dropped the hem 
of her party dress, scratching miserably at the 
thick wool leggings Scully was trying to keep on 
her. "The whole dress is itchy.  I wanna wear my 
overalls," she insisted.  

"You need a nice dress to go to the restaurant with 
us and your leggings will keep you warm.  You can 
take them off when we get there.  Come help me pick 
out a tie: your mom's almost ready." 

He held a few possibilities over the banister, 
wondering if trusting a five-year-old's fashion 
expertise and sense of humor was a good idea.  In 
New York, the maids had a system for organizing his 
wardrobe, but in Georgetown, he was at the mercy of 
the Scully women.  Although Emily knew her colors, 
she seemed to have convenient memory lapses at his 
expense. Mulder had appeared in public more than 
once wearing mismatched socks while Em and Scully 
giggled at him. 

"What color do you want?" Emily asked, hands on her 
wool-padded hips as she watched him jog down the steps.

"Blue.  The blue tie goes with this suit."

Emily pointed to the one on the left, nodding in 
approval as he tied it in the mirror in the foyer.

"That one's brown and your suit's gray," Scully 
informed him, crossing the landing with her high 
heels and velvet purse in her hands. "Be nice to 
Mulder, Emily."

Emily blinked in wide-eyed innocence as Mulder 
squatted down so they were nose-to-nose, pulling his 
tie off. "I'm gonna-" he began to tease her, but was 
interrupted by a knock at the front door.  

"Will," Mulder said in shock, opening it to find his 
son on the porch, looking like a pampered house cat 
accidentally left out all night. "What are you doing 
here?  Does your mother know where you are?"

"I guess." Will shrugged, stepping inside and 
dropping his backpack, shucking off his black 
leather jacket and tossing it in the general 
direction of the coat rack.  Nothing unusual: the 
boy couldn't sink a basket or hit the toilet, 
either. 

"Is something wrong?" 'For you to show up on my 
doorstep looking like a lost puppy when you're 
supposed to be in Manhattan with your mother?' 
Mulder's inner voice elaborated. 

Another shrug.  No, clearly nothing was wrong at all.   

"You can't just run away like this, Will, even if 
you're upset.  I'm calling your mother before she 
calls the police."

Mulder had his hand on the kitchen phone before Will 
blurted out, "Mother and I had a fight.  She's mad 
about Thanksgiving being her holiday with me when 
she doesn't celebrate Thanksgiving.  She said I 
should spend the week with you and your- with Miss 
Scully and plan to be with her over Christmas.  I 
borrowed some money and bought a bus ticket."   

"You're sure that's the truth, Will?  That your 
mother knows you're here?  Because if it's not, I 
could be in trouble."

"She knows where I am," Will conceded, looking 
distastefully at Emily, who was scratching again. 
"Why is she dressed like that?" 

"We were going out to dinner.  Scully passed all her 
mid-term exams and Em's finally feeling better, so 
we were going out to celebrate."  

"Wear this one, Mulder" Scully called from the 
landing, letting another tie drift down to the 
foyer. "Oh, hello, William.  Is everything okay?"

"Everything's fine. Why does something have to be 
wrong for me to see my father?" Will snapped, 
glaring at her as she came down the steps in her 
blue evening dress. "Isn't this my designated 
weekend to be his kid?"

"Of course," Scully answered, giving Mulder a 
worried look. Will had seemed accepting, even 
content with her in his father's life again, and 
while he was often short with Mulder, he'd always 
been polite to her. "Can you come to dinner with us, 
Will?  The restaurant has a dress code, but you're 
so tall now: I bet one of Mulder's suits will fit 
you."  

"Sure.  Why not," Will muttered, passing her without 
making eye contact and trudging up the stairs.

"The tie on the banister is brown," Mulder called 
after him, giving Scully his 'how should I know 
what's wrong; I'm only his father' face.

"Go help him," Scully instructed quietly, squatting 
down and trying to stuff her uncooperative daughter 
into the jacket of her snowsuit. "We'll wait in the 
car.  See if he'll tell you what's wrong."
 
"How do I do that?"

"Try asking, then listening."
 
*~*~*~*

"Ready, sir?" the waiter asked, holding his pad and 
pencil ready.

"Salmon, Scully?" Mulder asked, glancing up to make 
sure she hadn't changed her mind. "Gateau de salmon 
for the lady, coq au vin for me.  One jam sandwich 
and a glass of milk," he continued, trying not to 
smile at Emily's request. "And my son will just have 
the entire left-hand column of the veal section," he 
finished, handing the menu back.  

"Strawberry jam, Mr. Mulder?" the waiter confirmed 
with great dignity, and Emily nodded, nibbling at 
the elaborate apple swan the chef had carved for 
her.  

She sat up taller on her impromptu booster seat of 
telephone books and adjusted the floppy chef's hat 
she'd wheedled out of the owner, making a few nearby 
patrons smile indulgently.  So far, there had been 
no problem with bringing a child to a grownup 
restaurant, but then, there was seldom a problem 
with bringing Emily anywhere.  Will, on the other 
hand, was so sullen Mulder could almost smell the 
storm brewing in the little black rain cloud above 
the boy's head.  His son's vocabulary had dwindled 
to two words: a 'you're interrupting my life' "What?" 
and a 'like you give a damn' "Fine!"

As another waiter appeared to refill their glasses, 
Scully leaned over the table, wiping something off 
Em's chin, and accidentally giving Will and Mulder a 
glimpse down her deep princess neckline.  Looking 
quickly at his son, Mulder grinned when he caught 
Will staring, his cheeks starting to redden.  

"You're depraved," she chastised them, sitting back, 
and Mulder nodded in agreement, giving his son a 
stern look. "I meant you, Mulder."

"So did I," he agreed, putting his hand over hers on 
the table. "Can't help it: you're gorgeous.  Isn't 
she, Will?" Mulder asked, trying one last time to 
lure his son out of his shell.   

"Very pretty.  I think you're the only redhead Dad's 
been with lately, Miss Scully," Will said politely. 
"Usually, he has brunettes with him when we're in 
New York."

Mulder tipped his head sideways, giving Will a 
puzzled look.  That wasn't true and Will knew it. 
"What are you talking about?"

"Oh. Miss Scully didn't know you're still seeing 
Diana Fowley and those other women?" he asked 
innocently, taking a sip from his water goblet. "I'm 
sorry, Dad.  I didn't mean to cause trouble.  Not 
'seeing,' really, Miss Scully.  Kind of like when he 
and Mother get together: they used to be married, 
after all.  I guess it doesn't count."

"W-Will," Mulder stuttered, trying to keep his mouth 
from hanging open in shock.  He had the urge to hit 
himself in the head with his palm to see if there 
would be a 'boing' noise as his brain restarted, 
since he couldn't possibly have just heard that.

"What?"   

"What are you doing, Will?  In New York, I go to 
business meetings, make a few PR appearances, alone, 
and spend time with you.  The only brunettes I 'see' 
there are you and Frohike.  What's the matter?"

"Nothing," Will insisted, slouching in his chair. "I 
don't even know that Miss Scully's a natural 
redhead, but I guess you would, right Dad?"

"We're, uh-" Mulder pushed back from the table, 
pursing his lips thoughtfully. "We're going to wash 
our hands.  Please excuse us," he decided. "Let's 
go, Will."

"What?" the boy asked again, looking Wheaties box 
wholesome.

"Move!" he ordered, resisting the urge to grab his 
son by the scruff of his neck, and settling for 
keeping a firm hand on his shoulder as they made 
their way to the lobby. "What the hell was that, 
William?  Scully's never been anything except 
wonderful to you.  How could you do that?"

Will slouched against the back of an upholstered 
chair in the ornate lobby, refusing to answer.

"They have made medical school and work as tough as 
possible on her," Mulder continued angrily. "I don't 
think Georgetown University realized 'Dana Scully' 
was a woman when they admitted her, and half of her 
professors are the same doctors she works for in the 
ER.  You know who gets the worst shifts and the 
nastiest patients?  Her.  You see how thin and pale 
Emily is?  That's because she's just getting over 
pneumonia.  How dare you take whatever your problem 
is out on her!"

Will stopped leaning on the chair and crossed his 
arms miserably, staring at the Oriental rug and his 
borrowed wingtips. 

"Come on, Will.  What is it?" Mulder asked, getting 
his temper in check.

"You're just always down here.  With her," he 
mumbled. "With them."

"With Scully and Emily? You're not a child and this 
isn't a popularity contest.  I see you every second 
the court lets me, and half the time, you take off 
for the movies or the record store or on a date.  
Don't pretend I'm neglecting you."

"I hate her!" Will shouted, turning a few 
aristocratic heads in the next room. "Everything I 
do is wrong and she treats me like I ruined her 
life.  If it wasn't for me, she'd still be pouring 
pints for a bunch of over-privileged Oxford brats!"

Mulder nodded, realizing it wasn't Scully they were 
discussing at all. "What happened with your mother?"

"I just don't want to live with her.  Miss Scully 
lives with you.  Why can't you just marry her and 
I could live here? I could-"

"Wait, wait," Mulder interrupted, signaling a 
timeout with his hands. "Scully and I do not live 
together.  And she doesn't want to be married right 
now.  Maybe someday-"  

"Someday she'll get tired of being a doctor and want 
to stay home, have babies, and get off baking apple 
tarts?"

"Watch it, Will," Mulder warned. "Even if we were 
married, the judge said you couldn't live with me 
full-time.  Not right now.  That has to do with me, 
not Scully.  I'm doing everything the judge told me, 
and we have another court date next month: maybe 
he'll consider joint custody then."

"Can you just talk to Mother?  Maybe get her to lay 
off me a little?"

"Gods run for cover and the heavens tremble when she 
and I are in the same room," Mulder responded 
sarcastically.  Seeing Will's hopeful look, he 
exhaled. "Yeah, I'll talk to her.  Are we done here, 
Will?  I want you to go back and apologize to 
Scully.  That was completely uncalled for."

Will nodded, silently following his father through 
the dining room to their table in the back.  Emily 
looked up, her black patent leather dress shoes 
drumming excitedly as the waiters arrived with their 
food.  To her, this was a tea party come to life, 
complete with china, white tablecloths, and ladies 
in pretty gowns.  And, although Mulder might be 
biased, the prettiest lady in the room was sitting 
right beside Emily, waiting to trim the crusts off 
her daughter's dollar-fifty jam sandwich.  Bread was 
eighteen cents a loaf: that had better be some damn 
good jam.   

"Okay?" Scully asked as he and Will sat down, 
sliding their chairs forward.

"I think so," he answered, glancing at Will. "Will, 
you had something to say?"

"I'm sorry: who had the salmon?" a waiter asked, 
picking up the plate and looking to Mulder for a 
cue. 

"Dad's doorknob," Will answered, casually gesturing 
across the table to Scully, then dropping the linen 
napkin onto his lap as though that was how he 
usually referred to her. 
 
"Or not okay," Mulder said through clenched teeth, 
sliding his chair back again. "Sorry.  We'll be 
right back.  Let's go, Will."

"They like their hands really, really clean: germs," 
Emily explained to the puzzled French waiters.

*~*~*~*

"Keep walking, Will: there's going to be yelling," 
Mulder instructed, holding open the glass door of 
the restaurant for his son to step outside.   

Knowing he was in deep this time, Will leaned 
against the brick wall, watching warily while his 
father paced the sidewalk, pausing occasionally to 
raise a finger, start to speak, and then change his 
mind and go back to pacing. 'Dad's doorknob:' as in 
'everyone takes a turn.' Mulder had no allusions as 
to what Phoebe called Scully, but it was different 
coming out of Will's mouth.  
 
"If there was ever a best time to announce you're on 
drugs, this is it," Mulder finally said. "Okay, I'm 
listening, Will. You have my full and undivided 
attention." He stopped moving, standing eye-to-eye 
with his son and crossing his arms.   

"I'll tell her I'm sorry," he finally mumbled 
miserably, ducking as though he could avoid the 
falling sleet.

Mulder waited, not trusting himself to say 
anything else.  To his surprise, instead of more 
empty apologies, he saw a tear trickling down from
the corner of the boy's eye, tugging at his own 
heart like water finding a weak spot in a dam.

"Will, what's wrong?  This isn't like you."

"What Mother says about Miss Scully, is it true? 
About Emily?  You never really told me." 

"About Scully not being married to Emily's father? 
Yes, that's true.  I don't think Scully had any 
control over whether or not she had a baby, though.  
Do you understand?"

"You mean someone forced her."

"Basically." Mulder nodded. "To me, it's not the 
same, but I can see how you might not feel that 
way."  He had a whole speech composed on splitting 
moral hairs, but controlled himself, swearing he 
was listening, not lecturing. "Actually, I think 
keeping and raising her daughter alone is very 
brave."

"But you didn't know that when you asked her to 
marry you last Christmas?"

"No, I didn't.  I thought her husband had died."  

"And, uh, is it true about the baby?" he mumbled.

"What baby?" Mulder asked, trying to stall for time 
and wondering what the penalty was for strangling 
his ex-wife.  That was what was wrong with Will: 
Phoebe had found out and told him. Of course Phoebe 
told him: she would never pass up the chance to make 
Mulder look bad in front of their son. "Scully's not 
going to have a baby."

"I heard you talking to her last month about what 
it's like to be young and not want to be tied down 
to a baby and family.  And then when Mother said 
Miss Scully had- How could you let her do that, Dad?  
You always say it's my responsibility: to stop, and 
then to be responsible for whatever the consequences 
were with a girl if I didn't stop.  Why didn't you 
just marry her?" Pushing himself off the wall, Will 
yelled, "Jesus Christ, you married my mother!  Was 
the baby not yours?"

When Mulder hesitated, Will continued lividly, "It 
wasn't, was it?  That's why Miss Scully ran off!  
And when she showed up again, you took her back like 
it never happened!  Do you think she'll stop 
sleeping with you when she finishes school, or will 
she let you pay her way through her residency, too?  
She must be one bloody good shag." He pointed to the 
mat in front of the restaurant, then to his father, 
then back at the mat. "My father.  The doormat.  My 
father.  The doormat.  What's the difference?  I 
know: my father is taller!"

"Will-" he tried to interrupt.  This had ceased to 
be a discussion and was disintegrating into a vulgar 
temper tantrum.  

"What's the excuse this time? You never fix 
anything, Dad, but you damn sure can make excuses.  
My mother was young, and she had to raise me alone 
while you hit baseballs.  Losing your sister was 
hard: Grandmother's 'just like that.' Your father 
'didn't know me.' It's not that I'm six months away 
from being a bastard.  So what's Miss Scully's 
excuse?  And, while you're at it, what's your excuse 
for me?  Let me guess: you were drunk!"   

Mulder stepped closer, but Will shoved him back, 
cursing, then turned away.  When Mulder tried to put 
a hand on his son's shoulder, Will shrugged away, 
refusing to look at him.   

He moved back, trying to come up with something 
brilliant and fatherly to say, but drawing a blank.  
In fact, the space between his ears was so empty he 
could hear it echoing like a huge, deserted 
warehouse.

The restaurant door swung open, letting the sounds 
of DC's elite spill out onto the sidewalk for a few 
seconds before it closed again with a well-mannered 
'whoosh.' Behind him, Mulder heard a woman 
approaching, her stilettos clicking across the wet 
cement.

"I'm sorry to interrupt," Scully said hesitantly. 
"Everyone's smoking in the restaurant.  Emily was 
having trouble breathing."

"Okay.  Okay, I think we should just go home." 
Mulder took a few breaths, trying to calm down. 
"I'll go pay the check."

"The owner said not to worry about it: for us to 
come back another evening and they'd put us in a 
private room." She noticed Will standing a few feet 
away, still sniffing and flushed, then looked to 
Mulder. "Is there anything I can do?"

Mulder nodded 'no,' fishing in his pocket for his 
spare set of keys. "I'm not in the mood to wait for 
the valet; would you mind if we walked to the car?"

"Some fresh air would be nice, actually.  Emily, are 
you all right to walk?"  

Bundled in her wool snowsuit, Emily agreed, taking 
her mother's hand, assuming Scully would feed her 
dinner at some point this evening and it would 
involve strawberry jam on white bread with the 
crusts cut off.  Mulder wondered what it must be 
like to have a child's unconditional love and trust.  
Somehow he had missed the part of fatherhood when he 
had been his son's hero.  Probably, he had been deep 
in WWII, a bottle of Scotch, a double-header, or a 
brunette during that developmental stage.  

"We're going home, Will," Mulder said neutrally, 
still keeping his distance.       

"You can go to Hell!  And you can take your whore 
with you!"

'What is it?' Scully mouthed, and Mulder held both 
his palms up in the classic 'hands off' gesture.  
Continuing this discussion wouldn't be profitable 
for anyone except the psychotherapists, and it 
wasn't her responsibility to referee this blame 
game.      

"Let's just go," Mulder muttered, taking Emily's 
other hand, then picking her up in his need for 
something to do.  Will followed, refusing to 
acknowledge their presence, but muttering just 
loudly enough for Mulder and probably Scully to 
catch the occasional 'bloody tramp' comment.  

Mulder pretended to ignore him, still waiting for 
the Wisdom Fairy to come down and smite him.  The 
Conscience Fairy arrived with his usual agenda, 
bringing his friends Hurt, Insecurity, and Betrayal, 
but all the productive sprites seemed to have 
previous engagements.

What could he say to his son when he didn't 
understand Scully any better?  How could she invite 
him into her family, her bed, and her heart, but not 
her past or, in any permanent sense, her future?  
Life went along peacefully and pleasantly as long as 
they lived in the present, which was what Mulder 
tried to do, but he was like his son: forgive, 
forget, and move on wasn't his strong suit.  They 
tended to recall in great detail, silently ruminate, 
and give themselves ulcers until they exploded in 
self-destructive meltdowns.   

Mulder could almost see the Insecurity Fairy jumping 
up and down and clapping with glee out of the corner 
of his eye.  Yes, Virginia, there is an Insecurity 
Fairy: he brings indigestion and ex-wives.

Scully squeezed his hand, leaning her head against 
Mulder's shoulder as they walked. "What's wrong with 
him?" she whispered. "Are you okay?"

"No, I'm not okay," Mulder said brusquely, still 
holding her hand but putting some distance between 
them. "And not a damn thing's wrong with him." 

"Dad," Will said nervously, suddenly sounding much 
younger and unsure of himself.

"I'm not speaking to you until you calm down," 
Mulder insisted, but turned anyway and found two men 
pointing pistols at him as they stepped out from the 
shadows.  It was barely dusk, but the evening was 
overcast and miserable, and the alley between the 
restaurant and the parking lot was deserted.  

Wondering if this was actually a positive turn, 
considering how their evening had gone so far, 
Mulder set Emily down, let go of Scully, and 
slowly reached for his wallet.  

"Just take the money and go: we don't want any 
trouble," he said calmly, easing his hand out of his 
pocket.

The muggers exchanged looks, focusing on Scully in 
her evening gown instead of Mulder.  One grinned, 
his chapped lips parting slightly, his breath making 
white mist in front of his face as he watched her.   

"Will," Mulder said evenly, praying his son wouldn't 
choose this moment to argue with him, "Take Scully 
and Em and get out of here.  Drop your watch and 
wallet and run."  

Thankfully, he immediately heard the sounds of 
Will's watch hitting the pavement and then Scully's 
heels hurrying away behind him.  Holding his own 
billfold and raising his right hand, trying to keep 
the men's attention, Mulder said slightly louder, 
"There's probably two-hundred dollars here, and I'm 
wearing my World Series ring and a Rolex.  It's 
yours.  And my car keys: the black Cadillac parked 
on the next lot.  Just take it and get out of here.  
I don't want any trouble."

Will would probably take Scully and Emily back to 
the restaurant, and Mulder wanted these men moving 
in the opposite direction.  He laid everything on 
the wet asphalt, then started to back away, his 
heart rate only slightly elevated.  Everyone was 
fine, and, with the exception of the ring, 
possessions were replaceable.  It was still a 
charming way to end a romantic evening, though: at 
the police station going through pictures of 
criminals.  

"Okay?" he asked, taking another step back, keeping 
both hands in sight.  He was a veteran New Yorker; 
muggers were nothing new to him.  He thought of them 
as panhandlers with weapons and a pushy attitude.

The men waited, not moving toward his wallet and 
jewelry, still keeping their guns trained on him.  
Mulder was about fifteen feet when he saw one man 
raise his pistol and heard the hammer clicking back.

*~*~*~*

For a long time: he couldn't tell if it was seconds, 
hours, or epochs, consciousness was like a few women 
he had known: a nice, casual acquaintance it would 
be acceptable to see again, but there were no hard 
feelings if he didn't.  He didn't even see the point 
in politely lying and saying he'd stay in touch, 
because he probably wouldn't.

Mulder heard snatches of conversation, and men were 
telling Scully the same thing: he wasn't going to 
make it and she could stop trying.  Sleet was 
stinging his face, gravel was pressing into his 
shoulders, and in the background, he heard Emily 
crying and Will's hoarse voice asking if his dad was 
going to be okay.  He surmised his own situation as 
grave, to make a bad joke, but he smiled inwardly as 
she told the men, medics, probably, to go to Hell.  
No one was ever going to win a battle of wills with 
Dana Scully, so if she said he wasn't going to die, 
he might as well just resign himself to living.

Other voices passed through the darkness in search 
of him, often impatiently dissipating into nothing 
before he could respond.  To Mulder, the time inside 
his mind moved slowly, but life around him was a 
film running too quickly.  He caught a few plot 
points: sirens, needles entering his skin, the 
whirring and beeping of machines, and someone 
covering him with a warm blanket as though he was a 
sick child.  In general, though, reality had little 
application to him: just another ship passing in the 
immense night.

"Mulder," Scully's voice said again, finding him in 
his warm cocoon, and he felt her hand over his.  He 
rubbed his thumb against her palm, letting her know 
he could hear.  "You're in the hospital: there's an 
oxygen mask on your face helping you breathe, and 
we're giving you blood and medicine intravenously: 
through IV's in your arms.  You just came out of 
surgery again.  Don't try to talk yet, but you can 
open your eyes.  Otherwise, I need you to be still."

He tried to tell her he understood, but there was a 
something covering his mouth and nose and it hurt to 
breathe.  He shook his head to get it off, starting 
to panic when he realized he couldn't raise his left 
arm.  As he struggled, waves of pain and nausea 
buffeted him until he froze, terrified, tears 
seeping from the outer corners of his eyes.  Dying 
was a perfectly natural and acceptable concept so 
long as it didn't apply to him or anyone he knew.

"No, relax big guy," she instructed, stroking his 
forehead. "You're safe.  Everything's going to be 
fine." 

After a few tries, he got his eyelids to open, 
blinking through a layer of Vaseline someone had put 
on them.  Scully wiped it off, letting him focus on 
her pale face and white surgical gown.  From the 
purple shadows under her eyes and the firm way she 
was holding her lips, things were worse than she was 
letting on: his condition must fit her 'at least 
you're not dead' definition of 'fine.' 

"Hello there," she whispered, taking his hand again. 
"You're in Georgetown Hospital in Recovery.  We're 
moving you to a private room in a few minutes.  Do 
you remember what happened?"
    
Still frightened, Mulder formed his other hand into 
a gun, the way little boys playing cowboys shot at 
Indians. 

"That's right.  You were shot twice: once through 
the shoulder and once close to the heart.  The 
surgeons missed a bleeder when you came off the 
heart-lung bypass machine, and they just went back 
in to tie it off.  You're going to be fine; just be 
still so you don't tear your sutures or IV's.  Your 
blood pressure is still low." 

He raised his index finger, weakly pointing at her.   

"I'm fine, and so are Will and Emily.  They're just 
scared.  The surgeons repaired the damage to your 
aorta, and they think they have the internal 
bleeding under control.  You gave us a good scare, 
Mulder."     
  
He pointed at her again, then touched the layers of 
gauze covering his chest and shoulder, tapping 
lightly.

"You remember that?" she responded, sounding 
surprised. "Yes, I worked on your heart until the ER 
doctors could take over.  Will's waiting: I promised 
I'd tell him as soon as you were awake.  Are you in 
any pain?"

Mulder nodded 'yes,' too weak to pretend stoicism.  

"I'll see what I can do." She backed away, but he 
kept hold of her hand. "You have to let go, Mulder.  
I'm going to get the doctor and talk to Will and 
I'll be right back.  I'm not going to leave you."

"Thanks," he murmured through his scratchy throat, 
releasing his grip and letting the warm tide take 
him again.

*~*~*~*   

He turned his face toward Scully as she entered his 
room, habitually checking his IV's, then peeking at
the layers of gauze on his chest and left shoulder 
to check for bleeding. "The doctor was here, but all
he does is cluck to himself and make notes in my chart.  
What's the verdict?"

"Your pressure is close to normal, which means 
there's no internal bleeding.  There's no infection, 
and those drains in your chest will probably come 
out soon.  I think everyone's a little stunned 
you're doing as well as you are." 

"But I'm not going to make spring training this 
year, am I?" he said lightly.

"The doctors don't know the extent of the nerve 
damage to your arm, but you can move your fingers: 
that's a start.  You'll need some physical therapy 
once the incisions heal.  And your heart stopped 
before the ambulance arrived, which means your brain 
was partially deprived of oxygen for several 
minutes.  What I did helped, but not if there wasn't 
enough blood left to circulate the oxygen.  It's 
still too early to tell about anything else.  By all 
rights, you should be dead," she admitted, dropping 
her nurse persona and sitting on the edge of his 
bed. "But you're not, and I thank God for that."

"You mean it's too early to tell if I have brain 
damage."

She nodded, watching him carefully.

"So how much do I have to heal before I can have my 
shorts back?" he quipped, trying to push himself 
higher in bed to sit up, and collapsing without 
moving an inch. "Damn it, could you not just sit 
there?" he snapped, not sure who he was angry at.

Scully calmly raised the head of his bed a few 
inches, adjusting his pillow. "I'll get a basin and 
help you clean up and shave.  I don't know about 
boxer shorts, but I can probably lay my hands on a 
pair of pajama bottoms."

"Get another nurse to do it," Mulder said gruffly, 
looking away again to stare at the industrially 
antiseptic white wall.  

"Don't be ridiculous," she argued, straightening the 
IV lines he had tangled trying to move.  He jerked 
his arm away, refusing to look at her. 

"Just get someone else, Scully.  It's not your job 
to take care of me."   

"Yes, it is," she said evenly. "Now stop before you 
tear out your IV's."   

"It's a lousy job: one needy, injured, ex-ballplayer 
with an insane ex-wife and a screwed-up teenage son.  
The money's good, but he tends to get drunk, stupid, 
and morose.  I wouldn't sign up for that position 
either, Scully.  In fact, I'd get as far away as I 
could."

"I'll take my chances," she soothed, kissing his 
temple, then his forehead as he turned his face back 
to her, wondering if his eyes looked as frightened 
as hers.

*~*~*~*

Mulder awoke to Will hovering beside the bed, 
looking like he desperately wanted to do or say 
something but couldn't figure out what.  

"Hi," he said tiredly, reaching up to rumple his 
son's dark hair.  Will had been cultivating a high-
maintenance style that puffed up in front and 
feathered together in the back which he called a 
'duck's ass' and Mulder called, 'you could use a 
haircut, son.'  

"Hi.  How are you doing?" Will asked nervously, 
eyeing all the tubes and machines as he smoothed his 
hair back into place. "Tell me it's not as bad as it 
looks."

"I'm okay, Will.  I understand I have a few pints of 
your blood in me."   

Will nodded awkwardly. "I bleed well.  Dana said you 
were sitting up earlier."

"For a little bit," Mulder responded, noting that 
Scully had finally moved from being 'Miss Scully' to 
being 'Dana' to Will. "The doctor says I'm healing 
quickly and I'll be okay in a few months.  So far, 
all my marbles seem to be intact."

"Good," Will said quickly, still hovering.   

"None of this is your fault," Mulder assured him, 
closing his eyes for a few seconds.  It was 
humiliating that something as simple as lifting 
his arm had become exhausting.  

"I shouldn't have left you, but I saw the way those 
men were watching Dana."

"You did the right thing." 

"We would have been having dinner if I hadn't been 
such a brat," Will said guiltily, and Mulder heard 
the chair squeak as he finally sat down.  Scully had 
told him she thought Will had aged about a decade in 
the last week.  The poor kid probably had enough 
issues now to start his own magazine.   

"Do you think I'd rather those men had hurt Scully 
and shot you or Emily?" When Will mumbled 'no,' 
Mulder reiterated, "You did the right thing."

"Yeah.  Anyway, Mother's here.  She wants to see 
you.  Sorry: I got scared a few days ago and called 
her.  She's in the hallway," Will hedged.  Outside 
of court, he couldn't recall seeing his parents in 
the same room in his entire life. "What do you want 
me to tell her?"

"She can come in," Mulder conceded, not wanting to 
make things rougher for Will. "We don't hate each 
other; we just don't get along very well."

Will raised a doubtful eyebrow, but stood and opened 
the door, and a few seconds later Mulder heard high 
heels and smelled the once familiar scent of Chanel 
No. 5.   

"Fox, dearest," Phoebe said softly, sitting on the 
edge of the bed and looking concerned, the cool gold 
clasp of a diamond bracelet resting on his wrist as 
she took his hand. "How do you feel, love?"

"Like I've been shot in the chest," Mulder said 
easily, keeping things friendly. "How's Will doing?"

"He was so upset when I arrived, I had to sedate 
him, but I think he'll be better now that he's seen 
you.  Your girlfriend pulled some strings so he 
could visit you before we go back to New York.  I 
don't think you're supposed to have visitors."  

Will lurked in the corner, warily watching the 
tableaux on the hospital bed.  It was no coincidence 
his life with his mother had become steadily more 
miserable as his father had become more serious 
about Dana. 

"Take it easy on him, Phoebs.  It's been a rough 
week for everyone.  It's been a rough year."

"I will," she promised, running a manicured nail 
down his profile, lingering over his lips as though 
she expected them to open. "He can get his 
schoolwork and fly back down in a few days.  We'll 
work out the details when you're feeling better." 

"He can stay at my place," Mulder responded, getting 
tired. "Scully will keep an eye on him."  

"Fox, we stopped at your house so William could pick 
up his knapsack and there's a little girl's bedroom 
there.  It's your business, but I don't want him 
seeing that: you living with someone."

"Emily takes naps there and comes over to play, but 
she and Scully have their own apartment.  Always," 
he lied, conveniently forgetting the night they 
brought Emily home from the hospital. 

"All right.  I saw her with your girlfriend earlier.  
She's a beautiful child."

"Yes, she is," Mulder answered, hoping she meant 
Emily and not Scully. "And she's smart.  I'd love to 
have a daughter like her."

"I'm sorry you don't.  Really, I am," Phoebe 
whispered, sounding as though they were lovers 
instead of competitors locked in a struggle over a 
common human providence. "Why don't we bury the 
hatchet, Fox?  It can't be healthy for William for 
us to fight like this."  

Mulder murmured something affirmative, not 
mentioning he wasn't the one who fought unless she 
tried to take his son away.  He just signed the 
checks and wanted to see his kid as much as 
possible: everything else was just details.

"Good: we're friends, then.  I hope you feel better 
soon," she offered, leaning down to kiss him lightly 
on the lips, then standing and primly instructing 
William to say goodbye to his father for a few days. 

Will, who didn't kiss anything less than a B-cup 
these days on principle, squeezed Mulder's hand, 
promising he'd call as soon as he got off the plane 
in New York, then followed his mother out.

As the door closed, Mulder finally exhaled.  Jesus.  
Sixteen years and that woman still triggered 
something in the base of his brain that led directly 
to trouble. 

*~*~*~*

When Scully appeared in the doorway, hands on her 
hips, Mulder knew he was in Big Trouble.  According 
to Emily, there was being in 'trouble' and in 'Big 
Trouble' with Mommy: 'Big Trouble' was when the tops 
of Scully's ears turned scarlet and someone was 
about to get their mouth washed out with soap.  
Plain old 'trouble' was anything less, and Scully 
could usually be talked out of actual punishment if 
the offender promised they would never, ever do it 
again.  And this time they meant it.  Really.

He tried to warn Will, but his son was collapsed in 
his chair, laughing hysterically as 'Anita Johnson' 
was summoned to the parking lot over the intercom: 
'Hugh G. Rection' needed her urgently.  Of her own 
accord, the unwitting switchboard operator announced 
Anita was to 'come immediately,' which Mulder 
thought was either empty boasting or extremely high 
standards.    

Without a word, Scully marched into his hospital 
room and unplugged the phone cord from the wall, 
glaring at the two of them.  Mulder watched her, 
fascinated by the way her face kept changing shapes 
and colors.

'I love you,' was what he planned to say, but it 
came out more as "I rub you," which also sounded 
like a fine idea and made him start giggling again.  

"Yes, Mulder, I know you love me," Scully said 
sternly. "You love me, you love your nurse, the ER 
nurses, janitorial and food services, and the 
switchboard operator.  If you are up to loving that 
many women, you must be feeling better. What is 
wrong with you?"

"But I was careful this time," he told her 
seriously, noticing he could see the outline of her 
right nipple through her nurse's uniform. "Will and 
I were just discussing girls."

"And?"

"We're for them," he decided happily, trying to 
catch his breath. "Although being against them is 
pretty damn pleasant, too."

"No more phone calls, Mulder," she ordered. "Doctors 
Ben Dover and Seymour Butz aren't in Proctology, so 
don't call and try to make any more appointments 
with them.  No one named 'Oliver Clothesoff' or 
'Herald Johnson' is in the waiting room, and Mike 
Rotch isn't needed in Gynecology, so don't have him 
paged again.  I'm trying to work, Mulder."

"That was Will," Mulder insisted breathlessly, 
conversing with her breast and wondering if it was 
permissible to lick it under these circumstances.  
No, probably not in front of William. "And I rub 
you, Sculleee." 

"How much pain medication have you had?" she asked 
suspiciously, leaning over him. "Mulder, are you 
okay?"

Mulder responded by pressing her nipple with his 
index finger as if it was a doorbell, adding a loud, 
electronic, "Beeeeeep," sound. "Turkey's done," he 
announced, grinning at her stupidly. 

As she stepped back in surprise, cupping her breast 
protectively, Will spewed a mouthful of Coca-Cola 
out his nose and across Mulder's blankets before he 
fell out of his chair.   

"It's not funny, Will.  How much Demerol as he had?  
Mulder, how many pain shots have you had?  Or did 
they accidentally give you pills and a shot?  Answer 
me, Mulder," she ordered, rudely interrupting his 
pornographic rendition of the Oscar Mayer Wiener 
Song.  

"I like him better like this," Will called from the 
floor, coughing and trying to blow the remnants of 
soda out his nostrils. "I had no idea he knew so 
many dirty limericks."  

"You won't like it when he stops breathing," she 
said tersely, reaching for his chart. "Demerol 
depresses respiration.  How many nurses have been in 
to give him shots since you've been here?"

"None," Will insisted.

Mulder, hearing the magic word and knowing the 
drill, obligingly shifted, pulled down the right 
side of his pajama bottoms to bare his backside, and 
passed out cold.

*~*~*~*  

"I did not!" Mulder protested, staring up at Scully 
in shock and pulling the oxygen mask off his face.

"I wish I were an Oscar Mayer wiener," she sang 
flatly, crossing her arms.  At his horrified 
expression, a strangled sound escaped from her nose 
before she regained her composure.  

Mulder groaned, closing his eyes. "I was drugged," 
he mumbled, wishing he could sink into the floor and 
hide.  It was humiliating enough to have his every 
bodily function questioned, charted, and discussed 
by half the hospital without making a fool of 
himself and having no memory of it.  Please God, 
don't let there be pictures.  And, if he'd told Will 
any autobiographical stories, please let them 
be the ones where Mulder turned out sounding like a 
heartless womanizer instead of a pathetic looser. 

"You were very drugged," Scully informed him 
seriously. "I checked with the doctor: he's willing 
to discharge you in the morning if you'll go home in 
an ambulance and if you have a nurse 'round the 
clock."

Mulder didn't think he was up to 'having a nurse 
'round the clock,' but he kept his mouth shut, 
thinking he'd already said enough for one day. "Am I 
being expelled?"

"No, but I'd feel better and so would the police," 
she hedged. "Mulder, medication mix ups do happen, 
but I can't imagine any nurse giving you an 
injection without checking your chart.  Will says 
you were already loopy when he got here at eight-
thirty, but the only injection logged was by the 
duty nurse at eight.  Someone is responsible for the 
other puncture mark on your hip between eight and 
eight-thirty, but no one seems to know who that 
could be.  I'm not sure this overdose was an 
accident, just like I'm not sure those were muggers 
in the alley.  That second bullet could have killed 
you, just like that much pain medication could have 
stopped your breathing."

"This is when I'm supposed to tell you you're 
paranoid, isn't it?  And that nothing bad is going 
to happen?" She nodded, helping him sit up and take 
a sip of water. "What could I possibly have done 
that anyone would want to kill me?  Is your brother 
in town again?"

"He doesn't want to kill you, Mulder; he just wants 
to hurt you really, really badly." She smiled at his 
groggy reasoning, taking the paper cup and setting 
it on his hospital-issue nightstand beside his 
hospital-issue box of Kleenex. "You'll be more 
comfortable at home.  I can take some vacation time 
from work, and I'll be finished with school for the 
semester in a week.  Or you could get a private duty 
nurse from one of the agencies," she back-peddled.   

"No, if you're willing to tolerate me, that's fine."

"I'll have to: it's not like I can get rid of you," 
Scully said, running her fingers through his sleep-
matted hair.

"You're aware there's still a full-time position 
available, in case you're ever interested?  I figure 
taking care of me could be a twenty-four/seven job, 
especially when Will's factored in." He hesitated, 
waiting for an answer, then added, "Or a twenty-
four/three job while you're in school, but at least 
you wouldn't have to work.  Work now: you could 
always work later, once you finish school."  

Mulder decided if he stopped right then, he could 
still blame it on the drugs and romantic ideals.  
He'd actually managed an offer of marriage a 
romantic step below 'so you're sure you're 
gonna have a baby?'       

"Are you asking what I think you're asking, Mulder?"

He shrugged, wincing now that the painkiller had 
partially worn off. "You know me: Mr. Suave.  Yeah, 
I'm asking what you think I'm asking.  Let me think 
a few months and I can probably come up with 
something more starry-eyed."

"You do that.  I think this might not be the best 
time to make life-altering decisions," she said 
gently. "I have a policy of rejecting proposals from 
men who've just had massive doses of narcotics."

"You get these often?" he teased, dropping the 
issue.  

"Daily," she responded, helping him lie back down, 
covering him with a blanket, and turning off the 
lights near the bed. "Get some sleep; I'll stay with 
you."

"Hey, Scully," he said softly, pushing up on his 
elbow. "I'm not saying you're not paranoid, but, um, 
can I go home tonight?"

"I'll find your doctor and see.  Just stay put and, 
if anyone except me comes through that door, for 
God's sake, keep your pants on."
 
*~*~*~*

A Moment In the Sun: Part IV

*~*~*~*

It wasn't hard to understand how he and Byers had 
become friends during WWII.  Aside from surviving 
Hell on Earth together, they were probably the two 
GI's least likely to get laid in Europe while on a 
twenty-four-hour pass.  The average soldier had sex 
forty-two times during WWII, and Lieutenant Melvin 
Frohike later reported he had been in the Pacific 
personally skewing up that average.  Given Byers and 
Mulder had been puddle-ducking around the single-
digit end of the nookie pond and someone had to hold 
up the top end of the bell curve, that might have 
been the truth.   
 
For John Byers, every moment away from the fighting 
was spent telephoning the center of his universe: 
his new wife.  It was one of those romances that 
should have lasted a weekend and was still going 
strong after more than a decade: Susanne was fleeing 
Hitler's campaign against Polish Jews, and Byers was 
a newly minted attorney not sure what he was 
suddenly doing in the middle of a war.  They met 
Friday afternoon and were married Saturday evening, 
and somehow managed to hold on to their happily-
ever-after.   
 
Mulder, on the other hand, was technically still 
married when he had arrived in Europe, having come 
home from a road trip to find his apartment empty, 
his bank account drained, and Phoebe and Will on a 
plane to England.  Always preferring complete 
emotional desolation and public humiliation to 
taking a gentle hint - like his wife taking their 
infant son and moving an ocean away - he'd spent his 
precious R&R time on various public telephones still 
trying to 'win her back.' Eventually, the 'win her 
back' campaign dwindled to the 'But I'm his father, 
Phoebs.  Please, honey: just put him on the phone.  
No, I don't believe Will won't talk to me.  He'll 
talk to anyone; he'll talk to a ceiling fan.  Just 
for a minute.  Please, honey,' campaign… also 
largely unsuccessful.

The Army, though, had the unreasonable expectation 
the two men were supposed to spend their time 
shooting at the enemy instead of trying to telephone 
England.  Although lacking any actual military 
talent, Byers was unfailingly enthusiastic and 
patriotic, and someone had the foresight to give him 
a field radio rather than heavy artillery.  Mulder, 
being a 'famous athlete' wasn't so lucky, which 
contrasted problematically with his instinct to drop 
his rifle and run away as fast as possible.  He was 
of the opinion 'courage' was an exalted synonym for 
'a remarkable lack of imagination.'     
       
As WWII trudged through the invasion of Normandy and 
the liberation of Paris, passes became more rare 
than Italian virgins in August, which made no sense, 
but that was how their CO had put it.  When he did 
get away from the fighting, either on R&R or while 
getting patched up at one of the EVAC hospitals, 
Mulder could bet on Byers appearing in line for the 
phone either in front of or behind him.  The rest of 
their unit roamed off in search of public 
intoxication, brawls, and those elusive Italian 
virgins, leaving Byers and Mulder to find affection 
via Ma Bell.

After a great deal of pleading and promising on his 
part, Mulder held long, one-sided conversations with 
what might have been Will or might have been a 
potted plant: the silence on the other end of the 
line was so complete it could have easily been 
either.  Byers did his sweet-talking in German, but 
it didn't sound any more intelligent.  Being manly 
men, they exchanged manly nods, and then pretended 
to ignore the other's idiotic blathering.  

As Mulder waited for his turn at the only working 
pay phone left in Munich, Byers walked up behind him, 
shrugged off the forty-pound field radio he carried, 
and sat down with a sigh.  Mulder didn't notice him 
at first, being busy fiddling with his dog tags and 
questioning life, love, and his place in the 
universe. 

He ran his thumb over the indented letter P in the 
metal tags, the military code for 'Protestant.' 
There hadn't been a more specific letter for 'well, 
my father's a lapsed Methodist.' Mulder had 
originally wanted a H, figuring that would cover 
'Hebrew' as well as 'Hell if I know' and keep his 
mother from having a stroke.  The other choices had 
been C for 'Catholic' and a blank space meaning he'd 
been raised by wolves, so he'd put down h, choosing 
a diminutive lowercase letter to indicate his level 
of skepticism.  That hadn't been acceptable to the 
Army either, and the harried man making the tags had 
suggested he just list Protestant since Mulder was 
being shipped to Europe and might be captured by the 
Germans.  At the time, no one had told him why it 
was so important to be P rather than H to the Nazis; 
they'd just given him a rifle and instructed him to 
point it at people.  

Under his name and serial number, the year of his 
last Tetanus shot, and his blood type, was imprinted 
'Phoebe Victoria Mulder,' followed by Phoebe's 
mother's street address in London: the only home 
address and next of kin he could think to give when 
he'd been drafted.  Will had been born January 1939, 
Phoebe had been gone by summer, and he'd been 
drafted in 1942.  It wasn't until 1944 when Will had 
started talking about a 'new daddy' who lived with 
Mommy that Mulder had finally agreed to the divorce. 
He'd commemorated Will's 'new daddy' by getting 
drunk and getting laid as often as possible for the 
next month in order to 'show Phoebe' Which mean four 
times with three faceless women before Mulder felt 
Phoebe had been sufficiently 'shown.'   

"Hey, Mulder," Byers finally said, probably drawing 
on years of Ivy League education to make such a 
profound statement.  

"Hey," he answered, adding a nod to convey he'd 
studied psychology at Oxford and could nod with the 
best of them.  
 
"How long have you been in line for the phone?"

"Almost two wonderful hours now." He pointed at the 
portable radio on which Byers was sitting. "What 
kind of reception do you get on that thing?  I'll 
give you a dollar if you can get a call through to 
Boston for me."

"You're asking me to use a military radio for 
unauthorized civilian communication?" 

"Just for a second," Mulder promised. "It's a good 
cause."

Byers had grinned, looking like an eager, ginger-
colored puppy that still hadn't grown into his paws.  
After he'd somehow gotten a day-pass to meet her in 
Paris, Susanne had reported she was euphemistically 
'late;' news which Byers was zealously sharing with 
any man willing to listen and a few who weren't. "I'm 
know it is.  And I wish I could help you.  Are you 
calling Will?  Telling him Daddy's coming home?" 

Mulder looked away, patting down his uniform for the 
cigarettes he'd smoked in those days, although he 
already knew he didn't have any.  Ignoring Byers, he 
stared morosely at the empty pack before he crumpled 
and threw it into one of the ruts the Allied tanks 
had made in the muddy streets. Will was growing up 
thinking his 'real daddy' was a little man who lived 
inside the telephone, and there wasn't a damn thing 
Mulder could do about it. 

"The government says those things aren't addictive," 
Byers commented, noticing his foul mood.

Mulder shrugged and tucked his dog tags down his 
olive drab t-shirt.  As they waited, he leaned 
against the sooty brick wall of a burnt-out 
building, idly watching the few remaining shops 
closing as the spring afternoon began to settle 
hesitantly into the German dusk.

Byers offered a stick of chewing gum so old it 
snapped as Mulder bit into it, but which was better 
than nothing.   

Mulder chewed morosely for a few minutes until his 
jaws began to ache, then pulled off his sweaty metal 
helmet.  It too was olive drab, just like his jacket, 
fatigues, his socks, and his boxers.  Everything 
about this war was either olive drab or blood red or 
a blend of both, like a Christmas sweater washed in 
hot water.  He half-expected to get to Hell and be 
poked in the ass with an olive drab pitchfork. 

Whoever put up those 'Uncle Sam Wants You!' posters 
should have clarified a little: he'd thought Uncle 
Sam wanted him to wear a pretty uniform and wave 
proudly.  Uncle Sam never mentioned wanting him to 
live on broiled Spam and black coffee, sleep in a 
puddle with eight other GI's, or murder people.  
Somehow, going 'Above and Beyond the Call of Duty' 
was a different ballgame from, 'shoot the enemy in 
the head at point-blank range.'    
 
The phone line moved and the column of homesick men 
took two steps forward, Byers carefully resettling 
his field radio and sitting down again while Mulder 
found a new place on the wall to lean, running his 
fingers through his buzzed, sweaty hair out of 
habit.  Why he had to be almost bald to kill Nazis 
was beyond him.  Mulder missed his kid, his sofa, 
his hair, strawberry milkshakes, air-conditioned 
movie theaters, and new socks: in that order.  

Word filtered down that the overseas operator was 
allotting each man one minute for a call to the 
States, so Mulder started composing how he was going 
to tell his mother her sister, niece, and mother had 
died in a Nazi boxcar in sixty seconds or less.

"You're wife's a Jew, isn't she?" he asked, catching 
Byers off-guard.

"I just gave you gum, Mulder.  Tell me I'm not about 
to hear a Pollock joke," Byers answered warily.

In response, Mulder ran his finger down his nose, 
then smirked unenthusiastically.    

"Her family got out in time: before the resettlement 
camps.  What about, um, yours?"   
 
"Death camps.  Calling them 'resettlement camps' 
implies people weren't sent there to die.  Settling 
involves building a house, raising a family, getting 
a dog.  I didn't see any of that.  What I saw were a 
hell of a lot of bodies."

"Yeah," Byers had said for lack of anything more 
profound. "The war's over, Mulder.  We won.  We're 
going back to Mom, apple pie, and ticker-tape 
parades, and all this will be a world away. Call your 
wife and son and tell them you're coming home."  

"Yeah," Mulder had mumbled, picking up his dog tags 
again.
 
*~*~*~* 

"Shush," Scully's soft voice soothed him. "You're 
just having a dream.  You need to be still."

"Open the cars," he muttered, struggling to get up. 
"They're in the boxcars.  Oh my God."

"Easy, big guy.  Relax," she whispered.

"What the hell is wrong with you people?  Goddamn 
Nazi murderers… They're dead.  They're all dead."

"Mulder," her voice repeated.

He opened his eyes, blinking in confusion as he tried 
to follow her voice.  Even though it was mid- 
afternoon, she switched on the lamp beside his bed 
and the faces of the dead Jews and dying Nazi 
soldiers retreated to the shadows. 

"They're all dead, Scully," he mumbled as her face 
came into focus, still not certain what was 
happening.  He felt nauseated, and it hurt to 
breathe.

"No one's dead, Mulder.  You're just groggy.  I'm 
here.  Will and Emily are downstairs watching 
television and making a meal out of Grape Nehi and 
Mallow Cups.  Everyone's fine.  It was just a dream," 
she repeated, sitting on the edge of his bed and 
taking his hand. "Are you awake now?"

Mulder nodded sleepily, lying still as she stroked 
his face and pulled the blanket over him. "What time 
is it?"

"Just past four.  You're at home."   

"I was having a weird dream."

"You're coming off morphine.  That's going to 
happen," Scully assured him. "Try to go back to 
sleep."

"We shot the dogs," he told her, closing his eyes, 
but keeping hold of her warm hand. "All of them: the 
guards and the guard dogs." 

"What dogs?"

"In one of the death camps.  We liberated the camp, 
opened a train beside it, and found thousands of dead 
women and children packed inside like cattle, some of 
my mother's family among them.  The Nazis had just 
locked the train and waited for the people inside to 
die.  After we saw those boxcars- We executed the 
German guards, and when we ran out of guards, we shot 
the guard dogs."

"That was what you were dreaming about?" Scully 
whispered, lying down beside him for a few precious, 
forbidden seconds. 

"Usually, I don't dream about the dogs; I dream 
about the boxcars: what it must have been like to 
wait to die in one."

"So do I," Scully admitted softly, quickly getting 
up as Emily came in, eyeing the bed curiously. "Would 
I," she corrected, ushering her daughter out so 
Mulder could sleep.
 
*~*~*~*

"You're supposed to rest!  You lie back down or I'll 
tell Mommy," Emily ordered, and Mulder immediately 
put his sock feet back up on the couch, slouching 
guiltily.  He was marooned on his sofa with a five-
year-old sadistic cherub in a Davy Crocket cap 
guarding him. "And you'll be in Big Trouble."

"Your mommy isn't the boss of this house," Mulder 
responded dejectedly, tired of being treated like a 
sick child.  He might not be in tip-top shape, but 
he wasn't helpless anymore, either.  It didn't take a 
three-hour nap to rest up for a ten-minute meeting.

Emily had been warming her flannel-covered backside 
in front of the living room fireplace, but frowned in 
disapproval and hurried off to find her mother.  
Mulder heard as much as, "Mommy, Mulder says you're 
not-" before she rounded the bend of the stairs and 
was out of earshot. 

He sighed, picking up his notes again and trying to 
concentrate.  Scully had insisted he'd be less 
nervous about talking to the FBI people tonight if 
Mulder would eat something, but that hadn't proven 
correct.  Now he was nervous about talking to them 
in addition to being nervous he was going to throw 
up on them.  

There was a knock at the front door and his stomach 
pitched: they were early.  He still had several 
hundred things scheduled to worry about before Agent 
Dales and his supervisor arrived.   

Scully clipped downstairs, running a comb through 
her hair and then tucking it behind her ears.  

"You're going to wear that?" Mulder asked, eyeing 
her casual sweater and slacks as she hid the comb 
behind the fish tank.  She'd been trying to get 
Emily ready for bed while taking care of Mulder, and 
a dress wasn't conducive to either of those jobs.  
Since he wasn't allowed to do anything more 
strenuous than breathe, there were still dinner 
dishes in the sink and a basket of dirty clothes 
waiting for the washing machine at the basement 
door.  And the plan to have Emily asleep by seven-
thirty had failed miserably, as it did most nights.  

"What do you want me to do?" she whispered back, 
snapping the television off. "Let them wait on the 
porch in the snow while I change?"

He offered his hands to her, palms up, in 
desperation.  Standing up slowly so he didn't get 
dizzy, Mulder dropped his pillow and blanket behind 
the couch, then kicked Em's toys underneath it and 
stepped into his loafers.

"Ready," he nodded as Scully reached for the 
doorknob and Emily watched from the landing in her 
pajamas, making half an effort at brushing her 
teeth. "I guess.  Maybe they'll be too busy laughing 
at my domestic bliss to think I'm a risk to national 
security."

*~*~*~*  

"How's the ticker?" Dales asked, stamping the snow 
off his shoes, managing to get none of the slush on 
the mat and yet still evenly distribute it across 
ten feet of carpet.   

"Better.  It's good to see you again, Agent Dales.  
This is Dana Scully, and you met Emily last year," 
he introduced, tipping his head at the top of the 
stairs. "William is with his mother for the 
holidays."  

"Hello, young lady," he responded, "Good to finally 
meet you.  This is-"

"Assistant Director Walter Skinner," the tall man 
said tersely, offering his hand.  Mulder noted he 
didn't take off his trench coat, indicating he 
didn't plan to stay long. "A big fan.  Agent Dales 
says you're interested in some Bureau cases, Mr. 
Mulder."  

"That's right.  Thank you for coming," he responded, 
keeping his arm around Scully for support: physical, 
moral, spiritual, whatever.    

"Can I get you gentlemen some coffee?" Scully took 
over, playing the hostess. "You look like you just 
came from the office.  Have you had dinner?  We have 
turkey and dressing: we celebrated Thanksgiving a 
few weeks late."

"I'm not proud; I'll eat," Dales said quickly, 
tossing his hat on top of the coat rack, then 
flicking the aquarium with his finger to frighten 
the fish.  

"Mr. Skinner?" she asked, and the AD glanced at his 
watch.  

Mulder took the hint, clearing his throat.  The 
Assistant Director was only going to allot so much 
time to humor a retired baseball player, especially 
when a house call was involved.  Mulder gestured for 
everyone to sit down in the living room, trying not 
to think more than three-dozen thoughts at once.    

"So you're interested in the FBI?" Skinner prompted, 
perching on the edge of his chair as Scully vanished 
into the kitchen and Emily ambled downstairs, 
bringing a pitiful-looking stuffed Kitty with her for 
everyone to see.

"Mulder's been writing a monograph," Dales 
explained, sinking casually onto the sofa and 
propping his feet on the coffee table. "Or a 
dissertation.  Or something.  Anyway, he needs 
files."   

"A dissertation: Behavior Patterns in Stranger 
Killings."

"The FBI will certainly cooperate as much as 
possible," Skinner said politely, sounding like a 
politician at a fundraiser.  Men who wore suits and 
ties for a living tended to speak to Mulder as 
though English was his second language.  "Could you 
explain specifically what you're wanting?" 
 
"Well, as you know, stranger killings are 
notoriously difficult to solve because there seems 
to be no clear motive for the crime.  The attacks 
seem random and senseless, as well as bizarre.  It 
seems to be the work of a madman, yet someone truly 
insane is far easier to catch than this type of 
killer."

Skinner nodded impatiently.  Mulder was preaching to 
the choir.

"My proposal is there is a motivation, but one 
unique to the killer's perspective: his actions make 
sense in his own twisted mind.  Just as we would nod 
in understanding that a husband might kill a cheating 
wife: a criminal, but comprehensible act; a stranger 
killer might ritually revenge childhood abuse on 
women who remind him of his mother, or kidnap, kill, 
and preserve young boys to replace a son who has 
died.  If we can see the world as the killer sees it 
and understand what he gains from the crime, we can 
predict the type of person who would commit such 
acts.  By examining the crime, we can know the 
killer." 
 
He paused, making sure Skinner understood.  He'd 
practiced this speech on Scully earlier, and she'd 
cautioned him about venturing off into what she 
called 'genius land' and leaving his audience 
behind.  The AD was watching him intently, 
cautiously, like a soldier who had spent so long on 
guard he had forgotten how to relax.  He nodded for 
Mulder to continue, resting his elbows on his knees 
and leaning slightly forward.

"The basic question is 'Why?' Why would this criminal 
choose the victim, the manner, the time and place?  I 
want to take preliminary data from solved stranger 
killings and blindly predict the type of person who 
committed the crimes.  Then, I go back and check my 
error rate: how close was I on basic facts: age, 
occupation, location, habits, and so forth."

"And how accurate do you think you can be?"

"I'm not sure," Mulder hedged. "Without knowing the 
specifics of the cases, it's hard to say."

"Eighty percent," Dales chimed in. "I gave him five 
files to look at and he was right on the money on 
four out of five.  I told you this evening wasn't a 
waste of time."

"And the fifth?" Skinner asked, looking annoyed with 
Dales.

"It was an X-file," the agent answered, accepting the 
glass of iced tea Scully handed him. "Aliens.  He 
didn't even come close.  The others descriptions he 
nailed like a truck stop waitress.  Oh, sorry, 
sweetie," Dales added, glancing Scully, who frowned 
and herded her daughter back to the kitchen with her.

"That's higher than the average Bureau solution 
rate."  Skinner paused and Mulder swallowed, worried 
at how unconvinced the AD looked. "Excuse my 
skepticism, but you're a baseball player, Mr. Mulder, 
and an excellent one, and this is highly sensitive 
information you're asking for-"

"I respect that."  

"It's not a matter of respect.  We're talking about 
the most horrific of crimes, and you're claiming you 
can solve these cases better than my best, seasoned 
agents.  I understand you were recently the victim 
of a violent crime-"

"Not solve," Mulder interrupted desperately. "Just 
predict the type of perpetrator based on-"

"Give him a file, Skinner," Dales said casually. 
"Open your briefcase, pick out any file, and let him 
look at it and tell you what he thinks.  I promise he 
can do it."

Skinner hesitated again, then reached into his 
briefcase. "One," he said sternly.

*~*~*~*

Mulder closed the file, then taking a nervous sip of 
tea before he worked up the courage to look at 
Skinner.  He glanced at Dales, who folded his arms 
smugly, which Mulder took as a positive sign.   

Skinner took off his glasses, and needlessly, 
methodically wiped them with his handkerchief, then 
stroked his fingers over the muscles of his throat 
for a few seconds.  Mulder waited, hoping the A.D. 
would say something soon because he was holding his 
breath and starting to get lightheaded.    

"May I use your telephone?" Skinner finally asked.  

"Of course," Mulder answered quickly. "There's a 
telephone in the kitchen." 

"If you're calling your wife, it's gonna be a long 
evening," Dales informed his boss around a mouthful 
of sweet potatoes, still chewing blissfully. "You 
sure you don't want our lovely hostess to warm up 
some leftovers for you?  She's a good little cook."

Skinner smoothed his left eyebrow, then disappeared 
through the swinging door without answering.    

"What did I get wrong?" Mulder whispered to Dales, as 
china plates and metal roasting pans clinked on the 
other side of the kitchen door.  Assistant Director 
Skinner must have been hungry after all.   

"You didn't get anything wrong.  He just hates it 
when I'm right," Dales explained, picking turkey out 
of his teeth with his pinky nail.

*~*~*~*

He must have dozed off waiting for Scully and Emily 
to get back from the doctor, because Mulder woke to 
crime scene photos spilled across his chest, his 
reading glasses halfway down his nose, and Scully's 
voice whispering, "Are you going to sleep on the 
couch?" into his ear in a manner he, in his naivete, 
interpreted as seductive.  

"Santa can't come if you're not in bed," he 
responded suggestively, stretching and sitting up, 
smiling sleepily at her.  The house had seemed very 
empty this afternoon without her and Emily.  He 
hadn't realized how accustom he'd become to having 
them there until they weren't. "I missed you." 

His smile faded when he saw her complete lack of 
amusement: usually she'd at least roll her eyes.  
Scully checked him over, making sure he hadn't 
developed the plague in her absence, but seeming so 
far away he might as well have been invisible. 
"You're going to get a lump of coal in your stocking 
if you keep talking like that," she said, sounding 
like a disinterested actor supplying her line.   

"I think I'm already on the naughty list," Mulder 
mumbled, taking a sip from the glass of tepid water 
on the coffee table to fill the silence, watching 
her as he swallowed. "I thought you were going to 
call me from the airport to pick you up?" 

"You didn't answer, so we took a taxi." She gazed at 
him tiredly, wiping the sleep from his eyes before 
she straightened up and looked around at the ruins of 
his day: files and books scattered on every flat 
surface, the phone cord stretched across the rug to 
sofa, and the television droning in the background.  
She picked up his congealed, uneaten plate of food 
and turned back to the kitchen, seeming to have 
forgotten him.

Mulder started to say he'd been sitting almost on 
top of the phone, worrying about the snowstorm and 
waiting for her to call, but decided it wasn't worth 
the argument.  Maybe the phone lines were down or 
the operator put the call through wrong, but the 
telephone hadn't rung in hours.

"You know, according to the Kinsey sex studies I was 
reading, we're still lagging behind the national 
naughty average.  Not that your behind lags at all," 
he added, tilting his head sideways to admire as she 
walked away in her stocking feet, still ignoring 
him. "This is my best material," he called after 
her. "Could you appreciate it a little?" 

There was no response from the other side of the 
door.   

"How was your afternoon, Mulder?" he supplied for 
her. "Oh, my day was fine, Scully.  How was yours?  
It was all right.  Let me tell you what the Dr. 
Scanlon said…"

There were a few seconds of domestic noise from the 
kitchen: the cabinets and icebox opening, before 
Scully returned with a glass of orange juice, her 
all-purpose cure-all. "Have you done anything besides 
stare at those files today?  Have you eaten?"  

"Mumm," he replied noncommittally, obediently 
draining the glass, then stroking her thigh through 
her wool skirt. "I'm fine.  How did it go today?"

Instead of answering, she found it necessary to step 
away and adjust the stockings hanging above the 
empty fireplace, and then to unplug the Christmas 
tree lights for the night.  Mulder had plugged them 
in.  The outlet was too far back for her to reach, 
and the branches lashed her face as she struggled, 
finally cursing and jerking the sting of lights out 
by the cord.  Although she sounded angry, as she got 
to her feet, he could have sworn she was wiping tears 
instead of pine needles from her eyes.

"Is everything okay, Scully?  Honey?" he added, 
reaching out and pulling her back to the sofa when 
she continued to ignore him. "Come here, sit down-" 
In true Santa fashion, he tried to guide her onto 
his lap, but she pulled away, so he stood instead. 
"And tell me what's wrong."   

"I'm fine," she said predictably, looking past him.      

He bit the inside of his lip, not sure what to say 
next. "Is Emily fine?" 

"No," she said, turning away. "But she hasn't been 
fine for a long time.  Why don't you sleep upstairs 
so you don't wake up sore?" 

"Scully, did you see the doctor too?  Are you-" He 
was going to say 'okay,' but stopped and considered 
the possibilities.  

In more than a month, she'd seldom been more than a 
dozen feet from him, ensuring he was mending to her 
satisfaction.  Emily had a bedroom at his house, and, 
in theory, Scully was occupying a guestroom.  In 
actuality, she'd started sleeping in the master 
bedroom when he came home from the hospital, afraid 
he'd be too weak or groggy to call for her if 
something was wrong. While he no longer needed round-
the-clock monitoring, she still came to his bed each 
night, and he still scooted over to make a place for 
her.  Having her beside him hadn't led to platonic 
friendship and pillow talk.  As he recovered, it 
often led to slow, unhurried exploration that, in the 
last week, bordered on consummation.  He kept telling 
himself there was no chance of another baby if they 
did, but three cells in the front of his brain 
refused to accept that.

If she'd conceived the night they brought Em home 
from the hospital, she'd know by now. 

She started classes again in two weeks, but the baby 
wouldn't come until summer.  Provided Georgetown 
University allowed her to attend while noticeably 
pregnant, she wouldn't miss any school, though she'd 
have to stop working, of course.  And they'd have to 
get married, which was fine by him.

He started getting the warm, orange fuzzies in his 
belly, until he realized that, if she was pregnant 
again, she didn't look thrilled about it.

"Scully- Anything I need to know, Scully?  Don't you 
take off on me again."

He shut his mouth quickly: he hadn't meant that as 
angry as it sounded.  He crossed his arms, standing 
in the middle of the messy living room and feeling 
foolish and ashamed of himself.  She adjusted Em's 
coat on the coat rack, then stooped down to arrange 
everyone's shoes beside the door so the heels lines 
up evenly, putting some order back in the world.

"It's not that," she said tiredly. "I just need some 
time."

"You just need some time?  To do what?"

"Just to think, Mulder." 

"About what?"

"About everything.  I'm going to bed."

He looked at her, then sighed defeatedly like a man 
who finds absolutely nothing he likes on a restaurant 
menu. He wasn't leaving the diner, but he wasn't half 
as excited as he'd been when he walked through the 
door.

"Sure.  Okay.  Fine.  I'll put the presents in the 
trunk of the car to go to your mother's in the 
morning, and then I'll be up.  Go on to bed."

She paused on the bottom step, her hand on the carved 
mahogany banister. "No, we're having Christmas here."

"Oh for God's sake!" Mulder said in exasperation, 
certain there was an entire subplot to this evening 
he was missing. "I thought we settled this."  

Bill Scully refused to be in the same house, even his 
mother's, with Mulder, and he wouldn't allow Tara and 
Matthew there, either.  Christmas morning was 
traditionally 'done' at Maggie Scully's house, and it 
seemed easiest for Scully and Emily to go without 
Mulder rather than ruin everyone's holiday.  Will was 
in London with Phoebe: something Phoebe claimed 
Mulder had agreed to in the hospital.  Mulder would 
be content sleeping until ten, eating a leftover 
meatloaf sandwich, and watching Christmas specials on 
television while Emily and Scully opened presents at 
Maggie's.  Her family had been waging the anti-Mulder 
campaign for some time now, but it wasn't fair to 
drag a child into it, and it wouldn't be the first 
Christmas he'd spent alone.  By his estimate, it 
would be the twenty-first, and at least there was 
meatloaf and television.     

"Em should have Christmas with a family.  I'm not 
helpless.  I'm fine without you now, Scully."

She turned back quickly, eye-to-eye with him since 
she was standing on the first step. "Don't you dare 
tell me what my daughter should have!  She should 
have everything I can give her!"   
      
Dumbfounded, Mulder stepped back as though she'd 
slapped him.

"Fine.  Go to your mother's; don't go to your 
mother's; tell me what's wrong; don't tell me: do 
whatever you want.  Let's just go to bed." 

He flicked the switches at the bottom of the steps, 
turning off the lights on the porch, the foyer, and 
the passageway to the kitchen so only the fish tank 
and glowed surreally.  When he looked up, she was 
still there, watching him, her expression suddenly 
sad and her shoulders slouching from the weight of 
the world.  Her anger had flared and gone, leaving 
her hollow and alone.

"What, honey?" he asked quietly, taking her hand and 
noticing it was trembling.   

"I don't want to be with you tonight," she said 
flatly, as though there was nothing on the menu she 
liked, either.

"I was just joking," he said softly, grinning at her 
nervously. "You know that. Come on.  You look 
exhausted.  I'll rub your back."

"No, I'd rather be alone.  We can talk tomorrow.  We 
will talk tomorrow.  Goodnight, Mulder."  

He blinked, opened his mouth, and then let go of her 
hand and took a step back.  Whatever was happening, 
he wasn't a part of it, and she didn't want him to 
be.  Without a word, she turned and continued up the 
stairs, leaving him standing at the bottom.  After a 
few seconds, he heard the door to his bedroom close.  
He'd just been kicked out of his own bed.  Mulder 
shook his head, gesturing to the fish that he had no 
idea what was happening except that he didn't like 
it, and headed back to the sofa.

As he passed the cold fireplace, because Santa 
couldn't come if there was a fire in the hearth, he 
batted at the empty stockings and succeeded in 
twisting his shoulder the wrong way so the still-
healing muscles twinged painfully.  Exhaling, he 
adjusted a throw pillow and lay back down, listening 
to the sounds of Scully moving around his bedroom 
above him, wrestling her demons in private.

Merry Goddamn Christmas.  It was getting to be a 
tradition.

*~*~*~* 

He wiped the fog from the bathroom mirror again so 
his reflection stared back at him, unflinching.  With 
the steam still settling from his shower, Mulder 
paused, turning his freshly shaven face from side to 
side, and watching the man who watched back.  

So much of life passed unexceptionally: turn off the 
alarm, answer the phone, wait for the stoplight to 
change, but there were moments, like holding Will for 
the first time or seeing Scully and Emily in the park 
last spring, when the sun seemed a little warmer and 
the stars a little closer.  Senses heightened and 
emotions peaked, and somehow he went to bed a 
slightly different person than he'd been that 
morning.  Moments of love, hope, faith, fear: these 
make up a man.  Not money or power or status, but a 
few precious seconds strung together over a lifetime 
to hold back the darkness.  Life wasn't so much a 
path as it was a connect-the-dots and, halfway 
through the journey, he just wanted to make sure he 
was moving in the right direction.     

The man in the mirror had gained four pounds since he 
stepped off the professional ball field for the last 
time, although his coaches would have been pleased. 
'Lean' the sportswriters always wrote; 'lanky' Mulder 
always thought, with hands, feet, and a nose intended 
for someone else.  Fine lines were appearing around 
his eyes, and he had glasses he wore when no one was 
looking: the price of time and tide.

There were scars, too.  The newest ones bisected his 
chest and decorated his left shoulder in a rather 
impressive manner: souvenirs of the mugger's bullets 
that had almost killed him.  Further down was the 
scar on his thigh from a German mortar round that had 
put him out of WWII for two months, and then the 
scars on his knees that had finally put him out of a 
career.  Not bad for forty years on this Earth.  The 
worst damage didn't even show.    

"What's takin' you so long, Mulder?" a plaintive 
voice asked underneath the bathroom door, her chubby 
pink fingers wiggling through the crack as though she 
could grab him and pull him out. "Hurry up."

"I'm ready," he answered Emily, snapping back to 
reality and shrugging his shirt on. "Move your 
fingers so you don't get pinched."  

He opened the door to find her crouched down on the 
rug, her ruffled velvet backside stuck up in the air 
as she tried to see underneath the door.  Emily had 
on her red velvet Christmas dress, so Scully must be 
about ready to go.  She was pulling a Diana 'It's 
snowing, Mulder.  Can you get up and drive us to 
Mom's,' which was obviously a ploy of some kind.  
Scully would have bundled up, borrowed all the 
neighborhood dogs, and dog-sledded to her mother's 
house before she'd have willingly asked him for help.  
Something, as the great detective said, was afoot.

"Go find your coat, Em."   

"Uncle Freaky is here.  Mommy says for you to come 
downstairs."

"Uncle Freaky?  Is Aunt Langly with him?" Mulder 
asked in surprise.  "Well, good.  Uncle Freaky and I 
need to have a talk."   

In sorting through the reams of useless papers Byers 
prepared for him every month, he'd been startled to 
see the headline 'Yankee Legend's Planned Comeback 
Cut Short By Mysterious Attack: Are Communists 
Involved?' in an article clipped from the paper six 
weeks ago.  There was a note attached asking, 'did 
you know anything about this?  Do I need to look into 
this?' in Byers' copperplate script.  

No, he hadn't known anything about it.  He'd barely 
been conscious six weeks ago.  Anyway, the article 
wasn't so bad: to Mulder's knowledge, there wasn't a 
comeback in the works, but whatever floated their 
boat.  He'd read it and been interested to learn the 
Russians had a stake in his not returning to 
professional baseball, boosting American morale, and 
thereby aiding the war against Communism.  Mulder had 
no idea he was so important; someone should tell Will 
his father was solely responsible for thwarting the 
Red Menace.

No, his bone to pick with Frohike was what 
accompanied the headline: a snapshot of the four of 
them - him, Scully, Em, and Will - playing in the 
snow in 'majestic' Central Park right before Scully 
disappeared.  If Mulder remembered correctly, it 
wasn't a press photo.  Frohike had taken it, and 
somehow 'Fox Mulder's lovely female companions' had 
their names in print: Dana and Emily Scully.  Mulder 
and Uncle Freaky were going to talk all right.  

Tucking the clipping in his pocket, he buttoned his 
shirt and followed Emily down the hall, pausing on 
the balcony as Scully, dressed in a pretty Sunday 
suit, answered the door to the Byers family.  Mulder 
tilted his head slightly to one side, trying to 
determine what was happening.  He wasn't surprised to 
have Frohike and Langly get lonely and show up on 
Christmas morning, but Byers had said he and Susanne 
were taking the girls to spend Christmas with their 
grandmother in Poland.       

"Mulder!  Merry Christmas," Byers called to him, 
stomping the snow off his boots while trying to 
balance two armloads of presents.  The gifts started 
to slide and John Byers, never the master of grace, 
flinched as a shoebox-sized present hit the hardwood 
floor with an expensive glass-shattering crash.

"Oh, you got me the vase," Susanne said sadly in her 
Polish accent, shrugging off her coat. "How sweet, 
John.  Merry Christmas, Mr. Mulder."

"Merry Christmas," Mulder mumbled back after a 
second, still in shock.  It didn't take him long to 
realize he'd been duped.  Santa's elves had visited 
the living room in the time it had taken Mulder to 
shower, shave, and contemplate fate.  He could have 
sworn those stockings were empty when Scully woke him 
at seven-thirty: getting him out of the living room 
so she could clean up and get ready before their 
company arrived. 'Would you drive us to Mom's?' his 
ass.  The woman was devious.

Emily, delighted to have playmates, rushed past him, 
and Mulder walked slowly down the steps to Scully, 
who greeted him with a kiss on the cheek for the 
benefit of their guests.

"You look smug," he whispered tersely as everyone 
else headed for the Christmas tree. "You tricked me."

She nodded 'yes,' adjusting his shirt collar and 
carefully smoothing the fabric over his shoulders. 
"You can thank me later."

"You invited everyone here for Christmas without 
telling me?  You know I hate surprises."

"No, you don't," she answered, and he looked down 
sheepishly. "Will has an early flight out of London, 
so he'll be here later.  That was the best Mr. Byers 
could negotiate with your ex-wife.  I left messages 
with your mother's housekeeper, but I haven't heard 
from her." Scully looked at him uncertainly, then 
added, "Surprise," forcing a Betty-Crocker-fresh-
brownies smile.  When Mulder didn't smile back, her 
expression fell and she sighed tiredly.  

"Hey," he said softly, stepping close to her and 
leaning down a little so he could kiss her. "Thanks.  
For everything."

"Thanks for putting up with me," she murmured back, 
sounding relieved. "I'm sorry about last night."

"I figure I'll wear down your defenses and you'll 
eventually get over being so difficult," he teased, 
nuzzling gratefully at her neck until he heard the 
Byers' twins making a prepubescent "eeewww!" noises 
behind him.

"Don't get your hopes up," she teased back, pulling 
away to answer another knock at the front door.

Mulder didn't know whom to expect next, but he was 
stunned to see Margaret Scully armed with a shopping 
bag of gifts and a steaming casserole dish: the 
weapons of modern urban holiday warfare.  As he took 
the bag and food, letting Maggie and Scully embrace 
on the porch, he saw Bill Scully sitting in a car 
parked on the curb, the man's eyes straight ahead. 

"Mrs. Scully: please come in," Mulder offered, 
turning back to take Maggie's coat, figuring a peace 
treaty had been negotiated for the holidays. 

"The car's running," Scully's mother explained, 
addressing only her daughter from the porch and 
keeping her coat on.  The 'not setting foot under 
Mulder's roof' rule was still in place. "I just came 
by for a moment: to see you and Emily and drop 
everything off."   

"You can't stay?" Scully asked as Mulder looked away, 
hands on his hips.    

"We'll be at Bill Junior's house if you and Emily can 
come by later," Maggie responded gently. "And we'll 
go to Mass tonight, like always.  We'd love to see 
you." She smiled sadly and kissed her daughter's 
cheek, telling her to take care of herself and have a 
good Christmas. 

"Okay, Mom," Scully answered, sounding very young. 
"It will depend on how Emily feels tonight: whether 
she can go out or not.  I'll come to Mass if I can."

"I understand how difficult things must be for you 
sometimes," Maggie said, glancing at Mulder for the 
first time. "But we always miss you."

"Then stay," Mulder pleaded, swallowing his pride. 

"I don't hate you, Mr. Mulder; I just don't think 
you're good for my baby girl, and I'm not going to 
condone this."

"Mulder is-" Scully started.

"You don't even know me," Mulder interrupted, still 
staring at the doormat and feeling like the middle of 
an under-baked biscuit.  Margaret Scully must be a 
Jewish mother at heart to wield guilt so well.  

"I know enough to know you're dangerous, and that all 
my daughter is going to get from you is hurt. Again."

"Grammy!" Emily announced, defusing the discussion as 
Maggie stooped to hug her, leaving Mulder to fume.  

"My sweetheart!  How's my favorite granddaughter?"

"I'm your only granddaughter," Em said practically, 
her arms still locked around Maggie's neck as Scully 
tried to drape a coat over her. "And that makes me 
the best," she said in unison with her grandmother, 
completing the ritual.  

"Grammy just stopped by for a minute," Scully 
explained as a taxicab stopped on the snowy street 
behind Bill's Chevrolet. "And now she's leaving.  Say 
bye-bye to Grammy, honey."

As Mulder glanced up, a tall, dark form in 
sunglasses, blue jeans, and a leather motorcycle 
jacket emerged from the taxi, slinging an olive green 
duffle bag over his shoulder.  Will had absconded 
with Mulder's WWII Army-issue duffle, probably 
thinking the bullet holes in it made him look tough.  
Mulder hadn't told his son an angry French husband 
made those holes when Mulder, a few sheets to the 
wind during his 'show Phoebe' campaign, had mistaken 
a madam for a mademoiselle.  Will was fond of his 'my 
father stormed the beach at Normandy' story and it 
seemed like a pity to ruin it with a factual account.  
Mulder had been seasick and scared out of his wits at 
Normandy, and keeping track of his duffle bag had 
taken a distant second to not dying.  

"Will!" Mulder shouted from the porch, then hurried 
down the steps, passing Margaret as she left, wiping 
her eyes.   

"Hey!" Will called back, grinning, assuming the 
welcoming party on the porch was for him. "Come pay 
the cab.  I'm outta cash!"

"What are you doing here?  Scully said you weren't 
coming until later."

"I got on a plane at dawn and it's five hours earlier 
here: do the math.  Where's my car?"

"Still at the dealership," Mulder said, basking in 
the moment as he hugged his son, who hugged him back 
carefully, wary of his father's shoulder. "I didn't 
get the memo it was Christmas already.  But it's paid 
for and I have a key.  We can go steal it later if 
you want."

"Cool: committing a felony with my father.  Think the 
Boy Scouts give out merit badges for that?"

Declining to answer, Mulder was forking over the 
appropriate bills to the driver when Emily spotted 
Will and slipped out of the house, yelling for her 
'Bub! Bub!' As Mulder tucked his wallet back in his 
pocket, the door of Bill's car closed and Margaret 
Scully turned to watch through the window.  

"Get back inside, Squirt!" Will ordered her, then 
slung her over his shoulder and carried her into the 
house, her bare legs kicking helplessly.  

Mulder exchanged silent, accusatory looks with 
Maggie, then followed Will and Emily back to the 
porch where Scully stood waiting with coats.  As she 
scolded Emily and Mulder for going out in the cold, 
and greeted Will, Mulder saw her look past him, 
watching Bill Scully's car as it drove away.

*~*~*~*
 
Something was intrinsically sad about watching rain 
falling on snow, even from in front of a warm fire. 
It was a merciless ruin of innocence and beauty; one 
state of nature slowly, methodically eroding the 
other.   

Headlights pulled up to the curb, and he saw Will get 
out and walk around to open Scully's door, dodging 
the fat raindrops, then get back in the driver's 
seat.  Before Scully reached the front steps, the new 
Thunderbird's taillights defiantly turned the corner 
at the end of the block without stopping for the stop 
sign, and disappeared in search of whatever teenagers 
always thought was out there.   

Will had volunteered to drive Scully to and from 
Mass, which Mulder had reluctantly agreed to after an 
extended period of pleading and whining.  The boy had 
independently expanded that agreement to include 'and 
then go cruise around DC looking for trouble on a 
dark, wet night without my license while my father 
sits at home and worries.'  

Mulder hadn't even intended to let him drive the car 
at night until he turned sixteen in two weeks, but 
God forbid Dad the Doormat deny his son.  Mulder's 
paternal guilt allowed him six non-negotiable 'no's a 
year, and he'd used up the last one forbidding a 
boy/girl of-course-it's-supervised-Dad camping trip 
in September.  Anyway, Will was a fairly good driver 
- provided no one else was on the roadd. 
 
Mulder stared out the window at the ruined December 
night, then turned his head as his bedroom door 
opened and Hurricane Scully entered, the bottom six 
inches of her dress clinging to her legs and almost 
transparent.  She had the clutching-the-armrest 
pallor people tended to develop after riding with 
William, but her cheeks were flushed from the cold 
and her hair curled from the dampness, giving her a 
surreal beauty that made her blue eyes seem enormous.

Crossing his ankles casually, he followed her in his 
peripheral vision, watching like a domesticated wolf: 
calm, approachable, but at its center, still a 
hunter.  He still wanted her; wanting to throttle her 
didn't stop that.  If anything, it intensified the 
primal need, combining an act of caring and the 
sensual math of creation with an act of control.  Not 
to hurt, but to strip away clothing and boundaries, 
and in the chaos of passion, make her tell him just 
once what happened behind her serene expression.

After exchanging perfunctory 'Emily's asleep,' 'how 
was Mass?' and 'Will seems to like the car,' 
information like amicable strangers, Scully turned 
her back, waving the hem of her dress in front of the 
fire as she tried to dry it.  From his favorite 
chair, he watched her, pretending he was fixated on 
the mosaic of the fire.    

"I see England, I see France," Mulder begin, then 
shut his mouth and went back to staring at the 
hearth.  Outside the window, the snow began to lose 
its battle against the rain and fall off the roof in 
big, sloppy clumps.     

"What are you reading?" she finally asked, breaking 
the tense silence.

"The Case for the UFO, with notes by Carlos Allende 
and his two alter-egos.  Agent Dales loaned it to 
me," Mulder said, putting down the paperback he'd 
forgotten he was holding. "Did the Navy ever station 
your brother in Philadelphia?"

"A few years ago.  Why?"

"This book claims there was a 1943 experiment in 
Philadelphia that made an entire ship vanish and 
reappear in the Norfolk, Virginia shipyard a few 
minutes later.  The Navy was testing Einstein's 
theories on time and space, and the test went wrong."

From in front of the fire, Scully looked over her 
shoulder at him, giving him her warning eyebrow.

"And then the ship was suddenly back in Philadelphia 
with the crew acting drunk and confused: fighting, 
cursing, and talking to people who weren't there-"

"Sounds like shore leave."

"And then they burst into flames," Mulder finished 
triumphantly.

"Bill never mentioned that," she said casually. "But 
I'll keep you posted.  You'll be the first person I 
call if my brother catches fire.  Speaking of which: 
what happened in the kitchen?  Why does it smell like 
you tried to broil cellophane downstairs?"   

"Scully, I tried to broil cellophane," he said with 
mock dignity. "I was tired of the house smelling like 
pine and pie crust and holiday cheer, so I scorched 
some plastic." Scully shrugged, still flapping the 
hem of her dress at the hearth. "You'd think blenders 
would have a label saying whether or not they shave 
ice.  The kids wanted snow cones," he finally 
confessed sheepishly. "And the snow outside was 
melting."

"And you were genetically unable to tell them 'no'," 
she responded, giving up on her dress and taking off 
her high heels to see if they might be salvageable. 
"As if those two haven't eaten enough sweets today.  
I'm amazed Will's not in a sugar coma.  And why is he 
driving around in this weather?  He doesn't even have 
a license yet."

"Don't tell me how to raise my son," he snapped 
irritably, then slouched down in the overstuffed 
leather chair and stared purposely at his tattered 
UFO book. "You're not his mother." 

Scully looked up, holding one of her shoes in midair.  
Instead of throwing it at his head like she should 
have, she put it back on, telling him goodnight as 
she headed for the bedroom door.

"Don't go.  I'm sorry.  That wasn't fair."     

"No, it wasn't, Mulder," she said tiredly, still 
facing the door. "I do the best job I can with my 
daughter and I'm sorry if it doesn't live up to 
Phoebe Mulder's exacting standards."

"You do a great job with her.  And with Will. Scully, 
I-I talked to Frohike today.  He said-" 

She turned quickly and held up one finger, wanting 
him to wait before he said anything else.  
 
"This is the program Mr. Frohike talked about, isn't 
it?" she asked, turning up 'The Man Called X,' which 
had been providing background noise on the radio. 
"About the spy?"

"It's just going off.  X found the microfilm," Mulder 
answered, tipping his head like the RCA puppy looking 
into the phonograph. "Honey, if you're trying to 
distract me by seducing me, change the station. 'The 
Waltz Hour' is on next and I don't think I can make 
love in three-quarter time."

Without a word, she turned the dial until she found 
"Stormy Weather," then pushed his bare feet aside and 
sat down on the leather ottoman, facing him.    

"Fitting," he smirked as she leaned over to close 
the blinds. "Uh, Scully, we need to talk.  I'm not 
happy about this."

"I asked Frohike to put that picture in the paper and 
use the communist-scare angle," she said calmly, 
looking serious rather than seductive. "I'm sorry.  I 
knew you wouldn't like it, but I couldn't protect you 
alone, I couldn't leave you, and I needed a way to 
generate public interest.  You're so protective of 
your private life that when Frohike offered a picture 
of you with Emily and Will, almost every paper in the 
nation ran the story.  They won't try to hurt you 
again: the public would demand an investigation and 
They don't want that kind of publicity."              

"Are we in 'Them's' bad graces again?" he asked 
sarcastically, pretending he'd been appeased by her 
half-assed explanation. "I'll send Them a fruit 
basket.  You can be as paranoid as you want, Scully, 
but don't drag Will into it again.  Ever.  I don't 
care if you think Martians are landing in the 
backyard, you keep Will out of it."

"You don't think I agonized over this?" she said 
softly but quickly, her words tumbling over each 
other like water over a crumbling dam. "I care about 
you and that hotheaded rebel-without-a-cause.  You're 
the only father and Will's the only brother my 
daughter knows, but I'd rather you be furious with me 
than be dead.  I've had to make that choice before, 
and I chose being alone then, too."

Taken aback, he stared at her for several seconds 
before he remembered to blink, and then managed the 
understatement of the century: "I care about you too, 
honey.  And Emily.  I just don't understand.  I'm 
having a hard time with this, Scully."   

"I know," she said, regaining her composure.  She 
reached out and stroked his face the same way he 
remembered her doing when he came out of surgery.  
He'd be dead twice over if it hadn't been for her.  
That wasn't a gift he took for granted.  

Rubbing his lips together to warm up and get a 
running start at it, he asked, "W-were they aiming 
for Will?  I need to know." Seeing her perplexed 
look, he explained, "It was dark, icy, and we hadn't 
expected Will to be with us.  He had on my suit." 

"I don't think so," she said after some thought. "But 
I don't have all the answers."

"You know more than you're telling me, though," he 
said intuitively, still frustrated. "You say you 
don't know what experiments were happening when you 
were in the Army, or why Emily is sick, or what 
happened when you disappeared, but I think you do, at 
least in part.  I told you I'd take whatever comes, 
but I don't want Will in any danger."  

"He's not.  If he was before, he's not now."

"How do you know?" he persisted.

Of course, she didn't answer.  Why did he even bother 
to ask?  He kept telling himself he couldn't live 
like this: couldn't live with not knowing.  The 
alternative, though, was unthinkable. 

"I know you got hurt, Scully, but I got hurt, too.  
All I want is the truth.  I want to know what to 
believe, even if it's that Uncle Sam isn't my friend.  
Or," he paused. "Even if that baby wasn't mine and 
you just didn't know how to tell me."

He closed his mouth, exhaling slowly, tensely through 
his nose.  He'd mistaken the insecurity fairy for the 
courage fairy again, damn it.  The two tended to 
dress alike.  Ashamed, he clenched his teeth and 
looked away.  Not only was that a cheap shot, it was 
the pot calling the kettle black.  The name Diana 
Fowley came to mind, and, though Scully had to know, 
she'd never brought her up.    
  
"The truth won't make it better," she finally said, 
measuring each word. "It and that hard head of yours 
would just get you killed."  

"You mean you could tell me, but then you'd have to 
kill me?" He laughed nervously and leaned forward to 
kiss her, as though he was dropping the subject.  He 
wasn't dropping it, just retreating and regrouping 
for the moment. "Do you know who kidnapped the 
Lindbergh baby?" 

"They executed the man who did that, Mulder."

"No, they didn't," he answered, forcing a grin and 
tucking a damp curl behind her ear. "They executed a 
man; not the man who took that baby." He sighed, 
wrapping his legs around her hips and pulling her and 
the ottoman closer. 

"And I love that you told the Assistant Director of 
the FBI that to his face," she responded, smiling 
sadly. "You know I love you, don't you?" 

"I know that," he answered softly, kissing her again 
and reaching down to unbutton the front of her dress.  
It was time to ignore the big white elephant standing 
in the middle of the room, and they usually did that 
horizontal and naked. "And did you know George Hale 
built the Palomar Observatory because an elf climbed 
through his window one night and told him to?" 

"No, I didn't know that. I don't hear elves, Mulder."

"It's true," he murmured, pushing her damp skirt and 
crinolines up with his other hand to unfasten her 
garters from the tops of her stockings. "And in 
Nevada in 1947- In, uh, 1947- In, uh- My God, does 
Playtex sell instructions for this?  It must take a 
degree in engineering to get this off."  

He'd made three trips around this bra-girdle-corset-
thing, trying to figure out a way in, and was still 
stumped.  Trust that French fashion designer to 
convince American women they needed twenty-inch 
waists this season, much to the chagrin of aroused 
American men.  Another season of the au courant wasp 
waist and Christian Dior would personally halt the 
post-WWII baby boom.  
 
"It's a challenge," she answered, rolling off the 
nylon he'd freed, then unfastening the other one. 
"Some lady's man you are."

"Lady's man is still working on his dexterity and 
grip after being shot and left for dead seven weeks 
ago.  Do me a favor and just stand up and strip naked 
in time to the music.  No hurry: you can do it 
slowly.  I'll wait."

Knowing what her reaction would be, he leaned back, 
folded his arms, and waited.  On cue, she rolled her 
eyes, standing up and pulling the front of her dress 
together as Billie Holiday began caress each note of 
'God Bless the Child' on the radio.

"What are you going to do about Will?"

"We'll hear him when he comes back, and I'll go sleep 
downstairs later: set a good example.  Did you notice 
he kept choking on his eggnog every time you leaned 
over in front of him to get something from under the 
tree?  Then again, so did Frohike, but I'm not 
responsible for his moral development.  Thank God."

"No, I mean–" 

"Oh.  You know those books and magazines he's never, 
ever supposed to have here because Emily could find 
them?" Mulder reached beside his chair and held up a 
handful of thirty-five cent novels with titles like 
"Wayward Girl" and "Women Without Virtue" and a few 
copies of Playboy with the good pages conveniently 
dog-eared. "Found them in the basement.  I thought 
I'd secretly replace them with Em's coloring books: 
that should keep him sweating."
   
"And?"

"And I'll take his car keys back until he gets a 
license," he promised grudgingly.

"And?"

"Oh, okay," he conceded, tossing the trashy novels 
and magazines into the hearth. "I didn't even get a 
chance to peek," he muttered.

"You're wonderful, you know that?"

"Well, yeah," he said sheepishly, turning on the sad 
puppy dog eyes. "Take pity on me: go slip into 
something more secular."

She smiled: the first real smile he'd seen today, 
then turned and headed for the bathroom to change 
into her nightgown.  Leaning forward, he tossed a few 
sticks of wood into the fire: wouldn't want that big 
white elephant to get cold.

*~*~*~*

"How's the book?" Scully asked from behind him, 
causing Mulder to remember he was still holding it.

"Good.  Really interesting."

"It must be: you're still on the same page," she 
observed, tousling his hair playfully.  He tilted his 
head into the sensation, exhaling contentedly.  

"You don't know that.  And I'm reading for depth, not 
speed," he answered, doing his best to sound casual.  
They were lovers who seldom made love, and it was 
still delicious: the anticipation, the seductive 
dance of banter and glances.  Love was still a 
dangerous, forbidden thing, and nothing was as 
attractive to a man as something he shouldn't have.    

She 'um-hummed' him, then followed as he got up and 
turned off the lights, slipping off his robe but 
leaving on his T-shirt and boxers as they laid down. 
"I've seen scars before," she whispered as he curled 
up behind her.

"Cold," he explained.

"Liar," she countered, and left it at that, sighing 
as he ran his fingers lightly down her face, then 
neck, then over her breast to her hipbone.  She 
stretched like a cat, enjoying the caress and 
luxuriating in his touch for a long time. 

"So you've been reading Kinsey?"

He chuckled to himself and relaxed, recognizing an 
invitation to intellectual foreplay.  It seemed he 
wouldn't be spending another night on the couch; not 
all night, at least.

"That, and your anatomy textbook.  This, for 
example," he brought his hand back up to her breast, 
stroking lightly through her white nightgown, "Is 
'the areola: the darkly pigmented part of the breast.  
At the center is the nipple, which is highly 
sensitive to stimulation, either manual or oral,'" he 
quoted. "During sexual arousal, the nipple becomes 
erect, swelling, darkening."

"I don't think that part's in my text," she murmured, 
pulling her shoulders back. "It wasn't on the test." 

"I thought they taught doctors these things.  You may 
be getting a substandard education.  I'll help.  Did 
they teach you-" He slid his right hand slowly down 
the thin cotton, massaging, "This is the veneris 
mons: the hill of Venus?  The outer female genitals, 
collectively, is the vulva, while the inner structure 
is the vagina.  Is that right, Scully?"

"Umm.  Yes," she whispered, letting her legs part as 
he gathered up the front of her nightgown.  As he 
touched skin to skin, she inhaled, and as he raised 
his head to kiss her cheek, closed her eyes.   

"The labia majora, the outer lips, conceal the labia 
minora, the inner lips at the opening to the vagina," 
he said softly into her ear, sliding three fingers 
down, then spreading them apart, liking what he 
found. "When the female is aroused, these lips 
engorge, filling with blood," he continued quoting, 
watching her hand clutching the sheets as her 
breathing quickened. "The clitoris is the center of 
female pleasure: a tiny bundle of thousands of nerve 
endings.  As the clitoris swells, the vaginal walls 
moisten-  Is this okay, honey?" he asked huskily, 
pressing his hips against hers in case she thought he 
was asking her to play Scrabble.  

"I'm okay.  You okay?"

He nodded, kneeing her legs further apart.  He 
couldn't put much stress on his left shoulder, but he 
liked this: her lying in front of him, her head on 
his outstretched, left arm while his right had free 
range over her body.  It was different from being 
face-to-face: not as intimate, but close, with her 
body on display rather that hidden under his. "Do we 
need to be careful?" 

"No."

"'Kay," he mumbled into her hair, putting his left 
palm over hers in front of them, interlacing the 
fingers. "Relax.  Trust me.  Not gonna hurt you 
again.  Inside-" he pressed two fingers slowly 
inside, savoring her surprised reaction. "Inside is 
the vagina: a narrow sheath of muscles, which, during 
sexual arousal, moistens, expands, and lengthens to 
receive the male.  It's all right.  You don't have to 
do anything except let it happen," he urged her as he 
rubbed, alternating feather-light passes with direct 
contact that made her thighs tremble and breath 
catch.  

"The female orgasm is a period of heightened sexual 
excitement and gratification.  The face flushes, 
blood pressure and pulse rise, and the female may 
exhibit involuntary facial expressions and 
vocalizations which apppear to express pain.  Climax 
is characterized by spasms of the pelvic muscles 
causing vaginal contractions.  Like that," he added 
hoarsely as she gasped, rocking against his palm, 
"Followed by relaxation and release of sexual 
tension."    
       
As the light spasms subsided, her breathing slowed, 
and her body slackened, he shucked off his boxers, 
letting her enjoy the languid, peaceful state for a 
moment before he had her sit up to pull off her 
nightgown. 

"Female orgasm seems to serve no biological 
function," Mulder whispered to her, stroking her hips 
and kissing the sweaty skin on her neck as she 
watched him expectantly, then slowly laid down. 
"Although scientists speculate it may deepen the pair 
bond between the couple, or cause a female to select 
a male who is likely to bring her pleasure."

"Good theory," she murmured, shuddering again as he 
spooned up behind her, his erection pressing against 
her bare bottom and the apex of her thighs.  In 
response, he stroked his fingertips over her 
cheekbone, then pressed them to her mouth, telling 
her she was beautiful.  Her lips parted, sucking 
gently, teasing with the tip of her rough, warm 
tongue.   

"If I was a betting man, I'd bet you were thinking 
about this earlier, in the shower, maybe, or while 
you were getting ready for bed: about us, together.  
Pleasure."  

"What would you think of me if I said I was?" she 
asked hesitantly, having no idea how enticing she 
sounded.

"I'd think I was damn lucky." Telling her to relax 
again, he bent her top leg up slightly, positioning 
her hips as she faced away from him. "Just trust me.  
I love you, honey."

"I know," she whispered back, breathing quickly, 
shallowly as he slowly penetrated.  "Oh God.  Okay. 
All right," she assured him. 
 
"Love you," he managed again, just for emphasis.

*~*~*~*

'Three million sperm,' he thought drowsily, keeping 
his arms around Scully as they spooned up in bed, 
murmuring all the things lovers say to each other in 
the dark.  Across the room, the fire had burned down 
to a liquid orange core, while Bessie Smith, Empress 
of the Blues, sang of her sad life on the radio. 

'Three million sperm all in search of one egg.  A 
healthy couple had a twenty-five percent chance of 
conceiving a child each month - all it took was one 
in three million.' In his drowsy, over-satiated 
state, he wondered idly if there was still a chance 
of one in three million, regardless of what the 
doctors said.

"You asleep?" Scully whispered at some point, pulling 
Mulder back from the brink of the abyss.  

"Mumm-hum," he responded, not wanting to exert the 
effort necessary to move his lips.  He adjusted the 
sheet to cover her, then relaxed, resting his hand on 
her hips and listening to the music, the fire, and 
the slow drip of the snow outside. 

"I need to go back to New York, Mulder."

Pursing his lips, he nuzzled her neck and asked 
sleepily, "Right now?  Will can drive you; you'll be 
there in thirty-five minutes flat." 
 
She hesitated, and he felt her tense and swallow 
before she whispered, "Emily's anemia is getting 
worse: her body's attacking its own red blood cells, 
and no one knows why.  One solution is to remove her 
spleen, but that would further destroy her immune 
system.  Dr. Scanlon has enrolled her in an 
experimental outpatient program in New York: she 
needs to begin treatment immediately."  

"She's that sick?" he asked, opening his eyes. "I 
thought she was getting better."

No, this surreal conversation wasn't happening.  
Normal people didn't just announce these things out 
of the blue nineteen minutes post-coitus.  There was 
a one-hour post-male-orgasm period of thoughtless 
bliss: he should have mentioned that in the seven 
times they'd made love in the last year.  Rule number 
one: wear easy-access underwear.  Rule number two: 
immediately after sex, don't announce your daughter 
is gravely ill as though that's all you've been 
thinking about all evening and just went to bed with 
Mulder to get your mind off things, just like you 
usually do, Scully. 

There was another hesitation, then, "Mulder, it's not 
just that her immune system is failing, but also 
attacking her own cells.  If the doctors try to boost 
her immune system, it destroys her red blood cells 
even faster.  If they suppress her immune system, it 
slows the anemia, but she won't be able to fight off 
any germs.  Something like a cold could kill her. 
It's a no-win situation."

He sat up, dazed and disoriented in the darkness and 
still inebriated by the afterglow of lazy, winter 
evening lovemaking. "Is that what Dr. Scanlon told 
you yesterday?"  

She nodded, still facing away from him as she lay on 
the opposite side of the bed.  There was a wet, 
rushing sound as the last of the snow on the roof 
lost its battle with the rain and slid over the 
eaves, landing on the empty flowerbeds with a 
collective soggy plop.

"I don't accept that.  Maybe she's a little pale and 
tired and she gets nosebleeds, but she's not dying!"  
When she didn't answer, he exhaled and said with as 
much conviction as he could muster, "All right.  I'll 
see about chartering a private plane so she's not 
around strangers and she can rest.  When does she 
need to be there?  And we could have a nurse here 
while you're at school-"     

"I'm not going back to school.  I can live and work 
in New York, just like I can here."   

"You're not quitting school.  You can quit that awful 
ER, though.  Scully, would you sit up and talk to me 
instead of lying there and reciting everything like 
you already have it all worked out?  Could you maybe 
act like I exist at all?  Why can't you stay in 
Georgetown?  Your family's here, school's here.  I'm 
in Manhattan at least every other week anyway.  
You and Em can just come with me."  

"Mulder, I can't afford to take her back and forth to 
New York every month."

"But I can."   

"I can't take-"

"Yes, you can.  You saved my life, Scully.  Stay with 
me, go to school, take care of Em, and stop working 
in that nasty ER.  How hard is that?  You're here 
anyway, and if you're still trying to convince 
yourself you're living with me because I need a 
nurse, you're crazy.  Put on the damn ring, make your 
mother happy, and, when you're certain, we'll set a 
date."  He leaned over, burying his face in her damp 
hair for a moment. "I know you're afraid to love me, 
but at least let me try.  Anything you want, Scully: 
I'll promise whatever you want: no more drinking, no 
more women.  I'll put it in writing.  Anything you 
want for Emily. Just say 'yes'."

"Please don't, Mulder," she interrupted, burrowing 
further into the feather pillow. 

Right.  So much for a more eloquent proposal.  He 
knew she wasn't for sale, but God forbid she ever let 
herself need anybody. 

"That's Will," she informed him as an engine died and 
a car door opened in front of the house.  

Sighing, he sat up and swung his feet over the edge 
of the bed, reaching for his robe. The white elephant 
reappeared and stretched out contentedly in front of 
the fire, making happy little white elephant snores 
as he dozed.  "Right: one lecture on obeying rules 
and earning privileges by being responsible coming 
up."

"Shower first: he's not stupid."    

"Right," he repeated numbly. "Scully-"

"You're not going to save Emily.  I know you care 
about her, about both of us, but you can't bring back 
or atone for your sister disappearing by watching 
another little girl die."

"I know that," he responded automatically, wondering 
if he actually did. "Sam's been gone for almost 
twenty-seven years.  She's not coming back: I 
understand that.  It's not about that at all.  It's 
about you taking care of me when I needed it, and now 
you letting me take care of you."

"Then yes," she finally conceded after the longest 
four seconds of his life.

"Yes?"

"Yes," she repeated with a little more conviction, 
scooting over to his side to avoid the wet spot. 

He pulled on his robe and fumbled with the cloth 
belt, not able to get his fingers to cooperate.  
Mulder settled for tying two square knots instead of 
a bow, meaning he was either going to have to cut his 
robe off later or wear it for the rest of his life.  
He wanted to ask one more time to make sure she 
hadn't changed her mind already, but didn't want to 
take the chance that she had.

"Check on Emily while you're up," Scully instructed, 
adjusting what had recently been his pillow and 
settling in for the night.

He nodded stupidly, heading for the bathroom mirror 
to recheck his reflection.  

 *~*~*~* 
 
A single picture or sensation, either in the mind or 
on film stock, often captured the zeitgeist of an 
era.  For the folks at home, it was the last innocent 
war, frozen in time by Marines raising the flag at 
Iwo Jima and a mushroom cloud lazily unfolding over 
Nagasaki.  Victory was clean, efficient, and heroic, 
paving the way for suburbia, big Detroit cars 
gleaming with chrome, and a generation who liked Ike.

For the soldiers of WWII, the images were more 
intimate: the face of a fallen comrade, the way wet 
sand squished under new combat boots on D-Day, or the 
smell of gunpowder and death hanging over a ruined 
village.  It was Dear John letters, powdered eggs for 
breakfast, and counting out francs to a Paris 
prostitute because a scared eighteen-year-old GI 
didn't want to die a virgin.
   
For Mulder, those years could be condensed to the 
dull, haunting ache in his chest as he watched a 
little boy with beautiful German Shepherd eyes 
standing on a London doorstep, holding his fishing 
pole as he scanned the V-E Day crowds hopefully.  The 
Allies had won, the soldiers were returning home, and 
Daddy had called and said they were going fishing.

Fishing had seemed like a good, honest, father-son 
thing to do.

Seeing his son for the first time in more than six 
years, Mulder had stopped across the street to 
process, taking in the school uniform of short pants, 
loafers, knee socks, and a white shirt; the cap, 
blazer, and tie probably having been discarded the 
second the bell rang.  Someone, a governess or 
grandmother probably, had attempted to slick down the 
brown curls, with little success.  William watched 
each passing man as though he could see through them 
with his dark eyes - a shade darker than Mulder's 
hazel.  It was an intense gaze for such a small boy, 
but he had, as his Grandfather Mulder would have said 
if he had ever acknowledged his grandson existed, 
'gotten it honest.'

Their eyes met across the street, and Mulder grinned, 
slung his duffle bag over his shoulder, and started 
pushing his way through the jubilant masses of 
Piccadilly Circus.  Will had smiled back politely, 
then looked away and continued to scan the crowd in 
search of his father.

That was when the ache had started.
 
Soldiers weren't new to his son: he wouldn't have 
remembered a time without Nazis and rationing and 
hiding in subway tunnels as bombs exploded over 
London.  Will, with all the decorum afforded by his 
six years and four months, was scrutinizing the 
uniformed GI's as he tried to figure out which man 
might have been his father.  He had no memory of a 
world that wasn't at war, just as he had no memory of 
a Daddy outside of a voice on the telephone.            
 
May 8, 1945.  V-E Day.  Victory Day: it was a Monday, 
of course.         

Will leaned out of the doorway, craning his head to 
see far down the packed street.  Winston Churchill 
addressed Britain on a hundred radios at once while 
housewives leaned out third and fourth floor windows 
cheering and waving flags, but the world Mulder 
walked through was a silent, colorless place.  His 
boots made no sound as he crossed the cobblestones, 
and he seemed to be pushing cobwebs aside instead of 
the corporeal, teaming masses.   
 
"William?" Mulder finally heard his own voice ask 
from far outside his body. "Hello, William."

"Hello," the boy had responded in his clipped British 
accent, the 'o's and 'i's beginning to be rounded out 
by expensive schools and governesses.  One of the few 
insights Phoebe had ever given Mulder into her heart 
was that she wanted their son to have the best: to 
have all the comforts and privileges she had not, and 
Mulder had always tried to see William got them.   

"Hi," Mulder said breathlessly, squatting down and 
swallowing nervously when the child didn't come to 
him for a hug or kiss.   
 
"My name is William," he informed his father, seeming 
to have also inherited the tendency to say useless 
things when he was nervous. "I am William Adam 
Mulder."

"I know.  I know your name is William.  I'm, uh, the 
one who named you.  When did you get so big, Will?" 
he said in wonder, biting his lip uncertainly.

"I've been drinking my milk.  Are we going fishing?  
Where is your fishing pole?  If you don't have one, 
you can use mine," Will offered generously. 

"I thought we might be able to make one.  I was going 
to stop and buy one, but the stores are closed today. 
Everyone's celebrating."

"You talk funny.  Just like on the telephone."  

Laughing nervously, Mulder conceded that, to Will's 
ears, he probably did sound funny.

"You're one of the American GI's," Will surmised 
next, looking Mulder's well-worn uniform up and down.  

"I am.  I have to go back to my unit soon, but then 
I'll come back and I'd like us to be friends."
 
"Do you kill the Germans?"

"I do what my CO tells me to do, Will," Mulder had 
hedged, the memories of the death camp and the dogs 
barely a week old. "Are you ready to go?  Do we need 
to tell your mother you're leaving?"

He glanced up, hoping to see Phoebe in an upstairs 
window.  She wasn't coming back; he understood that.  
Maybe, though, he would wave and she would wave back, 
and they could at least be friends.  Instead, her 
mother stood watching, tersely gesturing to Mulder 
that he could take Will and go; the attorneys had 
already worked out the details.   

"No, Mother's not at home, and Grandmother is 
resting."

"So you're ready to go?"  Mulder stood, offering Will 
his hand.  He wanted so badly to make physical 
contact: to pick the child up and swing him around 
and embrace him tightly and swear Daddy was never 
going to go away again.  He wanted not to be alone.     

"I'm a big boy.  I don't hold hands," Will had 
informed him haughtily, picking up his tackle box.  

"All right," Mulder agreed quickly, feeling like his 
heartbeat hurt. "Stay close, then.  I wouldn't want 
to lose you."

*~*~*~*  
 
"Dad," Will's voice insisted, and Mulder winced at 
the hand shaking his shoulder. "Wake up, Daddy-O."

"Yeah.  What?  Shit.  I'm awake," Mulder mumbled, 
pushing the blanket aside and sitting up on the sofa. 
"What's wrong?" he asked, immediately putting his 
hand on his chest as though he were saying a painful 
Pledge of Allegiance.  The doctor hadn't specifically 
forbidden having sex seven weeks post-op, but Mulder 
hadn't specifically asked and the doc hadn't 
specifically suggested it, either.     

"You okay?"

"I'm all right.  Just sore.  What's wrong?  Why are 
you awake?  What happened?  Are you okay?"  Blinking 
and rubbing his eyes, he squinted at Will, who 
appeared to still be fully dressed at four-thirty in 
the morning. "Are you just getting in?" he asked 
tersely, going with what was statistically most 
probable, although he could have sworn he'd already 
given one lecture tonight. "Does the sheriff want to 
talk to me?  Where are your car keys?  Didn't you 
already come home once?"

"I've been home since ten; I haven't been to bed yet.  
I heard Dana and thought you were with her, but then 
I remembered you were downstairs, so I figured she 
was having another bad dream.  She's asking for you."

"Oh.  Okay," Mulder mumbled, shaking his head to 
himself.  His teenage son heard Scully begging and 
struggling to get away, and immediately assumed his 
father was 'with' her.  What wonderful conjecture: it 
was this kind of thing that could cause years of 
therapy bills.  He started to ask if Will really 
couldn't tell the difference between the sounds of 
fear and the sounds of passion, then, in his half-
awake brain, realized there was no answer the boy 
could give that Mulder would find acceptable.   

"It's a bad one," Will urged.

"I'll check on her," Mulder answered, standing up and 
putting one foot in front of the other toward the 
stairs. "Thanks.  You can go back to sleep."

"I wasn't asleep.  I'll make coffee," Will answered 
from the foyer, strolling off to the kitchen.

"Go to bed, Will," Mulder ordered, then sighed and 
headed upstairs when he continued to be ignored.   

The fire in the hearth had burned down the last red-
orange coals, casting only a few weak shadows over 
the big bed.  He noticed she'd put on her nightgown 
after he'd left to lecture Will, meaning she hadn't 
been as sound asleep earlier as she'd been pretending 
she was.  She was now, though, fighting the faceless 
Them and begging him to help her.

He would.  He'd get a gun, a checkbook, or a marriage 
license and help her, but he didn't know how.  She 
wouldn't tell him.

"I'm here," he told her softly. "You're just 
dreaming, honey.  It's okay."  

"Please don't take her.  Please don't," she pleaded 
with him, trying to push him away. "Hurts."  

"Nobody's gonna hurt you.  Nobody's gonna take Emily.  
I'm right here.  I'm not gonna leave you."

"Mulder?" Scully asked, opening her eyes, but still 
sound asleep. "You're here?"

"I'm here.  You're dreaming.  What is it, honey?  
What are you so afraid of?"

"I'm so sorry, Mulder," she murmured, rolling away 
from him and pulling herself into a little ball. 
"Too late.  It's too late."

"It's okay," he assured her, having no idea what he 
was assuaging.  

"They took the baby," she sobbed, covering her head 
with her arms the way schoolchildren were taught to 
in case of a nuclear bomb. "You hate me."

"Why?  Why did They take the baby?  Babies?" he 
pressed her, hoping for an answer from her 
subconscious.  He'd believe just about anything.  
He'd believe little green men from Venus whisked the 
baby away in a spaceship to ensure world peace if 
she'd just give him an answer.

"I don't know!  What did you do to me, Mulder?" 

He exhaled suddenly, moving back a few inches.

"I d-did what I thought-" he finally mumbled, shaken, 
as she continued to cry.

It was the first time she'd ever blamed him, unlike 
Phoebe, who made no bones about her displeasure at 
finding herself pregnant.  Years later, Mulder's 
attitude toward Phoebe was that it took two to tango 
and she'd been as much at fault as he, but he'd never 
been able to convince himself of that with Scully.  

He knew to stop; he hadn't stopped.  She was a nice 
girl, he had been wrong, and he knew it.  And she 
probably secretly hated him for it.   

Ignoring the screaming pain in his chest and 
shoulder, Mulder gathered her up, holding her loosely 
and waiting for the nightmare to stop.  She seldom 
woke up anymore, but the frightened gasps would 
eventually slow to normal breathing, the pleading 
would end, and her muscles would go slack against him 
as her demons dissipated into the night.  

"What do you dream about, Scully?" he asked her 
softly, watching her face relax into deep, 
thoughtless sleep. "Boxcars?  The baby?  Our babies?  
Was there ever 'our babies'?  Who hurt you?  Why 
can't you tell me?  You said you loved me, you made 
love to me, and then you vanished and showed up half-
dead beside a railroad switching station after three 
months, un-pregnant.  And the only explanation I get 
is that you're 'sorry.' I'm sorry too. I'm so sorry."

There was no response from her except to shift 
slightly on his lap, her tousled hair falling over 
her face.  The smell of coffee wafted up the steps 
and down the hall, staving off the cold of the icy-
gray winter pre-dawn.

"Why do you build such a wall around yourself?  You 
never drop your guard, never put it all on the line.  
You never trust me, Scully.  You saved me in a 
hundred ways: you saved my life.  You kept me from 
drowning myself in booze and women, and all you ask 
is that I don't ask you any questions.  All I have is 
questions, but with you there's no past and no 
future, only today, and I can't live my life like 
that.  If you're afraid to love me, I don't blame 
you, because I'm scared as hell to love you.  You 
think I'm dangerous?  You're dangerous, honey.  
You're either completely insane or completely right, 
and it scares the shit out of me either way."

He rolled her carefully onto the down pillows, and, 
after listening to make sure Will was still 
downstairs, curled up behind her and pulled her 
close.  To his surprise, she put her hand over his as 
she slept, the wet paths of tears still glistening on 
her cheek.  On her left ring finger, the glint of 
diamonds caught his eye.  He'd put the ring on as she 
slept earlier, and she'd left it.  For now.               

"Aw, Jesus, Scully," he whispered to her, wiping her 
tears away. "What you've done for me, for Will: you 
can't imagine how deeply my life has been changed by 
yours.  You happen to a man, and, for better or 
worse, I thank God you happened to me."
   
*~*~*~*

Begin: A Moment In the Sun: Part V

*~*~*~*

For most of America, 1954 unfolded as soft and 
promising as the skin of a graceful woman's back.  It 
was an optimistic time in an optimistic country: 
people knew their place, trusted their leaders, and 
still thought the last two words of the Star Spangled 
Banner were 'play ball'.  
 
For Mulder, however, by the second week it had gone 
bad, gotten worse, and then, just when things were 
starting to level out, descended unapologetically 
into abysmally shitty.  It was the classic story: man 
gets girl, man loses girl to some shadowy hush-hush 
conspiracy, finds girl, gets dumped, drunk, laid 
(don't tell Scully about that part), lost, found, 
loved, and then shot and left for dead.  Those people 
who said 'it always gets worse before it gets 
better:' they were right.  Those people were 
depressing and infuriating as hell, but, 
unfortunately, right.  

And those myopic souls who believed faith, truth, 
and love conquered all?  Well, they were right too, 
but they didn't have to be so damn smug about it.  At 
the end of the road less traveled by, the idealists 
waited, starry-eyed and adamantly maintaining they'd 
known all along how things would turn out.  Romance 
was simple when it was a spectator sport.  Those who 
played the game played with fire: love could warm a 
man's heart or consume his soul.
 
Or both, if he was lucky.

Happiness wasn't having what he wanted, it was 
wanting what he had, and sometimes the light at the 
end of the tunnel flickered back on when a man least 
expected it. 

1955

*~*~*~*

He stayed motionless in the dark for several 
seconds, listening to his own steady heartbeat 
marking the passage of time and trying to figure out 
what awakened him; what was wrong.  Georgetown was 
still, complacent, comfortable in her gracious 
silence, and preferring to keep her secrets behind 
closed mahogany doors.  The crisp air of an early 
spring night stole in through the open window, 
licking its insistent tongue into the corners of his 
bedroom and teasing the dark hairs on his bare arms 
and legs.
 
Finally hearing a weak cough, Mulder got up to check 
on Emily, stretching lazily as he pulled on his 
pajama bottoms.  Barefooted, he padded across the 
hall to what Scully had dubbed 'fairyland,' complete 
with a white canopy bed, pink unicorn wallpaper, and 
pony-sized rocking horse: another example of Mulder's 
inability to say 'no' to a child.

Emily was asleep, her head and shoulders cushioned in 
the valley between two pillows.  A vaporizer still 
hummed, breathing warm menthol mist into her lungs, 
while a miniature porcelain carousel twinkled on the 
nightstand, keeping away the monsters.  After 
checking her forehead, Mulder returned what remained 
of Kitty to her arms and pulled the quilt over her 
chest.  Before he was five feet from the bed, she'd 
pushed the covers off again, moving her mouth in 
silent admonition as she dreamt of innocent things.       
 
At the end of the hallway, a suspicious light glowed 
around Will's door.  He hadn't heard Will since 
midnight, but that might only mean the boy had 
mastered scaling the tree in the backyard and 
sneaking in and out through his bedroom window.  It 
was always suspicious when a member of the Mulder 
family made it home by curfew.

He stuck his head into the room and found his son 
lounging on the rug in his undershirt and blue 
jeans, a science fiction novel in one hand, a 
telephone in the other, and a steady stream of 
charming, practiced bullshit pouring out of his 
mouth.  Will was good: somewhere in the world, a 
fifteen-year-old girl's father should be very, very 
afraid.    

Mulder silently held up two fingers, reminding his 
son what time it was, then drew his index finger 
across his neck in an 'off with his head' gesture, 
indicating the wooing hour had come to an end.  Will 
pantomimed his usual theatrics, then acquiesced and 
promised 'Trixie' he'd look her up when he was in 
town again, as though he was a sailor with a girl in 
every port.

'Trixie?' Mulder mouthed incredulously.     

Grinning, Will put down his book long enough to 
outline a generous hourglass in the air, summarizing 
the girl's attributes.    

Mulder rolled his eyes, waved night-night, and 
closed the door, knowing his son wouldn't go to 
sleep.  Will had refined the sloth and decadence of 
spring break to an art, and he'd never waste a 
second by sleeping.  That was what school was for.       
 
As he returned to bed, Scully shifted in her sleep, 
rolled away, and exposed a smooth thigh and shoulder 
as the white sheet draped her like a Roman goddess.  
Mulder trailed a finger down each vertebra of her 
bare back, looking past her and out the open window 
at the vast night sky.  Just the stars: the same 
mysterious patterns that had been watching back 
since a time before memory.

"Beautiful," he whispered to her, tracing the 
outline of her hip and weighing the teardrop of her 
breast before his hand settled naturally into the 
curve of her waist. "Perfect."  

Appeased, he closed his eyes and moved closer to 
Scully, draping his arms and legs around her so his 
body surrounded hers.  He had her; she was safe.  
Everyone was safe.  There was nothing out there.   
Just his imagination getting the best of him.   

*~*~*~*

Mulder blinked at the clock and the clock blinked 
back like a Siamese cat.  Time was a universal 
invariant: he could squint at it all he wanted, but 
it would still be 6:00.  It wasn't just an ungodly 
hour; to a forty-year-old body functioning on three 
hours sleep, it was sadistic.
 
6:00

The other side of the bed was already empty for Will 
and Em's benefit, but he replaced his pillow with 
hers since his pillow just smelled like hair and 
hers smelled like a beautiful woman.  Mulder 
scratched his stubbly jaw and moistened his lips 
before he sighed contentedly, his body limp in 
sensual over-satiation, and closed his eyes. 

6:36

No, that couldn't be right.  He rubbed the sand from 
his eyes and looked again.  Big hand on the six, 
little hand on the-

6:36   

Blink.

6:37

"Dad!" Will shouted impatiently from downstairs in 
harmony with Scully's "Mulder!"

"All right," he muttered, groaning, rolling out of 
bed, and stumbling to the bathroom. "Coming."  

After he made an effort at washing any parts that 
might smell offensive or incriminating, Mulder 
leaned his forehead against the tile walls of the 
walk-in shower, savoring the warm water on his sore 
back.  The garbage truck squealed to a stop in the 
alley and he heard Will and Scully's indistinct 
voices in the kitchen below, punctuated occasionally 
by pots and pans and banging cabinets and the 
general sounds of morning.  Assured his universe was 
in order and running generally on schedule, Mulder 
turned the faucet and closed his eyes as the water 
pulsed down harder, punishing his skin and, like 
making love, drowning out everything outside his 
body for a few moments. 

There was a knock on the bathroom door, and Scully 
asked from the doorway if he was almost ready: Will 
had an eight o'clock flight back to New York.  
Phoebe was celebrating her thirty-fifth birthday for 
the twelfth year in a row and Will's presence was 
cordially required.  Mulder had suppressed the urge 
to send his ex-'child bride' a dozen white roses, 
all just slightly past their prime. 

"Almost," he called over the sound of the water, 
shifting so the harsh spray massaged the back of his 
shoulder instead of the top.  

"Are you sure?  He can call a taxicab.  Oh, come on.  
You're not even moving, Mulder.  You're never going 
to be ready in time; I'm calling a taxi.  Mulder? 
Are you even listening to me, Mulder?"

"Um-hum."

"Mulder, are you all right?"

"Didn't get much sleep last night," he mumbled, 
aware she must be watching him through the glass 
shower door.  Pretending to ignore her gaze, he 
stayed still, leaning his forehead and forearms 
against the slick wall as though he was being 
frisked.  The force of the water stung his back 
deliciously and then flowed eagerly over his hips 
and legs until it reached the tiles on the floor and 
swirled away. "Enjoying the view?" he whispered 
suggestively. 

There was no answer, but he heard the shower door 
open, and out of the corner of his eye saw Scully's 
high heels just beyond the range of the water.    

"Are you okay?" she asked anxiously. "Mulder?  
Answer me!  Talk to me, Mulder!"

"Uh, honey?" he responded, finally turning his head 
to look at her. "I'm awake, right?" He did have 
naughty-nurse fantasies, but this wasn't one of 
them.  He could tell: she was dressed, dry, and 
probably wearing underwear.

"You're awake.  Do you know where you are?  Did you 
get dizzy?"

He looked her up and down, then chuckled awkwardly. 
"I'm just trying to get my shoulder to stop aching," 
he answered. "I don't think it's life-threatening, 
but thank you for your concern.  There'll be a 
slight charge for the peepshow, though.  Please pay 
on your way out."   

"You didn't answer me," she said defensively, 
crossing her arms, her face flushing in 
embarrassment. "I was afraid something was wrong."

"I did answer you.  Anyway, I'm fine," he answered, 
trying to sound as casual as possible with a woman 
staring at his bare ass.  

She kept standing at the shower door appraising him 
like he was for sale by the pound, so he finally 
reached over and turned off the water, keeping his 
back to her.  He wrapped a towel around his waist, 
then hesitantly turned around, studying his wet toes 
and the puddles around his feet instead of looking 
at her. "My shoulder's sore and I'm tired.  Maybe I 
dozed off for a second, but that's all," he mumbled.       

She cleared her throat, ducking her head in a way 
he'd have found innocently charming if he'd been 
wearing more than a few square feet of terrycloth. 
"I'm sorry.  I just wanted to make sure you were 
okay.  I was thinking like a nurse: you could still 
have post-operative complications.  It's not likely, 
but- I'm sorry; I didn't mean to embarrass you."

"I'm not embarrassed," he lied. "I think we've seen 
plenty of each other.  But do I barge in when you're 
taking one of your all-afternoon baths?"     

"Yes, you do barge in; all the time, in fact.  You're 
sure you're all right?  You said your shoulder was 
sore."  

When she tried to touch his chest, he put his palms 
over the bullet wounds and incisions and backed away 
like a shy bride protecting her breasts. "Don't.  I'm 
fine." 

"Don't what?  Are you having chest pains?"

"No.  Leave me alone," he answered, surprised at how 
childlike he sounded.  

"Mulder, I'm a nurse, and they're just scars; they're 
not even bad scars," she insisted, running her 
fingers over his chest, trying to get him to move his 
hands. "The doctors did a good job.  Just let me see.  
Something could be wrong."

"Nothing is wrong."

"Then let me see."

"No." Shrugging away, Mulder dropped a second towel 
around his neck so it covered his chest. "Come on, 
honey; I'm fine.  I need to hurry or Will's going to 
miss his plane."

She didn't budge, caressing up and down his arms and 
finally kissing just above his heart.  In spite of 
the steamy room, he shivered and inhaled sharply as 
her lips explored his damp skin: nibbling, tasting, 
sucking, biting.  Instinctively, he reached for her, 
but she pushed his hands down.

"No, be still.  You touch me all the time, but you 
never let me touch you.  You don't let people touch 
you, Mulder.  You haven't for a long time.  You are 
beautiful," she murmured, trailing her mouth over the 
raised red lines, saying exactly what he needed to 
hear, but didn't want to be honest about. "Do you 
know that?"

"Right," he snorted and stepped back, but not so far 
back that he was out of her reach.  When she didn't 
follow, he tightened the towel around his waist and 
rubbed the other one briskly over his hair, drying 
like a man on a mission.
    
"You accept my scars and I accept yours.  That's the 
way it works," he heard through the terrycloth, 
followed by the sound of the doorknob turning as she 
started to leave.  

"Scully," he said quickly, dropping his hair towel 
and twisting the corner of his mouth into a half-
smile.  She waited, and he waited, trying to figure 
out how to put it into words.  The gentle poetic 
phrases didn't come, so he finally said simply: "You 
better like them; you're eye level with them."

"Maybe last night, but I wasn't early this morning," 
she responded flippantly, and Mulder coughed in 
stunned disbelief. "Get dressed; you're late.  It's 
not my fault you didn't get any sleep."

Unaccustomed to being verbally outmaneuvered, not to 
mention out-innuendo-ed by her, he started to say it 
certainly was her fault, but she was gone by the time 
he regained the power of intelligent speech.

Recovering his poise, Mulder laughed at himself and 
picked up his toothbrush.  As he polished his pearly 
whites with his right hand, he alternately touched 
each finger of his left hand to his left thumb, 
checking his dexterity.  Everything seemed to have 
healed as well as it was going to: it was less 
graceful, perhaps, and a little painful, but all in 
all, a successful recovery, especially considering 
where he had started.  That was a good thing: he 
certainly had both hands full.

*~*~*~*  

"If you need money, I can help, Dana," Margaret 
Scully's voice said from the kitchen, startling 
Mulder as he dropped his jacket over the banister and 
set his wallet and keys on the fish tank.  A school 
of hungry mollies abandoned their plastic reef to 
gape at him like bug-eyed aliens, hoping for a 
tidbit.  "Your father left some," the woman 
continued, "And I could borrow-"

"It's not money," Scully interrupted. "It's not about 
money at all." 

"But who pays for all this: the nurses, the doctor 
bills, your tuition? You're not working.  He pays for 
it, doesn't he?  You live here and he pays for 
everything, including taking care of Emily: that's 
the deal."   

As he stood outside the kitchen door, Mulder's 
conscience nagged briefly about eavesdropping and was 
promptly overruled by his curiosity when Scully 
didn't answer her mother.  In his mind, she should 
have said immediately that there was no 'deal.' They 
loved each other and they were getting married; 
they'd just gotten a bit ahead of themselves in the 
sleeping arrangements.  

"Don't do this to yourself.  What are you going to do 
when you get in trouble again?" Maggie demanded. "Is 
he going to walk away again?"

"That's not going to happen," Scully answered 
tensely, accompanied by the sound of a knife chopping 
something on the cutting board and water beginning to 
boil.

"How naive do you think I am, Dana?  He-"

"He is named Mulder, Mom.  Fox Mulder.  You're not 
even giving him a chance."

"I gave him a chance and I ended up watching my baby 
girl almost die from a botched abortion.  And don't 
tell me again that he had nothing to do with that.  
And don't you dare tell me it wasn't his baby.  
You're pretty, you're smart," Maggie pleaded, "You're 
barely twenty-eight years old.  Yes, he cares about 
you and about Emily, too; I've seen him with her.  
Yes, he's exciting and it's normal to be a little 
star struck, but you're playing with fire, honey."

"You think I don't know that?" Scully said angrily, 
setting something down hard on the counter. "Is this 
where you tell me to marry a nice, steady boy who 
doesn't know or care who I really am, Mom?  I'd 
suffocate.  You raised me to believe I could do 
anything: that's why I went to college; that's why I 
joined the Army; why I kept Emily.  For so long it 
was just me and my daughter against the world, and we 
made it.  We survived.  And now, when I find someone 
who loves me for being strong, loves me for who I am- 
I do love him, Mom.  Sometimes so much it scares me.  
But there are things- Things that you don't know."
 
There was a long pause, then Maggie asked softly, 
"I'm sure there are.  I don't make your decisions, 
Dana, but if there's anything I can do to help, I 
will.  And any time you need a place to go, just call 
me.  I'm not going to judge and I'm not going to ask 
any questions.  Just don't do anything hasty again." 
 
Not able to take any more, Mulder went back and 
closed the front door loudly, announcing his 
presence, before he put on his party face and pushed 
open the kitchen door. 

"Hi, honey.  Are you fixing dinner?  Hello, Mrs. 
Scully.  Good to see you again."

"Mr. Mulder," Maggie nodded, picking up a butcher 
knife and looking around like she was ready to chop 
something.   

"I ran into Mom at the grocery store and asked her to 
have dinner with us.  She hadn't seen Emily in a 
while," Scully said, forcing the same expression as 
Mulder.  She smiled, but her eyes didn't.    

"Sure; that would be fine," he answered before he 
realized no one had asked him.  He pursed his lips, 
then caught his bottom one between his teeth in 
annoyance at himself. "What are we having?"

"It's just getting started, but how does lamb sound?"
 
"Not baaad," he answered, trying to ease the tension 
and failing. "Do you want help or do you just want me 
to stay out of the way?"

"We have everything under control.  Could you see if 
Sleeping Beauty is awake?"

Glad to have an excuse to escape Margaret Scully's 
steady, disapproving gaze, Mulder obediently trotted 
upstairs to Fairyland.  In keeping with the story, 
when he kissed her forehead, Emily opened her eyes 
and raised her arms to be picked up.  She smelled 
like clean sheets and clean pajamas and alcohol swabs 
now, not like a little girl.  Not like the sun, but 
he buried his face in her neck for a moment anyway, 
inhaling deeply before he blew a big raspberry to 
make her squirm.    

The blood transfusions hadn't slowed her anemia as 
much as they had hoped, so the doctors had added 
injections of a cortisone cocktail: a new, 
experimental drug.  Scully, knowing the side effects 
of cortisone, hadn't liked that idea, and disliked it 
more when the shots immediately made Emily sick; so 
sick she and Mulder had almost pulled Em from the 
hospital's study.  Then, miraculously, Emily got 
better and they were able to take her home.  She was 
still pale and lethargic, but her body wasn't 
attacking itself anymore, viewing its own cells as 
the enemy.  As long as the injections continued, 
Emily held on to some fragile, hospital-white version 
of a normal childhood.  Without them, according to 
the doctors, it would be a matter of months.
 
"Dana was telling me about her Christmas gift," 
Maggie said as he returned carrying Emily: a child 
made a good shield. "Am I to understand it's an 
engagement ring?"  

"It's a Christmas tradition," Scully supplied, her 
gaze warming several degrees as she looked at him 
holding her sleepy daughter. "Mulder gets me the same 
thing every year."

"I'm not very creative," he supplied, eyeing the 
turn-of-the-century filigree setting on Scully's 
finger and telegraphing back 'I love you always,' in 
a silent language only the two of them could hear.   

He'd had it resized for her the first time he 
proposed, and after a few false starts, it had been 
on her finger when she vanished.  When she 
mysteriously reappeared three months later, she'd 
returned the ring within days of being discharged 
from the hospital.  There was no explanation, just an 
envelope left at The Plaza Hotel's front desk with 
'Mr. Fox W. Mulder' written in her neat cursive.  
Recognizing the writing and desperate for any contact 
with her, he'd ripped it open and found only the 
antique platinum engagement ring inside.  She could 
have sold it and put herself halfway through medical 
school, or kept it as a memento, or thrown it in the 
gutter, but she hadn't.  She had politely returned 
it, and he could have sworn it was still warm from 
being on her hand all those months. That had been 
when he'd started drinking again.  It made sin very 
convenient when he lived in a hotel with two bars in 
the lobby.         

Maggie moved to take her granddaughter, but Em seemed 
content snuggled against his shoulder, so she stepped 
back, tightening her lips into a polite line. "Is 
there a wedding band that matches it?" she asked, 
dropping a broad-as-the-side-of-a-barn hint. "Or is 
there just an engagement ring?"

"I know Grandmother had a wedding ring," Mulder 
answered cautiously, shifting Emily. "But I couldn't 
find it.  It was just a plain band and there were 
thousands of those.  It was probably engraved, but I 
didn't know with what, and I don't read Hebrew, 
anyway.  I only found this one.  I-I thought my 
mother might want it."

Margaret looked puzzled, so he swallowed, broke eye 
contact, set Emily on the kitchen counter, and 
explained. "My mother's mother - my grandmother - was 
a Jew.  She was in Germany during WWII and when my 
infantry unit took Dachau, a concentration camp near 
Munich, she was there."

"She was wearing the ring when you found her?"

"No, the Nazis took the jewelry off the, off the 
prisoners; took their eyeglasses, clothing, shoes, 
even gold fillings.  Anything of value.  There were 
rooms of stuff, all carefully sorted.  I kept looking 
until I found it.  I thought my mother might want 
it," he repeated stupidly.

The kitchen dimmed, and for a moment, he was there 
again, stepping out of reality and into a surreal 
world of horrors.  In slow motion, he looked around 
the prison camp, trying to comprehend how one human 
could categorize, utilize, and dispose of another as 
thoughtlessly as one experimented on a lab rat.  

He could smell the decaying bodies in the wooden 
dormitories and the freshly tilled earth of the 
flowerbeds around the officers' quarters.  A thick 
layer of ash mysteriously dusted the roofs: a mystery 
solved when they discovered the gas chambers 
disguised as showers and then the adjoining 
crematorium.  There was a medical clinic, the 
contents and purpose of which caused their platoon 
medic to be sent home gnawing his thumbs and 
jabbering nonsense.  One brick building, they 
eventually realized, had been a brothel run for 
German officers and stocked with less-than-willing 
female prisoners.  Mulder had shuddered, thinking of 
his teenage blonde/blue/I'm-really-a-Jew cousin and 
praying she wasn't there.  

Then they opened the boxcars on the railroad tracks 
and the hungry guard dogs had started barking crazily 
inside their chain-link pens, desperate to escape. He 
could feel his dog tags digging into his neck, his 
heavy pack on his back, and his own worthless wedding 
band still on his finger.  He wasn't thirty years old 
yet, with a son he barely knew and a wife he'd been 
unfaithful to, but he'd still believed it was 
correctable, as though he'd become his own father 
through a Jungian clerical error.  
 
'Shoot to kill; save some time,' his sergeant 
commanded tersely. 'There's nothing alive but Nazis, 
anyway.  The more Kraut bastards you shoot on sight, 
the fewer we have to execute later.' Behind him, 
Mulder heard Byers and a bunch of the other GI's 
being sick, but he was too deeply in shock to do 
anything but carry out orders.  He raised his rifle, 
looking through the sights, his finger trembling 
against the trigger.

"Oh," Maggie's voice said softly, and Mulder blinked, 
the Nazi death camp vanishing and his Georgetown 
kitchen reappearing, smelling of cinnamon and soap 
bubbles and family.  The sounds of bullets striking 
bone were only Emily's heels slowly drumming against 
the cabinet. "So you found her ring for her?  For 
your grandmother?" she asked, sounding far away. 

He tried to answer, but the walls were already 
starting to close in. 

"Mom, no, she was dead.  He found her body," Scully 
interceded. "Mulder, are you all right?"

He shook his head 'no', trying to clear it, then made 
some excuse and bolted for the kitchen door.  Quickly 
deciding the foyer was still too confining, he jerked 
open the heavy front door, and was pacing the yard, 
trying not to hyperventilate, when Scully caught up 
with him.

"Deep breaths, Mulder," she reminded him, keeping her 
distance as he circled, needing to prowl, to patrol 
for any threat to his family. "Easy.  It wasn't 
real."

She was wrong: it was real.  This time, it was out 
there; he was certain of it.  Unformed, unnoticed, 
but omnipresent, waiting, and watching.  He could 
feel it.         

The neighbors' faces were beginning to appear 
discreetly between lace curtains by this time he 
paced out and stood in front of her, his hands on his 
hips. "Damn it!  That hasn't h-ha-happened in months!  
Your family already thinks I'm pond sludge and now 
your mother thinks I'm crazy pond sludge."   

"No, she had two sons and a husband in the Pacific 
during WWII.  Only Bill and my father came home 
alive.  She thinks you just had a flashback.  That's 
all.  My family still thinks you're regular old pond 
sludge."

There was an uncomfortable pause during which someone 
was supposed to laugh and no one did.

"I'm sorry," he muttered, following as she took his 
hand and led him to the long swing on the front 
porch.  He sat down heavily beside her, resting his 
elbows on his knees and hanging his head.  
  
"Is he okay?" Maggie asked from the doorway. "Mr. 
Mulder?"

"I'm sorry," Mulder repeated, not raising his face.  
He felt Scully's hand gently rubbing his back and her 
mother's eyes staring a hole in the top of his head.  
The things the Scully Clan must talk about over 
Sunday dinner.    

"It's all right.  Dana, Emily wants to know if she 
can come-" Emily was already past her and on Mulder's 
lap, her arms tight around his neck. "Out," Maggie 
finished awkwardly.

"Bad awake dream?" Emily asked, sounding worried. 
"Like Mommy?"

The swing tilted as Scully stood, then turned back 
and, to his surprise, leaned down and kissed him 
lightly on the lips in front of her mother.  

"Bad awake dream," Mulder mumbled back, pressing his 
hot, damp cheek against Emily's and holding her 
closer. "Better now."   

*~*~*~*

She was studying anatomy in bed again

That wasn't nearly as interesting as it sounded.  It 
didn't involve him.

Mulder opened his eyes, noting she was up to page 
163; she had been on 151 when he dozed off.  The 
clock now read 11:37, and their bed had been 
transformed into a nest of notebook paper and 
textbooks.  Her hair was twisted into a loose knot on 
top of her head, a pen stuck behind one ear, and 
Scully had absconded with another of his shirts, 
making her look more like one of Will's bobbysoxer 
girlfriends than his.  Those smooth white legs 
sticking out from under his oversized T-shirt in 
combination with her big secret: a pair of black-
rimmed reading glasses.  His latent geek was aroused.

He started to roll over, then paused, feeling 
something weighing down his backside.

"Wait; my tea's on you," Scully said, reaching for 
the cup and saucer.

"I make a good table," he said lazily, accidentally 
sending a spiral bound notebook to the floor as he 
shifted his legs. "Make a good chair, too.  Wanna 
put away that book and come sit-"

She raised an annoyed eyebrow at him, and he left off 
the rest of that sentence.

"Try to sleep, Mulder.  I'm right here.  You need to 
try to relax."

His latent geek twitched with disappointment. "Are 
you going to study all night?"

"I'm just trying to catch up on what I missed while 
we were in New York with Em.  I'll go to sleep in a 
little bit."  

Willing to wait and hope, he folded his right arm 
under his head, getting comfortable.  Mulder watched 
her reading, pausing to underline or star the page 
occasionally, tuning out everything except empirical 
knowledge.  

"There was a friend of yours here today.  He was 
looking for you," he said casually, and was 
disinterestedly 'um-hummed' as she perused the limbic 
system. "Will and I were halfway to the airport when 
he announced he'd forgotten his knapsack: the one 
with all his incomplete homework in it.  So we had to 
turn around and come back.  You were already gone, 
but there was a man here going through my desk.  Mrs. 
Franklin said he went to school with you and was 
looking for some notes you promised him.  She was 
busy trying to get Emily to eat breakfast, so she 
just let him in and told him to start hunting.  When 
he didn't find them, he left.  He said he'd try to 
find you on campus."

"Tom," Scully said, not sounding happy about his 
continued interruptions. "Nice-looking Irish boy, 
overbearing and charming in a creepy, slimy kind of 
way?"

"Try 'Alex," he answered evenly. "Tall, dark hair, 
dark eyes; seemed to be channeling James Dean.  Looks 
nothing like a medical student and a lot like a 
pretty version of yours truly."

"I don't go to school with anyone named Alex." 

He paused a beat, waiting to see if she would say 
anything else.  When she just stared at him, he 
continued cautiously, "Will seemed to think he - this 
Alex - was one of the men who shot me." 
 
Her head moved almost imperceptibly, as though she'd 
been slapped hard but didn't want anyone to know how 
badly it hurt. 

"Was he?"

"I don't remember.  Maybe."   

Forgetting to mark her place, she slammed the text 
and turned toward him. "My God.  And he was here?  
Did you call the police?"

"I did, and it didn't seem high on their list of 
priorities, so I called Agent Dales at the FBI and 
his supervisor refused to let me speak to him.  So, I 
asked for Assistant Director Skinner, and had the 
Deputy Director explain that the Bureau wouldn't be 
granting me access to any more files.  I thought they 
were just dragging their feet getting me security 
clearance, but apparently telling them they were 
convicting innocent men pissed Hoover off: you know 
what a diplomat I am.  I'm not to have any further 
contact with Agent Dales or the Assistant Director, 
and I got the feeling Dales and Mr. Skinner got in 
trouble for letting me see those cases in the first 
place.  I took all the files back this afternoon; the 
Deputy Director wanted them immediately.  And he 
suggested I find another topic for my dissertation 
before someone questioned my loyalty to the American 
government."

"All this happened while I was at school today?"

"And Will missed his plane, so I had to call Phoebe, 
who was pissed off about not having a bartender for 
her party.  Apparently, our sixteen-year-old son 
makes a mean martini.  It's been a bad day, honey."

"It sounds like it," she said in disbelief, then 
started to add something else and didn't.    

"The police promised to keep an eye on the house, and 
I had the locksmith come, so the spare set of keys 
this man got won't work anymore.  And I'll stay close 
in case he comes back; I'll hang around and annoy 
Mrs. Franklin and Emily."  

"What about your research?  What about the FBI?"

"It was just a whim; a stupid whim.  I'm surprised 
they even considered it."

"It wasn't a whim.  It's important to you."

"Well, so is my family." He picked at the hem of 
his/her t-shirt, twisting the fabric around his 
finger, then asked, "Do you know him?  Not from 
school, but do you know him at all?" 

"Of course I don't.  If I did, I would have told the 
police." 
     
"So Emily's father being 'Alex Krycek' on her birth 
certificate and this man being 'Alex:' it's just a 
coincidence he tried to kill me?"

"How did you know that?" Scully asked in five 
carefully measured words. 

"Will and I went through some of your things, after 
you were gone.  I had Frohike try to track down the 
name, but it was a dead end; he said either you or 
the hospital just made it up.  And when he says it's 
a dead end, it's a dead end," he belabored, as though 
he'd just taken Frohike's word for it and not done 
everything in his power to attach an identity to that 
name on a piece of paper. "So it's just a 
coincidence?"   

"Yes," she said slowly, sounding heartbreakingly 
uncertain. "No.  No, I don't know him.  Yes, I hope 
it's just a coincidence."

"Scully- Scully, wherever Emily came from and whoever 
her father was, I'm here now.  Whoever this Alex 
Krycek is and whatever he did to you: whatever he 
did, it was wrong, and if he ever comes looking for 
you or Emily again I'll put a bullet between his 
eyes.  I owe him a few and I'm a better shot.  If 
that's not what you want, you'd better speak up now," 
he finished in a soft growl.
 
"That's what I want," she answered evenly.  

She held his gaze and his heart for a long time, then 
pushed her glasses higher on her nose and opened her 
anatomy text again, flipping rapidly, purposely in 
search of page 163 and almost ripping out pages 1 
through 162 for being in the way.  As soon as she 
looked away, he exhaled any air remaining in his 
lungs, realizing that the conversation really had 
taken place out loud and not just in his head.   

His bitter threat stayed on his tongue like 
unsweetened chocolate.  This wasn't supposed to be 
them.  A struggling Catholic single mother and a 
wealthy, divorced, disillusioned Jew.  Two kids, two 
cars, an ulcer, and alimony payments: Mr. Baseball 
falls for Miss All-American-Brains-and-Beauty.  The 
theme music was supposed to swell and the credits 
roll toward fade-to-black happily-ever-after.
  
They had their brick house with their grocery list on 
the refrigerator door and their miniature roses in 
the window boxes.  There were two televisions so 
Mulder never had to miss Alfred Hitchcock if Em and 
Will were glued to American Bandstand.  Hell, there 
was even a can of Burma-Shave rusting on the sink 
beside the cavity-fighting protection of Crest.  They 
were the Cleavers, with some illegitimacy, a few 
secrets, a few flashbacks, near-death experiences, 
and a tendency for the males to snort when someone 
talked about being 'hard on the Beaver.'  

And they were coolly discussing murder.   
  
He'd have no problem killing that man in cold blood, 
and Scully would have no problem loving him if he 
did.  She also owed 'Alex' a few.  Behind her serene 
expression lived something primal, like a lioness 
with hungry cubs; give both of them a gun and a clear 
shot at one of Them and Scully would probably be more 
likely than Mulder to pull the trigger.  And he'd 
still love her.  

Love was never having to ask for help burying the 
body.       

"I had this dog.  This mutt," he finally said quietly 
after watching her turn several unread pages. "About 
a year after Samantha vanished, a neighbor gave me a 
mixed German Shepherd puppy to try to cheer me up.  I 
was about thirteen, almost fourteen.  Anyway, I had 
it about a month before the dog got into a fight with 
a raccoon and got pretty chewed up.  The vet came, 
took one look at the sick raccoon weaving around our 
backyard, and told me to call my father.  I guess he 
didn't want to tell me himself, and Mom wasn't 
dealing with things too well that decade."

She put down her book and returned the pen to its 
shelf above her ear. "The dog had rabies."

Mulder nodded, his head still cradled in the crook of 
his arm. "Dad came home and told me to wait inside 
the house: he didn't want me to see.  The house has 
windows, of course, and there's a genetic reason 
Will's so nosey.  I saw Dad take a deep breath, raise 
his pistol, and pull the trigger without flinching.  
Then he wrapped the puppy in an old towel, got a 
shovel, and started digging a hole beside the 
carriage house to bury him: still wearing his suit 
and hat from the office.  It all seemed very 
businesslike, except when I went outside, I saw he 
was crying.  I told him I'd do it: I'd bury the dog, 
and he patted me on the shoulder, told me he was 
sorry, got in the car and went back to work.  It was 
the only time I ever saw him cry.  In fact, it was 
probably the last time in my life that he touched me.  
He didn't cry over my sister, but he cried over that 
damn dog.  That misbehaved, spoiled mutt that I 
didn't ask for in the first place.  I didn't 
understand then, but I do now.  And now it's too 
late."        

He took another deep, shaky breath and exhaled 
forcefully, pulling the scab off a quarter-century-
old pain.  He met her eyes again and quickly put his 
casual, bulletproof persona back on. "You wanted to 
see my scars, honey," he quipped, shrugging and 
closing his eyes. "I guess it doesn't make a very 
good bedtime story.  Never mind.  Move along: nothing 
interesting to see here. 'Night."

The high mattress shifted and books cascaded over the 
edge like lemmings, thudding to the floor. "Take off 
your shirt," her inner id ordered huskily, as smooth 
white thighs straddled his hips.

"Leave on your glasses," his latent geek responded, 
gathering up the cotton edge and shucking it over his 
head in one fluid motion.  The ink pen slipped from 
above her ear and jabbed him in the throat, and then 
was lost underneath the sheets with a pair of 
practical white panties and his pajama bottoms.  

*~*~*~*

"Toast?  I could have them send up some bread," 
Scully offered after rooting through the kitchen and 
finding only a half-empty jar of mustard, some stale 
crackers, and an orange with a suspicious brown spot 
on one side. "Or I could go to the grocery store.  Or 
Mulder could go." 

They did this every month: she filled his icebox when 
she was in New York with Emily, and Mulder and his 
son spent the following weeks consuming every crumb, 
as though there weren't four gourmet restaurants 
downstairs.  He and Will could cook anything as long 
as the main ingredient was coffee or scrambled eggs, 
so opening the icebox and finding a corner of 
congealed lasagna with the noodles so old they'd 
started to get crispy: it was love in absentia.   
 
Mulder leaned down and suggested to Emily, who was 
sitting beside him on the counter, "Cinnamon toast." 

"Cinnamo-" Em immediately repeated.

"You need to eat real food; cinnamon toast is 
dessert."

"It is?" Mulder asked in surprise, looking up from 
the stack of papers prepared by the hotel management 
'for your review, Mr. Mulder' which actually meant 
'sign here, stupid.' "Why is bread with butter and 
jelly on it food, but bread with butter, cinnamon, 
and sugar on it dessert?"

Scully stopped searching and, silently conveying the 
joy of an all-afternoon flight with a squirming five-
year-old on her lap, answered, "Because I'm the mommy 
and I say so, that's why."

Nonplussed, he raised his eyebrows and grinned at her 
mischievously, then went back to his stack, flipping 
to the vaguely interesting parts.  Among the messages 
left at the front desk was another cryptic one from 
Walter Skinner, which he stuck in his shirt pocket to 
consider later.  He wasn't sure he was speaking to 
Walter Skinner, although he could think of a few 
choice words he wouldn't mind sharing.

"You need to eat something, Emily, or you're going to 
be starving in a few hours," Scully tried again. 
"Oatmeal?  That would be easy on your stomach."

"Oatmeal cookie," Mulder whispered into the little 
girl's ear. "Oatmeal, flour, eggs, butter," he listed 
for Scully's approval. "Raisins: aren't those fruit?  
An oatmeal cookie: crispy brown on the edges with 
gooey-wholesome-goodness in the center?"

Emily was salivating like a waif staring at Christmas 
displays in the FAO Schwarz toy store.  Mulder knew 
the look: on one of the first Saturdays he'd been 
allowed to have Will after The War, that look had 
lightened his wallet a couple-hundred bucks and his 
conscience not at all.  When The Plaza Hotel had 
turned out to be a pleasant place to live as well as 
a good investment, Mulder had eventually bought stock 
in FAO Schwarz as well in an effort to cut his 
expenses.  It was no wonder Will had a slightly 
distorted view of real life: his daddy owned a 
significant share of Manhattan's most elegant Grande 
Dame hotel and the mother-of-all toy stores across 
the street.  The boy had grown up believing 'no' was 
a four-letter word.

"Look, Em: Mulder wants a spanking," Scully said 
sweetly. 

He pretended to be uncertain for a second, then 
responded eagerly, "Okay," working his eyebrows 
again.

Three little lines crinkled down Emily's forehead.  A 
spanking was one of those vague possibilities 
immediately following Big Trouble, and she probably 
couldn't think up anything bad enough to do to merit 
one.
 
Before Scully could finish sputtering, Mulder grabbed 
the top twenty pages of his stack, hopped down, and 
picked up Emily. "How 'bout we go downstairs and you 
can pick out anything you want?  Mommy doesn't really 
want to cook anyway and Mulder wants to talk to the 
manager."

"Mommy would appreciate it if Mulder would use the 
phrase 'anything you want' a little less often with 
the kids.  And maybe buy some groceries every now and 
then."

"Would you believe Will had dinner with seventeen 
people last Saturday?  William Mulder: Oak Room, 
party of eighteen.  With a bar tab.  And he sent me 
the bill," he responded, changing the subject and 
waving the restaurant check like a white flag. "I 
can't think of seventeen people who'd even want to 
have dinner with me.  Do you want to go raid the 
kitchen, Em?"

Emily was agreeable.

"Scully?"

"I'm still trying to think up your seventeen people," 
she teased, smiling at him. "I'm up to five."

"Keep counting.  Saturday, June eighteenth?" he 
double-checked, kissing her flushed cheek as he left 
and giving her bottom a promising squeeze while Em 
was looking the other way.  Three weeks should give 
Emily enough time to recuperate from her dreaded 
hospital ordeal day-after-tomorrow and Will could 
probably clear his social calendar by then.

"Saturday, June eighteenth," Scully answered, handing 
him Emily's shoes to carry around. "Six o'clock."
 
"You're sure you don't want a big church wedding?"   

"With a puffy white dress?  Can we invite your ex-
wife?  Maybe Father McCue to do the Mass in your 
mother's synagogue."

"I see your point," he agreed quickly. "One civil 
ceremony it is; I know all the best judges.  Fifty 
people for the reception?  I need to tell the chef."

"I think we can find fifty people who like us, but 
ask him not to serve any food that might be used as a 
weapon."

*~*~*~*

The general manager was droning on and on, 
apologizing profusely and throwing in a superfluous 
French phrase every now and then because he was the 
general manager of an expensive hotel and he was 
supposed to be French, witty, obsequious, and 
androgynous.  The fact that he and Mulder both knew 
he was born and raised in Jersey was beside the 
point.

When he finally went away, Mulder propped his elbow 
on the cool, slick bar, rested his cheek on his fist, 
and stared miserably at his own reflection in the 
wall-sized mirror.  This fatherhood thing: it should 
come with a warning label.

Beside him, Emily continued holding court in the Palm 
Room, slathering her turkey drumstick with strawberry 
jam and gnawing it happily.  Being the pragmatic duo 
that they were, Mulder and Emily had eaten dessert 
first to make sure they had room for it: one 
chocolate torte and two spoons, and washed it down 
with Coca-Cola.  Forty-five minutes later and now 
solely responsible for a five-year-old on a sugar 
binge, he was reconsidering that decision.     

"I am Emily; I am five," she informed several nearby 
patrons from her seat on, not at, the bar, swinging 
her feet happily.  Most of Manhattan's preeminent 
society smiled in aamusement at the out-of-place 
child and went back to their dinner, but the other 
part: the portion who would have paid someone to be 
born, reproduce, and die for them if that had been 
possible, flared their thin, aristocratic nostrils in 
horror.  Scully had battled her into a neat black 
pinafore and a white blouse that morning, but by 
evening the bow holding back her blond hair had 
shifted to the left, smears of breakfast and lunch 
were evident on her blouse, and her white knee socks 
slouched around her ankles.  He was still holding her 
shiny black shoes, which hadn't touched her feet that 
day. 

He sighed and let his elbow slide outward so his head 
was inches from the bar.  Last Sunday morning's room 
service bill lay trapped and wilting under his glass 
of ginger ale.  The ink was beginning to bleed 
purple, but he could still make out a late breakfast 
for two charged to him, which would have been fine if 
Mulder hadn't been in Georgetown last Sunday.  And, 
although sleepovers when Mulder wasn't there weren't 
allowed, it would have been a minor offense if 
'Mister Will's guest' hadn't ordered a Mimosa.  Try 
as he might, Mulder couldn't see any of his son's 
hooligan friends ordering a champagne cocktail.  When 
Mulder had questioned the mistake, he'd been informed 
everything was in order; the waiter had checked the 
guest's ID and 'she' was of legal drinking age.          
 
And he'd thought his ulcer had gone away.   

"Mr. Mulder?" a man asked from behind him, and Mulder 
glanced up to see Walter Skinner's reflection looming 
in the mirror.

"What?" he mumbled dejectedly.

"The front desk said you were in here." The big man 
shifted uncomfortably, running his fingers over his 
bald head as though he still expected to find hair 
there. "I left messages for you."

"I got them; they were very nice," Mulder answered 
sarcastically. "Enigmatic, but decisive.  Don't 
worry: I read them, then ate them: wouldn't want to 
be a threat to national security."

Walter Skinner's reflection had the perplexed look of 
a man whose shorts were starting to creep up his 
backside and he wasn't sure what he could do about 
it. "I have a case I want you to look at."

"Me?" he scoffed. "I'm not allowed, remember? I'm too 
stupid to do anything but hit baseballs, remember?"  

"I don't make all the decisions at the Bureau, Mr. 
Mulder, and, as I told you last month, I think 
blocking your research was a bad idea; a bad idea 
that will almost certainly cost lives.  I don't care 
who you are or what you do for a living; if you can 
tell me who is perpetrating a crime, I'll listen," 
Skinner finished, holding out a manila file. "Thirty 
bombings in New York over the last sixteen years, all 
in public places: the library, movie theaters, 
department stores, Grand Central Station, office 
buildings.  The police receive warning letters a few 
days before each bomb so no lives have been lost, 
yet, but the bombings are becoming more frequent and 
there's less and less notice.  Sooner or later, we're 
not going to find one in time.  I'm off the FBI clock 
and I'm asking nicely: will you look at the case or 
not?"

"You're desperate enough to ask me?"

"I wouldn't be here if I wasn't."
 
Mulder held out his hand for the file and Skinner 
took a seat on the barstool beside him.  "It's all in 
there: everything we have," he added.

"Okay.  Watch her," Mulder asked, nodding his head 
at Emily. "Don't let her go anywhere."

"I am Emily; I am fivve," she informed him, wiping 
her mouth with the back of her hand as she appraised 
her new victim.  

"I'm Walter; I'm more than five," Skinner responded 
uncertainly, his shorts creeping a little higher and 
making him grimace like he'd just accidentally 
snorted shampoo.  

"It's nice to see you again, Mr. Walter.  Do you live 
here?  I live here sometimes and then sometimes we 
live in George's Town with Mulder in a big red house 
with lots of good hidin' places.  I lived here when 
Mommy was away and we couldn't find my cat and then 
Mommy was sick when she came back and then she was 
better and then Mulder and I used to flash with 
flashlights in the window - that was when I didn't 
live here anymore - and then Mulder got shot and 
'most died and Mommy and me live with him now so you 
can sleep in Mommy's bed if you come spend the night 
with us 'cause Mommy sleeps with Mulder but don't 
tell Grammy that 'cause it makes her mad but it's 
okay 'cause they're gettin' married in three weeks 
and I can come," Emily said in a single breath.

"Oh," Skinner answered, but Mulder didn't even look 
up. 

"And then Mulder will be my step-daddy, but he says 
I can call him whatever I want but Bub - his real 
name is Will - he calls him Daddy-O and Uncle Bill 
says Mulder's a S. O. D. 'cause Mommy got sick one 
time and then we lived with Grammy for a little bit.  
I get sick sometimes too and then I get ice cream and 
chicken soup and sometimes Mommy cries and then I get 
better but I'll be sick again soon 'cause I hafta get 
more shots but we're going to Coney Island first and 
I can have all the hotdogs I can eat but Mulder 
always says 'one' when Mommy asks how many I've eaten 
and that's a lie but Mulder says it's not 'cause I 
did eat one right before I ate two more."

"Oh," again.

Emily paused to suck the last drops of her soda 
noisily through her straw, replenishing herself, and 
then continued at the same frantic pace, "My mommy is 
Mommy and Bub's mommy is Mrs. Mulder but Mommy will 
be Mrs. Mulder too, and that's confoos- Confus-
Hard to 'member.  Mulder and Bub's mommy used to be 
married but I've never met her and Bub says I'm not 
missin' much.  Mommy says Mulder and Will are two 
peas in a pod and Bub's mommy can come to the wedding 
over her dead body but Mommy's teasing and she's not 
really gonna die so I won't meet her there either.  I 
think I'll just call him Mulder after that like I do 
now 'cause he looks like my daddy but he's not but 
most of the time he's pretty nice even though Bub 
says he's sku-whah-air," she finished, outlining a 
square in the air with her forefingers and nodding 
knowingly.    

Skinner's eyes were glazing like he'd spent hours 
watching a hamster run boogady-boogady-boogady on its 
little exercise wheel. If the FBI wanted to know 
secrets, there was no need to do a background check 
on Mulder; just ask a five-year-old.

"Mulder's Mommy is Mrs. Mulder too, but I've never 
met her either but Bub says she's Missus Have-a-sham 
but I don't know that word and Mulder said 'that 
wasn't nice to say, Will,' but Bub says Mrs. Mulder - 
that's Mulder's Mommy - smells like mothballs and I 
don't like mothballs.  And Mulder told Mommy 'the 
moth's gonna miss those,' but I don't know what he 
means either and Will says my mommy has all the balls 
at our house anyway.  So Mommy is Mrs. Mulder and 
Bub's mommy is Mrs. Mulder and Mulder's mommy is 
Mrs. Mulder too, so if you come to Christmas and 
bring presents, don't write 'Mrs. Mulder' on them 
because that's confoos- Cunfus- Hard to tell, 'cept 
for Missus Have-a-sham but I don't think she'll come 
to Christmas 'cause she didn't last time and neither 
did my Grammy 'cause of Mulder but my Grammy is Mrs. 
Scully, not Mrs. Mulder, so that would be all right."     

Skinner opened his lips for another 'oh,' but got no 
farther, producing a numb "uuh," as his shorts began 
to hit home.

"What did you say, Em?" Mulder asked nonchalantly, 
glancing up from the file he'd been engrossed in. 
"Who do I look like?"
 
She shrugged, having finally run out of steam as 
suddenly as a wind-up hoppy toy.   

He closed the folder, laying it on the bar beside his 
glass. "No, really: did you say I looked like your 
real daddy?  Is that true or are you just pretending 
again?"

There was another shrug and a yucky face as she 
worried her tongue around her mouth.

"Do you mean the man who was in our house last month?  
That man?  Is that your Daddy?  I thought you were in 
the kitchen with Mrs. Franklin.  Did he talk to you?  
What did he say to you?"

"Mulder," she said uncertainly.

"What, honey?" he said softly, completely forgetting 
about the FBI file. "What is it?  What did he say to 
you?"

"I'm gonna be sick."

"He said you'd be sick?"

In response, Emily burped, giving him fair warning.  

Oh joy: another glorious ray of sunshine to add to 
his evening.

"He's male: almost all bombers are male.  Bright, but 
self-educated after high school," he dictated 
impatiently for Skinner, who refused to go away until 
he had some answers.  He followed Mulder as he 
carried Em through the lobby, dodging the well-
heeled, white-gloved masses.

"He's paranoid, and paranoia peaks at around thirty-
five.  If he's been bombing for sixteen years, he's 
about fifty.  English isn't his first language; his 
letters to the police read like a pulp fiction novel.  
He can speak English fairly well, but he built his 
vocabulary through books, not through conversation.  
He's single and lives with a female relative who 
takes care of him: maybe an aunt or a sister.  He's 
not married and never has been, but he's not 
homosexual; it's just that no one can take Mommy's 
place."

"What else?"

Mulder leaned on the button impatiently, wondering 
what was happening on the fifteenth floor that all 
the elevators were up there.   Reaching in this 
pocket, he pulled out half a roll of Tums, which he 
started popping into Emily as though she was a 
calcium-operated slot machine. 

"He's reclusive, eccentric: he's the odd foreign man 
who lives with his sister and never speaks to anyone.  
The neighborhood kids are afraid of him.  He's 
conservative, modest, precise, and meticulous.  
He couldn't make bombs for sixteen years and be 
careless.  He needs to pay them back for what they 
did to him: the people who made him weak and the 
public who didn't believe him.  He wants to be known; 
he wants credit for what he's done.  That's why he 
sends the letters to the police.  He wants to be 
someone important, because deep down he knows he's 
not."
 
"I need facts, Mr. Mulder, not feelings.  Give me 
something I can tell my men.  Who do we look for?"

"A white man in his early 50's; a quiet European 
immigrant who learned English as a second language 
and who worked for what became Con Ed between the 
late 20's and early 30's.  His first two bombings 
were Con Ed office buildings and he calls it 'The 
Consolidated Edison' in his letters to the police.  
No one's called it anything but 'Con Ed' in decades, 
just like no one writes letters about 'dastardly 
deeds' like he does.  He worked for one of the 
smaller utility companies that merged into Con Ed, so 
go through their old employee files.  He was injured, 
or thinks he was injured, on the job and Con Ed 
denied his disability claim.  He's paying them back, 
and when the public didn't react the way he wanted to 
his first few bombings, he started paying the public 
back for not believing him.  His frailties are real, 
though.  Maybe mild Polio, or seizures or TB, or 
something else that isn't obvious, but it's there.  
He's weak, and the bombs make him feel powerful.  And 
he's frustrated. This is his way of saying 's-c-r-e-w 
New York.'  The bombs are phallic to him," he added, 
hoping Emily didn't know what 'phallic' meant and 
didn't think to ask her mother. 

"He's mad at the power company and his mother, so he 
bombs innocent people who are just trying to catch 
trains and check out library books?"  Skinner said 
skeptically as the elevator finally chimed. "Why?"

"Because he's insane," Mulder answered, shifting 
Emily from his left to his right hip as his arm began 
to tire. 

"How can you predict all that from looking at the 
file for three minutes?"

"Most of that information was in the newspapers 
except for his letters to the police.  I can read the 
paper: the big words on the editorial page and 
everything.  Agent Dales hasn't contacted me in more 
than a month, if that's what you're asking.  I don't 
want him in any more trouble."

"So you put together a profile of the bomber just 
from the newspaper?  If you already had a description 
of this man, why didn't you tell someone?" 

"I tried; you called me a communist and refused to 
take my calls," Mulder responded, stepping into the 
elevator.  As he turned around, looking out at the 
crowded lobby, there was an old man standing a dozen 
feet behind Skinner, leaning against the back of a 
chair and savoring his cigarette.  He nodded and 
Mulder nodded back curtly: it was the same gentleman 
who'd rudely interrupted his first 'big grownup date' 
with Scully.  They weren't buddies.  

"Mulder," Emily whimpered.

"Just hold on.  We're going to see Mommy right now, 
Em," he assured her. 

"I didn't call you a communist.  Like I said, I don't 
make all the decisions," Skinner said, tucking the 
file under his arm and loosening his tie. "And I 
don't agree with this one.  I get force fed a lot of 
bullshi- hockey in my job, and after a while, no 
matter what I tell myself, some of it just goes down 
the wrong way.  If you think of anything else about 
this case, or any other case, my home number is on 
the back."  He reached in his jacket pocket and 
pulled out a white business card. "I'm one of the 
good guys, and I'd appreciate a call." 

He started to set Emily down, but she clung to him, 
eyeing the man in the lobby.  "Mulder," she whispered 
urgently. "We need to go now!"

"Mr. Skinner," the smoking man said casually, 
"You're a long way from home." 

Skinner tensed when he heard the man's voice, and a 
wall instantly descended behind his eyes, blocking 
out the warmth.  His posture changed from hesitantly 
friendly to rigid and contemptuous, like the 
proverbial little boy caught with his hand in the 
cookie jar.  Without a wasted motion, the card 
disappeared back into his pocket as smoothly as a 
magician palms a coin.  

"I understand you're getting married, Mr. Mulder," 
the Assistant Director said with a sudden hollow 
politeness, and Mulder nodded in confusion.  Three 
seconds ago they were becoming fast, if formal, 
friends, and now they were strangers again. 
"Congratulations.  Dana Scully is very special." 

"Mr. Skinner," the older man repeated sharply, 
forcefully stubbing out one cigarette and beginning 
the process of seducing another.

"Thank you," Mulder mumbled as the doors closed, 
trying to figure out what he'd done wrong.  

Emily finally stopped trying to crawl inside his skin 
and let him put her down, which he did automatically.  
The elevator chimed again, reaching the third floor, 
and he moved to the back to make room for the other 
guests.  There were more chimes and more bodies 
coming and going until they eventually reached the 
top floor and the elevator was empty except for 
Mulder, the operator, and Emily, who had fallen 
asleep on the chaise lounge behind him.

She burped again as he picked her up, then settled 
against his shoulder as he carried her down the hall, 
his body going through the motions but his mind 
breaking the speed limit exponentially.

"Did you get her to eat before she conked out?" 
Scully asked, wrapping the towel around her wet hair 
like a turban and following as he carried Emily to 
the couch.  The soft, mellow smell of hot tea drifted 
from the kitchen and mixed with the scent of 
sandalwood and bubbles from her bath.  Maybe it was 
the steam, but it always seemed cleaner and easier to 
breathe around Scully. "I made some Earl Grey.  Do 
you want a cup or will you just drink mine?"    

Mulder didn't answer, straightening and looking 
around the living room, trying to figure out what 
kept nagging at the back of his brain.  Things looked 
exactly like they always did, except not so lonely.  
She'd unpacked and hung up their clothes, leaving out 
the swimsuits, towels, and Coppertone for Coney 
Island tomorrow.  Her evening dress and his tuxedo 
waited beside the door for the maid to press; they 
had tickets for Faust tomorrow night and Will had 
agreed to watch Em, which would almost certainly end 
in disaster.  His son's dog-eared copy of "Brave New 
World" served as a coaster for an empty soda bottle 
on the end table; like Mulder, Will usually read and 
watched television at the same time.  Emily's one-
eyed, no-eared Kitty occupied an uncomfortable, 
priceless Louis XIV chair no one ever sat in, and 
Scully's textbooks and overnight case were ready in 
the foyer; if Emily wasn't well enough to leave the 
hospital Tuesday night, Scully would send Mulder back 
to get them while she stayed with her daughter.  

There was nothing wrong; the only things out of place 
were things that made his world a home instead of a 
hotel room.  This was exactly what life was supposed 
to be.  Only a fool would look any further. He should 
accept the cup of tea, strip off her white terrycloth 
robe, count his blessings, and forget the world 
outside for a few hours.  Like that day in Central 
Park, all the gilded picture lacked was 'Norman 
Rockwell' scrawled at the bottom, and it had the same 
surreal, too perfect atmosphere.  

"Mulder?"

"She ate some turkey.  And she drank some, uh… 
Scully?"

"Hum?"   

"I'm, uh, I'm gonna go downstairs and take care of a 
few more things.  I was just bringing her up."

"Are you okay?"

"Yeah.  Sure.  Go on to bed; I know you're tired."

"Wake me later?" she invited, leaning over to pull 
off Em's knee socks and revealing there was nothing 
under her robe except glistening white skin and the 
exotic scent of the lotion the maids left in the 
bathroom.

"Bet on it."

After the valet brought the car, Mulder circled the 
block while he tried to decide where he was going, 
and in Manhattan, circling the block could easily 
take an hour.  He did a few laps around Central Park, 
enjoying the cool night air, and drove past Phoebe's 
apartment building to see if the light was on in 
Will's bedroom.  It was.

Finally making up his mind, he hit the blinker, slid 
between two taxis, and made a left, and pointed the 
new Chrysler downtown.       

He walked through the rheumatic bowels of the parking 
building and around back to the freight elevator, 
which smelled of take-out food, pride, secrets, and 
at the core, loneliness.  There was a lobby entrance, 
of course, but Frohike never used it.  The freight 
elevator was private and more direct, if less pretty.  
Frohike's public persona was as smooth and 
conscientious as he was paid to be.  Butter wouldn't 
melt in his mouth when the cameras were aimed at one 
of his priceless athletes.  He was the silver-tongued 
devil a hundred talented young men called to bail 
them out, smooth things over, and be father, friend, 
and handler.  In private though, he and Mulder 
weren't so different.  They played the game, played 
it well, and then went home alone.               

Mulder pounded on the steel security door of the 
Chelsea loft until Frohike answered, wearing his 
pajamas, flack jacket, and, for some reason, his old 
olive green combat helmet. "I have office hours, 
Mulder," his press agent reminded him again, yawning. 
"What do you want?"

"I want my money's worth," Mulder answered, stepping 
inside the spartan apartment.

*~*~*~*
 
While he waited, Mulder opened Frohike's phone book 
and thumbed through it.  Yes, Uncle Freaky was still 
doing it: reading the obituaries and crossing the 
dead people's names out of the phone book.  The 
living people Frohike didn't like had little stars 
beside them so he could find them faster when they 
died.  Phoebe merited two stars.  Speaking of 
paranoid men in their fifties:

"Does your sister still come by twice a week to 
clean?" Mulder called.

"Yeah.  Why?" Frohike answered, emerging from the 
bedroom in slacks and a short-sleeve shirt. "Why do 
you ask?"

"No reason.  How's your love life?"

"A gentleman never tells."

"Been feeling frustrated lately?" Mulder teased, 
lounging on the sofa.   

"Only in the last ten minutes."  Frohike poured 
himself a mug of the strong coffee Mulder had made 
and sank into a chair. "Okay.  I'm awake.  What is 
it?  What's wrong?  Is it Will again?"

"It's always Will, but that's not why I'm here." 
Mulder leaned forward, chewing the inside of his lip.  
"I don't know," he hedged, not sure how to put it 
into words.

"You woke me up at one in the morning to tell me you 
don't know what's wrong?"

"There was a man in our house last month looking for 
something.  I told you about him.  Will says he's the 
man who shot me, Emily says he's her father, and 
Scully says she doesn't know him.  I think the kids 
are telling the truth, but I think Scully's telling 
the truth, too.  And then there was a man in the 
hotel lobby tonight; I've seen him before and he just 
gives me a weird feeling."

"So you woke me up at one in the morning because you 
have a case of the heebie-jeebies?  A quick shot of 
penicillin will cure that, but you'd better hope Dana 
doesn't find out."   

"You know what I mean.  Every time I tell Scully I 
have a weird feeling, she says it's just gas."

"You told me to drop it, Mulder."

"And I know you didn't.  I just need to know what to 
believe."

"Are you sure?"

"What do you mean am I sure?  Of course I'm sure.  
It's my life; my family; my-" he started to say 
'babies' and didn't. "I want to know what's 
happening.  I need to know."   

Frohike paused a second, and then picked up his hat 
and keys, looking like a man with a destination. "Do 
you feel like going for a drive, Mulder?"

*~*~*~*          
 
"Wow," Mulder said in mock reverence, getting out of 
the passenger's side of Frohike's Ford truck.  "It's 
a baseball stadium, right?"

"The house that Babe Ruth built and you decorated," 
his driver quipped, killing the engine. "And I made 
five percent of both.  You're a lot less trouble than 
Babe Ruth, by the way.  At least, you used to be."

"What the hell are we doin' here, Frohike?"

"We're playing baseball.  What else would we be doing 
here?  Can you still get in?"

"Unless they heard I was a communist and changed the 
locks."

"Who said you were a communist?"

"Never mind.  Yeah, I can get in."

*~*~*~*

Only a few of the floodlights were on, eerily 
illuminating the empty field and stands.  It echoed: 
the openness.  It gave a man room to think and it set 
him free to hold his head a little higher.     

While the Negro groundskeeper fiddled with the 
pitching machine, loading the balls, Mulder picked a 
bat off the rack and caressed the smooth, pale ash 
under his palms.  He could have been touching a 
woman's body; it was as familiar and sensual.  It was 
an old friend. 'Don't screw it up,' he used to tell 
himself, and then pick his bat, adjust his hat, shut 
out the world, and walk out on the field.  He was 
twenty-four years old and scared shitless the first 
time he'd set foot on Yankee Field, and thirty-nine 
and a retiring legend when he stepped off. In between 
those years, he'd chanted those words to himself and 
walked up to bat almost seven thousand times.

"What's it like?" Frohike asked out of the blue, 
following Mulder to the plate.

He took a gentle practice swing, getting the feel 
again, then adjusted his grip and swung harder, the 
bat whistling as it sliced through the air.  

"To be born able to do that?  To do it effortlessly?  
What's it like?"

Staring out at the darkness, he finally answered 
thoughtfully, "I suppose if you don't have anything 
else, it's the best there is.  In 1941, I got a base 
hit every game for fifty-six games in a row.  It set 
a record no one's broken yet.  The newspapers kept 
track of it on the front page: how long could Fox 
Mulder go before someone struck him out?"

"I remember that," Frohike said almost reverently.

"If there was ever a moment in the sun, that summer 
was it.  I was America's new Wonder Boy, provided I 
didn't screw it up.  It should have been the best 
time of my life, and it was great; don't get me 
wrong.  But if you'd ask me to name the best times in 
my life, I'd say every second with Will and every 
second with Scully.  You only get so many seconds, 
Frohike.  Sometimes I think I spent too many of mine 
standing right here: alone.  Sometimes I think that 
along the way there were choices, and I didn't always 
make the right ones."

"The Yankees are offering a hundred-grand if you come 
back for one more season, Mulder.  I wouldn't mind 
having five percent of that.  A hundred-thousand 
dollars to swing a bat occasionally and listen to 
fans cheer."   

"Tell them no."    

"I just thought I'd mention it."

"Ready, sirs?" the groundskeeper asked from the 
pitcher's mound sixty feet away, partially hidden by 
the darkness.       

"Ready," Mulder called back. "I don't know what I'm 
doing here, but I'm ready.  And I don't know what 
you're trying to prove.  Who cares if I can still hit 
a baseball?"

"Just do it," Frohike ordered.

"You're not going to make me run, are you?" 

"Hit the damn ball, Mulder."

Mulder shrugged and raised the bat, quickly and 
cleanly hitting ten of the two-dozen balls the 
machine launched at him and clipping another few.  
That wasn't a bad average, given he hadn't played in 
two years.  He'd always hated that damn machine.   

He was standing at home plate staring out at the 
stands and remembering the simplicity of a hundred 
summer afternoons when Frohike told him to get ready 
again.  Like an automaton, he raised the bat, and 
when he looked, the machine had been rolled to the 
side and the old groundskeeper was holding the ball.

"Oh, come on, Frohike.  You've gotta be joking.  I 
can hit anything he can throw at-"  

Mulder swung quickly at a fastball that would have 
made any major league pitcher proud, making contact 
with a bone-jarring crack. A heartbeat later the ball 
arched into the floodlights and vanished over the 
back fence.  Homerun number two hundred and seventy-
four. 

"My God!  That had flames after it!"  

From the pitcher's mound, the quiet Negro man grinned 
at him, squaring his shoulders proudly.  Mulder 
snorted and pointed the bat at him as if to say, 'I'm 
ready for you now,' then dug in again.

A curveball followed, which he sent between second 
and third base and eventually heard thud dully as it 
hit the fence.  The next pitch blazed into the 
outside edge of the strike zone, met the sweet spot 
of his bat, and soared high into left field before it 
dropped out of the sky like a dying quail.  More 
curveballs, fastballs, and the exotic ones: sinkers, 
high heat, hanging curves, forkballs, knuckleballs - 
all effortlessly delivered with marksman-like 
precision and meteoric speed.

"Now you're just showing off," Mulder yelled at the 
pitcher's mound, beginning to hurt.  A few more 
fastballs and he stepped back, lowering the bat and 
shaking his head.

"Okay, Mulder?" Frohike asked.  

The groundskeeper nodded in satisfaction, grinned 
proudly, and headed back to the dark outfield to move 
the sprinklers and pick up any trash that had fallen 
from the stands during the game earlier that evening.     

"Okay.  Sore and humiliated, but okay.  Who is he?"

"Josh Exley.  He was a Negro League legend.  By the 
time the Majors started letting Negroes play, he was 
past his prime."

"If that was past his prime, I'm glad I didn't step 
up to bat when he was at his best." He rolled his 
shoulder, trying to ease the ache. "Okay, aside from 
embarrassing me, what was the point of that?"

"Simple math," Frohike responded, taking the bat.  He 
slid it back into the rack, then walked out on the 
baseball diamond again, sitting down on the neat 
grass with a series of painful cracks and grunts. 
"Out of twenty-four pitches from the pitching 
machine, you hit ten.  Out of twenty-four pitches 
from a human - tough pitches - you hit all twenty-
four."

"But it's always like that.  It's part of being a 
good batter: you learn pitchers; you know their 
patterns and what they're likely to throw at you.  
You read their body language."

"But you've never stepped up to bat with him on the 
mound before.  There's no past pitching record you 
can look at.  And you can't really see him in the 
dark to read his body language.  Basically, there's 
no difference between the pitching machine and Exley, 
except you hit less than half the pitches from the 
machine and every pitch from the person.  How do you 
explain that?"

"I'm not sure," Mulder said, scratching his head as 
he sat down beside Frohike. "Maybe I had to get 
warmed up.  Random chance, maybe?  Not enough trials 
to establish a reliable pattern?"

"You played for twelve seasons, total; that's a 
pretty reliable pattern."

"Tell me something, Frohike; something that isn't a 
riddle."

"What if you know on some primal level what the 
pitcher is going to throw, but you can't predict the 
machine?  I've been thinking about it, about what I 
asked you last year: how could you just pick up a bat 
and suddenly set the baseball world on fire?  Maybe 
it's because you have an edge the rest of the players 
don't.  You can read the pitcher's mind."

"Frohike," Mulder said, lying back on the cool grass 
and resting his head on his palms, "Read this 
thought."

"Not on any conscious level, but just enough that you 
can anticipate things.  I've seen it a hundred times: 
you pick up the phone right before it rings and it's 
Dana calling you; you show up at my office as I'm 
leaving to go see you.  I think it's some form of a 
slight sixth sense."

"I did the Zeener cards at Oxford: those cards they 
use to test psychic ability.  They hold up a card and 
you're supposed to guess what's on it.  I was a test 
subject in one of my professor's experiments.  It 
took hours."

"And?"  

"And Phoebe showed up again and we got married and 
moved to New York and Will came and I never went 
back."

Mulder digested for a while, watching the stars shift 
across the broad night sky over the Bronx.  For a 
long time he'd believed Yankee Stadium was a little 
closer to Heaven than the rest of the world, and 
probably as close as a lanky, spooky misfit from 
Boston was likely to get.        

"If what you're saying is true, and I'm not saying it 
is, is this something I could pass on?  Like being 
color blind?  Will's color blind."
 
"Being color blind passes through the mother; that 
came from Phoebe.  But this, this gift, if it's 
hereditary, yes, you could pass it on.  It could be 
something you were bred to have, or just a genetic 
fluke, but either way, yes.  You'd need a woman with 
the right genetic makeup, just as you would to pass 
on a certain blood type or eye color.  And if you 
happened onto a woman like that, especially if her 
suitability as a breeder was already known, and she 
happened to conceive…" Frohike trailed off, giving 
that thought some time to sink in as well. 

"I'm not Emily's father.  Not even via your Petrie 
dish, turkey baster theory.  I had the blood types 
checked and we don't match." 

"I know; I saw the bill for the paternity test.  You 
shouldn't frighten Langly and Byers like that.  No, 
she doesn't match you, but she doesn't match Alex 
Krycek either."

Mulder's head snapped toward Frohike. "How do you 
know?  Did you finally track him down?"  

"No.  As far as I can tell, he's just a name on a 
piece of paper." Frohike hesitated like a man 
contemplating biting into an under-ripe banana. 
"Mulder, that child's blood type doesn't match 
anyone's.  That's why she's dying: her body doesn't 
recognize some of her own cells as human.  That means 
she's not completely human: she's a human-hybrid."

"She's a little girl," Mulder insisted shakily. "Not 
an orchid.  What the hell are you talking about?"

"Her body's attacking itself.  Why?  What does the 
immune system attack?  Anything foreign.  That's why 
we can't put one person's heart or lung into another 
person's body: we reject foreign tissue, just like 
Emily's immune system rejects her own red blood 
cells.  However she was created, someone tampered 
with her genetics and the result isn't harmonious.  
The two tissues can't quite co-exist.  Almost, but 
not quite.  If I was that person, or persons, I'd go 
back to the drawing board and try again with tissue 
from the same mother, but a more suitable father.  
I'd probably have better success hybridizing that 
tissue because it would be a closer match.  I 
wouldn't need a living child; just tissue."

Mulder swallowed, turning those words over in his 
head as he tried to wrap his mind around them.  It 
was like trying to dig to the bottom of the beach: he 
could scoop as fast and hard as he liked, and there 
would only ever be more sand.   

"Dana was gone almost exactly three months, Mulder, 
and you said there was no way she could have been 
more than three months along.  I figured you knew 
what you were talking about, so I checked that out: 
until a fetus, an unborn baby, is three months old, 
it has no immune system.  If foreign tissue is 
injected into it, the fetus incorporates it and 
continues to develop and the result is something not 
quite human.  The Nazis figured that out, but they 
couldn't get a human-hybrid to come to term, to be 
born alive.  What if their experiments never 
stopped?"

"We stopped them," Mulder said roughly, biting his 
lower lip and wishing he still smoked.  Now would be 
a good time to smoke and pace. "We wiped the sons-of-
bitches off the planet.  I was there.  I wasn't 
lounging in the South Pacific with a Mai Tai in my 
left hand and myself in my right," he added 
pointedly.  

"You really think any government would just throw 
away decades of research attempting to create a 
super-soldier?  There are whispers that we didn't; 
that we brought the Japanese and Nazi scientists to 
the US and put them to work in our labs, on our 
agendas, and now we've had ten years to perfect the 
science."

Mulder sat up, leaning forward and wrapping his arms 
around his knees as though he were cold and staring 
at nothing, not even bothering to focus his eyes.   

"You said you wanted to know," Frohike said quietly. 
"I'm just guessing.  I could be completely wrong.  I 
just manage baseball players, Mulder.  This is way 
out of my league."

"I'd like to go back to Manhattan," Mulder murmured, 
getting up and brushing off his backside. "Could you 
drive me back?  Please?" he asked hoarsely. "I want 
to check on them.  I need to.  Right now."

"Sure," Frohike answered sympathetically. 

*~*~*~*

Fifth Avenue hadn't vanished.  The Plaza still stood.  

As he walked through the deserted lobby, the 
uniformed concierge greeted him by name, 
congratulating him on his upcoming marriage.  When he 
pressed the button, the elevator came and delivered 
him to the right floor, although Mulder half-expected 
the doors to close on one universe and open to 
another.

Scully had left a lamp on in the foyer, but otherwise 
the suite was dark and silent: she and Emily had been 
asleep for hours.  Mulder paused in front of the 
mirror, checking his reflection as though it might 
have changed.  It hadn't: not after Samantha 
disappeared, not after he'd been with Phoebe, not 
after he became a husbaand, a father, a Yankee, or a 
soldier.  On those days, life seemed to leap forward 
and he felt so different on the inside, he always 
expected the rest of the world to be able to tell.        

But it couldn't.  It was just the same hodge-podge 
mug of his mother and father's features staring back 
at him.  He could see his father's face in Will's, 
but then, in that fleeting millisecond, he had seen 
it in Alex Krycek's, too.

It was too late to think anymore.  The only things 
normal people did at this hour were sleep and make 
love.  To that end, he stripped off all his clothes, 
leaving a messy, grass-stained crumple beside the 
bed, and crawled under the covers with Scully, 
finding nothing between his skin and hers but heat.

"Hi," she murmured sleepily, scooting toward him. 
"Late." 

"Hi," he breathed back, skipping the fine-how-do-you-
do's and settling her on her back, taking her breast 
greedily in his mouth. Half awake, she arched her 
body and shifted under him, wanting more.  He knew 
that feeling: to want more.

"Love you," he whispered when he switched breasts, 
trying to divide his attention evenly between the 
two.

"Yes," Scully mumbled back, possibly confirming that 
she believed he loved her, possibly encouraging him 
or agreeing, and possibly just not able to think of 
anything else.

"Want you," he said, half as a request and half as 
blanket policy, and her legs went around his hips as 
his mouth finally made it up to hers.  They'd made 
love for the first time in this bed; they'd conceived 
a life in this bed, but there would never be another.  
Never.

"Yes," she answered the next time he gave her a 
chance to speak, panting softly.  There was no 
hesitation or resistance: it shouldn't have been 
called 'making love' so as much as 'making peace.'

"Need you," Mulder told her, even though needing was 
dropping his heart in a pencil sharpener and waiting 
for someone, Them, to turn the handle. 

"Now," she requested.

"Always."

*~*~*~*   

Mulder first thought he had the wrong apartment, but 
then compared his watch with the figure in the 
doorway.  At seven-thirty a.m. on Memorial Day his 
ex-wife was wearing full makeup and party hair, but 
not a stitch underneath her long silk robe.  Yes, he 
had the right place, and this had all the makings of 
A Very Bad Idea. 

He was not noticing the nipple.

He was not noticing the nipple.

He wasn't a fish who snapped at anything shiny and 
ended up with a hook through his cheek, or a ring 
through his nose, for the rest of his life.  Lesson 
learned.  Someone should have taken a bullwhip to him 
when he decided to commit parenthood with this woman. 

He was getting married and Scully and Emily were in 
the car downstairs and he was just here on 'parent 
business' and he wasn't going to screw it up this 
time.

"Scully's waiting," he announced out of the blue.

And he was not noticing the nipple.  God purposely 
put those on females so males would never get 
anything accomplished.  Men got brawn, but women got 
breasts; it was a plot against Darwin.  If any other 
lump of flesh was noticeable under fabric it was 
reason to see the dermatologist; call that lump a 
'nipple' and the male fontal lobe developed a case of 
the hiccups.    
    
"Fox, come in," Phoebe repeated, holding open the 
door. "Will's in the shower.  Do you want coffee?" 

"I have a cup in the car.  The doorman said to come 
up.  Scully's waiting."   

"You said you wanted to talk.  Come in.  Sit down."

"I didn't mean we had to talk this morning.  I didn't 
mean to wake you.  I called to wake Will, not get you 
out of bed this early."   
 
"We can talk now.  Come in.  What about some orange 
juice?"

She turned away, making his life easier, and he 
followed the flowing ivory hem through the apartment.  
He took the opportunity to see what his alimony and 
child support checks paid for. From the age of seven, 
Phoebe had Will wait with the doorman downstairs when 
Mulder came to pick him up.  In all these years, 
Mulder had never been past the lobby.  The apartment 
was very nice and homey it that over-furnished 
brothel kind of way.   

"Did you want orange juice?" Phoebe repeated, picking 
up her own mug of coffee from the kitchen counter.  

"No, I'm fine.  Is Will almost ready?"

"He's in the shower."

"Oh," he mumbled, realizing he'd already been told 
that once.

"I'm going to the market today so the cupboard is 
pretty bare, but I might have some bagels."

"I wouldn't want you to go to any trouble."

"It's no trouble," his ex-wife responded as a door 
whooshed open at the other end of the apartment. 
"William, do you want a bagel?"
 
"Uhhhh… No, thank you," a confused voice answered.  
A few seconds later, Will ambled into the kitchen in 
his blue jeans and an undershirt with a flaming eight 
ball embroidered on the front, finger-combing his wet 
hair and looking like he was certain he'd heard 
wrong.  He surveyed the scene, taking in his mother 
flitting around looking like Mae West-meets-June 
Cleaver, and his father, who looked like the dog next 
in line to see the vet.   

"I just wanted to talk to your mother," Mulder 
mumbled, slouching a little. "Is that what you're 
wearing to Coney Island?"

"No, this is what I'm wearing while you and Mother 
are fighting," he answered evasively.

"We're not fighting.  We're just talking."

"Hurry up; your father's waiting," Phoebe prompted, 
pouring a cup of coffee for Will. "I packed your swim 
trunks and a towel.  They're in the bag by the front 
door."

Will blinked his eyes and shook his head slightly, 
certain he'd also stumbled into the wrong universe. 
"Are you okay, Mother?"

"Of course I'm okay, dear."

Will looked back at his father, who slouched a little 
lower against the counter and shoved his hands in his 
pants pockets. "We're adults.  We can just talk."       

After a few more alternating glances at his parents, 
Will shrugged and turned back to his bedroom. "Great; 
now I'm gonna need to see my shrink twice a week," 
Mulder heard him mumble.

Mulder smiled, but Phoebe didn't seem amused and his 
grin faded. "We were planning on breakfast at 
Aiello's, Phoebe.  We have a blueberry pancakes 
tradition we do."

"What is it, Fox?" she prompted before her face 
disappeared behind her cup for a few seconds.  There 
was a drop of coffee about to drip from the rim as 
she lowered the mug and she caught it expertly with 
the tip of her tongue, then slowly licked her lips. 
"You said you wanted to talk."

"Oh.  Will.  I just don't think it's a good idea for 
him to be at The Plaza anymore when I'm not there, 
that's all.  We've talked about it and-"

"We?"      

"Scully and I.  We talked this morning.  And I wanted 
to talk with you, too," he hurried to add. "I wanted 
to see what you thought."

"Do you mean he's at the hotel when you're not?  He's 
there alone?  He's sixteen years old!"

Mulder's eyebrows raised and met at a perplexed 
angle. "Of course he's there alone when I'm in 
Georgetown.  The staff keeps tabs on him.  He lounges 
around, eats, sleeps, watches television, eats, talks 
on the phone, eats.  You know that.  You send him 
over there all the time.  Anyway-"        

"No, I did not know that," she said evenly. "I 
thought you were with him."

"Oh, of course you knew.  Know."      

She had been leaning against the counter, but stood 
quickly and called, "William!"

"Yes, Ma'am?" 

"Come in here right now!"

"Phoebe, I'm sure you knew I wasn't there," Mulder 
insisted, a little slow on the uptake in his sleep-
deprived state. 

To his credit, Will appeared wearing a black satin 
shirt with glowing red flames on the shoulders and 
sleeves, which was a step up from the flaming eight 
ball. "Yes, Ma'am?"

"Why did you tell me your father was at The Plaza 
when he wasn't?  I had no idea you were over there 
alone."  

There was a stunned silence.  Will's gaze cut back 
and forth between his father's puzzled expression and 
the hungry, desperate gleam in his mother's eyes. 
Then, stubbing out an imaginary cigarette butt with 
the toe of his sneaker, he mumbled, "I thought I told 
you." 
 
"You're calling me a liar?" she asked, crossing her 
arms.

"No, Ma'am," Will told the marble-tiled floor. "I 
just thought-"

"You lied to me and said your father was there when 
he wasn't.  I would never have let you be there 
alone.  How dare you lie-"

"Phoebe," Mulder interrupted, "I don't know what 
you're talking about and neither does he.  You've 
called me in Georgetown and told me Will was at The 
Plaza for the night.  There's no way you could think 
I was in New York when you were calling me in DC."

"Did you lie to me, William?" Phoebe asked sharply, 
crossing her arms.

The boy glanced at his father from underneath his 
eyelashes, then mumbled, "Yes, Ma'am," in a way that 
made his father's heart hurt.
 
Mulder pursed his lips, succeeding in blowing air 
instead of producing words. "Okay," he said slowly. 
"I'm not arguing this.  From now on, you're not to be 
at The Plaza alone, Will.  No exceptions.  If you do 
it again, I'm taking the car."

"Are you actually punishing him?  Fox Mulder, 
playboy-of-the-decade, is acting like a parent?  It 
only took you sixteen years.  What did you do, 
William?" Phoebe hissed at him. "What have you been 
doing over there?"

Will's cheekbones stood out as he clenched his teeth 
and his hands balled into fists in his blue jean 
pockets, so Mulder answered, "I'm betting he had 
dinner with a bunch of his friends and when the check 
came, everyone seemed to have misplaced their 
wallets.  So Will charged the check to me and he'll 
play busboy next weekend to pay me back, right Will?"

Will nodded, not looking up.

"Okay, then.  Go change your shirt," Mulder said 
quietly. "Go put on something that won't blind 
people." As soon as Will was out of the kitchen and 
settled in the living room to eavesdrop, he 
responded, "Please: let's not do this, Phoebe.  He's 
just being a teenage boy and he needs reined in a 
little.  I thought for once, you and I might be able 
to handle something without lawyers and a judge."

"I'm handling it just fine.  I'm not the one who lets 
that boy run wild and then sweeps in every few months 
and expects to make it all better with a big check.  
You think buying him a car without a backseat is 
going to keep him out of trouble?  It didn't work for 
us.  You expect him to keep his pants buttoned just 
because you tell him to?"
   
"What do you want me to do?" 

"I want you to set a decent example instead of 
shacking up with that redheaded whore!"

Mulder exhaled through his nose, then answered 
slowly, "You can call her Dana.  You can call her 
Scully, if you want, and if you think she'll respond.  
Or you can call her Mrs. Mulder.  But if you call her 
a whore again-"

"You married her?" 

"We're getting married in three weeks," he said, as 
calm and quietly as Phoebe was shrill and dramatic. 
"We decided yesterday."

"Is she knocked up again?"

When he didn't answer, steam seeped from her ears for 
a few seconds before she slammed her coffee mug on 
the counter and barked, "William!"

"No," Mulder barked back, "You're not doing this to 
him!  You're making him crazy!  Whatever insane 
scheme is cooking inside your head, you're not using 
him in it."

Will had been all of five feet away from the kitchen 
and appeared almost instantaneously. "Yes, Ma'am?"

"We're leaving, Will," Mulder ordered. "Let's go.  
Phoebe, he's spending the day with us and then he's 
babysitting Emily tonight.  We're hoping Em's well 
enough to go back to Georgetown tomorrow night, but 
if she's not, he can spend Tuesday night with us, 
too."

"I get no say in this?  You're the rich Yankee Oxford 
boy so you just tell me the way it's going to be and 
I get no choice?  I think that's how we got a baby, 
wasn't it?  You got drunk and I didn't get a choice?"   

Ignoring her, Mulder took his son by the shoulder and 
steered him toward the front door, but Phoebe stepped 
in front of them.

"What did you do, William?  Your father's lying for 
you, just like you always lie for him.  Get some girl 
in trouble?  You two are exactly alike."

"I hope so," Will muttered under his breath and 
Phoebe slapped him hard across the face.

Mulder saw blood red, then sepia tones of pinkish-
brown as he grabbed her and shoved her against the 
wall, screaming "How dare you, you insane bitch!" at 
her as she screamed back hysterically that she was 
sorry.  He held her there as she sobbed, hands around 
her upper arms, not hurting, but not letting her go, 
either.  It didn't matter how many times she pleaded 
that she hadn't meant it, any lingering tenderness 
he'd felt for her vanished.  Dim memories of passion 
cooled to hate and solidified into pity and distaste 
and eventually, to indifference.                        

"Dad," Will's frightened voice pleaded, "Dad, let her 
go.  She didn't mean it.  She's sorry.  Just let her 
go; you're scaring her."

"Good."

"Dad, she's crying.  It was an accident.  Don't hurt 
her, please."

Somehow, Mulder's hands let go and Phoebe fled 
tearfully to her bedroom and a door slammed and 
Mulder was standing beside the front door, one hand 
braced on the wall.  Will dragged his hand across his 
face, wiping away the blood from his nose, and 
swallowing more often than necessary.

"Has she done that before?" he finally managed to 
ask, tapping the plaster wall threateningly with his 
fist.

Will looked down, ashamed.  "She's having a bad 
morning.  She and Mitchell broke up last night."

Mulder started to ask who Mitchell was, then realized 
he didn't give a damn. "This place looks like a 
whorehouse burped," he muttered. "Go put on a decent 
shirt and we'll get the rest of your things later."

"I'm not coming back?"

"No." There was a dull finality to it, as though a 
bank vault door had swung shut.  
 
It took his son a long time to change clothes, and he 
seemed to be having trouble with the buttons when he 
emerged in a sedate gray shirt with a darker gray 
collar.  It seemed familiar, and Mulder realized he 
had worn one identical to it yesterday; Scully must 
have hit a two-for-one-sale at Bloomingdale's.  

Neither spoke in the elevator, waiting to see if the 
doors opened to the correct universe.  In the lobby, 
Mulder said things like, "You should have told me," 
and "There's no excuse for her hitting you," and "I'm 
sorry," which Will answered with uncomfortable shrugs 
and nods.

They were standing on the sidewalk doing nothing 
before Will hesitantly asked if they were walking to 
Coney Island.

"We double-parked; Scully's probably circling the 
block."

"I didn't know she could drive."

"Of course she can drive.  This is her car, actually; 
she picked it.  A hundred and ten pounds of her 
behind the wheel of three hundred horsepower and a 
few tons of chrome and steel: it's kinda sexy," 
Mulder chattered nervously, watching the sleek black 
Chrysler round the corner and willing it to hurry.  

There was still no place to park, so he and Will 
waded between taxis as she waited for the light to 
change, choosing the back seat so they had some leg 
room during the long drive.  Scully watched them in 
the rearview mirror, her eyes hidden behind her black 
sunglasses.  Mulder's take-out coffee was fogging the 
windshield and she turned to hand it to him, his 
fingers briefly covering hers before she let go.  It 
was a beautiful morning and they'd left the top down, 
but Emily had the hood of her jacket up and Scully 
had tied a scarf around her head against the cool 
air.  Before she turned back, Mulder trailed two 
fingers down her jaw, one on her skin and one on the 
thin silk fabric, reassuring himself.

'She hit him?' Scully asked silently into the 
rearview mirror, and Mulder nodded.

Will slouched down, attempting to sink into the 
upholstery and answering Emily's excited chattering 
in glib monosyllables.

Scully opened the glove box and handed a paper napkin 
over the front seat. "Your nose is bleeding, Will.  
Mulder, do you have a handkerchief?  Just pinch your 
nose and tilt your head back until the bleeding 
stops.  Help him, Mulder."

"I am.  I'm helping him."

An expert nose-bleeder, Emily turned around and knelt 
to watch them, but Scully made her sit back down as 
traffic moved again.   
 
*~*~*~*

They made it to Aiello's before all the blueberries 
for the blueberry pancakes were gone.  They'd been to 
Wax World and the Arcade and on the Cyclone and the 
Parachute Jump and the Carousel.  They'd covered The 
Boardwalk, The Bowery, and Surf Avenue with Em 
sitting alternately on Mulder and Will's shoulders.  
They'd met a geek, a tattooed lady, a bearded lady, 
and a dog-faced boy at the sideshow, and Emily was 
completely convinced her mother had eaten a bug.  
Nathan's hotdogs were a nickel each, meaning Mulder 
could give himself near-lethal heartburn for a 
quarter, and Will was soothing his morning trauma by 
consuming any food he could find served on a stick.  
Scully said she was still full from her bug.    

"I sent Will to change so he could take her in, but 
he got lost.  I thought you weren't going to swim 
today," Mulder said as Scully returned from the 
bathhouse in a white, halter-top suit, her hand in 
Emily's.  A few straying husbands had been following 
her down the beach, but looked crushed when they saw 
Mulder.  Pretending he thought they were fans instead 
of competition, Mulder waved enthusiastically and the 
men waved back, now looking constipated. 

"Will's made a new friend; I just saw him with her 
near the Boardwalk.  He said to tell you they were 
studying."
 
"Studying what?  Full-body Braille?"  Mulder sighed 
resignedly, put down his book, and started to get up. 
"I'll go round up Don Juan.  Try to stall the Indian 
Mermaid Girl for a few minutes."  

Emily eyed him from under the brim of her sun hat, a 
streak of zinc oxide painted down her nose and two 
stripes on each cheek.  Like any woman with new 
clothes, she'd been 'practicing' wearing her new 
turquoise two-piece in the bathtub for a week, but 
the sun block war paint must have caused some 
disagreement between her and her mother.          

"No, I'll take her.  It's fine.  Read your book."   

"But I thought-"

"Mulder, it's fine," she insisted as Emily went for 
more water for moat of the elaborate sandcastle she 
and Mulder had been building, the idea of swimming 
already forgotten.  Apparently, all she'd wanted to 
do was wear the suit; there was no need to get it 
wet.     

At the urging of their fathers, two junior high-aged 
boys approached for autographs and to ask the usual 
questions about his shoulder while he signed their 
slips of paper. "No, I'm through playing," Mulder 
said for the fiftieth time that day, politely 
refusing to take off his shirt to let them see the 
scars.  Contrary to popular belief, his life wasn't a 
display case for their amusement, although, like 
everyone else, the kids didn't mean any offense and 
he didn't take any.  Living in a fishbowl came with 
the job, except he'd quit the job almost two years 
ago.
  
When the boys left, Mulder filled and turned over his 
bucket, completing the north tower of the inner 
castle wall, then looked up at Scully again, 
squinting into the sun. "You're late."

"Mulder-"

"Scully?"

Not wanting to share their conversation with the 
neighboring beach-going baseball fans, she knelt in 
the sand beside him and answered quietly, "No, one 
day is not 'late.'"

"Four days.  Uncle Arthur is late this month."

"Uncle Arthur?  How old are you?"

Mulder grinned, a nice orange glow warming his 
stomach. "Or Aunt Flo?  I got a million of them.  Are 
you decorated with red roses?  Flying the scarlet 
flag?   I can even euphemize in other languages: Opoe 
op bezoek hebben?  Kritische tagen?  Les Anglais ont 
debarque?" 

She stared at him in disbelief and then shook her 
head. "You're incorrigible.  And weird.  Fine, four 
days.  It's still just a fluke."   

"You're late," he repeated, still grinning stupidly.  

"Mulder," she said seriously, "I told you; it won't 
happen.  No more babies.  There was too much uterine 
trauma.  The doctor said there was injury to my 
cervix and scarring of the endometrial lining and 
fallopian tubes."

"Which part's your endometrial?"

"The lining of the uterus.  I thought you studied 
this."

"I only memorized the parts I could reach with my 
tongue," he whispered into her ear, catching the 
fleshly lobe between his teeth for a millisecond.

She blushed like she was supposed to, laughed like 
she was supposed to, and then helped build the 
sandcastle as though another baby was a non-issue.  
It wasn't, but Scully was doubled-hulled and had more 
sealed compartments than the Titanic.  He was never 
going to pound his way in, but sometimes he could 
seep.  

"I didn't know you still thought about it," she said. 
"We have Will and Em.  I thought you were happy."

"I am happy; very happy." He added another level to 
the castle walls before he spoke again. "If it would 
happen, though, I don't want you in danger again, and 
I'm not sure I could protect you.  I'm not even sure 
who I'd be protecting you from."

She glanced up quickly from her beach architecture, 
and his reflection in her sunglasses looked 
uncomfortable.  He was still using the cover story 
that hotel business had kept him busy until almost 
dawn, and she was still pretending she was buying it.

"If it would happen," he continued slowly, tamping 
down his new bucket of sand. "I'm not furthering some 
agenda.  If I can't keep you safe, I'd rather it 
didn't happen at all."

Emily returned lugging a plastic bucket of murky 
seawater, sloshing it over the sides and onto her 
canvas shoes.   

"It won't happen," Scully answered, emptying the 
bucket into moat and then heading to the shore for a 
refill.       

Will finally reappeared, bare-chested, carrying a 
soda, wearing his swim trunks, and looking like 
Trouble with a capital T waiting for a horizontal 
surface to happen on.  In Mulder's estimate, his son 
was still mostly all show and not much go, but it was 
getting to be a dangerous amount of show.             
 
"Mulder, can I bury you in the sand?" Emily asked, 
now bored with the sandcastle and reaching the four-
in-the-afternoon, day-at-the-beach stage where most 
of her energy was going toward fighting a nap. 

"Only if you do it head-first," Mulder agreed, 
watching Scully walk away. 

*~*~*~* 

Begin: A Moment In the Sun: Part VI 

*~*~*~*

"How is he?" Mulder had yelled over the din of the 
fans greeting the other players outside the stadium.  
No one even noticed him; they probably thought he 
was there to carry the luggage.  The driver finally 
turned off the bus engine and he could hear and 
breathe a little easier inside the phone booth. 
"How's my boy?"

"I'm fine, thank you for asking, Fox," Phoebe had 
answered, sounding tired.  She was at the payphone 
around the corner from their apartment, and in the 
background, he could hear Will whimpering and traffic 
slogging past.   

"I meant you too, honey.  You know that.  How's 
everything?"

"Where are you?"

"Detroit.  We just got here and we have a game in a 
few hours.  Lou Gehrig's not going to play, so I'm 
in the line-up; that means I'm batting.  Hitting."  

Someone tapped on the door of the phone booth and he 
turned, coming face to face with Lefty Gomez through 
the smudgy glass.  Lefty Gomez wanted to use the 
phone.  Mulder still mentally addressed his 
teammates using both their first and last names: 
Someone wake Bill Dickey; it's time for practice.  
Joe Gordon was next in line to use the john.  Lou 
Gehrig wasn't batting today; he wasn't feeling up to 
it.  These were the New York Yankees, for God's 
sake, and he felt like a kid who got on their bus by 
mistake while trying to get to his Aunt Greta's in 
Normal, Illinois. 

"Where is Detroit?"

"A long way from home.  Listen, someone else wants 
the phone.  Does William need anything?"

"He needs the rent paid, Fox."   

He looked around the cramped booth like he was going 
to find an easy answer. "Stall the landlord.  I 
won't get a check for another few weeks.  I don't 
think I can get an advance."

He couldn't; he'd already asked.  When he hit .300 
in The Show, they'd be glad to give him an advance.  
While he was still an untried rookie, he'd better be 
glad they were paying him at all.

"He said he's going to evict us from the flat if 
it's not paid by Friday.  I can't live like this, 
Fox." 

He turned his back to Lefty Gomez and the rest of 
the team and slouched over the pay phone. "Okay, 
I'll get it.  Don't worry.  I'll wire the money 
tonight and I'll call tomorrow morning at ten to 
make sure you got it.  Give my boy a kiss for me."

He waited for her to say something, but there was 
only the crackle of static over the long-distance 
line: she'd hung up.  He pushed the cradle down to 
end the connection and asked the operator to put 
another call through to his parents' number in 
Boston, fishing the last of the change out of his 
pocket.  He'd called when William was born, eager to 
tell them they had a grandson instead of the 
granddaughter Mulder had been expecting.  His mother 
had sent a bouquet of flowers with a hundred dollars 
cash inside the card: probably her secret cookie jar 
stash.  His father hadn't come to the phone.

"Rosa, it's Fox," he told the maid who answered. "I 
need to talk to Mom, please."

"She can't come to the phone, Mr. Fox," the old 
woman responded.

"Is she there, Rosa?"

"She and Mr. Mulder: they're both here.  She's not 
gonna be able to come to the phone no more, Mr. 
Fox."    

"Did Dad find out she talked to me?"   

There was silence on the other end of the line.

"Do you think he'll talk to me, Rosa?  It's 
important."

"No, I don't think so, Mr. Fox."

He opened the folding door of the phone booth and 
bent down pick up the suitcase he'd dropped, nodding 
politely at Lefty Gomez as though it was just 
another day.

Across the street from the stadium, a sign glowed in 
a dingy window, a beacon for sure things and last 
chances.

"You got a kid, Mister?" the nosy man behind the 
counter of the pawnshop had asked as Mulder slipped 
off his heavy wedding ring, weighing it in his hand.  
Gold was gold, but he was hoping a family man might 
get a slightly better deal. "How old?"

Providing they didn't fire him after his first game, 
the Yankees played Detroit again in a month; he 
could get the ring out of hock then.  Phoebe, 
miserable in the last months of her pregnancy and 
then exhausted and frustrated as a novice mother, 
was already accusing him of bedding every woman in 
the neighborhood.  Mulder hadn't even had sex on 
American soil yet - with Phoebe or otherwise - 
although he was still optimistic.  He wasn't sure 
how he'd explain coming home without his wedding 
band, but he'd think of something before he had to 
face his wife again.

At the time, he'd had no idea Phoebe and William 
wouldn't be there when he got home.

"He's three, almost four," Mulder had answered, 
laying it on the counter. "Months.  Three months." 

*~*~*~*

They must be back in Manhattan.  The car hit a 
pothole large enough to swallow a Volkswagen, 
jarring Mulder awake and reminding him where those 
five chilidogs with extra onions had gone.  

A damp beach towel was wadded under his cheek, but 
otherwise the back seat made a nice, if cramped, 
bed.  Raising his head, he saw Em still asleep on 
Will's lap in the front seat, her new cat clutched 
tight.  They'd found 'Kitten' prowling the parking 
lot as they were leaving and Emily had insisted he 
was homeless.  He was friendly and tolerant enough, 
so they'd agreed, but 'Kitten' was a misnomer for 
the grizzled old tabby.  He peaked out over the 
collar of Mulder's jacket, which was draped over 
Emily, surveying his new family with his one good 
eye.  Privately, Mulder thought the animal was on 
its last leg; he wasn't sure the cat had enough 
working appendages left to warrant a plural 'legs,' 
but Emily was in love.  Like her mother, she took in 
strays.

The sun had left Mulder and Will bronzed and drowsy, 
but Scully and Emily's fair skin was pink despite the 
sunscreen and hats and beach umbrella.  Will had one 
tanned arm around Emily and the other hanging out the 
window, talking easily with Scully as she drove.  

"You really put zucchini in it?" Will was saying, 
"That sounds horrible."

"It's like the carrots in carrot cake; you grate 
them fine and you can't really taste them," Scully 
responded. "You can add nuts or raisons or 
applesauce and some people even put in carrots or 
pears or pineapple.

"Carrots should only be eaten with peas.  Peas and 
carrots.  And zucchini shouldn't be eaten at all.  
It's bread?  How is it bread?"

Mulder smiled to himself, shifted contentedly, and 
settled back down to his nap.  Will would die if he 
thought anyone besides Scully could hear him blowing 
his cool cover.  Mulder was 'Daddy-O', but Scully was 
'Dana,' and she filled some maternal, big sister, 
intermediary, confidante role in his son's life.  If 
Will had a secret, and he had a file drawer full of 
them, Scully was more likely to know it than Mulder.
 
"It's a dark, moist cake baked in a loaf pan.  Your 
father likes it.  I don't think he realizes it has 
nutrition in it."

"Dad likes just about anything you do," Will said 
lightly, then turned to look out the open window.  
He raised his hand, opening his fingers so the cool 
air caressed them. "Did he tell you what happened 
this morning?"

"Yes, we talked about it."

"It wasn't her fault.  She's not like that, not 
usually.  I was being disrespectful.  Mother- Mother 
loves Dad as much as she hates him, and every time 
she looks at me and sees him, she hates me.  And when 
she sees him happy with you, she hates me even more."

Mulder knew how badly Scully wanted to say 'She 
doesn't hate you, Will' but she didn't. "Do you 
really think she feels that way?" she asked instead.

Will hesitated.  Poor kid; it couldn't be easy going 
through life as a helping verb. "No.  She doesn't 
hate me.  I don't think she even notices me most of 
the time.  Dad doesn't love her.  He never did.  She 
tries to make him pay attention to her, but all she 
does is annoy him.  He doesn't care about her, so 
it's easier for her to pretend I don't exist."

"You're still her son," Scully responded, a hint of 
anger creeping into her voice. 

"Like Emily's your daughter?"

"Yes," she answered softly.

"I'm sorry," he apologized immediately. "I shouldn't 
have said that.  Dad- Dad told me.  About Emily's 
father.  That he'd-" The passenger seat squeaked as 
Will shifted uncomfortably. "That he did something he 
shouldn't have."

Mulder closed his eyes as Scully glanced in the 
rearview mirror, her gaze hidden by her sunglasses.

"Dana-" The seat squeaked again. "He told me because 
I asked.  I didn't tell anyone.  And I won't.  Dad 
thinks you were very brave.  And so do I."
      
The car slowed, then made a gentle right turn.

"Last year, I didn't mean what I said about him and 
Mother getting together.  It wasn't true.  Not for a 
long time.  And I shouldn't have called you names.  
I was just angry.  I didn't mean that, either."

"I know."

He resettled Emily on his lap, then draped his arm 
out the window again.  As Mulder looked up, the 
skyscrapers whizzed past like giants peering down at 
the populace, keeping watch as the lazy sun slid 
into the dark formality of evening.  

"Do you mind if I live with you?  I'm won't be any 
more trouble."

"Do I mind?  Of course I don't mind; that's like 
asking Mulder if he minds if Emily lives with us.  
He's going to find a bigger place next week."

"We're going to need a house bigger than the one he 
has?  Is there something I should know?"
   
Scully cleared her throat, ignoring that. "Mulder is 
going to stay in New York with you, and once this 
semester is over, Emily and I are moving back here 
as well.  He's going to find a bigger apartment in 
Manhattan so you can stay at Packer.  There's no 
sense in you changing schools when you only have one 
more year.  And Emily's doctors are here."

"So you finally set a date?"

"I'm sure he wants to talk to you about that 
himself."

"I already accidentally overheard him talking to 
Mother this morning.  What about your school?  Are 
you transferring?"

"I'll finish this semester, and then take some time 
off and go back when I can.  I'm going to stay home 
with Emily for right now."  

"And with the baby?" There was another uncomfortable 
pause, more throat clearing, then Will meekly added, 
"Mother asked why you two were getting married. 
That's what started everything this morning."

"There's no baby; that's not why we're getting 
married," Scully answered almost too softly for 
Mulder to hear.

"He told Mother he wanted a little girl.  I guess I 
was just hoping…"    

"He said that to her?"

"Well, he said it last year in the hospital.  They 
were talking about why you uh, why you were, uh, 
gone for so long, and he was pretty doped up."   

Mulder leaned forward and slid his hand between the 
driver's seat and the door, caressing her hipbone as 
she drove.  Leaving one hand on the steering wheel, 
she laced her fingers through his and glanced in the 
rearview mirror.  She was still wearing sunglasses, 
so he couldn't see her eyes, but he could see his 
reflection in the lenses.

"Why can't you just go to school in New York?" Will 
persisted. "I don't think Dad would care, even after 
you're married."

"I'm not quitting school, I'm just taking some time 
off.  I want to be with Emily right now.  And with 
you," she quickly amended, stopping and putting the 
car in reverse to back into a parking space. "It's a 
fulltime job keeping up with you and your dad. 
Mulder, are you awake back there?"

Obviously awake, Mulder sat up and looked around, 
trying to figure out why they were parked in front of 
Phoebe's apartment building instead of The Plaza.   

"Will needs to get his book bag.  It has his report 
in it."

"It's due tomorrow," his son added, twisting sideways 
in the front seat. "I called from the beach and 
Mother didn't answer.  I don't think she's here.  I 
just need to go up and get it."

"You and that book bag." Mulder yawned, rubbing the 
towel indentions on his cheek. "Do you want me to go 
with you?"

Scully had a smug tilt to her chin, indicating that 
was what she had planned all along.  He curled his 
lip at her like that Elvis kid everyone was going 
crazy about; as if he hadn't lived thirty-nine fairly 
productive years on this Earth without her planning 
his every move.   

"All I need is my book bag.  And some clothes."

"Why can't you wear mine?" he responded, wanting to 
do this as quickly as possible. "Just for tomorrow." 

They already weren't going to be able to have dinner 
before the opera, and they were going to be late if 
they didn't hurry.  Mulder liked Faust, and he liked 
to get there early so he could be sound asleep on 
Scully's shoulder fifteen minutes into the first act.

Will smirked and silently outlined a square in the 
air with his index fingers. "Besides, the last time I 
borrowed your clothes, my shorts had 'Scully' written 
in them.  That's too weird to even think about."
       
It wasn't weird; it was the pair Scully slept in, and 
it was a joke, but as they got out of the car he 
murmured in his son's ear, "That's because those are 
the pair with the balls in them."

Will gaped at him, too taken aback to speak.  That 
should teach him to call his father 'sku-whah-air.'  
His son's stunned expression kept Mulder amused 
through the lobby and on the elevator and he was 
still grinning as Will unlocked the apartment door.

"I knew you must have left them somewhere," Will 
finally responded, taking six minutes to think up 
something witty.  Mulder swatted him gently on the 
back of the head, then tousled Will's picture-perfect 
hair like he was scratching for fleas. "Hey, stop it.  
What are yo-"

Will wound down like an old phonograph and came to a 
halt.  Phoebe was asleep on the sofa, still in her 
silk robe from that morning and showing more leg than 
a teenage boy needed to come home to.  

"She's here," Will whispered, demonstrating an 
amazing grasp of the obvious.

"Just go get what you need," he answered, closing 
the front door quietly.

While Will retrieved his book bag and a few shirts 
and pairs of slacks from his bedroom, Mulder got the 
blanket off Phoebe's bed to cover her.  He should 
just let her lie there and be cold, but old habits 
died hard.  Once an albatross necklace, always an 
albatross necklace.  

Draping the blanket over her, he noticed the open 
prescription bottle on the rug and, to his growing 
discomfort, a half-empty bottle of vodka. "Phoebe, 
you okay?" he asked tiredly, jostling her. "Phoebe?"              

She didn't respond, so he picked up the prescription 
bottle, noting it had been filled at the drugstore 
three days ago and was now empty.  He didn't know 
what 'Miltown' was, but he was betting she wasn't 
supposed to take all of it in three days.

Opening the window, he called for Scully to come up 
and saw her quickly get out of the driver's seat and 
pick up Emily. 

Pulse; she had a pulse.  And she was breathing, but 
only in little short, shhallow pants. "Don't you dare 
do this to Will!" he ordered, shaking her shoulders. 

"Is she okay?" Will asked from the hallway, coming to 
see what the commotion was about.

"What is this?" Mulder asked curtly, holding up the 
prescription bottle.

"Nothing.  She just needs some coffee and she'll wake 
up."

"What is it?" he barked.

"Tranquilizers; nerve pills."  

"How many does she usually take?"

"The doctor said to take one if she can't sleep."

That wasn't an answer. Will was an amateur pharmacist 
as much as he was an amateur bartender. It had always 
made Mulder uneasy that he could rattle off does and 
indications as quickly as Scully. "William, now!  
This isn't a game!"

"If they're 400's, she's not supposed to take more 
than four a day.  If she does, it makes her too 
groggy."

"What's an overdose?"

"Twenty-four hundred milligrams.  Six pills."  

"She won't wake up," Mulder told Scully as she came 
in, handing Emily off to Will and bending over 
Phoebe. "She took Miltown, 400 milligram tablets. 
There were two-dozen in this bottle three days ago 
and it's empty.  And vodka."

Dana Scully, meet Phoebe Mulder; Phoebe: Scully.   

"Put her on the floor: flat," Scully ordered, and 
Mulder shoved the coffee table out of the way and 
slid his arms under her knees and shoulders, easing 
her off the sofa.  Scully steadied her head, which 
lolled drunkenly. "Will, call an ambulance."  

"She just needs some coffee and she'll wake up," Will 
offered again, holding Emily in the background.

"Call an ambulance!" she ordered. "Now.  Do it now!"

*~*~*~*

"We'll keep her under observation for a few days, and 
then relocate her to a residential facility for long-
term treatment," the doctor was explaining, tapping 
his pen on his clipboard in a way that indicated he 
felt these big words were wasted on Mulder.  He was 
in charge of many important crazy people and he was 
in a hurry to get to them.

"You mean you'll commit her," Mulder said tiredly, 
leaning against the cool wall of the long, windowless 
hospital corridor. "You mean you'll put her in a 
mental asylum.  It was just an accident; she wasn't 
trying to commit suicide."

"Mr. Mulder, she swallowed four times the amount of 
tranquilizers needed to overdose: that's twenty-four 
pills. She then drank alcohol so she wouldn't vomit.  
What do you think she was trying to do?"

"I don't know," he mumbled. "I don't."

"Of course you don't.  We're the professionals.  
We'll take good care of your wife.  Don't worry.  
And I wanted to tell you: I'm a big fan of yours.  
Nobody smacked those balls like you did."   

Mulder had about a thousand responses to that 
statement, but none seemed worth the effort. "Is she 
awake?"

"She's groggy, but you can see her for a little bit."

Mulder stared at the wooden door for several seconds 
before he pushed it open and stepped into the room.  
He was tired: tired of her, tired of this game.  He 
wished he had a magic eraser so he could erase her 
from the picture and leave Will, but it didn't work 
that way.   

"Fox?" she said softly, turning her head to him, her 
pretty eyes glassy and unfocused.  This was the 
psychiatric ward and she was on a suicide watch; the 
straps around her wrists were fastened to the sides 
of the bed so she couldn't get up or hurt herself.  
The nurses had dressed her in a thin white gown that 
hit mid-thigh and showed some of the best legs in 
Manhattan and would have been sexy if it hadn't been 
so pitiful. 

"Some day, huh?" 

"I'm sorry.  I'm so sorry."

"I know; it was an accident."

"I didn't know you'd want him," Phoebe murmured 
slowly, blending the phrases together like sugar 
folding into meringue, "Give me money like… others.  
Didn't know you'd want to get married."

Mulder put his hands on his hips and rolled his head 
from side to side, trying to make sense of what she 
was saying. "Is that why you did this?  Phoebe, we 
haven't been married in a decade.  Scully's great 
with Will; why do you care if I marry her?"

"Nice guy: sweet, shy, rich.  Lonely.  Easy mark.  
But you wouldn't walk away, Fox.  Supposed to walk 
away- Stupid Yank.  Wasn't supposed to really get 
knocked up, but I could've fixed that."

"Phoebe, I don't understand."

His words didn't even seem to register in her hazy 
brain. "So nice.  Didn't want to be married, but- 
Nice to me.  Like I was worth something and you 
wanted the baby so much.  So, marry the rich chump," 
she rambled, slurring her words. "Wanted you to want 
me, but you didn't.  Just him," she mumbled, turning 
her face back to the wall. "Just him."
 
In the industrial-strength insanely white hospital 
room, his watch ticked loudly as seconds and then 
minutes passed.  Until he was sure she was asleep, 
Mulder was so still he could feel his pulse throbbing 
in his palms and the air passing over his lips as he 
breathed.  Then he backed slowly out of the room, 
blindly feeling his way as he went.  He slipped 
through the doorway as effortlessly as fog, and then 
pulled the door closed, feeling a little better as 
the latch clicked into place.    

"Are you all right, Mr. Mulder?" some young nurse 
asked when she almost walked into him.

"No."  

No, he was certainly not all right. 'All Right, 
Mulder' was a town outside of Normal, Illinois; he'd 
missed that bus a long time ago because of this 
woman.  When he was twenty-three, he'd gotten drunk 
and been sold a ticket to the suburbs of Hell, 
Michigan, while his luggage went to Lawyersville, New 
York.  He never had been good with maps and that 
layover in Intercourse, Pennsylvania had screwed up 
his sense of direction for too many years.

Scully had the car; if he was lost he could always 
call her to come get him.       
 
"Sit down," the little nurse said, looking ready to 
candy-stripe something as she dragged a chair into 
the hallway. "Your wife is going to be just fine.  
You don't need to wworry.  Sometimes it's just a 
little bit scary seeing her like that, but she'll get 
better.  Sit down, Mr. Mulder.  Your wife will feel 
much better tomorrow."

Mulder sat.  Good dog, Mulder: pat, pat. 

"She's not my wife; my wife is with the kids.  They 
were upset and Scully took them home.  She'll be back 
at seven," Mulder told Miss Candy-Striper from 
Happyland, Oklahoma. "Em has to see the doctor.  
She's sick."

"Then who is that?" She pointed at the closed door on 
the other side of the corridor with a perfectly oval 
fingernail.   

He exhaled and shook his head from side to side. "I 
have no idea."

*~*~*~*

Mulder took sinister pleasure in thwarting Miss 
Candy-Striper's mission to spread good cheer.  No, he 
wasn't hungry; no, he didn't want coffee; no, he 
didn't want to talk; no, he didn't want anything 
except to occupy his designated chair outside 
Phoebe's hospital room and wait for Scully and 
morning.  After repeated attempts at brightening his 
life, she finally gave up and went home at six a.m., 
which left Mulder a solid hour of wonderfully morose 
silence.      

No one else on the ward seemed to give a damn about 
him, and he liked it that way.  Until further notice, 
the bluebird of happiness had been replaced by the 
grizzled buzzard of malcontent.

Sneakers squeaked down the waxed hospital corridor 
and came to a stop in front of his chair with a final 
anxious yelp.  Once there, they started rocking back 
and forth as his son shifted his weight from the 
dingy canvas tips to the worn rubber heels and back 
again.  When Mulder didn't look up, the shoes 
eventually came to a standstill except for some 
nervous toe wiggling.

"So, how was Faust?" Will asked, sounding as if he 
was going eighty miles-per-hour in third gear.    

Without disturbing his Thinker pose, Mulder answered, 
"It was great.  Wonderful evening: the arias, the 
ambiance, the women in horned hats and steel 
underwear.  Hey Will, was there anything in your book 
bag you actually needed yesterday or was it just a 
ploy to check on your mother when she didn't answer 
the phone?"

The sneakers started rocking again.  Mulder's dark 
moods always made Will nervous, as though teenagers 
had cornered the market on angst, and being an adult 
was all sweetness and light.   

"Yeah, I thought so," Mulder mumbled.  He finally 
raised his head to see Will was holding Emily, still 
in her bunny-printed pajamas and looking tearfully 
unhappy. "Why aren't you in school?" he asked 
tersely, then repeated to Scully as she finally 
caught up with Will. "Why isn't he in school?"

Scully threw up her hands and tilted her head to the 
right, indicating the joyful series of events that 
had been the last twelve hours. "The same reason Em's 
still wearing her pajamas and almost brought Kitten 
to her doctor's appointment."

"The Gods are against you?"

"I'm beginning to think so."

"You're not the only one." Mulder stood, stretching 
his aching back. "She's okay, Will.  Your mother's 
just resting; just like she was when you called the 
nurses' station at one, and at three, and at five."  
He squinted at his watch. "It's seven, right?"

"Seven-oh-five," William corrected.  

"Yeah," he grunted, rubbing his eyes. "Anyway, the 
doctor just saw her and she's fine."

"My doctor?" Emily asked apprehensively.

"No, not your doctor," Scully said immediately. 
"Another doctor."

"I don't want to see my doctor," Emily insisted 
loudly, turning the nearby nurses' heads. "I don't 
like him."

"I know you don't," her mother responded, then 
exhaled like she was being deflated through her lips. 
"Mulder, I brought you clean clothes.  Come change; 
there's a nurses' lounge.  Will, watch Emily.  Fran," 
she asked a passing nurse, who seemed to be an old 
work acquaintance, "Could you keep an eye on them, 
please?"

"Sure, Dana," the woman answered, wrinkling her nose 
at Emily, who didn't wrinkle back.  After so many 
medical tests, Em distrusted anyone wearing white; 
even the milkman was under suspicion.   

Scully picked up the shopping bag she'd brought and 
walked away, not looking back to see if Mulder was 
following.  He was left standing in front of his son, 
Em, and the wrinkly-nosed nurse, looking less than 
master of his domain.  Pretty soon he'd be the little 
old man who stood outside the dressing room holding 
his wife's purse while she tried on bras.  

"William, watch Em for a few minutes," Mulder 
ordered, because Scully saying it wasn't sufficient, 
and then slouched down the hall after her.     

Will raised an eyebrow, but kept his mouth shut, at 
least until his father was out of earshot.
 
"Bad morning?" he asked her, closing the door of the 
nurses' lounge after them.

She looked at him like a disenchanted hero trying to 
decide if the villain was really worth the bullet or 
if she should just pistol-whip him and keep walking. 

"Bad morning?" she answered. "I had to drag Emily out 
of the hotel and into the car.  Literally, drag.  She 
doesn't want any more needles and I can't blame her, 
although the alternative- Will's been climbing the 
walls all night; he's upset and he thinks his 
mother's overdose was his fault.  No one has slept.  
No one ate breakfast except that damn stray cat, who 
then peed on the rug.  I yelled at The Plaza parking 
valet.  I had to make Will pull over and let me drive 
because he was running red lights.  That also 
involved yelling.  Then, he promised Emily a pony to 
get her out of the car and into the hospital.  I 
think I'm wearing two different shades of beige 
stockings.  Yes, you could say it's been a bad 
morning."  

"Any word about the, um, future of the bunny?"

She shook her head 'no,' which could mean the rabbit 
was in no mortal danger or could already have been 
sentenced to death; he didn't know. "Still no 
comment," she clarified, not wanting to discuss it. 
"What about you?  You have that 'show me to the 
scotch' look on your face, and that worries me."

"Me?  I have a 'look'?  You're late; I'm wearing the 
stupidest grin I own, sweetheart," he retorted, 
getting both ends of his mouth to tilt upward 
simultaneously and, with his stubbly beard and 
disheveled hair, looking like an evil scarecrow.     

Scully crossed her arms and leaned back against the 
dented lockers. "You.  You have a look.  She was your 
wife; I'm sure you're upset-"

"Ex-wife.  Ex.  Over.  Done with.  All she is to me 
is a check I sign every month and a giant pain in the 
ass."

She shook her head again, not buying his act.  

"I don't need you to come to my rescue and bandage my 
boo-boos.  I'm a big boy.  I'm fine."

"You're not fine.  You're so far from fine, you 
should have a sign around your neck warning people to 
keep their fingers clear of the cage because you may 
bite." 

He barred his teeth at her and growled, but she 
didn't look amused.

"All right; I'm not fine," he admitted sarcastically. 
"You could add up all my issues and have a decent 
Greek play.  It was my mother and her overly zealous 
toileting training.  I fear abandonment, indigestion, 
and big green bugs.  When rejected, I 
narcissistically self-destruct with women who remind 
me of my sister in order to reinforce my self-serving 
guilt complex.  I'm obsessive, self-centered, 
insecure, cynical, and still a closet romantic.  I 
read Robert Browning's poems, but I don't admit to 
liking them.  I'd wear women's shoes, but who can 
find tasteful spike-heeled, thigh-high boots in a 
size twelve?  I repress, project, displace, 
intellectualize, and sublimate, all in one swoop.  No 
one is ever more disappointed with me than me.  And I 
hate opera.  And zucchini bread: it's an aberration 
of nature.  There, I feel much better now.  Thank you 
for listening."
 
"Oh, for God's sake, what's wrong, Mulder?"  

He started to tell her, then hesitated, then didn't.  

When she asked again, he shrugged, feeling a 
dangerous kind of power and eye-of-the-storm calmness 
in not answering.  There was safety in smoldering 
fury.  It was as though he was wearing armor and 
nothing could hurt him unless he allowed it to.  He 
was bulletproof.  He could leap tall buildings in a 
single bound.     

"I know you and Phoebe got into it yesterday morning, 
but you can't possibly think her overdose was your 
fault."

"I don't.  For the first time in twenty-seven years, 
I don't think something is my fault.  In fact, I 
couldn't care less.  In fact, I wish we hadn't found 
her in time."

He shoved his hands deep in his pockets, fishing 
around for his super-human invincibility and only 
finding some blue lint.  He must have left his cape, 
tights, and phone booth in his other pants.  

"No, nothing's wrong at all.  All right: sit," she 
requested, backing him toward the sofa and beginning 
to unbutton the shirt he'd been wearing since Monday 
morning.  It still smelled of sand and ocean air and 
yesterday, like an innocent memory pressed and 
preserved between the pages of his mind. "Let's get 
you cleaned up and maybe you'll feel better." 

"Damn it, I can dress myself, Scully.  I'm not 
helpless." 

"I'm just trying to help," she answered angrily, 
jerking at his buttons. "I can do it faster than you 
can."

"I don't need your Goddamn help!" he barked at her, 
pulling away. "I don't need anybody's help."

Giving up, she sat on the torn vinyl sofa, putting 
her elbows on her knees and her forehead on her 
palms.  For a second, he thought she was going to 
cry, but she didn't. She just looked tired and alone.

"I'm sorry, honey; I didn't mean to yell.  I know 
you've had a long night." There was a little sink and 
mirror beside the nurses' lockers, and he rinsed his 
face, then stared at the lines around his eyes while 
she didn't answer him. "Sorry," he muttered again.
 
"Is it-"

"No.  Whatever you're going to guess, the answer is 
no." He stared through the man in the mirror and said 
angrily, "Phoebe went to bed with me so I'd give her 
money for an abortion.  That was it; that was the 
only reason she did it, except she accidentally got 
knocked up.  Really being pregnant wasn't part of the 
con," he almost spat, speaking as crudely as he felt. 
"And neither was me wanting to marry her.  Will's 
always told me she hates him and he's right.   She 
got stuck with a kid she never wanted in the first 
place and a husband she was trying to play for a 
chump, and I never had a clue."

"Does Will know this?"

"No, usually she tells him I got drunk and forced 
her.  When she was seventeen, according to Phoebe's 
math.  By my math, she was twenty-six." There was the 
Gregorian calendar, the Hebrew calendar, and the 
Phoebe calendar, which ran on dog years and vanity.

Scully came to him and, too tired to fight back, he 
let her hand stay on his shoulder as he leaned over 
the sink and rested his forehead against the cool, 
smeary mirror. 

"I'm so sorry," she said sadly.

"I guess I had a crush; she was pretty and fun and 
one of those girls who made you feel like everything 
you said to her was brilliant.  I knew she didn't 
love me, but I thought she at least liked me.  I did 
everything I could to make it up to her: I married 
her, I left school, I alienated my family." He tried 
to stop talking and couldn't; the words kept spilling 
out like spaghetti sauce boiling over onto the 
stovetop. "I keep thinking 'If she didn't want the 
baby, why didn't she just say so and make both our 
lives easier?'  And then I think of Will and I think 
'what kind of man am I that I could even think 
that?'"

"You don't have to love where a child came from to 
love the child," she said softly, rubbing his back 
through his wrinkled shirt.  

"Yeah," he muttered.  He turned around and buried his 
face in her hair, swallowing hard. "Why'd he hafta 
promise Em a pony?  Why not a puppy?  Where the hell 
are we gonna put a pony?" Mulder whispered to her, 
sniffing.
 
"Basement," she whispered back, holding him close.  

The buttons on the front of her dress pressed into 
his chest, and the crinolines under her full blue 
skirt sighed and compressed as he crushed her against 
him, afraid she might get away.  He ran his hands 
over her breasts and down and around her waist.  His 
fingertips still touched, but they wouldn't soon.   

"I hate her," he confessed, exhaling angrily. "I 
can't think of anything nasty enough to call her."

"I can, but I grew up around sailors."

His chest rumbled as he almost laughed, then sniffed 
again. "Sorry, honey.  I'm sure you didn't need 
anything else to deal with today."

"Emily sees Dr. Calderon at eight; we're supposed to 
be there at seven thirty to get ready."

"You're really going to try?"

"I'll try.  I'm not forcing her.  I'll cajole, I'll 
bribe, and I'll plead, though.  Will you be okay?"

He nodded, loosening his death grip on her body. 
"Yeah.  Yeah, I'll be okay.  Let me calm down, get 
some coffee, and I'll be up to help.  Tell Will to go 
with you and Emily, just in case."

"Just in case of what?"

He didn't answer.  He didn't know.

"I'll tell him," she answered.  Leaning back against 
the sink with his eyes closed, he felt her mouth 
lingering on his for a moment, then heard the door 
opening and closing as she left.

*~*~*~*  

He could have a hot, flavored beverage that didn't 
taste like coffee, didn't taste like cocoa, or didn't 
taste like chicken soup.  There were options for 
extra sweet and extra cream, but none for extra 
caffeine, which was what he needed.  Mulder stared at 
the buttons and rattled the change in his pocket, 
trying to decide.  

Behind him, someone dragged a chair across the floor 
to the vending machines with a jerky, nerve-wracking 
screech.  Thinking the next machine might have 
something better, Mulder looked over and saw a boy 
climbing on a metal folding chair to reach the 
selection buttons.

"Do you need help, buddy?" he asked out of habit, 
then realizing who it was said, "Gibson?  Wow.  It's 
good to see you again; I was worried about you."
 
"Hello, Mr. Mulder.  No, thank you, Mr. Mulder.  I 
don't need help," the solemn child responded, pushing 
the button for chicken soup.  A paper cup dropped 
down and began filling nosily.

Noting the boy was wearing hospital pajamas and 
slippers, Mulder offered, "Do you want me to carry 
that upstairs for you?" The children's ward was one 
floor above them and the stairs were just around the 
corner. "I'm going up anyway."

"No, thank you, Mr. Mulder."

"Okay.  Be careful then.  It's hot.  Wait and we'll 
ride the elevator together.  I'd like to meet your 
Mom and Dad."

As Mulder dropped his nickels in the slot of the 
first machine and pushed the buttons, Gibson climbed 
down from the second one and pushed the little door 
aside to get his cup.  The kid always had seemed to 
live inside his own head, so it didn't surprise him 
when Gibson politely said, "Goodbye, Mr. Mulder," and 
turned away.  

"Bye," Mulder answered.  They were going in the same 
direction; he could catch up later.  He didn't worry 
until he saw Gibson open a security door marked 'high 
voltage.' "Whoa; wait a second, buddy.  That's the 
wrong-"

He bolted through the door after Gibson, catching up 
with him in a narrow service corridor.  It sloped 
gently downward and grew gradually smaller until it 
disappeared into a pinpoint of light far in the 
distance. Overhead, rusting pipes and ductwork hung 
from the ceiling like post-modern spiders' webs, and 
water stains crawled down the cement walls. "You're 
not supposed to be back here.  Come on; I'll walk you 
upstairs."

"I'm supposed to be back here," he asserted.

"No, you're not.  You'll be in trouble.  Big 
Trouble," Mulder, not the disciplinarian of the 
house, added. "Where's your mother?  Your real 
mother?"

Gibson shrugged, fogging his glasses as he tried to 
sip his soup.

"Stop that.  You have parents somewhere.  You didn't 
come from Diana's Rent-a-Kid-to-Impress-Mulder store.  
Who takes care of you?"

From behind his steamed lenses, Gibson blinked in 
confusion.

"Who brought you to the hospital?  Why are you here?"

'And why aren't they watching you?' he wanted to ask.  
Diana had said her 'son' was six, but to Mulder he'd 
seemed closer to Em's age.  After that day in Central 
Park, he'd called the police to report a possible 
kidnapping, unsure of exactly how crazy Diana had 
been.  She was insane enough to bug his phone, and 
Gibson certainly wasn't her son.  After searching, 
the police had concluded no one named 'Diana Fowley' 
existed, nor did a missing child fitting Gibson's 
description.  They'd 'continue to investigate all 
avenues,' which was what detectives said when they 
had no idea and just wanted annoying, crazy people to 
go away.        

"Gibson, why are you in the hospital?" he repeated in 
frustration.

Blink.  Sip. "I live here."

Mulder relaxed, tilting his head from side to side 
and popping his neck. "Buddy, sometimes I feel like I 
do too.  Come on, let's go find your Mom and Dad." 

Sighing, Mulder took the cup so Gibson wouldn't burn 
himself and turned back to the door to the lounge.    

When he tried the knob, it was locked. "Oh, damn it," 
he muttered under his breath. 

"I drink all the soup first and then eat the noodles 
out of the bottom of the cup," Gibson said as though 
someone had asked a question.

"What?" Mulder asked, jiggling the knob again.

"You wondered what I was doing at the vending 
machines.  I like the chicken soup.  Not the hot 
chocolate, though.  All the cocoa sinks to the bottom 
and makes icky black sludge.  Mr. Mulder, can I have 
my cup back?"

"Yeah; here.  Stay right here." He handed it back 
while he looked for a way out.  There were several 
identical doors, but each one he tried was locked.  
While he jiggled and cursed, Gibson turned away again 
and ambled down the dim hallway. "Gibson!  Come back- 
Damn it!"

Gibson had opened a door opposite and a few yards 
down from the one they'd come through.  Mulder had 
tried it, but it must have been stuck.  Not knowing 
what else to do, he groaned and went after the boy 
again and found himself in some sort of medical 
laboratory or exam room.  

The room was so cold he expected to see his breath 
forming white clouds in front of his mouth.  
Experiments had been set up to run overnight, and 
amber liquid drained slowly through glass coils and 
into flasks.  Metal cabinets lined an entire wall and 
low stainless steel tanks punctuated another, their 
metal sides covered with frost.  The tanks were 
refrigeration units, probably, given the hum of the 
compressors attached to them.  In the center of the 
lab was an operating or examination table bordered by 
trays of surgical instruments and equipment.  Above 
the table, an adjustable spotlight glared down, 
illuminating nothing. 

"No one's here, Mr. Mulder," Gibson assured him, 
crossing the tile floor in his slippers. "No one 
comes until eight."

"We still can't be here," he insisted, trying to 
figure out where 'here' was.  They'd had Emily in 
this hospital so many times he thought he had the 
place memorized, but Mulder hadn't seen this area 
before. "I mean it," he added.           
 
Gibson sipped his bullion as he crossed the room, 
seeming to know where he was going, but fogging his 
glasses again in the process.  While he stopped to 
wipe them on the hem of his pajama top, Mulder tried 
the door at the back of the lab and found it was also 
locked.  Getting increasingly angry, he tried the 
front door they'd come in and it was bolted as well.  
It must have locked automatically when they entered.   

"Great.  We can't get out.  Maybe there's a phone."

The doorknob turned easily under Gibson's hand, and 
Mulder's stomach started to get nervous.   

"Where are we?" he asked sternly, propping the door 
at the back of the lab open with his foot and putting 
his hand on Gibson's shoulder to stop him.  Outside 
the door, bare light bulbs sputtered every fifty 
feet, revealing another identical cement hallway 
lined with unmarked black doors.  It was also cool, 
but damp, as though they were underground.  It 
reminded Mulder of a beehive with all the bees away; 
it had the same empty stillness of activity on hold. 
"Gibson, stop playing games.  We're not supposed to 
be down here."    

"I am."

"You are?  You're supposed to be here?" Mulder asked 
in confusion. 

"No, not right here.  This is the Dr. Calderon's lab.  
My room is down the hall, but I can open the door.  
It's a secret.  They don't know I can do it."

Keeping his hand on the doorknob, Mulder squatted 
down so he and boy were eye-to-eye. "You must be in 
the same research project as a little girl I know," 
he said sympathetically. "She doesn't like the 
needles either.  Are you sneakin' out, buddy?"

"No, I'm not a hybrid.  I was born this way, like 
you.  Mr. Mulder, can we feed the ducks again 
sometime?"

"A-a hybrid?"

Gibson nodded. 

Stunned, he leaned back, propping open the door like 
a human doorstop.  Every few seconds, he glanced up 
at Gibson, who waited patiently. "A hybrid," he 
repeated. "A hybrid with what?"

"With Them.  Mr. Mulder: the ducks?"

"Sure," he mumbled.  

His 'Them' were the same as Gibson's 'Them.'  He 
found that strangely comforting: there really was a 
'Them,' whatever the hell 'Them' was.  Were.  Anyway, 
he wasn't just flypaper for brunette fruitcakes.  
Diana was a 'Them;' something to keep him occupied 
and away from Scully.

It was a Picasso: all the important features were 
there, but shuffled together into a confusing 
mishmash.  Once someone told Mulder what he was 
supposed to see, it was obvious, but until then all 
he saw was an anatomical tossed salad.  Once he had 
the magic Them decoder ring, the pieces started 
falling into place; all he needed was some time to 
think.  

"It's the implantation room."

"What is?  To implant what?" Mulder thought he asked 
aloud, but might not have.  Reality was getting 
disjointed.  If the world had been a merry-go-round, 
he'd have knelt at the edge and pushed with his foot 
to get it moving a little faster.

He looked back at the operating table and noticed 
stirrups at one end like doctors used as women gave 
birth.  These, though, had straps so the patient's 
legs could be tied apart.  Further up were two more 
straps to fasten wrists down.  Doctors didn't allow 
fathers in delivery rooms, but he couldn't imagine 
four-point restraints being standard issue.

"They're coming.  She needs you," Gibson said in his 
toneless way, always sounding like he was relaying 
bulletins from his own private radio. 

"Who's coming?" he asked.  He scrambled to his feet, 
looking up and down the corridor for the bad guys. 
"Who needs me?"

"The girl and the woman from the park."  
 
Heart pounding, Mulder hurried after Gibson, who 
again opened the door at the front of the laboratory 
with no problem. 

"That was locked.  How did you do that?"  

The boy didn't respond, but crossed the hallway and 
opened the original 'high voltage' security door that 
had led them through the looking glass in the first 
place.  He moved aside to let Mulder rush past him, 
instinctively reaching for a revolver that hadn't 
been on his hip since WWII.

And suddenly Mulder was back in Normal.  The glaring 
lights over the coffee machines and the smell of 
sticky-sweet pastries were overwhelming in comparison 
to the mechanized sterility of the laboratory and the 
stale air of the catacomb of service corridors.  

"You didn't put any money in the vending machine," he 
realized, feeling disoriented as he turned back to 
look at Gibson. "You can work the machines somehow, 
just like you can open those locks.  And you answered 
questions I was only thinking.  How is it you can 
make the coffee machine work without coins, but you 
had to push the button to choose soup?" 

He shrugged. "I just like to push the button.  
Goodbye, Mr. Mulder," he said politely, quickly 
closing the metal door.  

"No, wait-" he said desperately as the latch clicked 
into place.  

Mulder tried the door, but it was locked.  He 
listened, but there was only the air conditioner 
blowing through the overhead vents and the distant 
cacophony of voices in the hospital lobby.  

"Open the door, Gibson!  Come on, buddy…"

Damn it, he'd had a clue: something tangible he could 
hold in his hand and feel growing warm under his 
fingers like a woman's body.  It was there; concealed 
by steel plate and hinges and hiding in plain sight.  
He'd put the border of the jigsaw puzzle together and 
now he just needed to fill in those tricky middle 
pieces. 

Bad guys.  He needed bad guys.

He pounded on the door with his fist until people 
started wandering in, looking at him warily, and 
backing away.   

His watch said seven nineteen; barely any time had 
passed at all.     

His coffee, extra cream, no sugar, since he'd 
probably share with Scully, was waiting in the 
dispenser behind the little plastic screen.  Prowling 
the room, Mulder drank it carelessly, burning his 
mouth, and then ran his tongue along his teeth, 
comforted by the unpleasant, familiar sensation.  
 
Beginning to doubt himself, he looked around the 
lounge nervously, waiting for someone to jump out and 
yell 'April Fool!'     
 
How many hours had it been since he really slept? 
He'd spent last night in the emergency room and the 
psych ward with Phoebe, and the night before that at 
Yankee Field with Frohike. Forty-eight hours?  Sixty?  
The universe was just starting to get a little 
unfocused.  It was just a paranoid, self-serving 
hallucination.  It was all perfectly explicable and 
related to some hard to pronounce medical condition 
Scully would know.    

He tried the security door one last time, found it 
locked, then stared curiously at the metal folding 
chair still in front of the vending machine.  Picking 
up his coffee, he started to take the elevator, then 
decided the stairs would be faster.
                
*~*~*~*

As he stepped out of the stairwell and saw Will and 
Scully, with Emily in her arms, walking toward him, 
he realized it was the beginning and the end.  

Mulder didn't often think of how much taller he was 
than Scully: she didn't seem as small as she looked. 
He and Will were roughly the same height and build, 
though, and she looked so small beside him.  She was 
saying something, and Will tilted his head down, 
listening, then nodded in understanding.  Whatever it 
was, Will would handle it.  Watching his son walking 
slightly behind her, jaw set and head high, he was 
seeing the end of a boy and the beginning of a man.  
It made him proud, but sad, mourning the childhood 
moments that would never come again.   

Emily's face was flushed; she'd been crying again, 
and her mother had the same determined expression as 
Will.  And they were leaving.   

Mulder and Scully had already discussed it; whether 
it was worth putting Em though this every month: if 
all the shots and trauma and tears made enough 
difference to bother.  She wouldn't get better; every 
doctor they'd seen had been specific about that.  Dr. 
Calderon managed to slow the progress of the disease, 
but the side effects of his treatments made her just 
as sick as the mysterious auto-immune anemia, and she 
dreaded the hospital.  They'd spent many late nights 
talking about it, about when to stop fighting.  This 
morning, it was time to stop.

"Where've you been?" Will asked tersely, sounding 
paternal.

"Chasing rabbits.  Are we going somewhere?"

Will nodded, and as Mulder got closer, he saw 
Scully's eyes were slightly bloodshot and her cheeks 
were damp. Emily was curled against her chest, 
sniffing, and refusing to look up.  

"I can't do this," Scully said hoarsely.  

"Do you want me to try?"  

Emily liked the 'I get a shot; Mulder gets a shot' 
game.  Not as good as 'Bub gets a shot and Bub gets 
another shot,' but close.  The bandage on the back of 
Will's hand indicated they'd already played that one 
while unsuccessfully trying to get Em to let them put 
her IV in.

"No, I want to go home."

"Okay," he said quietly, putting his arm around her 
shoulder. "We go home."

"I can't do this to her," she repeated shakily. "I 
won't let this be her life.  She deserves to be a 
little girl."  

"Okay.  We're going right now," Mulder assured her.  
Without being asked, Will took Emily from Scully.  
Temporarily relieved of her burden, Scully leaned 
into Mulder as though they could merge into one, 
mindless of anything else around them. "Right now," 
he reiterated, stroking her hair and the hot skin on 
the back of her neck. "We're taking her home."

"Miss Scully!" Dr. Calderon curtly, probably having 
been alerted by his nurses. "What is the meaning of 
this?  Is there a problem, Miss Scully?"

"There's no problem; we're just leaving."

"I wasn't addressing you, Mr. Mulder.  Miss Scully, 
let's speak in my office." 
  
Scully's back rose and fell as she took a deep 
breath, then composed herself, squared her shoulders, 
and answered, "We're taking her home. I'm withdrawing 
my daughter from your project."

"It's not that simple, but I can see you're upset.  
Let's speak privately.  Right this way, please.  
Right this way, please," he repeated firmly.

When Dr. Calderon said 'privately,' he probably 
hadn't meant 'with Fox and William Mulder looming 
behind her like barely tamed guard dogs,' but that 
was what he got.  He could take it or leave it.

"You're a nurse, Miss Scully," he said, sliding into 
the oversized chair behind his desk and leaning 
forward, sympathetically folding his hands. "You're 
aware of the repercussions of withholding treatment, 
even for a short period.  Your daughter is very ill 
and very valuable to our research.  I'm sure we can 
reach some mutually beneficial agreement."

When that offer didn't get a nibble, Dr. Scanlon 
added, "I can assure you the consequences of this 
hasty decision will be," he paused to purse his lips, 
"dire.  To everyone involved."

"Don't threaten me," she responded evenly, getting up 
from her chair. "How do I know what you're doing 
isn't making her sicker?"

"I can assure you it isn't.  It's the only thing 
between her and," he did that annoying lip-pursing 
thing again, "the inevitable.  I would say what 
you're doing, withholding medical treatment, 
constitutes child abuse.  You're the mother of an 
illegitimate child and you're living with an 
alcoholic womanizer who's already lost custody of his 
own son.  I believe criminal charges were filed 
against you last year for having an abortion.  Is 
that correct?  Those charges were dropped, but I can 
see how a judge might not be sympathetic to your 
position now, given your questionable history."

If Will hadn't been 'in the know' about all the dirty 
laundry before, he was then.  Mulder shook his head, 
speaking for the first time since they entered the 
opulent office. "Don't try it; my lawyer will bury 
you."

Calderon ignored him and continued addressing Scully. 
"You must understand that you can't just walk away 
from the project."

"Watch me," Scully responded, growing larger.  

A side door opened and two men slid out of the 
proverbial woodwork, one nursing his cigarette.  Dr. 
Calderon pushed back from his desk, distancing 
himself.

Mulder tensed.  Smokey probably wasn't at the 
hospital because he volunteered to read to sick kids 
in his spare time.  The hair on the back of his neck 
bristled as though a storm was approaching.    

"Mr. Mulder," the smoking man nodded, leaning against 
the edge of the doctor's expensive desk. "Miss 
Scully.  Is there a problem?"

"No problem.  We were just leaving," Mulder 
responded, reaching for Scully's hand. 

"I'm sure we can reach some agreement," the old man 
echoed casually.  He leaned close, blowing smoke in 
Scully's face. "Very sure."  

The smoking man didn't move, but his goon did, 
blocking Will and Emily's path to the office door. 

"What are you doing?  Who do you think you are?  This 
is a hospital, not a prison," Mulder argued. "Anyone 
can seek or refuse medical treatment.  We're 
refusing.  To Hell with your study."

"We've invested a significant amount of time and 
money in this child," Dr. Calderon piped up, 
personifying the word 'pipsqueak.' "She's worth a 
great deal to us."

"Bill me," Mulder snapped.

Smokey smiled so coldly Mulder shivered.

There was a flash of silver as the goon drew and 
raised a gun, pointing it directly at Will's head.      

Sound stopped and seconds stretched into hours.  

Will froze, holding Emily tightly against him.  His 
terrified brown eyes cut sideways at the gun and then 
at his father as his chest swiftly rose and fell.  

Mulder saw, but didn't hear Goon cock the pistol, 
pulling the hammer back with his callused thumb.  He 
leveled the barrel inches from the hair Will was so 
fond of fixing and waited for the order.  

The world became a series of stark, silent black and 
white textures, like an Ansel Adams photograph. 
'Don't hurt him, don't hurt him, don't hurt him,' 
Mulder prayed silently.

Goon hesitated, shifting his weight between his feet 
as he adjusted his stance.

Will trembled, but he didn't blink.  

Mulder saw a tear trickle out of the corner of his 
son's eye as Emily hid her face against his shirt, 
gripping fistfuls of the soft cotton fabric.

The expensive clock on the wall finally ticked, the 
brass pendulum swinging with perfect Swiss precision, 
and color flooded back into the world.  Mulder could 
see it: it was blood red.  He'd always wondered what 
color true red was.  It was the color a father saw 
when someone threatened his child.

The only muscle Mulder purposely moved was his 
diaphragm to breath, and only because that was 
necessary.  He could feel his heartbeat in his ears 
and his fingertips tingling with fury, ready for 
battle.  With the static intensity of a soldier, he 
waited, which was a thousand times more difficult 
than attacking.  

"Think this through, Miss Scully," a distant voice 
rasped. "Would he ever forgive you if something 
happened to his son?" 

Inhale.

The smoking man leaned even closer until his lips 
almost brushed her cheek. "We don't want the boy.  
Tell Mulder to take him home, Miss Scully.  Let them 
walk away while they still can."  

Exhale.

Smokey glanced down at her abdomen, his eyes 
caressing her body like a lover's hands. "I know your 
secret," he added dramatically.

Inhale.

"And I know yours," she responded coolly. 

"Don't play games with me, little girl," he hissed.

Exhale.

She didn't flinch as she added, "And I can prove it."

He shook his head, not believing her. 

Inhale.

"A majestic December day in Central Park," she 
answered, sounding like she was quoting something. 
"Miss Scully carries a blue book with a paperclip 
marking her favorite chapter." She paused, tilting 
her head back defiantly.

Exhale.

"Check," she breathed. "Your move."   

Inhale.

The smoking man recoiled, surprised, and Mulder threw 
his cup of scalding coffee in the goon's face, 
grabbed the gun, and shoved Will and Scully through 
the door in front of him.  

"Run!" he ordered them.

He turned back and kicked Goon hard in the ribs, 
hearing and feeling the bones give. "Don't you ever-   
You son-of-a-bitch!" Mulder shouted at him, grabbing 
Goon by the hair and slamming his head against the 
floor.  It made a dull, satisfying sound, like a 
melon splitting as it hit the sidewalk.

"Dad!" Will yelled from halfway down the hall.       

"Down the stairs," Mulder yelled back, following, and 
disappointed he didn't get to break as few of old 
Smokey's bones as well.

As they pounded down the metal stairs, the alarm 
sounded for hospital security, and there was the 
heavy sound of the men's shoes chasing after them.  
They burst into the lobby and rounded the corner, 
only to be intercepted by a hapless security guard.  
Mulder punched him in the jaw and kept running, 
chalking up his second assault charge of the morning.  
At the hospital doors were a half-dozen more guards, 
and he could see red and blue lights flashing through 
the lobby windows as the patrol cars arrived outside.

Whirling around, he grabbed Scully's wrist and 
ordered Will to head for the vending machines. "Open 
the door, open the door, open the door," he chanted, 
hearing the footsteps getting closer.  Scully started 
to falter and he put his arm around her shoulders, 
keeping her moving.  Saying a final silent prayer, he 
jerked the knob and the 'high voltage' door opened.   

"I can tell you where your sister is," the smoking 
man said breathlessly, bracing one hand on the coffee 
machine as he gasped and coughed. "She's alive, 
Mulder.  Or I can destroy you."

Mulder hesitated less than a heartbeat, then followed 
Will and Scully into the musty corridor, closing the 
steel security door firmly after him.  

He panted, bracing his hands on his knees as he tried 
to catch his breath and makes some sense of whatever 
had just happened.

Scully leaned back against the damp cement wall, 
looking pale and disoriented. 

"Honey, are you-" 

Mulder grabbed her shoulders as she slid slowly to 
the floor, fainting.  Emily started crying again, and 
Will tried to shush her, jiggling her nervously. 
Under the bare light bulb swinging dizzily from the 
ceiling, as he picked Scully up, his watch read seven 
twenty-six.

*~*~*~*

Either a hundred and ten pounds of pretty woman was 
heavier than it used to be or he was getting old.  
Mulder paused to adjust his grip on Scully's limp 
body, trying to find a way he could hold her that 
didn't make his arms ache.   

"Where are we going?" Will asked, shifting Em against 
his chest.  He'd gotten her to stop crying, and now 
she was just terrified into silence.    

In the distance, more men were shouting and more 
boots were pounding angrily against the hard floor.  
The lynch mob sounded as if it had gained a few more 
supporters and caught the scent of blood.   

"Keep going," Mulder ordered, commanding his feet to 
start moving again.   

They were underground; that was all his senses told 
him.  Having no idea where the tunnels led, they 
tried every knob they passed and entered any room 
they found unlocked.  It was an unscientific system, 
but so far it had kept them ahead of Them, and that 
was what counted.  

Will seemed to think there was a plan.

Actually there was.  It was 'we don't die today.'  
The rest was details.  

The first open door had been Dr. Calderon's lab, 
which was either some sort of hub or Gibson's 
favorite shortcut, then another corridor, then a 
series of archives with shelves of boxes to the 
ceiling, and now another identical corridor.  Gibson 
could be carefully, remotely directing their escape 
or they could be circling mindlessly like cattle 
being steered toward the slaughterhouse; he didn't 
know.              

"This one's unlocked," Will whispered thankfully, and 
braced the door open with his foot while Mulder 
carried Scully inside.  His son stopped short, mouth 
agape, and the door banged closed behind them, 
announcing their location and almost certainly 
locking them in.  Will pulled Emily a little tighter 
against him, protectively cradling her head in his 
hand.

Holding Scully in his arms, Mulder pivoted in a 
gradual, stationary circle, trying to take it all in.  
He could see it, but he couldn't process what he saw.  
If much of the morning had been surreal, then this 
room was pure science fiction.   

"You know, I understand the doctors being angry at 
Dana pulling Em from their research study," Will 
murmured. "That made sense.  And you did hit those 
men.  I'm a little uncertain as to why there's a 
concrete maze down here, or how you know where we're 
going, but I thought I'd ask later.  When people 
aren't chasing and pointing guns at me.  But, 
Dorothy," his son said deliberately, almost 
reverently, "I don't think we're in Kansas anymore."    

There were dozens of high tables, each containing a 
woman's heavily pregnant, nearly nude, sleeping body.  
IV's dripped into their arms, and tubes, oxygen, 
Mulder guessed, ran into their mouths.  Each had her 
groin and chest covered with light blue fabric, but 
her swollen abdomen exposed.  From the ceiling, long, 
needle-like probes extended downward and into their 
stomachs.       

*'A needle going into my belly.  And a drill like a 
dentist would use,' he remembered Scully's sleepy 
voice telling him after he woke her from a 
nightmare.*  
 
"What are they doing down here, Dad?"

*'They're building a better human: smarter, 
healthier, more athletic,' Frohike had speculated 
last year, 'And they're doing it against people's 
will.'*  

"I think," he said uncertainly, "They're making 
babies."

"I don't think - and I'm not telling you how I know 
this - but I don't think this how people normally do 
that," Will responded.

*'She's an experiment,' Scully had whispered when 
he'd insisted she tell him what was wrong with Emily. 
'And the experiment, for her, failed.  She's 
something that was never meant to be.'*   

Mulder had a pounding in his temples he was blaming 
on his lack of sleep and a queasy stomach he 
attributed to the bad ccoffee he hadn't drunk. "Just 
keep walking, Will.  Don't think; just keep moving."

*'They took the baby,' she'd sobbed Christmas night, 
not really awake. 'You hate me.'*

Under the blue-black lights, the room was completely, 
eerily silent.  The women didn't move; didn't even 
seem real.  As they reached the last row, one's belly 
shifted suddenly, and Will jumped away like he'd been 
burned.

"It's the baby.  The baby's kicking," Mulder assured 
him, but his son didn't look comforted.    

*'You really think any government would just throw 
away decades of research attempting to create a 
super-soldier?' Frohike had asked, lying back in the 
grass with him in Yankee Field and staring up at the 
stars. 'There are whispers that we didn't; that we 
brought the Nazi and Japanese scientists to the US 
and put them to work in our labs, on our agendas, and 
now we've had ten years to perfect the science.'*

He didn't think either of them breathed again until 
Will tried the knob on the metal door at the back of 
the room and it turned.  Mulder looked back, assuring 
himself he'd just seen what he thought he'd just 
seen.  

*'Of course, Mulder,' Scully had told him, walking 
out of his bedroom at The Plaza after the first time 
they'd made love. 'It all sounds so silly.  Of 
course, I would make up a story like that instead of 
just picking out a late husband off a tombstone.'*

In the next corridor, the cement walls widened and 
were bordered by row after row of what looked to be 
steel card catalogues used in libraries.  For a 
while, he read the labels on the drawers: years 
beginning with 1947 and a code of letters.  
 
*'Except that my part was a joke: they had me 
maintaining medical records and storing tissue 
samples," she'd said of her time in the Army, 'I 
never laid a finger on a live person. Within a few 
months I started getting sick and fainting and the 
doctor said I was going to have a baby.'*

1949 DKS-ALK.

Files: lots and lots of files.  They started to blur 
as he passed them, carrying Scully and concentrating 
on keeping his feet moving.  

1954 DKS-FWM.

*'Then, they have files that have something to do 
with vaccinations for anyone I thought to ask about: 
me, you, your sister, the President, Hoover, 
everyone,' Frohike had told him.*  

Eventually the cabinets stopped, as did the light 
bulbs overhead, and there was only smooth darkness.  
He could hear his and Will's feet moving, and Em and 
Scully's soft breathing; his plan was still working.  

"You still back there, Dad?"

From behind him, Mulder responded that he was, 
feeling Scully's arms tighten around his neck.   

"We're out of hall," Will informed him uncertainly. 
"Wherever we were going, we're there."

Mulder squatted down and gently set Scully against 
something solid, feeling brick instead of cement.  
He stood, suppressed a groan, and ran his hands over 
the walls in search of some way out. 

"I'm open to suggestions."

"I suggest we hurry," Will answered, listening to the 
approaching voices.  Their pursuers were close enough 
that Mulder could see their flashlights, pinpoints of 
light bobbing in the distance.  

He checked the pistol.  As far as he could tell, it 
had a full clip: six bullets.  It sounded like more 
than six people were after them, though, and there 
was nowhere for Will, Em, and Scully to get out of 
the line of fire.  He flicked the safety off, just in 
case.

*'Those men will kill you and not think twice,' 
Scully had promised himm ages ago. 'I shouldn't have 
told you.'*  

"Up," he decided, seeing a stray beam of light glance 
off a rusted metal bar. 

"Up?"

"Up," Mulder confirmed, exploring the iron rungs 
fastened into the brick about seven feet from the 
floor.   

As the lights and voices closed in, Will told Emily 
to hold on to his neck tightly, put his hands on the 
bottom rung and pulled himself up.  Propping Scully 
on her feet, Mulder listened to him climb into the 
darkness above them.

"There's a manhole cover," he called down, and metal 
squealed nosily over asphalt as he pushed it aside.  
Mulder squinted into the sunlight, seeing the 
particles of dust floating through the yellow air. 
The sun seemed foreign, as though days had passed 
while they were underground. "It's an alley: come 
on," Will ordered, leaning over the manhole and 
partially blocking out the sun. "Hurry up."

"Scully, honey, you have to wake up," he tried, 
jiggling her.  She'd been semiconscious for several 
minutes, and she opened her eyes, trying to focus on 
him. "I can't lift us both.  I'm going to lift you 
up.  Grab a rung and hang on.  I'll be right behind 
you.  You understand?"

She nodded.

As the flashlight beams got close enough to be faint 
rays instead of pinpricks, he put his arms around her 
hips and lifted her up, feeling the weight against 
his shoulder lessen slightly as she grabbed the bars.  
Will came back to help, and a few seconds later they 
were sitting in an alley behind a row of rundown 
stores and dreary restaurants.  

Mulder helped Will slide the manhole cover back into 
place, then looked around again, trying to figure out 
where they were.  Someone had knocked over a 
trashcan, and empty tin cans and limp newspapers 
littered the alleyway.  The place was overwhelmingly 
real.  It smelled of soured milk and wet cardboard 
and coffee grounds: like used things.  

"Third Avenue," Will answered the unspoken question. 
"That's the Third Avenue El, I think," he said, 
pointing up.  Overhead, the elevated subway tracks 
cut the morning sky in two. "I think we're a few 
blocks behind the hospital."

On the oil-stained, gritty asphalt, Scully clutched 
her daughter, arms shaky but eyes vigilant.  She ran 
her fingers through Em's sweaty blonde hair and 
murmured softly, trying to sooth the frightened girl, 
but all the while watching the shadows like a hunter 
watches the horizon.

"We need to keep moving," Mulder said, switching the 
pistol from the back waistband of his pants to the 
front.  In the tunnel below them, he could hear men's 
voices shouting in confusion.  

Even in New York, people looked at them oddly as they 
hurried up the steps to the station.  Families 
generally didn't get on the subway looking like war 
refugees from the land of Casual Sportswear.  Mulder 
ignored the stares and found Scully a seat among the 
commuters, putting Emily on her lap.  

The last passengers crowded in and doors of the 
subway car closed.  And they waited.  

"Move, move," he prayed under his breath, talking to 
the driver somewhere far down the tracks. "Move," he 
pleaded.

His shoulders and arms were so tired they trembled.  
His right fist was sore; the knuckles bruised where 
he'd hit the hospital guard.  All Mulder had done was 
knock him out, but that goon might or might not get 
up again, which would make Mulder a murderer.  Self-
defense, Byers would claim, although it wasn't.  
The need for self-defense had ended when Mulder had 
grabbed the goon's gun.  The rib-breaking kick and 
head banging had just been for the primal, teeth 
barring pleasure of it.  

*'Are you a murderer, a rapist, or a mobster, Mr. 
Mulder?' Scully had asked him the morning he'd first 
followed her home, planted himself on her front 
stoop, and refused to leave. 'Married, insane, or a 
communist?'*

Scully held Emily close, watching the men shoving 
through the workday crowd to get up the metal steps 
to the platform.  Smokey was with them, pointing 
frantically at the El and yelling.  Scully flinched 
back against her seat, and Mulder put his hand on the 
gun in his waistband, drawing more curious looks.

*'You don't understand, Mulder: there's nothing wrong 
with me,' she'd told him as he'd pleaded with her to 
stay, telling her he'd make everything right. 
'There's nothing wrong with my daughter.  You're 
welcome to love us, but we don't need you to fix 
us.'*  

Beside Mulder, Will held tightly to the overhead rail 
and stared out the window, watching a group of men in 
suits cursing as the subway car slid away from the 
station.  Mulder put his hand on his son's shoulder 
and Will startled at the touch, like a soldier who'd 
seen one too many horrors.  In Will's air-
conditioned, prep school, freshly starched-and-
pressed world, this wasn't happening.   

*'There will be a price, Mulder,' she'd promised him. 
'So what do you think I'm worth?'*

Mulder grabbed for the rail as the car lurched 
forward.  As the El settled into its slow, slapping 
pace along the tracks, he rested his forehead against 
the round glass window of the door, letting the train 
take him downtown.  

On the other side of the glass, Smokey and his men 
watched from the edge of the platform.  Smokey threw 
down his cigarette, grinding it disgustedly into the 
grate with the well-polished toe of his shoe.

*'If you keep asking questions, it doesn't matter who 
you are.  They will get to you,' she'd assured him.*

Scully reached out, weaving her index finger through 
his belt loop and leaning her pale cheek against his 
hip.  He rested his hand on her head, stroking her 
hair absently.  His watch, when he squinted to look 
at it, said seven forty-eight.
  
*~*~*~*

They needed help.  Mulder was too tired to see 
straight, and Will was acting like he'd convinced 
himself this was a 3-D movie.  It looked real, but 
that was just the funny glasses.  Scully was normally 
great in emergencies: gunshot wounds or small kitchen 
fires, but she seemed stunned, keeping one hand on 
her flat stomach and one on Emily's shoulder.

They needed someone who would believe this paranoid 
story: that there were Nazis or Communists or someone 
kidnapping women, making them have babies, and then 
using those babies for God only knew what. They were 
breeding superior athletes or genius scientists or 
super-soldiers, and they were doing it under one of 
the world's best hospitals in the middle of 
Manhattan.  That something about Mulder and Scully, 
separately, but especially in combination, made their 
genetics vital to this breeding project.     

They needed someone shadowy, someone just a hair this 
side of dishonest, and someone who had all the right 
connections to all the wrong kind of people. 

They needed Melvin Frohike.     

And two subway trains and a taxicab later, they were 
there, pounding on the reinforced door of his loft.  

"Office hours start at ten," he muttered, seeing only 
Mulder through the peephole.  He opened the door in 
his helmet, undershirt, and pajama bottoms, 
scratching himself irritably. "What, Mulder?"

"Get inside," Mulder ordered, and Will ushered Em and 
Scully out of the freight elevator and inside the 
loft, and Mulder slipped in after them.    

Surprised, Frohike paused mid-scratch.

"What's-"

"We're in trouble.  I need to get Scully and Em 
someplace safe.  And I need Byers.  I think I 
probably just killed someone."

"Oh," Frohike answered, as though Mulder had just 
asked for mustard on his hamburger rather than 
ketchup: it was a less conservative choice, but still 
within the realm of normal. "Okay.  I'll make 
coffee."   

Frohike's place looked like a newly divorced man was 
trying to furnish an enntire apartment with only one 
room's worth of belongings, the empty space just 
being filled in with junk.  It had always looked like 
that, throughout all the years Mulder had known him.  
There was a great deal of iron and exposed brick and 
broken testaments to the Electrical Age that Frohike 
was going to get around to fixing 'just any day now.'  

Will shoved a pile of magazines and a dissected short 
wave radio off the sofa and sat down, putting his 
elbows on his knees and covering his face with his 
hands.  In addition to everything else, Will was 
worried about his mother.  Mulder wanted to say she 
was half naked, doped to the gills, tied wrist and 
ankle to a bed, and probably couldn't have been 
happier, but he didn't.  Whatever Phoebe was, and 
he'd finally thought up a word for it, she was still 
Will's mother.

Scully took Emily to the bathroom, then just sat at 
the kitchen tabble and did nothing.  The ice 
dissolved slowly in the glass of water in front of 
her, and the condensation dripped down the sides to 
form wet rings on the tabletop.  Em wandered to the 
couch, eventually curling up against Will and 
watching everyone with big, frightened eyes.  

"Honey," Mulder said hesitantly, as Frohike called 
Byers' office, trying to explain the situation. "Do 
you remember something we saw on television, on 
Alfred Hitchcock?" he whispered, standing behind her 
and stroking his fingertips over her shoulders. "A 
man breaks in a house and attacks a woman, and when 
her husband returns home, the policeman tells the 
husband to take her away for a little while, just 
take her someplace different for the night until she 
can calm down. So they're driving to the hotel, the 
husband and the wife, when the wife says she sees the 
man who attacked her walking on the sidewalk.  The 
husband stops, gets out, and beats the man to death, 
then gets back in the car and keeps driving, thinking 
he's avenged her.  A few minutes later, the wife 
points out a different man and insists he's the one 
who attacked her.  And then another man and then 
another, and the husband realizes she's so upset 
she's just pointing out every man they pass.  That's 
how I feel.  I'll kill 'em, honey, but I need you to 
tell me who the real bad guys are."     

She leaned her head back against his stomach, closing 
her eyes.

"What am I, Scully?" he finally asked. "Is it just a 
genetic fluke or is it something else?  Did Samantha 
just get lost playing in the woods one day, or was 
she one of those women underneath the hospital?"

"I don't know.  I don't know anything about Samantha.  
And a year and a half ago, I thought the only special 
things about you was a complete lack of mechanical 
ability, that you could hit a baseball, and that I 
loved you."

"When did you realize there was something,
s-something else?"

"When I woke up in the hospital to my mother crying 
and the police explaining I was going to be arrested 
for having an abortion.  The last things I remembered 
were you teasing me about my overly neat packing and 
then a knock at the door a few minutes later.  I 
hadn't even realized I was going to have a baby."  

"Wanna see me bend a pen with the power of my mind?" 
he said softly, caressing her cheek. 

"When I was in the Army, I paid attention to what I 
was filing.  Most of it made no sense, but some did.  
I guess they expected me to be so humiliated I'd give 
up Emily and walk away with my tail between my legs, 
but I didn't.  Those phrases I asked Mr. Frohike to 
put in the paper last Thanksgiving, after you were 
shot, those were the names of project files: Blue 
Book, Paper Clip, Majestic Twelve. 'A majestic 
December day,'" she clarified, staring blindly at the 
empty kitchen wall. "I was letting them know I knew 
or had something, that if they hurt you or Will, I'd 
go public.  If they left us alone, I'd stay quiet."

"Was that what the man was looking for in our house?  
Something he thought you had?"  

She swallowed, then took a tiny sip of her water. "I 
think so."   

"You said you weren't sure the doctors were helping 
Emily.  Was that true?  I was the one who started 
taking her to all those doctors. She started out with 
a sore throat and just kept getting worse.  Maybe 
they were the ones making her sicker and I didn't 
realize it.  The Nazis used to do that: see how long 
it took babies to die of exposure or children of 
typhoid.  Is that what's happening?"

"I don't know," she answered irritably.   

"Why did they try to kill me?"

"Mulder, I don't have all your answers.  Maybe 
because they had what they wanted from you; they had 
the babies, and you were causing problems.  Maybe 
because I told you about Emily.  Because you won't 
stop asking questions.  Because if you had believed 
me, and stood up and announced you believed me, 
people might have listened."

"I do believe you.  I know what I saw, Scully."  

"I'm sorry," she answered, picking up the cold glass 
and holding it against her forehead, then her cheek. 
"I never meant to hurt you.  You can't imagine how 
many times I tried to make myself walk away."

"Like you could get rid of me," he teased gently. 
"You can't outrun me in those damn high heels, 
anyway." 
    
"Byers is on his way," Frohike announced, sticking 
his head around the corner. "I need to make a few 
more calls, and then we're ready to go.  And I need 
to have Langly transfer some money, Mulder.  A pretty 
good amount."

"That's fine.  Whatever you need."

Scully's chair squeaked against the linoleum as she 
stood suddenly, covered her mouth with her hand, and 
bolted for the bathroom.  Her glass spilled, and 
Mulder reached for a dishtowel to mop off the table 
before the water could hit the floor and make a clean 
spot.

Will looked up as she passed, then glanced at his 
father, then lowered his head again.

"Congratulations," Frohike mumbled, hearing retching 
a second after the bathroom door slammed. "I didn't 
realize.  How far along?"

"Not very." Mulder concentrated on wiping off the 
kitchen table, scrubbing off some jelly smears while 
he was at it.

"That changes things; it ups the ante.  They'll come 
after that baby."

Mulder nodded tiredly, tossing the damp towel in the 
sink. "They already tried."

"I'll have Langly transfer seventy-five thousand.  
He'll shuffle your account and a few others around to 
cover his tracks so it doesn't look like you funded 
this.  He doesn't exactly launder money for the mob, 
but occasionally he spot cleans it."

"Seventy-five thousand?"  

His last year with the Yankees, he'd only made fifty 
thousand, before taxes.  He'd made money playing ball 
and he'd invested it, but between alimony and tuition 
and medical bills and two houses in two cities, there 
was a lot of outgo and no new infusions of cash to 
pad the nest egg.  He couldn't stand to just write a 
check for seventy-five thousand dollars.  

"I need to make Dana and Emily disappear.  Forever.  
If you want to be sure they're safe, they have to 
disappear from the US Government.  Hell, they have to 
disappear off the face of the planet.  And now 
there's a baby coming.  That takes a lot of money.  
It might take more than that."

Scully emerged from the bathroom, then immediately 
turned around and hurried back inside.  

"Dad?"

"She's okay.  Give her a minute.  Are you okay, 
Will?"

Instead of answering, Will just smirked and put his 
face back down on his open palms again, shaking his 
head 'no' and laughing nervously.

The toilet flushed a second time, and the door 
opened. 

"I need to talk to Mulder.  Alone," she said as all 
the men pretended they hadn't noticed her morning 
sickness.

Since there was no 'alone' in Frohike's loft, Mulder 
followed her to the hallway, feeling like a kid on 
his way to the principal's office.

"If you're going to tell me you're going to have a 
baby, give me a minute so I can act surprised," he 
kidded tensely, leaning against the paneled wall 
beside the freight elevator.  He put his hands in his 
pockets so he'd have something to do with him. "Okay, 
now I'm ready."

"Mulder- I, uh, God, I'm not sure how to say this."

"Try, 'Mulder, I'm going to have a baby.  We're going 
to have a baby.' I have my stupid grin ready."

"But I shouldn't be.  I told you that."

Something about her tone made him swallow, trying to 
get a lump to go down.  According to her, she had no 
memory of conceiving Emily, or of even most of her 
pregnancy.  She called it 'missing time,' which was a 
phrase popular in the UFO novels Agent Dales used to 
lend him.  Mulder had teased her about it until he'd 
realized she hadn't found it funny to have no memory 
of months of her life.

"Well, do you think someone's," he ran his tongue 
over his teeth, "done something to you?"

"Yes, but that someone would be you."

He slouched slightly, examining the cracked tile 
mosaic on the floor.  It had been those black-rimmed 
reading glasses, bare legs, and bobby socks; no man 
could be expected to control himself if he woke to 
that in bed beside him.  

"I didn't mean to say it like that.  Mulder, whether 
you say it or not, I know how much you want more 
children.  I know how difficult it is for you to stay 
with me, knowing that won't happen."

"That's not-"

"Just don't interrupt.  Please.  Let me speak.  
Mulder, this shouldn't be happening.  I've seen the 
doctor's reports, and this shouldn't be happening.  
If I thought there was any chance of me actually 
carrying a baby to term, don't you think I would have 
told you?"

"I don't understand."

"Maybe this is an ectopic pregnancy: a pregnancy 
somewhere outside the uterus.  If it is, that's 
dangerous and I'll need surgery.  Or, if it's not, if 
the baby's growing where he's supposed to be, the 
uterine walls have significant scar tissue.  And the 
cervix is weakened.  Spontaneous abortion is a real 
possibility." Seeing the look in his face, she 
clarified, "A miscarriage."

"Which part's the-"

"The 'ouch, not so deep' part.  The cervix has to 
stay closed as the baby grows or else labor starts 
too early.  Just- please stop looking at me with 
those expectant puppy dog eyes and seeing maternity 
clothes.  Just because we've conceived a baby doesn't 
mean we're- It doesn't mean I can manage to have 
one."

He nodded, checking that mosaic on the floor again. 
"If you're sure, absolutely sure, do you want to stop 
this now?  Frohike knows good doctors; I know he 
does; he's arranged things for Phoebe." He found a 
good place on the inside of his lip to gnaw. "I don't 
know where we're going or what's going to happen.  
Those men at the hospital will take this baby, if 
they can find us.  I don't want you mu-miscarrying 
somewhere where we can't get to a doctor.  Just tell 
me what you want, honey."

"What do you think I want?"

He shrugged, afraid to speculate. He had his mental 
picture all conjured up: getting to coach his son's 
little league team or going to his daughter's dance 
recitals.  Actually, he'd be happy to coach his 
daughter's baseball team and go to his son's dance 
recitals. 

"I want to try.  I just wanted you to know the 
possibilities."

Mulder nodded, not risking looking up. 

"All right?"

"All right," he mumbled, following her back inside 
the loft.

*~*~*~*

It was a cold dream of the black, white, gray, and 
red variety.  He could always see color in his 
dreams; that was how he knew it existed.

"She just turned four," Scully had answered, 
buttoning the top button of her coat as she walked 
beside him, her head barely coming up to his 
shoulder.  

This had been before he'd started calling her 
'Scully,' of course.  It had been just after 
Halloween 1953, right after he'd quit playing ball, 
and a few weeks after he'd stopped drinking.  And a 
week after Will had accidentally cracked him in the 
head with a baseball bat and sent him to the Mercy 
Hospital Emergency Room for stitches.

"My son's fourteen.  It changes things.  It changes 
everything," he had commented, watching Emily running 
down The Boardwalk in front of them.  Except for the 
wind and the distant waves pounding the beach, her 
feet on the weathered planks and their voices were 
the only sounds.

The cold, salty Atlantic air caressed his face with 
its icy fingers, draining color from the world like 
an artist rinsing water over his pallet.  The early 
November sun lurked behind the clouds, casting long 
shadows as Coney Island stretched, yawned, and 
hesitantly woke to winter.  Above them, the sky was 
dense and heavy, threatening snow.  

"Having a child– Both of us having children makes 
everything automatically," He hunted for the right 
phrase, "Less casual." 

"Yes, it does," Scully responded, hands deep in her 
pockets. "You can run now, if you like."

The brisk wind colored her cheeks scarlet and blew 
her auburn hair out of the neat bun she'd had it in 
at the hospital.  She kept tucking the strands behind 
her ears and they kept whipping around her face 
again.  Below her coat, the fluttering skirt of her 
nurse's uniform still had a red splatter of blood 
droplets on the hem.

"I don't run; I have a policy.  I was only saying: 
seeing someone when kids are involved: the stakes are 
higher.  It isn't fair to be casual."

"Are you used to casual?"

He had considered the intoxicated blur of the past 
month, then responded, "I've tried it."

"I'm sure you have."

"It's overrated." Mulder hesitated, then asked, "Did 
you like Aiello's?  I know it's a little odd, but-" 

"No, I liked it.  It was different," she said 
cautiously. "Emily liked it.  Were all those people 
sideshow performers?"

"Yes.  It's a favorite of the locals.  If you want to 
eat breakfast with a tattooed man and a bearded lady, 
that's the place.  Will loves it.  We go there for 
pancakes on Saturdays if I can get him out of bed 
before noon."

"Is that your son?  Slugger?  Will?"

"William."  The word formed a white cloud in front 
of his lips.

"Can I ask-"

He stopped and leaned back against the wooden railing 
above the empty beach.  If she asked, she was at 
least interested.  

"He lives with his mother in Manhattan; before that 
they lived in London.  It's very over between his 
mother and I; we've been divorced a long time.  My 
father died last year; my mother lives in Boston.  I 
flew up to check on her a few weeks ago.  I grew up 
there with a younger sister named Samantha.  I played 
professional baseball from 1939 until last season, in 
between being drafted into the Army and a few 
injuries.  I guess you could say I had some trouble 
adjusting to retirement, but I'm doing better.  I 
think I have my act together now.  I'm trying, at 
least.  Again, there's a lot at stake."   

"Did you meet your ex-wife during the war?"

"No, I met her when I was in school.  What about 
you?" he had asked, refocusing the discussion. 
"What's your life story?"

"You're looking at it," Scully answered, watching 
Emily. "I went to college, became a nurse, and then, 
in what my father thought was an act of rebellion, 
joined the Army to go to one of the M.A.S.H. units 
in Korea.  Then Emily came.  Now it's just the two 
of us."            

"That's the whole story?" he asked.

"No.  Was that your whole story?" She glanced up at 
him, then turned away, calling for her daughter to 
come back so they'd have a buffer to fill the silence 
between waves.

"No," he mumbled, following her down The Boardwalk.  
The hinges creaked as a few garish booths opened, and 
the cotton candy machine began to spin pink silk 
threads. "No, that's not nearly the whole story."

"I didn't think it was," she answered, stooping down 
to tighten the strings on her daughter's hood.   

"Are you a daddy?" Emily asked pointedly, looking 
over her mother's shoulder at him.

"I am.  I have a son named Will."

"Is he big?"

"He's about-" Mulder held his hand even with his 
eyebrows. "This big."

Her mouth formed a silent 'wow.' "We don't have a 
daddy.  Or a Will." 

"Oh, well, uh.  You don't have a lot of room.  You 
have a cat, though.  He's probably less trouble."

"He's a stray."

He glanced at down Scully, who was taking in this 
dialogue with an amused glint in her eyes. "Help me 
out here."

"Mommy says he's a Tom Cat," she continued. "And 
I'll be sorry.  She lets him in, though."

"Your Mommy's a smart lady."

Scully didn't respond, but she smiled as she stood 
up, and he put his hand cautiously on her back as he 
turned her toward the car. "I need to be back in 
Manhattan for a meeting in an hour," he explained, 
listening to the weathered gray boards creaking under 
their feet. "But if you want, I'd like to take you to 
dinner Friday," he offered. "We'll go someplace 
without dwarfs."

"You're not going to make your meeting."

"They'll wait."

"Emily and I could take the subway home," she 
offered, walking beside him. "Then you'd be less 
late."

"Am I doing that badly?"

She stopped, looked at him, then laughed, a sound 
that had seemed out of place in the stark 
surroundings. "Aside from getting me fired, following 
me home like some lunatic, coercing me into going out 
with you by charming my daughter, buying me pancakes 
in a restaurant full of circus freaks, dragging me 
for a walk in the Antarctic, and giving me the 
Readers Digest happily-condensed version of your life 
story, no, I'd say you're doing very well."

He stared at his shoes, having no idea how to 
respond.  It sounded like a crappy morning when she 
said it that way. "I almost didn't go back to the 
emergency room this morning," he finally told his 
shoes. "I was going to have my doctor take the 
stitches out."

"I almost wasn't there; my shift was supposed to end 
at midnight."

"Must be fate," he said lightly, uncomfortably.

She considered, then decided, "Fine: dinner Friday.  
Now take me home before I pass out from exhaustion 
and the police find my frozen body under The 
Boardwalk clutching some cotton candy."

He glanced up uncertainly.  "You're sure?"

"No, I'm completely not sure, but fate is fate," she 
had answered, carrying Emily on her hip as they 
walked down the broad, endless Boardwalk.  Hours 
before the thin, off-season crowds would arrive, it 
had seemed like they were almost the only people on 
the planet. 

It was a nice dream.

*~*~*~*

"There he is," Frohike said sharply, and Mulder 
raised his head from the kitchen table, wiping a few 
minutes' sleep from his eyes.  He pointed out the 
window to the street below. "Finally.  Let's go." 
  
Although he could have afforded whatever he wanted, 
John Byers drove a pristine, baby blue, Studebaker 
station wagon: whitewall tires, chrome bumper, 
luggage rack, and all.  And he drove it slowly.  He 
was waiting at the corner below Frohike's apartment 
building for the light to change, his blinker 
flashing patiently.  Going 'right on red' made Byers 
nervous.

"Don't give him that," Mulder said as Frohike started 
to hand Will a pistol. "He doesn't know how to use 
it."

"I do.  One of Mother's friends showed me."

Mulder didn't even want to consider all the possible 
definitions of who 'Mother's friend' could be.  
"Fine.  Whatever.  Scully, are you okay?" He shoved 
the goon's handgun back in his waistband, then pushed 
the button for the freight elevator.

Scully picked up Emily, nodding that she was ready.   

As the elevator slowly lowered them to the ground 
floor, the sun was shining, shimmering bright yellow 
through the mental grating.  The world had continued 
turning, except it seemed cheapened, like a dime 
store ring when the shine wore off, the ugly metal 
showed through, and it began to turn the skin green.  

"Beside Wollman's ice-skating rink in Central Park," 
Scully said, startling everyone. "In locker thirteen.  
The key is inside Emily's Kitty: the stuffed one.  
Take what's inside the locker and go to Mr. Skinner 
at the FBI.  Tell him you want to make a deal."

"What's inside the locker?" Mulder asked as the doors 
opened.

"The truth," she answered. "Pandora's box."

Byers was parking exactly eighteen inches from the 
curb as the elevator doors opened to the parking 
garage.  He locked the station wagon, then hurried 
toward them, bringing two Macy's shopping bags.

"What is this?  Langly just dropped this off at my 
office.  Why am I carrying this much cash?  And what 
is this about you killing someone, Mulder?  I called 
the hospital; there's no record of any disturbance 
this morning.  Are you insane?  I'm supposed to be in 
a meeting right now."

By trade, Byers did property law, which he insisted 
was more complex than 'finders keepers, losers 
weepers,' and suited his buttoned up personality.  He 
was to 'paranoia' and 'aggression' what 'mild' was to 
'Tabasco.' Confronted with a non-legal crisis, he 
usually started jabbering facts and statistics like a 
frantic chipmunk.  His wife Susanne was the cool head 
of the two: the Army would have done better to draft 
her during WWII.

Without comment, Frohike took the shopping bags, 
putting them on the passenger-side floor of his 
truck.

"Dad, I have school," Will blurted suddenly, which 
was code for 'who's going to take care of my mother?'

"It's okay, Will; you can stay with Byers for a 
little while," Mulder decided as calmly as possible, 
barely able to believe he was deciding it at all. 
"Don't give Susanne a hard time.  You can stay in the 
city, go to school, check on your mother.  As soon as 
it's safe, I'll contact you.  All right, Will? You're 
coming up on seventeen years old; you-"

"Wait, why is he staying with Byers?" Frohike 
interrupted as Byers just stood there with his mouth 
open. "Where are you going?"

"I'm going with Scully and Em."

"No, you're not.  I can hide them; I can't hide you.  
You're Fox Mulder; your face is on baseball cards and 
cereal boxes around the world.  I could send you to 
Siberia and you'd still stick out like a sore thumb."

"Who's going to Siberia?" Byers demanded.

"No one," A voice answered from the shadows behind 
them.  Six heads turned, and Alex Krycek stepped out, 
carrying a sawed-off shotgun. "No one's going 
anywhere except the ladies.  Dana, let's go.  Bring 
the girl."

"Not a chance," Muldder responded, raising Goon's 
pistol.  Scully and Emily had been the last ones out 
of the elevator, so they were between him and Krycek.  
She stopped, pulling Emily against her chest, ready 
to run.

"My gun's bigger than yours."

"And Freud would say there's a reason for that.  
You're the guy who shot me.  You were in our house.  
Who the hell are you?  What do you want?"

Will nodded in agreement, edging toward Scully and 
Emily with the gun Frohike had given him in his hand.     

"Don't move, boy," Krycek snapped, alternately 
pointing his shotgun at Will and then at Scully and 
Emily.  From the other side of his truck, Frohike 
cocked his old Army rifle, which made three weapons 
against one.  Mulder didn't know how well Frohike and 
Will could shoot, but he'd have no problem nailing 
Krycek at this distance.

His finger twitched in anticipation, molding into the 
steel of the trigger.

Krycek seemed to realize that, and looked around 
nervously. "You won't shoot.  The boy won't shoot."

"Don't bet on it.  What do you want?" Mulder 
demanded, still aiming past Scully's shoulder and 
directly at Krycek's head. "Who are you?"

"Just the errand boy.  I'm what Daddy did in his 
spare time. You can consider me the next generation," 
he said sarcastically.  

Mulder jerked his head for Scully to come toward him.  
She knew enough about guns to move sideways, getting 
out of the line of fire.  As soon as she reached 
Will, Emily pulled away, hurrying to Mulder as 
quickly as her stiff joints allowed. "Stay behind me, 
honey," he told her, keeping his pistol trained on 
Krycek as Emily clung to his left leg, terrified.

"She's grown," Krycek said absently. "Since last 
year: she's grown."

"They do that.  She's not yours.  And Scully's not 
going with you. Turn around, scurry back into the 
gutter, and tell whoever you work for to back off 
before I put their secrets on the front page of every 
newspaper in this country."

"Can you tell when she's thinking about me?  I bet 
you can't, Mulder.  I've watched you with women," 
Krycek spouted off, his eyes darting randomly around 
the parking garage.  He was stalling for time, either 
waiting for backup or calculating his next move. 
"I've sat on the other side of the lens and just 
watched you.  You're not that damn suave, although 
I'd like to have been in your shoes a few times.  
That blonde: the actress last spring.  Not a natural 
blonde, but still.  You picked her because she 
reminded you of Dana, didn't you?  Get drunk enough 
and you couldn't tell the difference in the dark.  
Petite, fair, blue eyes." He paused to whistle under 
his breath. "Damn.  And Diana's not bad, either.  We 
paid her to be very, uh, enthusiastic.  So can you 
tell, Mulder?  I bet Dana told you she doesn't even 
remember me."

"Shoot him," Scully's voice said from nearby and he 
pulled the trigger, putting the bullet in the middle 
of Krycek's forehead.  The body hit the cement floor 
before Mulder heard the gunshot.   

"Jesus Christ!" Byers exploded, sounding like a 
hyperactive metronome. "You just killed him!"

That was another brilliant statement of the obvious.

"Let's go," Frohike barked, hurrying around to the 
driver's side door of his truck. "If he's here, my 
phone must be tapped.  There'll be more men coming.  
Byers, take care of the body."

"The hell I will.  I'm a lawyer.  This is aiding and 
abetting murder.  This is the type of thing we're 
specifically not supposed to do."

Still clutching the gun, Mulder squatted down and 
picked Emily up, setting her on his left hip.  This 
wasn't real.  This absolutely was not happening.  

"Get in," Frohike ordered, starting his truck. "Dana, 
Emily: now."

In slow motion, Mulder opened the passenger-side 
door, and Emily crawled inside.  She liked to sit in 
the middle so she could help shift gears: Mulder let 
her do it in the Porsche.  

"Mulder?" Scully said numbly.

"Get in," he responded, holding the door open.

"I want to go to a movie," she said suddenly. "To one 
of those really awful science fiction movies you 
like.  We'll sit up front with Em and eat popcorn and 
Will can sit in the back with his latest girlfriend 
and pretend he doesn't know us."

"Okay, we'll do that," he answered automatically, his 
nose still stinging from the gunpowder.

"You said you'd teach me how to hit a baseball. You 
always said you would and you never did."

"We'll do that the next time around," he promised, 
closing the door. "I'll call you later," he lied, 
keeping his hand on the door handle. 

She stared at him through the glass window, blinking.  
In her universe, this wasn't happening, either.  It 
was just another Tuesday morning.  She'd just be 
getting home from her early class and they'd have a 
second cup of coffee and read the paper.  The kitchen 
would smell like soap bubbles and toast.  Emily would 
climb on Mulder's lap and insist he read the Lil 
Abner comic strip and do all the voices.

The truck started backing away, and he saw Scully 
tell Frohike to stop, trying to twist the expensive 
engagement ring off her finger. 'Keep it,' he mouthed 
silently. 'Come back.'

It wasn't eloquent, but it was the only thing he 
could think of.

"Dad," Will said from behind him.  Mulder had 
forgotten Will and Byers were still there.  Wondering 
where all the air on the planet had gone, he turned 
around, seeing Will pointing at Krycek's body.  The 
corpse was dissolving into a yellow and green puddle 
and smoking as though there was a cloud of lime  
Jell-O forming over it. "What is that?"

"Oh my God," Byers mumbled.

As he, Will, and Byers stared at the melting body, 
trying to comprehend what it might be, tires squealed 
as Frohike ran the red light outside the parking 
garage, taking Emily and Scully wherever they were 
going.  Within seconds, there was nothing left of 
Alex Krycek except the sawed-off shotgun and a few 
scraps of leather and denim cloth.

There was nothing left of anything.  It just turned 
to mist and drifted away in the morning sun.

Mulder's watch said ten-o-five.  He tapped it with 
his fingernail, then held it up to his ear, certain 
it must have stopped.  
 
*~*~*~*

In the back seat of the car, Will held the film up to 
the glowing red sunset, squinting at it. "Could be a 
girl with birth defects," he proposed, unwinding a 
few more inches from the reel and studying it 
carefully, trying to see the body the doctors were 
examining on the metal table. "Some weird syndrome.  
Or it could be exposure to radiation."

"Could be."  

It wasn't.

As it grew darker, Coney Island came alive with 
lights, outlining the roller coasters and Ferris 
wheel like patterns of white stars against the velvet 
of space.  The sticky-sweet smell of cotton candy and 
funnel cakes drifted down The Boardwalk, mixing with 
the old salt fragrance of the sea.  They'd decided 
they wanted dinner at Aiello's, then forgotten they 
were hungry once they got there, so they just sat in 
the parking lot for an hour, taking turns speaking 
every ten minutes.

In the front seat, Mulder was sitting sideways with 
his back against the driver's side door and his feet 
hanging out the passenger side window.  He watched as 
another plane took off, arched away from them, and 
disappeared into the last of the sunset, thus ending 
the movie in Technicolor splendor.

"Could some sort of hairless monkey," Will continued.

It wasn't.

"Yep.  Could be one of those hairless monkey autopsy 
films the government doesn't want us to see."  Mulder 
put his feet down and pivoted around, then opened the 
driver's door. "I'll be back."

He hesitated before he picked up the pay phone, then 
grabbed the receiver and dialed quickly before he 
lost his nerve.  

"It's Mulder.  Don't hang up," he said when Scully's 
mother answered. "I was wondering if you'd heard from 
Dana.  I'm not sure where she is and I was hoping she 
might call you."

Mrs. Scully answered that she hadn't seen nor heard 
from her daughter, then asked evenly what was wrong.  
Her jury was still out on whether Fox Mulder was 
friend or foe.

"We had a fight.  She's upset.  She took Emily and 
took off.  She's pretty sore at me."

"And why would that be?" Maggie asked icily.

"I just don't want her to do something stupid again," 
he answered evasively. "I'll fix things; I just have 
to find her."

There was a long silence on the other end.  To hell 
with this shadowy government hybrid-breeding project: 
Bill Scully was going to kill him first.

"You'll fix things?"

"Yeah, it's no problem.  I mean, I'm not marrying 
her, but I'm not abandoning her, either.  I care 
about her.  She's great fun."  

He bit his lip so hard the coppery taste of blood 
trickled back onto his tongue, and was relieved when 
the line went dead.  Out of curiosity, he listened 
and heard a second click a few seconds later.  They 
were listening; mission accomplished.
 
Victory should feel better.  
  
Hands on his pockets, he walked slowly down the long, 
shadowy boardwalk and back to the car.  The ocean 
seemed endless, as though there was nothing between 
him and the end of the world.  He paused to look up 
as another plane flew over, staring at it until it 
was out of sight.  

"That's the seven-ten to London," his son informed 
him. "There's also a redeye at eleven.  The last 
flight for DC took off about half an hour ago; she 
could have been on that one, too."

"She and Em could be anywhere, Will, and it's nowhere 
you or I would ever think to look.  This is what 
Frohike does best.  He'll send her someplace safe: 
that's all we need to know.  If we know where they 
are, we could put her and Em in danger."

"You gave her a lot of money, Dad," he said warily, 
testing the waters. "I know there's money, but I 
thought it was invested.  Where do you have that much 
cash just sitting around?"

"Don't worry about it."  

"I do worry about it.  Taking care of Emily had to 
cost a bundle, plus my mother, plus what you gave 
Dana, plus I'll have college-"

"College?  I thought you were going to drop out and 
be a bum?  Will, I didn't budget college; I budgeted 
bail," he teased, then added, "The Yankees made me a 
really good offer to come back for one more season.  
We don't need to worry about money."   

As Mulder opened the driver's door, the light glinted 
off a silver dime store lipstick case that had 
accidentally fallen down beside the seat.  He picked 
it up and it was still warm, like the sidewalk just 
after dusk.  He sat down tiredly, holding the case in 
his palm.

"Should I ask about the baby?  Or if Emily is going 
to be okay?  Or about that man you shot and why he 
bled green?"

"No, you probably shouldn't," Mulder mumbled.  

Will nodded, focusing on the metal film case lying on 
the passenger seat.  The white label stuck on it read 
'Roswell, New Mexico 1947: Project Blue Book.'   

"Do you think she's coming back?"

"I don't know.  Tomorrow, I'll take this film to 
Walter Skinner and see if it's worth what I think 
it's worth.  I'll see if he can help me make a deal."

"Is it real?" Will asked, unfurling a few more inches 
off the reel. "What are these doctors autopsying on 
here?"

An alien.  They weren't breeding superior humans 
anymore; they were trying to breed alien-human 
hybrids.     

"It doesn't matter.  It's either the government-
created a hoax to make people think aliens exist, or 
it's the real deal.  Either way, I bet whoever made 
it doesn't want it shown on the evening news."

"And Dana had it the whole time?" 

"Yeah, she had it the whole time."

By the time he and Will had returned to The Plaza 
that afternoon, They, the omnipresent 'Them,' had 
been through the suite like a tornado, searching for 
the film.  It wasn't there, of course.  It was in a 
locker across the street in Central Park where Scully 
had hidden it.  And Kitty, stuffed Kitty, was still 
on the floor of Emily's bedroom.  Real Kitten was 
under the bed, hissing at everyone.  Mulder's World 
Series rings were missing, but everything else was 
just ransacked.  Curiously, the police found no 
fingerprints, nor had anyone noticed anything 
suspicious happening on the top floor of one of the 
world's most conscientious hotels.  

Mulder opened the glove box, putting Scully's 
lipstick beside a spare set of keys she'd left there.  
She'd had half a dozen sets made so she stood some 
chance of finding one when she needed them.

"Sixty-eight Saturday afternoons: that's not nearly 
enough," he said softly, draping his arm across the 
front seat and around nothing.  In the back, Will 
looked down from the film stock. "Nineteen months; 
that's four hundred and seventy-six days, but only 
sixty-eight Saturday afternoons.  That's two 
Christmas's, but only one summer."

Will leaned over the seat, not understanding. 

"It's not enough," Mulder repeated. "I keep thinking 
this isn't happening; that it's a bad dream and I'm 
going to wake up and they'll be here." He looked up 
at the sky again, then back at Will. "You're here, 
though.  You wanna go see a movie?"

"I'm not a kid anymore.  You don't have to buy me a 
milkshake and make it better, Dad."

"What about 'Killers From Space' or 'Invaders from 
Mars,'" he answered, reciting the movie marquee from 
memory. "Or simply 'Them!'"

"Or 'The Creature Walks Among Us,'" Will suggested.  

Neither of them wanted to go back to The Plaza where 
all the phones had bugs and all the mirrors had 
lenses behind them.    

"Nah, I'm tired of seeing the creature get his ass 
kicked.  How about 'Earth Versus the Flying 
Saucers'?" He looked back and Will and forced an 
exhausted grin.

"Does Earth win?"

"My God, I hope so." 

*~*~*~*

Begin A Moment In the Sun: Part VII

*~*~*~*

On the Sunday Society page of the New York Times, 
December 20, 1953, the headline read, "Manhattan's 
Most Eligible Bachelor Off the Market," and for once, 
the reporters got it right.  If he could pick one 
afternoon to relive for eternity, it would be that 
Saturday.  It was a high-water mark, and as close to 
perfect as the universe ever got for a lanky, spooky 
misfit from Boston.
 
At Will's urging, he'd worn only a black sweater, 
slacks, and a scarf, forgoing a hat and jacket and 
certain he'd catch pneumonia in the name of fashion.  
Scully had worn a skirt that swirled out as she 
skated, and a little jacket with fur trim on the 
collar and cuffs.  He remembered the winter sky had 
been a perfect shade of blue, the icicles had 
glittered on the bare tree branches like sugar 
crystals, and she had been beautiful.  

"He should be here," Mulder had commented, eyeing the 
crowds enjoying the crisp air of Central Park.  
Christmas had been coming, and families hurried to 
claim their share of holiday magic in the freshly 
fallen snow. "I told him noon.  Maybe he overslept."

"Noon is awfully early," she said knowingly, nodding 
in agreement.

He narrowed his eyes at her. "Are you always this 
difficult?"

She held onto the railing, watching him as he glided 
effortlessly, supporting Emily in front of him. 

"Yes."

"Good," he responded, grinning as she wobbled.  Both 
Emily and Scully were fair at skating forward, but 
hadn't mastered the fine art of turning or stopping. 
"It keeps me in line."

"You're showing off," Scully teased as he and Em 
weaved past her a minute later, both nonchalantly 
standing on one foot.  

"I am not," he responded, whispering to Emily to 
switch feet.        

Finding an uninhabited patch of ice, Mulder moved a 
little faster, telling Em, "Airplane," as her mittens 
tightened against his palms excitedly.  Leaning back, 
he swung her in circles until her feet left the ice 
and she took flight, squealing until he slowed and 
set her gently back down on her miniature skates.   

Along the edge of Wollman Rink, a line of 
photographers waited, cameras poised.  They smirked 
at the antics on the ice, but their shutters remained 
closed.

"Now you're showing off," Scully commented, grabbing 
the hand he offered as he passed.  
 
"Yes, now I'm showing off.  My sister and I grew up 
on skates." He shrugged, holding her with one hand 
and Em with his other. "I used to ski, too, but not 
anymore.  Although, we're, we're– Will and I and some 
friends," he started awkwardly. "We're going to Aspen 
for Christmas.  A friend of mine: my attorney, 
actually, but he's an old friend.  He has a house 
there.  He has a wife and kids, so there will be lots 
of people.  I was just wondering if you and Emily 
would want to come?"

She was already starting to shake her head 'no,' so 
he hurried, "As my guests.  That's all.  It's a 
family thing; my father died last year and my mother 
isn't really up to playing hostess, so this is how we 
do Christmas."

"I thought you had a sister."

"I do.  I did, but, uh, she, uh.  Will's coming and 
Byers has two girls a little older than Emily.  There 
will be lots of whining over what to listen to on the 
radio and snowball fights and runny noses.  It's not 
exactly a romantic weekend getaway."

"I'm not sure I can get off work," she had hedged. 
"Although I bet you'll help with that if I can't," 
she added.

"I bet I will," he grinned at her again, seeing her 
resolve starting to crumble. "We charter a plane, so 
there's no paying for a ticket.  Byers owns the 
house, and it's a big house, so there's plenty space 
for you and Emily.  Will and I room together and 
we'll put you and Emily at the other end of the 
house.  It's all very chaste.  We'll fly out Thursday 
morning and you can be back for work on Tuesday."

"You just don't accept 'no' very well, do you?"

"I guess I'm used to getting what I want."

"That's what scares me," she answered, and he let the 
subject drop.     

"There he is," Mulder said quickly, finally spotting 
Will and Frohike ambling down a slope. "That's 
William.  The tall one," he added. "Not the one who 
looks like a troll.  That's my press agent, and he 
can't help how he looks."

Will had been in his Early Pink period, and had 
chosen a stunning fuchsia and black plaid flannel 
shirt, with matching socks, to go with his ubiquitous 
leather jacket and cuffed blue jeans.  Mulder had no 
idea where one would buy fuchsia and black flannel, 
but it wasn't wise to look too closely at a fourteen 
year-old's wardrobe choices.  That was also the 'you 
could use a haircut, son' phase, a precursor of the 
'Jesus Christ, when are you going to get a haircut, 
son?' era that would follow.   

Leaving Scully and Emily, Mulder crossed the rink and 
slid to a sideways stop just in front of Frohike and 
Will, showering them with shaved ice. "Will, where'd 
you find Frohike?"

"Under a bridge," Frohike responded for him. "No, he 
was hailing a cab outside Phoebe's apartment as I 
passed, so I gave him a ride.  I'm just tagging 
along."

'Bullshit,' Mulder would have said if Will hadn't 
been there.  Frohike wanted a look at Dana Scully, 
and Will wanted reinforcements.  It was such a 
spontaneous trip that Frohike had a camera hanging 
from his neck.  They probably had a code word worked 
out in case one of them wanted to leave early.

"Is that her?" Will asked, watching Scully skating 
with Emily around the far corner of the rink.
  
"That's her," he responded, swallowing.

Emily was fascinated at Mulder having a son who was 
fourteen, 'most grown up,' according to her, and was 
staring back at Will instead of watching where she 
was going.  Predictably, she got her skates twisted 
and spun out on her backside, almost pulling Scully 
down with her.    

"Very nice," Frohike said quietly as Scully helped 
her daughter up, brushing her off.  Scully glanced at 
Mulder, who motioned for her to come over, and then 
left Will to meet her halfway.

"Dana Scully: Melvin Frohike.  And this is my son 
William," Mulder introduced, and then held his 
breath, sliding his skates back and forth restlessly.

"So you're the reason for the smile on my father's 
face these days," Will responded ambiguously, shaking 
her hand.  

Mulder gave his son a warning look, knowing what that 
was about.  

Will had appeared unexpectedly at The Plaza mid-
October and walked in on something Mulder hadn't 
wanted him to see, specifically a waitress named 
Kristin- he hadn't caught a last name -leaving his 
father's bedroom one morning.  A collection of empty 
bottles still littered the coffee table, and a red 
lace bra and Mulder's shirt were draped over the back 
of the couch.  Seeing Mulder's horrified, hung-over 
reaction to his son's sudden presence, Kristin had 
grabbed her brassier, dropped her head, and walked 
out without a word, careful not to touch or look at 
Will as she passed him in the foyer.  She wasn't the 
kind of girl who had any illusions about what Mulder 
had wanted; she wasn't even a Yankees fan who wanted 
to hump the American dream.  She was just there, as 
humiliating as that was.

Will had said nothing, but Mulder had been at an AA 
meeting that night.  He'd sobered up, wised up, and 
met Scully a few weeks later.   

"I'm William," his son amended more politely, "Will.  
I'm pleased to meet you, Mrs. Scully."

"And I'm pleased to meet you.  This is Emily."

"You talk funny," Em informed him before her mother 
shushed her. "My name is Emily.  I'm four."

"Hello, Emily-I-am-four," Will responded, perhaps 
thawing a degree. "I am William and I'll be fifteen 
next month."

Emily blinked in stupefied awe and probably mentally 
added Will to the limited list of people who got to 
feed her cat. 

There was a long, uncomfortable pause, so Mulder 
asked, "Will, why don't you rent some skates for a 
little bit before we head to the movies?"

Will tilted his head toward the sun, looking like he 
was posing for a portrait on a coin. "No, I think 
I'll just stand here and give the ladies something to 
look at."
 
To Mulder's surprise, Scully laughed so hard she 
almost lost her balance.  Will seemed taken aback, 
then grinned uncertainly as she turned away, leaving 
Emily staring at him from the edge of the rink. 

"Well, don't smile, son," Mulder said sarcastically, 
sliding away, "There could be casualties.  We can't 
have women dropping like flies as they die of broken 
hearts."

"So how am I doing?" she whispered to Mulder as they 
reached the middle of the ice.

Behind her, Frohike made a circle with his arms as 
though he was carrying a barrel against his chest, 
then turned sideways.  Will made a similar circle, 
but held it over his head, then pointed his feet 
outward and bent his knees like a ballet dancer in a 
graceful plie. "Nine from Frohike; eight from Will.  
No, wait-" Will turned sideways and put both arms out 
in front of him, then picked up his left foot, 
holding it out behind him. "Eight point five from 
Will.  He likes you.  He went with me to the Olympics 
in Helsinki last year, so he thinks this is cute.  I 
don't have any excuse for Frohike," Mulder explained. 

"You went to the Olympics in Finland?  Or you were in 
the Olympics?" she asked skeptically, glancing back 
to make sure Emily was okay.   

Frohike immediately shoved his hands in his coat 
pockets and stared up at the sky, whistling 
disinterestedly.  Will discovered something hidden in 
the snow and poked it purposely with the toe of his 
shoe, trying to look innocent.

Standing in front of them in her little skating 
costume, hands on her hips, Emily looked like a 
perplexed tooth fairy.

"No; baseball isn't an Olympic sport.  And even if it 
was, I couldn't participate; I was professional and 
you have to be an amateur.  It was just an exhibition 
game they invited me to play in; I don't have a medal 
or anything.  Well, I have a shirt." He cleared his 
throat. "And a pin.  Anyway, Will and I hung around 
afterward and watched the games for a week or so."

Looking up at the pale blue sky, she laughed again, 
holding his hands as he moved backward and she glided 
forward.  

"What?"

"You're not real," she said wondrously, shaking her 
head in disbelief. "First of all, you're some kind of 
sports legend.  I have little boys in my neighborhood 
asking me to get your autograph for them.  Reporters 
follow us everywhere.  I remember my father listening 
to the radio as you played in the World Series.  You 
were in the Olympic games and then just took a few 
days afterward to tour Helsinki.  You live at the top 
of a hotel I can't afford to even walk into.  You go 
to Yankee Field to play catch with your son.  You fly 
to Aspen for Christmas; you take me to The Oak Room 
for dinner.  I think if Emily wanted waffles, we'd 
probably get on a plane for Belgium.  You're not 
real!"

"I'm real." 
     
"No, you're not."

"I am," he insisted uncertainly, leaning down to kiss 
her cheek, feeling the heat transfer from her skin to 
his mouth.  He put one hand on her neck, sinking his 
fingers into the little fur collar so she couldn't 
pull away. "I'm real and this is real," he whispered. 
"Why do you still think I'm playing?  Why do you 
think all I want to do is chase, catch, and walk 
away?  I don't.  I love you."  He kissed her lips 
this time, pulling her close as they moved smoothly 
across the ice.  She leaned into him, tilting her 
head back.          

From the edge of the rink, a dozen flashbulbs 
exploded simultaneously and the reporters grinned 
smugly.  Will and Emily were on the other side of the 
rink and far out of the picture; Mulder and Scully 
were fair game and the papers now had a photo to go 
with their headline.   

On the sidelines, Will put his arms straight up in 
the air, signaling a touchdown, and Frohike turned 
sideways and pushed his gut out; the judges rated 
that kiss a perfect ten.

"Oh, that one's gonna make the papers," he mumbled 
sheepishly, actually blushing.  For a few seconds, 
he'd forgotten the rest of the world existed. 

"Yeah," she answered breathlessly, licking her lips. 

"I mean it," he added. "I'm not playing."

"I know; that's the other thing that scares me." She 
broke eye contact, glancing toward Emily. "Mulder," 
she'd said softly, holding his hand as they 
approached the edge of the rink.

"What?" 

She stayed focused on Emily, who was still staring at 
Will as if he were a god.  

"Nothing," she decided.

"Did she say 'yes' yet?" Will asked as they slid off 
the ice. "To Aspen.  Christmas?  Did you ask her?"

"Well, I asked her.  I think she's considering it," 
Mulder fibbed, putting his arm around Scully's waist.  
She was warm against him.  Alive.

Will twisted one side of his mouth up into a half-
grin, revealing braces that would come off in another 
month, and contemplating something bound to cause 
someone an ulcer. "Let's ply her with popcorn and a 
bad science fiction movie."

"There's no such thing as a bad science fiction 
movie," he'd responded. 

*~*~*~*

Mulder smiled as he traced the old piece of 
newspaper, remembering. 'Manhattan's Most Eligible 
Bachelor Off the Market.' Taped beside it on the 
inside of his locker door was the photo Frohike had 
taken of them that afternoon playing in the snow. 'A 
majestic December day in Central Park,' the caption 
read. 'Miss Scully carries a blue book with a 
paperclip marking her favorite chapter.' Nowhere in 
the picture was a paperclip or a blue book.

"Mulder," one of the assistant coaches barked.  The 
locker room door banged closed as the rest of the 
team headed out to the field for their first home 
game of the '56 season. "Are you all right?"   

Mulder nodded, stopped staring at the pictures, and 
reached for his jersey.  Across the front, in big 
block letters, was 'New York' and on the back was a 
large 5.  On the sleeve was 'Yankees.' It felt 
familiar, comforting, to have someone put who he was 
on his shirt.  It made things easier.  

The game was the same, but some of the faces had 
changed: Lefty Gomez and Bill Dickey had been 
replaced by Yogi Berra, Mickey Mantle, and Don 
Larson.  And some faces hadn't: Casey Stengel was 
still the manager and showed every sign of continuing 
to be for rest of the century.  Lou Gehrig, whose 
place in the batting line-up Mulder had taken that 
first game in Detroit, had been dead for almost 
fifteen years; Babe Ruth for six.

Scully had been gone eleven months.        

"Were you thinking of joining us?" the coach asked 
sarcastically. "Because we're going to have a riot, 
otherwise."

"I'm coming," he mumbled, sliding the jersey over his 
head and leaning down to lace up his cleats.  He 
grabbed his baseball cap off the hook, closed his 
locker, and followed the coach out.  

As soon as he stepped out of the shadows, the crowd 
started cheering, hailing the resurrected hero.  
Mulder bit his lip and hesitated, but the coach put 
his hand on his back, propelling him forward and out 
onto the familiar field.  Although his contract said 
he was going to play, the Yankees wanted him for star 
power.  He was window dressing.  His job was to stand 
in the spotlight and wave to the fans.  If he hit a 
baseball, that was just a bonus.  He was almost 
forty-two years old; he was one of the oldest players 
in the league, but also the most highly paid. 

'Don't screw it up,' he told himself.    

*~*~*~*

Frohike glanced at Mulder and raised his hand, but he 
was busy shepherding a new wonder boy through the 
gauntlet of reporters.  Years ago, he'd done the same 
for Mulder: grooming him like a trainer with a prize 
racehorse.  Wonder Boy had the same stunned, 
uncertain look he'd once had, as though he expected 
an announcement that there was a mistake and no one 
wanted him to play for the Yankees after all.       

Mulder waved back, then ducked his head and pressed 
through the crowd, trying to go unnoticed.  He'd 
already done the mandatory interviews and pose-with-
the-bat photos on the field after the game.  Time, 
Life, Look: all the single syllable publications had 
their stories; these were the freelancers waiting for 
the crumbs.

"How's it feel to play again?" someone shouted as 
Mulder stepped out of the locker room, carrying his 
duffle bag and car keys and heading for the parking 
lot.  

A flashbulb exploded in his peripheral vision and he 
shied away, pulling the bill of his baseball cap 
lower on his forehead.  

"It feels incredible," Mulder responded predictably, 
walking faster.  

Four hundred and twelve steps to the parking lot and 
then one hundred and twenty-seven miles to the 
mountains: all he wanted to do was toss his duffle 
bag in the trunk, slide behind the wheel, turn up the 
radio, and let the evening wind blow over his face as 
he drove home.  He liked the long drive; as the city 
slid away, so did the rest of the real world until it 
was a faded memory on an old postcard.  

Before he could escape, the reporters spotted him and 
there was a mass stampede across the hall, like 
wolves trying to get at the kill.  They encircled 
him, jockeying for camera angles and sound bites.

"How's the shoulder?"

Another flashbulb popped so close he could feel the 
heat on his jaw.   

"Can you comment on missing the last week of spring 
training?" another man asked, holding his pad and 
pencil ready. "Is it true you were injured?" 

"Are you starting in the game Saturday?" someone 
demanded, pushing a microphone in his face.

"Good.  Fine.  No, I have no comment.  No, I'm not 
injured.  Yes, I think I'm starting," Mulder 
answered, trying to blink the spots out from in front 
of his eyes. "It's up to the coaches."
  
"You looked good out there, Mulder.  Real good.  Any 
thoughts on next season?"

"Let's cross that bridge when we-" he hedged, raising 
his hand as flashbulbs popped like fireworks. "When 
we, uh, get to it."

"Hand down.  Give us a grin!  Come on, Mulder."

"Are you an Elvis fan?"       

"What do you think of Japan being admitted into the 
United Nations?"

"Of Eisenhower running for re-election?"

"There are rumors of a wedding and a baby shower at 
your house.  Can you confirm them?"

Mulder smirked, and started pushing through the crowd 
again. "Goodnight, boys," he said with monotone 
finality.

"'Night, Mulder," they answered en masse, abandoning 
their cause.  He wasn't going to give them tomorrow 
morning's headline.  The swarm of reporters, 
microphones, and camera parted, clearing a path, then 
turned back to Wonder Boy.  
 
He could see the almost-empty parking lot at the end 
of the corridor with the New York skyline still 
blushing violet in the evening light.  The moon was 
rising, bringing Venus with it as a counterpoint: 
lunacy and love.  As a child, he'd mistaken Venus for 
the North Star, thinking that was the light wise men 
followed.  Some beliefs a boy didn't outgrow, he just 
let out the seams and patched the elbows when they 
got ragged.
   
The crowds had gone, and discarded soda cups and 
crumpled napkins sprinkled the dark pavement like 
powdered sugar, remnants of a warm spring afternoon.   

"Good game, Mr. Mulder," one of the ushers greeted 
him, offering to carry his duffle bag.

"Thanks.  No, I have it," he answered, stopping at 
the water fountain.

"There's a girl waiting for you.  She asked me to 
tell you."

Mulder smirked, and the balding usher nodded 
knowingly.  There was never a shortage of pretty 
women waiting outside the stadium for the players.  
Most were not the players' wives.

Jake shrugged. "I know, I know, but I said I'd tell 
you.  She said it was important she talk to you."

"Tell her to go home before her father starts to 
worry.  It's a school night."

"She's pretty.  Don't you like girls?" the usher 
teased.

"Not anymore.  Not since I laid eyes on you, Jake.  
Come on: give me a kiss." Mulder puckered his lips 
sarcastically, making sucking noises at the old man.

Jake looped one thumb into his tight waistband, 
patted his round belly, and sighed in satisfaction. 
"I'm too much of a man for you, Mr. Mulder.  Good to 
know I still got it, though."

"Oh, we'll be putting you out to stud any day.  I 
guess I'll-" 

"Mulder?" a female voice asked from behind him, and 
he whirled around, forgetting what he was saying.  

He saw her all at one, a visceral recognition rather 
than slowly taking note of the familiar carriage and 
coloring.  The universe shifted like an old 
transmission, throwing his heart forward and then 
slamming it back into its usual place.   

"Scu-" he started before he realized it wasn't.  He 
exhaled slowly, then adjusted his grip on the duffle 
bag. "Yes, ma'am?" he asked politely, evenly, using 
his 'I'm a busy man' tone.

"Are you Fox Mulder?"

He nodded, his eyes flitting over her hungrily.  

She wasn't her, but she was close.  For a second, 
something traitorous in his brain wondered if she 
was close enough, just for a few hours.  It was hard 
to walk out of the stadium night after night and see 
other men leaving with wives or girlfriends or at 
least with warm bodies.  He didn't want sex, though; 
he just wanted someone to be happy to see him besides 
Jake, Frohike, and the reporters.

"My name is Melissa.  You knew my sister Dana."

"Your sister?" he answered cautiously.  

Melissa, Melissa.  Big sister Missy, he remembered.  
She lived with her husband in San Francisco; she was 
some sort of beatnik artist.  He'd never met her, but 
Scully had written to her occasionally.
  
"I went to The Plaza.  They said you don't live there 
anymore."

"No, I don't."

Melissa met his gaze with the same regal bearing 
Scully had, and she was taller, with the lithe 
gracefulness of a ballerina. "I don't mean to bother 
you, Mr. Mulder.  I wanted, I wanted to speak with 
you about Dana."

He swallowed, breaking eye contact. "I'm sorry; I 
can't help you."

He glanced at her from underneath his eyelashes, then 
arranged his features into no expression and stepped 
around her, walking across the parking lot toward the 
black Chrysler he'd bought for Scully.

"I think you can," she persisted, walking quickly to 
keep up with him. "Mr. Mulder-" 

"I'm sorry; I can't help you," he repeated sternly, 
being careful not to look at her again.   

"My sister wrote to me about you.  You loved her.  
And she loved you."

He unlocked the trunk and tossed his duffle bag 
inside. "I've loved a lot of women.  Some were more 
memorable than others.  Tell me what your sister 
looks like and maybe I can help you." He punctuated 
his lie by slamming the trunk so hard something broke 
loose and rattled.

"You know exactly who she is."

"Do you have a photo of her?"  

He started to unlock the driver's side door, taking 
three tries and scratching the paint as he fumbled to 
get his key in the lock. 

"You called my sister 'Scully' because she threatened 
to hurt you if you called her 'Nurse Scully' one more 
time.  You hate to be called 'Fox.' You bought Emily 
a giant rocking horse at FAO Schwarz, even though 
Dana told you not to, and then you paid to have it 
shipped to Georgetown.  You, you, you can't cook.  
Anything.  You live on deli takeout, coffee, and 
scrambled eggs when Dana isn't around and she's 
always afraid you're malnourished.  You have an old 
gray flannel shirt you like to wear when it's cold.  
She patched it for you.  You have a son named William 
she taught to ride the subway.  You wanted to get 
married but Dana wouldn't set a date.  You wanted 
children and Dana couldn't any more.  Don't pretend 
you don't know who I'm talking about!"  

"All right; I remember!  Of course I remember!  What 
do you want?"

"You called my mother last year, hinting Dana was 
going to have another baby and you weren't happy 
about that.  You said she took off again when you 
wouldn't marry her.  You were lying.  You may have 
fooled my Catholic mother and my over-protective 
brother, but you don't fool me, Mr. Mulder.  I know 
my sister."   

"I'm sorry; I can't help you," he repeated for the 
third time, noticing his hands were shaking. 

"It doesn't add up.  It doesn't even come close.  You 
took care of Emily and scoured the planet for Dana 
the first time she vanished. You beat Bill senseless 
because he wouldn't let you talk to Dana; they had to 
call the police to get you away from her hospital 
room two years ago.  This time, you just shrug and 
say 'oh well'?"
 
He gripped the door handle, his knuckles straining 
white under his skin. "I'm sorry; I can't-"      
 
She tilted her chin up slightly and crossed her arms. 
"No, obviously you can't.  Or you won't.  My brother 
was right.  I'm sorry I bothered you, Mr. Mulder."

As Melissa turned away, he reached out impulsively, 
grabbing her wrist. "Wait."

She stared at his hand as though trying to decide if 
she was going to pull away or not.

He moved his mouth silently a few times, then exhaled 
painfully and asked, "Do you know where she is?  Is 
she okay?  Is Em okay?"

"I don't know.  I was hoping you did."

He shook his head, staring down at a plastic soda cup 
as the wind slowly rolled it past. "I haven't heard 
from her since last May."

"You don't know where she might have gone?"

"No." He nudged the cup gently with the toe of his 
shoe to get it moving again. "I don't even know if 
she's alive."

Melissa studied him, then said softly, "She wrote you 
wore guilt the way other men wore neckties.  She was 
right.  And she said you don't let people touch you.  
She was wrong.  You let people touch you all the 
time; you just don't like to let them know it."

He nodded, not sure how to respond, and then decided 
he should probably let go of her wrist. 

"Whatever you're hiding, I'm sure there's a good 
reason for it.  I just want to know she's safe."

"So do I," he mumbled. "She has a telephone number 
she can call if she needs anything: it's a friend of 
a friend of a friend.  She's never called it.  It's 
been safe for months; we, uh, sent her a message 
telling her that.  She hasn't c-ca-come back.  I 
don't know why."   

He glanced up, watching the violet-blue light glowing 
soft against her hair.

"Can I buy you a cup of coffee?  There's a place just 
across the street.  We can talk.  About Scu- About 
Dana." 

"You sound like you need someone to talk to."

That was early April.

*~*~*~*

This was late May.

And properly done, a Saturday in May was like a nine 
year old's summer: it could last an eternity.  

If he was in Georgetown a year ago, they could have 
made love quietly before the kids woke up, hushing 
each other and giggling like two teenagers doing 
something naughty.  When Emily got up, the three of 
them could have breakfast in bed, getting crumbs on 
the sheets and eating the toast crusts she didn't 
want.  It was a delicate balance between sloth and 
malodorous, but he could usually put off showering 
and shaving until at least eleven.

Eventually, they'd concede to morning and wander 
downstairs.  Emily usually parked herself in front of 
cartoons, wearing her Davy Crocket cap and wrapped in 
the pink blanket from her bed.  Scully sat at the 
dining room table to read the newspaper, and Mulder 
stood behind her, sipping his coffee and reading over 
her shoulder.

By then it was noon, and Will was awake.  Something 
in the old house was bound to be leaking, falling 
off, stopped up, or shorting out.  Flush with full-
tummy, post-nookie optimism, Mulder would get his 
toolbox and announce he'd fix it.  Scully would 
suggest he call a repairman on Monday, knowing 
Mulder's toolbox held a hammer, three screwdrivers 
(two flat and one criss-cross), a wrench, a roll of 
duct tape, a washer, four rusted nails, a thumbtack, 
and an old pack of gum.  Scully would insist he call 
a repairman on Monday.  When he didn't, she'd sigh 
and get out the bandages and peroxide, and tell Will 
to call the fire department and put them on alert.  
Mulder's home repair projects were really excuses for 
Scully to fuss over his boo-boos while Will fixed 
whatever was broken.

Afternoons were for errands, for 'don't buy anything 
that isn't on the list, Mulder.  Did you hear me, 
Mulder?  Will?  Nothing unless it's on the list.  I 
mean it.' When they returned from the market two 
hours later, Scully would have taken a long bath and 
be in a good enough mood to overlook Mulder, Will, 
and Emily having managed to buy twenty dollars worth 
of junk, but nothing on the shopping list.  
Afternoons were for 'let's go for a drive,' and 
'let's go to a movie,' and 'let's just sit here a 
little longer.'

Evenings fell into two categories.  The first was a 
heady rush of silk slips and high heels clicking and 
'did you tell the babysitter six or six thirty?' and 
'where are the damn tickets; you had them last,' 
moments.  Those nights glittered like diamonds, but 
they were rare.  More frequent were evenings of old 
sweaters and sock feet and good books and 'what's on 
the radio?' and 'stir the pot on the stove as you 
pass, Mulder.' Mr. Baseball and Miss All-American-
Brains-and-Beauty, despite being the center of a 
global conspiracy, weren't the most exciting couple 
on the planet.

And then there was night, when they could lie in bed, 
bare limbs tangled together in a jumble of flesh, and 
watch the stars tumbling in slow motion through the 
blackness of space. 'I love you,' he'd tell her, 
combing his fingers through her hair and caressing 
the elegant muscles of her shoulders.

'More than strawberry milkshakes?' she'd ask, safe in 
his arms.

'Close call, but yes,' he'd respond.

Mulder smiled and rolled over as he woke, enjoying 
the luxury of soft sheets against his bare skin.  He 
knew she wasn't there, but he reached out anyway, 
patting the empty space on the bed beside him.  If he 
didn't open his eyes, he could pretend she was 
downstairs, fussing at the kids and starting 
breakfast.  If he didn't open his eyes, he could 
almost swear the bed smelled like her.  He lingered 
in the land between sleep and morning, stringing 
together enough memories to hold back the darkness 
for another day.  

The bedside clock suggested it was a little before 
seven, but these were the Catskill Mountains, and so 
it was only a suggestion and open for negotiation.  
Like Brigadoon, things moved a little slower at this 
altitude.  

Will was already up.  He'd left a trail of socks and 
pajama bottoms from his bedroom to the bathroom, then 
dumped out a basket of clean clothes on the sofa, 
looking for his swimming trunks and a towel.  His 
son's saving grace was having made coffee, and Mulder 
poured a cup, then slid his feet into his canvas deck 
shoes and shrugged on an old flannel shirt.  Standing 
on the back porch, he stretched and yawned as the 
screen door banged shut behind him.  

The grass was still wet along the path to the lake, 
and it whipped damp lines over his ankles.  The 
valley was a vast, azure openness surrounded by gray-
green mountains and scented with balsam and pine.  
Their new house was two hours and a several worlds 
above Manhattan, and the only prying eyes on the old 
horse ranch belonged to the wildlife.  It was easier 
to breathe here, and Mulder had spent the last year 
trying to exhale.   
                 
As he walked out on the pier, Will reached the far 
end of the lake and turned back, his arms cutting 
easily through the water and the muscles of his back 
and shoulders rippling.  Mulder set his cup on top of 
the post, then leaned on the railing, watching 
unnoticed as his son swam laps.  He still looked 
twice, wondering who had carved a young man's body 
and given it his son's features.

"How's the water?" he asked as Will passed, then, 
when he was ignored, dove in. "My God!" he gasped as 
he reached the surface again, trying to get some air 
back into his lungs.

"It's freezing," his son finally responded, pausing 
and treading water.

"Thanks.  You're very helpful." 

"I try," Will assured him. "Think you can keep up, 
old man?" he challenged, backstroking away.

"With you?  Who let you out of the kiddie pool?"  

Fifteen minutes later, a temporary truce was called, 
and Mulder followed Will to the middle of the lake, 
both resting their forearms on the floating wooden 
platform as they caught their breath.

"No bad," Will conceded. "For an old guy."

"I didn't want to embarrass you," Mulder responded 
sarcastically, his body humming.  Will had probably 
been doing laps for half an hour and was tired, but 
it was still an effort to keep up. "So, it's 
Saturday.  You wanna go to a movie?"

"Yeah," Will responded, tossing his wet hair back 
from his face. "Let's get a burger, too."

"Play some catch after?"  

"And then go fishing.  Teach me to drive?"

"Sure," Mulder promised.

As they planned a day that would never happen again, 
he saw a small female figure making her way down the 
path from the house, her full skirt swaying 
gracefully as she moved.  She walked to end of the 
pier, then stood with her hands on her hips, 
surveying the scene with a frown.  Mulder pushed back 
from the platform, swimming toward her with long, 
unhurried strokes.  

"Guillaume, we to be too much very late," she 
informed Will, who waved to her happily from the 
middle of the lake.  She ran her fingers through her 
short, dark curls, then gestured toward him in 
frustration. "You have library.  Why you not ready?"

Will grinned, climbing up on the platform and 
stretching out lazily.  Lying on his back, he rested 
his head on his forearms and crossed his ankles, 
getting comfortable.   

"Guillaume, I mean it!  Is no joke.  I tell you be 
ready seven thirty." 

"You can't have him, Maddie," Mulder informed her, 
treading water a few feet from the pier. "It's 
Saturday.  Our day.  We're going to the movies.  
Right, Will?"

Will gave him a 'thumbs up,' otherwise not moving.

"And then we're getting a burger.  You can come.  
We'll share.  We'll even let you sit in the middle 
and hold the popcorn."

She pushed her eyebrows together, and a perplexed 
crease appeared in the white skin between them. "I 
cannot come to burgers, Monsieur Mulder.  I to be too 
much too late for work.  He have library work or no 
graduation.  Guillaume, what this about burgers?"

"If you want me that badly, then come get me, honey," 
Will responded, still not even bothering to turn his 
head. "Dad and I are going fishing."

"You can't have him, Maddie," Mulder told her again, 
grinning. "Not yet."

Ignoring him, she folded her arms and shouted across 
the lake, "Guillaume Mulder, you come this instant!  
We to be too much-"

"We to be too much too late for work," Will finally 
responded, sitting up. "We to be too much too late 
for library.  Do you think all the good encyclopedias 
are going to be gone if I don't get there at eight, 
Maddie?" He slid off the raft and into the water, 
joining Mulder in front of the pier. "You look 
pretty.  Come here and turn around."    

Madelon complied, turning slowly so he could see her 
new dress.  He swam closer and she stepped to the 
very edge, still swishing back and forth for his 
amusement.  Mulder thought she looked like Audrey 
Hepburn, but Will, highly biased, insisted Audrey 
Hepburn tried to look like Maddie.  Either way, she 
was lovely, and bright, and funny in a wry, French 
kind of way, and nothing at all like any girl he'd 
ever dreamed would catch his son's eye. 

"I can see up your skirt," Will informed her 
seriously.

She sighed in exasperation, and stepped back. 
"Monsieur Mulder, why you not teach him listen when I 
say I want 'come this instant'?" she demanded, trying 
to maintain her stern expression. 

"Very high standards," Mulder whispered to Will, 
still treading water.     

"Very," his son responded. "Go dig up some worms, 
honey.  There's a shovel in the barn.  I told you: 
we're fishing today.  The Yankees and graduating can 
go to Hell; it's Saturday."

"Such language!  You two: you are both too large for 
your trousers!" she informed them.

Mulder bit his lip, coughing as he struggled not to 
laugh.   

"It's 'too big for your britches,'" Will managed to 
choke out, then put one hand on the slippery ladder, 
probably wanting to get out before she said anything 
else enlightening. "And not in this cold water."   

"You're going to the library in town?" Mulder asked 
as Will took the towel she offered, brushing off her 
attempts to dry him. "Or are you going to drop Maddie 
at work and ride into Manhattan with me?"

"Town.  This is my term paper, and I think she's more 
uptight about it than I am.  I'm gonna pass.  Who 
cares if I pass with a B or a D?  What do you want me 
to drive?"  

Will's Thunderbird was still out of commission after 
getting a large Buick-shaped dent in the passenger 
side door.  For almost two months, the garage kept 
sending it back, saying it was repaired, and Will 
kept returning it, saying it wasn't repaired to his 
standards.

"Take the Chrysler.  I'll drive the Porsche today."
 
"Are you sure?"

"Take it.  Are you two coming to the game?"

Will immediately turned to Maddie, asking, "Are we 
going to watch my dad play this afternoon?"

"We to see."

"We'll see.  Maybe," he relayed to his father as if 
Mulder hadn't heard her. 

"Bonjour, Monsieur Mulder," Madelon told him, turning 
back to the house. "Guillaume, I cook breakfast, 
start car.  You wash; you smell of the fish."

'Balls?' Mulder mouthed at his son, gesturing as 
though he might have left them somewhere in the lake.

Will made a face, then followed Maddie, flicking his 
wet hair at her playfully as she pushed him away and 
ordered him to stop.  At almost halfway through his 
seventeenth year, Will was just over six feet of lean 
muscle, and he slouched slightly as they walked so he 
could hear whatever Maddie was telling him to do.  
Eventually he got tired of being lectured and kissed 
her, which was a sure way to shut up a headstrong 
woman for a few seconds.

Mulder laughed to himself, then pivoted in the water 
and started another lap, putting off starting the day 
a little longer.

*~*~*~*
 
His son had made it sound easy enough: unscrew the 
little bolt, drain out the old oil, change the oil 
filter, etcetera, etcetera.  Will even laid out all 
the parts and tools before he'd left to take Maddie 
home, explaining each step like his father was a 
complete moron.

It was official: his father was a complete moron.  
Just because Mulder had hit a homerun over the wall 
this afternoon didn't mean he'd grown a mechanical 
gene.   

He heard a car coming up the gravel drive, for once 
going at a reasonable speed.  Will had finally become 
a more cautious driver after wrecking with Maddie in 
the car.  An old man had run a stop sign on a dark, 
rainy road; the accident hadn't been Will's fault, 
but the trip to the emergency room had been a 
sobering experience.  

Mulder adjusted the portable light so it wasn't 
blinding him, then picked up the wrench, squirming to 
get at the bolt.  No normal human being's arms were 
meant to bend at that angle.  

The old Coney Island cat Emily had adopted peeked 
underneath the Porsche, curious as to what all the 
foul language was about. "Stew meat," Mulder 
threatened, and Kitten flicked his tail haughtily, an 
amused, evil gleam in his one good eye.   

He mumbled in satisfaction as the bolt turned, then 
cursed again and jerked away as scalding motor oil 
poured down his forearm.  Unfortunately, underneath a 
small sports car, there wasn't a lot of room to 
escape.  His foot hit something as he squirmed, 
tipping it over.  When he heard 'glugging' sounds, he 
realized it was one of the cans of oil Will had 
opened before he'd left. 
 
Kitten, knowing danger when he saw it, headed for 
the safety of the hayloft.  

Mulder found a rag, then wiped off and up as much oil 
as possible.  His T-shirt was ruined, so he skinned 
it off and tossed it in the dark corner of the barn 
before he crawled back underneath the car. He was 
supposed to do something else while the old oil was 
draining out of the engine, but he couldn't remember 
what it was so he just jiggled various things, 
getting nervous when a chunk came off in his hand.

"Will!" he called, and heard footsteps approaching.  

He turned the grease-coated part over, then tried to 
fit it back into place before anyone noticed.  It 
wouldn't stay.

"What is this?" he asked, holding the lump out from 
underneath the car.  He turned his head and saw 
women's loafers standing beside the Porsche instead 
of Will's oversized sneakers. "Oh, never mind.  I 
thought you left, Maddie.  Where's Will?  Tell him 
someone left this loose and it fell off.  I didn't 
touch it."

"It's okay; I think it's a pebble," Scully's voice 
said thoughtfully, and Mulder slammed his head into 
the undercarriage as he tried to sit up.  

He scrambled gracelessly from underneath the car, 
sticky with sweat and slippery with oil, with dirt 
sticking to his bare back and grease stains on his 
old blue jeans.  It was really Scully.  Not her 
sister, not a hallucination, not a dream: it was 
Scully standing in his barn in a skirt and a white 
blouse, her hair caught in a ponytail at the base of 
her neck.  In spite of the dizzying rush of blood to 
his brain, he felt an inner calm, like knowing a 
nightlight was on even without opening his eyes.  

"Hi," she said softly, being surreally still as the 
world continued to turn.

"Hi," he exhaled back, stunned. "My God."

"What gave you the idea you could work on a car, 
Mulder?"

"I was supposed to- Will said- Oh my God!"  

He cupped his palms against her cheeks, then wrapped 
his arms around her and lifted her off her feet.  He 
just inhaled her for a moment, then set her back 
down, staring at her, trying to take in everything at 
once in case she vanished again. 

"I'm getting you dirty," he mumbled, trying to wipe a 
smear of grease off her cheek and only making it 
larger.

"No, you're not," she answered, her eyes shining as 
she looked up at him. "Are you all right?"

It seemed like such a mundane, inane question that he 
almost laughed.

"I, uh, I burned my arm.  Just a minute ago."  

He held it out for her to examine, putting his other 
hand on his wrist so it would stop shaking.

"It's not bad.  Anything else?"

"Everything," he answered breathlessly. "Everything 
hurts."

She stepped back, looking at him critically in the 
glow from the light hanging from the rafters.  Under 
her gaze, he felt self-conscious of his bare chest, 
with the two puckered scars from the bullets and the 
long red line from open-heart surgery beginning at 
the base of his throat and running to the base of his 
ribcage.  Most people saw him as a two-dimensional 
icon, but she saw him as a man and he was acutely 
aware of all his flaws.

"Is this what 'playing form' looks like?" she finally 
asked, sliding her fingertips over his shoulders and 
down his arms, tracing the evidence of hours of 
swimming laps and lifting weights. "This is nice."

"Oh," he mumbled awkwardly. "Yeah.  I can't believe 
you're really here, honey.  I think I'm a little 
afraid to believe it.  Because if you're not really 
here and I believe you are, I think I'll go crazy.  
Well, technically, that would mean I was already 
crazy because I'd be hallucinating, so I'd really 
only be going crazier," he chattered. "And if you are 
really here and I don't believe it, then I'd be 
delusional, which would be equally bad, and, and, 
and- And I sound like a blithering idiot, don't I?"

She rested her forehead tiredly against his chest, 
leaning into him as though she could crawl inside. 
"I've missed you so much."

"You can't imagine," he began, then couldn't finish. 
"You're okay?"
 
"I'm fine." She straightened up, her expression 
wavering between tears and a smile. "We heard you on 
the radio; we listened to the game in the car this 
afternoon."

"We?  Are you a 'we'?"   

Will had left the porch light on, and the nondescript 
Chevrolet in the driveway was dusty, with Oregon 
tags.  He stared at it as they walked past, seeing 
evidence of a long drive.  There was a suitcase 
behind the driver's seat, along with two empty soda 
cups and crumpled food wrappers.  In the front were 
some crayons, a coloring book, a blanket, and a baby 
bottle.

She nodded, taking his grimy hand and leading him up 
the front steps. "We're a 'we.'"
 
*~*~*~*

The best way to describe it-

No, the only way to describe it was like dreaming he 
was falling, plummeting from the heavens and watching 
helplessly as the ground came closer and closer.  His 
body tensed, bracing for the painful impact, and he 
could only pray he woke up before it was too late.  
Then, out of the blue, God or chance or destiny 
intervened, slowed his fall, and guided him softly 
back to Earth with all the gentleness of the father 
for his child.

It left him breathless, thankful, and still waiting 
for the sky to come crashing down on top of him.
 
He checked the clock on the mantle, making sure it 
was moving at the right pace.  It was, so he looked 
around his living room, checking for red.  He didn't 
see any, which meant this probably wasn't a dream.  
They were really there: the three of them.  Scully 
and, asleep on the couch, Emily, and-

Employing his coveted genetics, the thousands of 
dollars his father had spent on his education, and 
knowledge gleaned from years as a closet 
intellectual, Mulder pointed at the portable 
bassinette beside the sofa and announced, "That's a 
baby."

At his voice, the infant opened his blue eyes, 
splaying his tiny fingers in front of his mouth.  He 
yawned, his face briefly metamorphosizing into 
toothless gums and taut pink lips before it resumed 
its normal shape.

"That's a baby," Mulder repeated numbly, his brain 
sputtering like an engine running low on gas.

As he stood frozen in the doorway, Scully's hand slid 
out of his and she walked to the bassinette, leaning 
over it.  The baby reached up, fascinated by her 
face. "Yes, it is," she whispered, smiling. 

"Scully, that's a baby." He was still pointing. "Th- 
that's a, a, a-"

"A baby."

He nodded stupidly.  

"Why don't you sit down, Mulder?"  

"I should sit down," he mumbled, sinking gratefully 
into a chair.  Thank God she suggested it; he'd 
forgotten he could move. 

Scully picked up the infant, settling him against her 
shoulder with one hand on his bottom and the other 
supporting his head. "Do you want to hold him?"

He stared at her, now forgetting he could speak.  

Scully was an excellent nurse, and she'd make an 
excellent doctor.  If she said he was coming down 
with something, odds were he'd wake up the next 
morning with a stuffed-up nose and a scratchy throat.  
If she said he should take vitamins, he took them 
unquestioningly.  And if she told him to think of a 
pregnancy as a threat to her health rather than as a 
child, he branded any other hope as traitorous and 
stamped it out guiltily. 

"Mulder?" she repeated when he didn't respond.

"Yes?" he answered as though she'd asked if he'd like 
cream in his coffee.  That was where she'd been for 
months, why she hadn't returned or made contact when 
they'd sent the signal it was safe: because she was 
afraid someone was after the baby.

The baby.  They had a baby.

He started feeling lightheaded, also having forgotten 
he was supposed to breathe.  He'd had a thousand 
nightmares of her suddenly doubling over in pain, not 
able or afraid to get to a doctor.  He'd envisioned 
her strapped to one of those cold metal exam tables 
with the needle descending into her swollen belly.  
He'd even pictured the label on the filing cabinet: 
DKS-FWM 1956, a code summarizing a life like a toe 
tag at the morgue.  Even in dreams, though, he didn't 
allow himself to hope.  It hurt too much.

"Do you want to hold him?"

He blinked, checking to see if she'd vanished.  Life 
was already in soft focus; he wouldn't have been 
surprised if it faded completely to black.  

"You don't have to," she immediately amended. "I 
didn't mean to push you.  Maybe later." 

"It's okay?  It won't bother him?"

Scully looked at him, puzzled, then responded, "No, 
it won't bother him."

"Phoebe said it bothered Will: when I wanted to hold 
him."

"Phoebe would."  
 
He inhaled slowly, moving his lips silently as she 
settled the baby into his arms, then just stared at 
him.

Then at Scully, who was hovering protectively.  

Then nervously at the baby, who yawned again, under-
impressed. 

He was almost ready to tell her to take the baby back 
before he dropped him when, like God touching 
Michelangelo's Adam, there was a spark, an 
instinctive recognition, and a sense of rightness, 
and nothing in the world was going to pry him away 
from that child.  

Mulder felt warm, like he was sleeping under an 
electric blanket, and tingly, like he was submerged 
in champagne punch.  It started at the crown of his 
head and flowed down to his fingertips, pushing aside 
other emotion in its path.  As it reached his chest, 
it twinged as an ache was massaged away: the pain of 
too much tenderness. 

He folded the blanket back a few inches, breathlessly 
enraptured with the scents and textures of a new 
human being. "He's beautiful.  Oh my God.  Look at 
these fingers.  They're perfect.  And eyes.  Blue 
eyes.  He's watching everything.  He's so little.  
What's his name?  What's your name, little guy?"

"Mortimer."

He glanced up, mouth open. "You named my son 
'Mortimer'?"

"No, I just wanted to see if you were paying 
attention."

"Don't tease me, honey," he pleaded, sniffing. "Not 
unless you want to see a grown man cry." 

She smiled, brushing her lips against his cheek, 
which may or may not have already been wet. 
"Benjamin.  Ben.  I was keeping with the tradition of 
verbs, so I thought you'd like a past participle."

"Hello, Benjamin," he murmured, tracing his finger 
over the baby's downy head. "I didn't even let myself 
think it might happen.  Last May you said-"

"I know what I said, Mulder." She stroked the sole of 
a bare foot that had escaped the blanket and Ben's 
toes curled under in response. "But here he is."

"Is he okay?  Is there anything odd or, or different 
about him?"

"As far as I can tell, he's a healthy, full term 
infant.  He snores, though: these tiny little baby 
snores.  And sometimes I can't do anything to make 
him happy; he just wants to be difficult, and I think 
that's hereditary."

Ben closed his eyes again, dozing as he chewed his 
fist contentedly.

"What if he gets sick?" he asked suddenly. "What if 
he didn't come from where we think he came from?  
What if whatever made the first baby so valuable: 
what if he has it too?  What if They take him the 
same way They took you?"  
    
"And what if the sky falls?" she answered, reaching 
over to adjust his hands again. "He's here.  I think 
if They were going to take him, They already would 
have.  He's here, he's wonderful, and he's ours.  I 
take my miracles where I can get them."

He cradled Ben against his chest and nodded toward 
Emily. "Like this one?  I thought the doctors said-"  

Emily had the same pale, hollow-cheeked look she'd 
had after having pneumonia, except more so.  She 
shifted in her sleep, reaching out for her mother.

Scully stroked her daughter's hair, smoothing back 
the sweaty wisps. "For a few months, she got better, 
and I thought the doctors had been making her sick on 
purpose.  She seemed fine.  She even started school 
last September.  And then she started getting 
nosebleeds again and catching every germ known to 
man, just like before.  It's just a matter of time.  
Sooner or later-" Scully paused and smiled that war-
weary smile again. "She wanted to see you, Mulder.  
Bub and Mulder: that's all she's talked about for a 
week."

He nodded again, then went back to staring wondrously 
at the baby in his arms. "He's real, honey," he said 
softly. "He's real, you're real, Em's real.  You're 
all really here."

"Yes, we are."  
 
"Am I holding him the right way?"

"You're fine," she assured him. "I thought you'd done 
this before?" 

"I want to do it right this time."

*~*~*~* 

The suitcase had been packed in Scully's meticulous 
manner, but with strangers' clothes; echoes from 
another life.  

Mulder unfolded a light blue waitress uniform, cut 
loose to conceal a pregnant belly, with 'Laura' on 
the nametag.  There was a stain of something yellow, 
mustard, maybe, on the front, and a crumpled, washed 
sheet of paper from an order pad in the pocket.  It 
hurt his pride to think of those three things in 
conjunction: Dana Scully, his baby, and a maternity 
waitress's uniform.  He hadn't played pro ball for 
years so the mother of his child could use her belly 
to counterbalance a tray of root beer floats. 

There were half-empty packages of plain socks and 
white panties, both Emily and Scully-sized, like 
she'd rushed through the store and just grabbed the 
first things off the shelves that fit.  It was as 
though someone had been sent to buy clothes: just 
generic, all-purpose 'clothes:' and this was what 
they'd returned with; the skirts and blouses and 
pajamas were as impersonal as accidentally bringing 
home a bag of another person's groceries.       

The 'if lost' tag on the suitcase was for 'Donna 
Miller,' but no home address was listed.

A manila folder in the side pocket held a 
kindergarten report card from Oregon, a school 
picture, a few crayoned worksheets, and a piece of 
lined paper with 'Katie Samuels' written in a little 
girl's careful lettering.  A teacher had drawn a 
smiley face and noted the printing was 'very nice.'  

A second folder was thick with medical records, most 
undecipherable by him, and a birth certificate 
recording a baby boy weighing in at a little over six 
pounds. 'Benjamin William Martin,' had been born 
February 10, 1956 in Vancouver, British Columbia, 
Canada to Marty and Sally Martin.  Marty Martin was, 
once again, absent.

Love grows gradually.  It shifts and evolves like a 
musician who plays a song again and again until 
suddenly he hears it as if for the first time.  And 
sometimes it was possible to fall in love a hundred 
times in a hundred different ways in the course of a 
lifetime, all with the same person.        

"Thank you," Scully said casually, emerging from the 
bathroom enveloped in his oversized robe and a cloud 
of steam. "For bringing in my suitcase," she added, 
seeming puzzled by his intense gaze. "Are the kids 
all right?"

"Still sleeping," he reported softly, pushing a wet 
strand of hair back from her forehead. "You are so 
beautiful."

She half-laughed, then started to pull away. "I just 
had a baby, Mulder.  Is it the bags under my eyes or 
the extra ten pounds on my backside that does it for 
you?"

"No." He licked his lips, then felt them cool as he 
inhaled. "I wish I was an artist so I could draw you 
the way I see you: courageous, noble, strong; a 
thousand times stronger than I am.  It's beauty that 
goes deep and endures: fine furniture in a world of 
cheap veneer."       

Beginning at the base of her throat, he ran one 
finger slowly down her chest, parting the damp robe.  
She watched his hand moving, and swallowed nervously 
as he untied the knot at her waist. "Bed," he 
breathed into ear, pulling her to him by the 
terrycloth belt.  

"Ben will be awake soon," she answered, tilting her 
head as he traced a tendon down the side of her neck 
with his mouth.

"Is that your way of saying no?"  They could make 
love without actually making love; Ben was barely 
three months old.  Or maybe that wasn't the problem. 
"Scully, what Alex Krycek said about Diana: that was 
true.  About the others, too."

"I know."

"I thought, sometimes, in the past year, it wasn't 
that you weren't coming back, but that you weren't 
coming back to me."
 
She shook her head from side to side, closing her 
eyes as he guided her back onto the mattress.  

"Are you?  Coming back to me?" he asked softly.

"I'm here," she whispered.

"And when I open my eyes tomorrow morning?"

She didn't answer.  She relaxed, her movements 
languid, trusting, and almost trancelike as he mapped 
her body with his, fearful one square inch might 
escape him.  Under his tongue, she tasted of melted 
vanilla ice cream and saltwater taffy, and her body 
quivered gently, like ripples across the surface of a 
pond.

"Stay with me.  Marry me.  I love you," he murmured, 
just in case there was still any question. "I think I 
have for forever.  It has to take more than one 
lifetime to learn to love someone this much."   

Life was passion and pain waiting to open its jaws 
and howl.  Love was opening himself to another person 
the way a woman opened her body for a man.  It was 
slicing the artery to his heart and letting his soul 
bleed from it.  It hurt, sometimes more than he 
thought he could bear.  Perhaps the only way to find 
peace was to live without it, but that time was 
hollow, empty: passing through life in the shadows 
rather than living it in the sun.

"I want to be inside you," he whispered to her, 
opening his eyes to see her watching him, looking 
deep into the cluttered, cobwebbed shelves of his 
soul. "Slow, careful; I promise.  I won't hurt you."

"You have been inside me," she murmured back, 
shifting under him and wrapping her bare legs around 
his hips. "You were inside me for nine months.  I 
could feel your hearrtbeat.  Sometimes it was the 
only thing I could feel."

*~*~*~*

It probably happened to every guy, but it had never 
happened to him before, and it was horrifying.  
Sickening.  Or maybe it had happened with another 
woman and he'd just been too drunk to notice: that 
was a sad thought.  Though he'd been married to 
Phoebe for years, he'd spent less than nine months 
actually living with her, and that was including the 
months immediately before and after Will had been 
born.  He'd been with Scully fifty times for every 
one he'd been with his ex-wife, so it would, of 
course, happen with Scully: he made love to a woman 
and then cuddled up, dozing as the last pinpricks of 
passion flitted through his body and the wetness on 
his skin shifted from hot and slick to cold and 
sticky, and discovered she was sobbing.  

He pushed up on one elbow, staring at her in his dark 
bedroom. "Are you crying?" he asked in horror, like 
this could be some sort of extended, tearful, 
epileptic orgasm.  

"No." She turned her face away, burying it in the 
pillow.

"Yes, you are.  You are.  You're crying." He'd been 
to shrink school; they'd taught him to recognize 
these things.

"No, I'm not," she insisted, her bare back shaking as 
she sobbed.

"Yes, you are," he argued, his stomach tightening.   

"Fine.  I'm crying.  Go away, Mulder."

"What's wrong?"  

"I'm fine," she said angrily. "I'm just crying."

"Well, stop it.  What did I do?   I was being 
careful.  Did I hurt you?"  

"No, I'm crying because you didn't hurt me.  Because 
you're always so damn careful."

"Turn over and I'll slap you around a little if it'll 
get you to stop.  Stop it, honey.  What's wrong?" 

"Go away.  Go check on Ben."

"No, I'm not going away.  Tell me why you're crying."

"I'm crying because you're playing baseball again, 
and I know you didn't want to.  I'm crying because 
you tried to change Ben's diaper when you have 
absolutely no idea how.  I'm crying because I dragged 
you into this nightmare of secrets and projects, 
because they almost killed you and held a gun to 
Will's head, and when I show up again, you still want 
to be with me.  I'm crying because you shot Alex 
Krycek when I told you to.  And I'm probably crying 
because your father cried when he buried your damn 
dog when you were fourteen."

"So you're crying because I love you and I'm a nice 
guy?"   

She nodded, still sobbing into the pillow.

"I slept with your sister."

She whirled around, sitting up, her eyes and nose 
swollen. "She's married!  You did not!"

"No, of course I didn't.  She is cute, though.  See: 
now you're not crying."

"I hate you sometimes, Mulder." 

He kissed her forehead, nervously wiping away the 
tears.  She closed her eyes, leaned against his 
shoulder, and he put his arms around her, keeping her 
safe from the world for a few more minutes. 

She was probably telling the truth.
 
*~*~*~*

Entire reels of life were forgotten on the cutting 
room floor, yet single frames stood out, projected 
larger than life, dust and scratches and all.  This 
day was one of those frames, dust and scratches and 
all.

It wasn't lost on him that Ben was the same age Will 
had been when Phoebe had returned to London, taking 
William with her.  That couldn't have been seventeen 
years ago; it was somewhere between yesterday and an 
eternity, but not seventeen years.  

"Mulder?" Scully whispered, still buttoning her 
pajama top as she came down the stairs. "What are you 
doing down here?  It's almost midnight."

He looked up from his place on the floor, with Emily 
asleep on the couch on one side and Ben in the 
bassinette on the other. "I-I was just watching them.  
I thought you fell asleep," he answered, his voice 
hushed by the darkness and roughened by emotion. 

"Is something wrong?"

"No," he answered after a moment's hesitation. "I 
don't think so." 

As she watched him from the last step, the moonlight 
glowed through the living room window, outlining her 
delicate features and making her sex-tousled hair 
luminous.  She'd rolled up her sleeves, but her white 
pajama bottoms were too long, bunching over her feet 
so only her toes peeked out, not sure if it was safe 
to come out or not.

"I should have been dead for more than a year and a 
half," he said hoarsely, trying to sound casual. 
"Eighty-two weeks.  That's five hundred and seventy-
four days, or thirteen thousand, seven hundred and 
seventy-six hours.  In case anyone was counting," he 
added. "The doctor said he'd never seen anyone lose 
that much blood and live.  And not have brain damage.  
He said it with this look of confused disappointment: 
that I hadn't died when he said I should."

"Well, I told you not to," she teased quietly, and 
without much energy. "And the no-brain-damage part is 
debatable.  No grown man who still likes snow cones 
is completely normal.  Really, Mulder: are you all 
right?"    

"When he was a baby, I used to watch Will sleeping 
before I'd go to work in the morning.  I had to be at 
the docks at five, so from four until four-fifteen 
I'd just stare at him.  Once, he was awake, so I 
tried giving him a bottle, but he started crying and 
got Phoebe up, and Phoebe was mad, so after that I 
just watched him sleep."

"That's too bad.  Anytime a baby cries between three 
and five in the morning, it automatically means they 
want their daddies."

"Really?" he answered in surprise, then realized, 
"You're still teasing me."

She shook her head that she wasn't, but she smiled 
tiredly as she did it and walked toward him, running 
her fingers through his hair as she passed.  He 
caught her hand, keeping her close.

"I got another year and a half with my son.  And now 
we have Ben.  He's wonderful, Scully.  Not too many 
men get a second chance, and I did.  I got two: to 
live and to be a father again.  And you gave me 
both."  

Her smile softened, spreading to her eyes.

"I owe you so much.  I was thinking of something: 
sitting here, watching them.  Maybe a way of 
redeeming my IOU.  The doctors gave Emily blood 
transfusions; she needs healthy red blood cells, 
right?"

"That's right, but her body rejects them.  So to 
prevent that and suppress her already weakened immune 
system, they gave her cortisone, which made her even 
sicker and less able to fight off germs.  It's not a 
matter of money, Mulder; I'm not doing that to her 
again."

"She doesn't have very long, does she?"

Scully nodded 'no' again, like a light bulb that had 
just dimmed a little. "It's not a good idea to be 
moving her around, to expose her to new germs, but 
she wanted to see you and Will."
 
"What about giving her my blood?  I'm O-positive; I 
can donate to anyone.  Maybe she'd be less likely to 
reject cells that are genetically closer to hers."

"You and I aren't related."

He hesitated, then said it. "I think Alex Krycek and 
I probably are.  Somehow.  It might buy her some 
time."

"It, it might, if you're compatible," she responded 
thoughtfully. "Are you saying that man's really your 
brother?  That Emily is your niece? "

"No.  And I'm not saying he was Emily's father in any 
classic sense.  I don't even think he was a man.  I 
think he was a creation.  I think he was what he said 
he was: the next evolutionary step between human and 
alien. Gibson and I are the first naturally-occurring 
step, Emily is the second, and whatever Krycek was is 
the third." 

"I know this is your line, but do you know how crazy 
that sounds?  Even if there is extra-terrestrial 
life, the laws of physics prohibit traveling faster 
than the speed of light, which they'd have to do to 
reach Earth.  And evolution happens slowly.  A 
species changes over eons."     

"Unless evolution and physics have a little help.  I 
know what I saw.  I saw Them creating children, and I 
saw Krycek's body dissolve like a green Popsicle on a 
hot sidewalk.  And that film-"

"That film is a hoax; something to feed a paranoid 
public.  There are monsters, but they're human 
monsters in government laboratories trying to play 
God with human genetics.  And when They fail, this is 
what happens," she said quietly, gesturing to Em. 

"No, Scully.  I know what I saw; I just can't prove 
it.  I can put the pieces together, but there's no 
proof.  There's just nothing, just like when you 
disappeared the first time.  They repaved the alley 
near the hospital that night, covering up the manhole 
we came out of.  The door in the vending room opens 
to a janitor's closet, now.  Gibson vanished, just 
like Diana and Old Smokey and Dr. Calderon.  They 
just dug a big hole and covered up their mess, 
Scully, but at least they didn't bury us with it."

"No," she said softly.  

"Please don't go."

"What if-"

"What if what, Scully?  What if you being here puts 
us in danger?  What if Ben and Will don't have the 
genetics They want because it's a recessive gene, but 
they can pass it on to their children?  What if Emily 
doesn't get better?  What if that smoking bastard 
comes after us anyway, film or no film?  What if the 
Russians drop the bomb and we all vaporize in an 
instant?  What if?  Everyone has 'what ifs;' ours are 
just a little less mundane." 

Headlights exploded through the living room window, 
then the car engine died and the driver's door 
opened.  Scully startled, then jumped again, ready to 
grab a child and run, when he tightened his hand on 
her arm.

"Just Will," he assured her, wondering how many times 
she must have fled in the last year to have reacted 
like that.  "It's okay.  It's just William.  He took 
Maddie home."   
 
"It's just Will," she repeated to herself, taking a 
breath. 

"He's missed you.  We both have."

'Missed' was an understatement.  Will, with the 
resiliency of youth, had somehow rationalized the 
bizarre morning Emily and Scully vanished, but there 
was still the void and silence they left behind.

Mulder wasn't the only one who'd spent months 
expecting Scully and Emily to be just in the next 
room.  More than once last summer, they'd gone to a 
restaurant and requested a table for four instead of 
two.  They'd never spent another night at The Plaza 
or the house in Georgetown, unable to face the 
memories, so the movers had packed with little regard 
for whose things were whose.  It wasn't uncommon to 
open a box, searching for a missing book or a winter 
sweater, and discover a lone crayon or a mate-less 
lady's glove.  Those things were quietly, 
optimistically repacked: saved, but not commented on.  

And life had gone on.  That wasn't disloyalty; it was 
survival.

Will got out of the car, then stood and stared at her 
in astonishment.  He blinked - just checking - then 
slammed the driver's side door and rushed toward her. 

"Dana?  Dana!"  

She met him in the yard, and a broad grin split his 
face before he picked her up and swung her around, 
her bare feet dangling helplessly.    

"Easy, Will," Mulder called from the porch. "Be 
careful."

Will set her down, but kept his arm around her 
shoulders as they walked back to the house. "Jesus, 
Dana, where've you been?  Do you know what a bad cook 
my father is?"

"Yes, unfortunately I do."

"Where've you been?  Is Emily with-"

He noticed Mulder sitting on the top step, holding 
the baby.

"Oh my God," he said in amazement. "Is that what I 
think it is?"

"We have mounting evidence that it's a baby." Mulder 
waggled his eyebrows in his Groucho Marx impression. 
"And Emily's asleep in the house." 

If possible, Will's grin got even broader. "Dad, have 
you been opening your birthday presents early this 
year?"

"William Adam," he murmured as Will leaned over the 
baby, "Meet Benjamin William.  Ben, meet Will."

"You named him after me?"

"Yes, Will, we named him after you," Scully 
responded. "Not Mulder, not my father or brother, not 
three of his four grandfathers, but you, Will."

"Gee, thanks.  Good name, little guy.  Wow.  Are they 
supposed to be this little?" 

Mulder nodded, adding another frame to his memory as 
Will examined his baby brother, checking tiny 
fingernails and ears and chubby pink cheeks. "He's 
three months old.  And I think you were smaller than 
this at his age."    

"I was not," he responded. "Can I hold him?"

"No, I'm not done yet.  Get your own." 

Still bent over Benjamin, he glanced up his father 
and asked, "Did you tell Dana?" 

"I thought I'd let you."

"Uhhh." Will swallowed nervously, taking a step back, 
and not liking that idea.  He tended to have all the 
subtly and tact of a sledgehammer. "Well, uh," he 
started, then paused again. "I'm getting married.  In 
two weeks."

Scully's lips formed something, but no sound came 
out.   

"Keep going," Mulder said, gesturing with one hand 
for him to continue.

"As soon as I graduate.  Dad says I have to graduate 
first.  And I'm going into the Air Force.  I'll be a 
jet mechanic; I'm all signed up.  You wouldn't 
believe some of the things those doctors checked 
during my physical, Dana."

Mulder continued gesturing like a traffic cop waving 
people through an intersection.

"Her name is Madelon.  Maddie.  Her father's the head 
chef at one the resorts.  I met her in town.  She's 
nineteen.  She's French.  She's great.  Really 
great."

Mulder kept gesturing, indicating Will had about one 
inch to go.

"And she's going to have a baby.  Hey: does anyone 
want anything from the kitchen?  I'll make tea," Will 
said quickly, stepping past them and hurrying into 
the house.
 
"Oh," Scully said numbly, sitting on the steps.  She 
looked at Mulder, slowly tilting her head to one side 
as the news and its implications sunk in. 

"He and Maddie had a car wreck in late March while I 
was in Florida for spring training.  The other driver 
hit Maddie's side going about forty-five miles an 
hour," Mulder explained. "By the time my flight 
landed in New York, Will was patched up; he just had 
a few cuts and bruises. Maddie's injuries were worse, 
and she started to bleed.  The doctors told them 
about the baby and asked if they should try to save 
it, and he and Maddie both said yes.  Which the 
doctors were able to do.  Which would make her about 
four months along, now."

"Twenty weeks," Will informed them from the living 
room, not sounding the slightest bit embarrassed 
about it when he didn't have to look Scully in the 
eye.  

"Twenty weeks," Mulder corrected, looking down at 
Ben. "Which would mean I'm halfway to being a 
grandfather."
   
"Wow," she exhaled.

"Yeah," he answered tightly.

*~*~*~*

Mulder heard the teakettle whistle, and then the 
radio drifting from station to station until Scully 
found a late-night program playing slow, smoldering 
Blues.  Ben was ready for a midnight snack, and Will 
had picked on Emily until she'd woke enough to smile, 
ask where her pony was, and then go back to sleep.  

That made three things he was planning to do first 
thing Monday morning: get married, go crib shopping, 
and buy a pony.

"Will's feeding Ben, and doing a fair job of it.  And 
he brought Kitten in the house for Emily.  Unless 
that cat's learned some manners, that's not going to 
turn out well," Scully commented as she carried out 
two mugs of tea. "Will seems happy, though."

"He is happy.  And Maddie really is wonderful.  I 
have-" He searched for the word. "Concerns: about the 
baby, about him being seventeen, about everything, 
but this what he wants.  I've offered everything I 
can think of to get him to go to college instead of 
into the Air Force, but he just doesn't want to.  
He's always tolerated school, but he's not a scholar.  
Neither is Phoebe."

"How is Phoebe?" she asked, sitting on the top step 
beside him.  The hems of her pajama legs were wet 
with dew, and they clung to her ankles.  The cool 
breeze blew her hair over her face, and she snuggled 
deeper into an old sweater she'd wrapped around her 
shoulders.

"She's okay.  She's been out of the asylum a few 
months; she says she's better. She calls 
occasionally; we talk.  Briefly.  Will drives down to 
Manhattan to see her sometimes, but she's still 
unaware she's going to be a grandmother.  Or a 
mother-in-law.  Will says he's telling her next week, 
and I'm planning to be there with a camera to capture 
the moment.  I think that one photo will make all 
those alimony checks worthwhile."

"How are you, Mulder?"

"Me?" He shrugged one shoulder casually. "I ended up 
just like my father said I would when I told him I 
was marrying Phoebe.  He said I'd be forty years old 
and have a job with my name on my shirt.  It just 
also happens to say 'Yankees' on it, too.  And I'm 
forty-one and a half.  Is that bad?  To still count 
my age in halves and quarters?"

"Mulder-"

"No, I'm okay.  I play a few games a week, and the 
rest of the time I'm here.  I like it here in the 
mountains.  It's quiet.  It's almost safe."
  
He started to smile, but stopped when she didn't seem 
amused.  Sometimes he felt half a beat out of step 
with life, and this was one of those moments.  He 
wanted to make it better, to do something, and she 
wasn't letting him.  He wanted to fix her, and she 
didn't wanted fixed; she just wanted to remember how 
to be still.

"I'm sorry," she said after a pause. "When I met you, 
you were an idealistic, trusting optimist who 
followed me home to return a dime store lipstick. You 
could have been wearing a badge with 'All American 
Boy' printed on it.  You'd never questioned who you 
were.  You'd never-"

"Maybe I met you because I was supposed to question 
who I am.  Why I'm here." He leaned over to kiss her, 
savoring the warmth of her lips. "You asked me once, 
if I could go back and make different choices, if I 
would.  No.  I wouldn't then, and I wouldn't now. 
Even if I knew the price.  Even if I could have stood 
at the crossroads when I was twenty-three or thirty-
nine or this morning and seen my life stretching out 
in different directions in front of me, I wouldn't.  
I wouldn't change one moment.  Well, maybe I would 
have taken better care of my knees.  And drunk a 
little less.  A lot less.  But I can't imagine how 
empty it would have been: working for the FBI: having 
case files and criminals be my life.  I never would 
have known Will.  Or had Ben.  I never would have met 
you or Emily."

"Oh, you never know.  Even as an FBI agent, I bet you 
would have still spent plenty of time in the 
emergency room."           

"You have to take the first step in faith, Scully. 
You don't have to see the where the road leads; just 
take the first step. I still have your lipstick, you 
know."

"Tall, dark, handsome, and fertile doesn't get very 
far with me."  

"What about disillusioned, paranoid, obsessive, and 
slightly banged up?"

"That could grow on me."

She leaned her head against his shoulder, closing her 
eyes.  In the house, Will was talking to the baby, 
and seemed to have succeeded in waking Emily again.  
Kitten hissed and something glass crashed to the 
floor as cat claws tore across the rug.  Mulder's un-
tasted cup of tea was warm in his hand, and steamed 
slowly into the cool night air, the wisps rising like 
old, ethereal souls.  On the radio, Robert Johnson's 
slide guitar continued to play, howling softly along 
with the spring breeze.
 
*~*~*~*

He could see color.  Not just red, but the passionate 
oranges and sun-drenched yellows of summer.  The 
outfield grass was a lush green, and the stands a 
vibrant patchwork quilt of hats and shirts.  
Overhead, above Yankee Field, the sky was blue: vast, 
expansive, cloudless blue.  

He was sitting in the second seat of a long, empty 
row overlooking the dugout.  Below him, the team was 
assembling, a fantasy mixture of eras.  Babe Ruth was 
there, wearing the baggy knickers and skullcap 
uniform of the 1920's, as was Lou Gehrig, looking 
tall and lean and healthy in the sun.  What Mulder 
thought of as 'his' teammates from 1939 were there: 
Lefty Gomez, Don Larson, and Bill Dickey.  The new 
1950's Wonder Boys were warming up: Mickey Mantle and 
Yogi Berra.  Standing on the pitcher's mound like an 
ebony Adonis, was a young Josh Exley, cupping his 
long, elegant fingers around the baseball.  Exley 
smiled, and Mulder smiled back, tilting his head 
knowingly as if he was in on some cosmic joke.

A young couple with an infant made their way up the 
steps, arguing good-naturedly, and Mulder watched 
them, fascinated and a little wistful.  They still 
had the symbiotic glow of two people in love with 
each other for the first time.  The man was wearing a 
blue Air Force dress uniform and carrying a dark-
haired baby on his hip.  A stylishly dressed woman 
was hurrying him along, fussing over the baby, and 
telling him in her French accent that they were late.   

"I know we're late, Maddie," Will informed her, 
turning sideways to scoot down the row. "Don't you 
think I own a watch?"

Mulder stood as Maddie eased past him, tiptoeing to 
give him a European kiss-kiss on each cheek. "He does 
not listen when I tell him, Monsieur Mulder.  I say 
'traffic accident, Guillaume.  Is on radio' but he 
not listen.  We sit; just sit on bridge for twenty 
minute.  This is why we are late."

"How are we supposed to get to the stadium if we 
don't go over the bridge?" Will responded, trying to 
unbutton and peel off his uniform jacket and hold the 
baby at the same time. "Contrary to popular belief, I 
can't walk on water.  Dad, could you take him 
please?" he asked irritably, handing the infant to 
Mulder. "Jesus, Maddie, you think you have to remind 
me to breathe."

"Guillaume, breathe," she responded, and Will 
glowered at her, then exhaled and licked the tip of 
her nose affectionately.

Mulder cradled the baby boy, trying to figure out who 
he might be.  He looked familiar, but he couldn't 
imagine who in the world would let Will look after an 
infant.

"Dad, have you met Luc?"

"No, I don't think we've been introduced," Mulder 
answered uncertainly.   

"Dad, Luc Guillaume Mulder; Luc: meet Papa."

Mulder blinked, staring at the baby, who watched him 
with big, serious brown eyes from underneath a head 
full of glossy black curls. "Papa?  My God.  Did I 
miss a few chapters, Will?" He leaned closer, asking 
seriously, "Am I dead again?"

"No, you're just dreaming.  He's not even here yet; 
don't get all hyped up." Will unbuttoned the top 
button of his shirt and loosened his tie, getting 
comfortable.  On his left hand was a wedding ring, 
which matched the one on Maddie's finger. "The game 
hasn't started?  It's getting late."

"This is Luc?  This is your son?"

"Yeah.  Come here, little guy.  Come to Daddy before 
you give Papa a heart attack," Will said, lifting him 
off Mulder's lap and turning him around so he could 
see the field.  Maddie immediately leaned over to 
take the baby, but Will refused. "I'm holding him," 
he insisted. "Get your own."

Maddie said something in response, but her voice 
blended with the other spectators into a harmonious, 
expectant hum.  

Mulder had opened his mouth to ask something, or else 
it was just hanging open, when he saw Scully 
approaching, carrying a baby, leading one toddler and 
herding another, and trying to keep Emily in motion 
in front of her.  

For the first time in years, Emily moved easily, 
chatting with the other spectators as she made their 
way up the aisle.  She'd found his old Yankee's cap 
again, and she had it on backward, along with her 
favorite denim overalls.  She looked about eight or 
nine; she'd lost her round, babyish cheeks and gained 
a few adult teeth.

Mulder stood again, taking Ben as Scully passed their 
infant son to him.  He looked down curiously as one 
of the two identical redheaded toddlers squeezed past 
him, headed for Maddie's lap.

"All right: everyone who was wet is dry, everyone who 
was thirsty has had a drink, and everyone who's able 
has been to the restroom.  I'm not moving again," 
Scully said, sitting beside him with the other 
toddler on her lap. "So if there's a potty problem, 
you can handle it, Mulder.  It's your shift."

Emily scrambled over Scully, Mulder, and Will, 
trampling their feet, and plopped herself down on the 
seat beyond Maddie, still talking a mile a minute and 
pointing at the players on the field.  Will reached 
over to pick on her and she picked back, sticking her 
tongue out at him.

"Uh, Scully?"

"Hum?" she responded, arranging the little girl on 
her lap and then putting a sun hat on her. The child 
immediately pulled it off, turning back to frown at 
Scully.     

"Who is that?" he asked, nodding to the toddler. "And 
the other one?  Did you hit a rent-a-kid store and 
get a two-for-one special?"

"Katherine.  Katie.  She's one of the twins They 
took.  You did say you wanted a little girl.  Well, 
you have two.  The other is Anne."

"Anne.  Anne and Katie.  Twins.  Oh," he answered, 
nodding like that made any kind of sense. "And 
they're here?"

She looked at him like he was insane. "Of course 
they're here.  Katie, say hello to your father."

"El-O," she said easily, more interested in the 
approaching snack vendor than him.

"Hello, Katie," he responded breathlessly.

"Emily said she wanted popcorn.  Give me your wallet, 
Mulder."
 
"Okay." Moving automatically, he twisted sideways and 
slid it out of his back pocket, then handed it to 
her.  Looking at the faces on either side of him, he 
swallowed and jiggled Ben nervously against his 
shoulder.  Something was either very wrong or very 
right with this universe.

"I think I'm dreaming, Scully."

"Of course you're dreaming, Mulder." She used her 
soothing, 'just go with the nice men in white coats' 
tone.

He kept jiggling Ben, who began to protest. "Please 
tell me we're married in this dream."

She held up her ring finger, showing him the wedding 
band. "Stop bouncing the baby and ask Will if he or 
Maddie want anything to eat.  And make sure Em hasn't 
changed her mind again."

"All right," he answered trustingly, figuring someone 
would clue him in eventually. "Will, do you or Maddie 
wa-wan tah an, uh, uhh."  

He stopped speaking, noticing a girl standing at the 
other end of the row, looking around as though she 
couldn't remember where she'd been sitting. 
"Samantha?  Sam," he called to her, and she turned 
her head, her long brown braids falling over her 
shoulders as she smiled.  

She was still nine, and still wearing the same violet 
dress she'd vanished in that Saturday in 1927; he 
remembered his mother being uneasy about the 
fashionable hemline that barely covered her knobby 
knees.  It had come from the Montgomery Ward's 
catalogue, and she'd pleaded for weeks to get it.  
Their father had refused to let Sam cut her hair into 
a bob, but had conceded to a stylish flapper hat, and 
it still had the wilted wildflower Mulder had stuck 
in it.  He'd picked it for her while they were 
playing in the woods behind their parents' 
summerhouse, listening for their father to start the 
car for a trip to town.  He'd turned his back and 
she'd been gone, as though there was an unannounced 
game of hide and go-seek.  She'd won.   

"Fox?  There you are." The silly, close-fitting 
cloche hat sat so low on her forehead that she had to 
tilt her chin up to peer out from underneath the 
brim.  She sighed and put her hands on her hips, 
seeming annoyed by his almost twenty-nine year 
absence.  

"We're over here, Sam."

She made her way down the row, claiming one of the 
empty seats on the other side of Maddie.  He wanted 
her to come closer so he could touch her and assure 
himself she was real, but she wouldn't. "There aren't 
any more seats.  I'm fine down here.  I was afraid I 
was lost, Fox," she called to him. "I guess you found 
me."

"I guess I did."  

He stared at her, watching as she and Emily sized 
each other up, then decided to see if they could both 
fit in the same seat, squirming and laughing.  Katie 
wiggled down from Scully's lap and joined Anne in 
tormenting Maddie, who didn't seem to mind.  Mulder 
started to call the twins to come back, but Scully 
assured him they were fine where they were.
  
A head appeared over the dugout: one of the long-dead 
coaches from Mulder's rookie year. "We're ready to 
start the game, Mulder," the man said, talking around 
a lip of snuff. "Are you ready?"

He exhaled all the air out of his lungs, then wet his 
lips. "Do I have to?" he asked, dreading swirling 
around his belly. "We just got here.  I'm not, I'm 
not even dressed.  Do I have to play?"

The coach shook his head like he thought he'd heard 
wrong. "No, we're just checkin' with you to see if 
it's time to start the game.  It's getting late.  You 
ready?"

Mulder pushed his eyebrows together.  No one asked 
the players if they were ready to play. 

He looked at the faces around him: to Ben on his lap, 
to Scully on one side and Will and Will's family, and 
past them, to Emily and Samantha and the twins, and 
then finally understood.  Mulder leaned back, 
settling in for the duration. "Yeah, I'm ready." 

He draped his arm around the back of Scully's seat, 
then leaned closer and whispered to her, "I'm 
dreaming, honey."

"Pay attention: the game's starting, Mulder," she 
answered.
 
*~*~*~*


End A Moment In the Sun


Epilogue I
A Moment In the Sun: West

*~*~*~*

In his experience, there were two kinds of 
professional athletes: those who were some trouble 
and those who were lots of trouble.  In thirty-odd 
years as press agent, often a glorified term for 
'nanny,' he'd learned few of the latter minority 
lasted.  They burned out within a few seasons, 
sometimes within a few months.  Most were barely out 
of their teens, some barely out of high school, and 
the meteoric rise to sports stardom, with all its 
trappings, was dizzying.  Women, booze, drugs, 
parties, gambling, money, cars, houses; it was like 
suddenly inheriting a million dollars, then being 
granted immortality to spend it.  Some men were just 
too young, some too dim or naive, and some too 
arrogant, but the results were the same.  Frohike 
had watched enough amazing athletes destroy 
themselves to know the pattern.

And then there was the majority: those who were some 
trouble but worth the effort.  They were the amateur 
league big fish who made it to the pros and had to 
adjust to an entire pond of big fish.  And piranhas.  
One of his favorite clients once likened them to 
prize thoroughbreds, and there was a grain of truth 
in that.  The heart and talent was there, and it was 
a matter of teaching an athlete what to do with it, 
both on the field and off.

Fox Mulder had been the exception.  He was older 
than most rookies.  Married, with an infant son.  
Bright, and well educated, if Frohike could get him 
to talk about it.  During his playing years, aside 
from being camera shy, the only trouble Mulder 
presented was calling at all hours, lonely and 
wanting someone to talk to.

When the Yankees signed Mulder in the spring of 
1939, Frohike had watched him practice and seen the 
makings of an icon.  A Wonder Boy.  Mulder was six 
feet of sun-bronzed skin, lean muscle, sleepy hazel 
eyes, a lazy, lopsided smile, and hair that was 
never quite in place.  He was painfully polite, and 
tended to mumble and stutter, which reporters found 
charming.  After his first homerun in Detroit, in a 
post-game interview, he mentioned missing his wife 
and new baby boy, his voice raw with emotion.  On 
the other side of the radio, women and more than a 
few men sighed in ecstasy, loving a hero with his 
heart on his sleeve.  Shutters clicked, flashbulbs 
flashed, pencils scratched, and when America saw him 
on the sports page the next morning, they ate him up 
with a spoon.

From a distance, Fox Mulder was the man every boy 
wanted to grow up to be.  Not just the fortune and 
fame, but the grace he brought to the game.  He made 
homeruns look effortless, like watching Gene Kelly 
dancing with a bat instead of an umbrella.  But up 
close - and he didn't like to let people get up 
close - Mulder was still the most brilliant, flawed, 
noble man he'd ever known.  Frohike tended to think 
of his clients as sons, but Mulder was one of a 
handful he thought of as a true friend.

For fourteen seasons, nine World Series victories, 
6,821 at bats, and a world war, Mulder's son was 
actually more trouble than he was.  Until a pretty 
little redhead named Dana Scully came along.

Frohike put his foot down hard on the accelerator, 
squealing the truck's tires and running the red 
light.  Emily was curled up in her pajamas on the 
bench seat beside him, and Dana was on the passenger 
side, with two Macy's shopping bags containing 
seventy-five thousand dollars in cash at her feet.  

Dana twisted, looking through the rear window at 
Mulder, Byers, and Will in the parking garage, 
staring at Alex Krycek's dead body.  Will and Mulder 
both held pistols, but Mulder had been the one who 
just pulled the trigger.  Predictably, Byers was 
jabbering frantically, but he'd pull through.

"Where are we going?" Emily asked in a small voice, 
her sock feet dangling far above the floorboards.  
Mulder had taken them to Coney Island the previous 
day, and her nose and cheeks were still pink from 
the sun.

"I don't know, honey," Dana answered numbly.  She 
watched until Frohike's apartment building was out 
of sight, then turned, putting a hand on her flat 
abdomen.  Her full skirt, bolstered by layers of 
frothy white crinoline, spread out across the seat 
in a sea of dark blue silk.  An antique engagement 
ring glittered on her finger, still twisted slightly 
out of place.
 
"Are you all right?" Frohike asked, keeping one eye 
on the road as he weaved through mid-morning traffic 
and one eye on her. "Are you going to be sick 
again?"

"No.  No, I don't think so."

"Just let me know if you need to stop," he promised.

"Where are we going?"

"Someplace safe," he assured her.

*~*~*~*

Frohike had spent the early autumn of 1953 watching 
Mulder crawl to the bottom of a bottle of expensive 
scotch and refuse to come up for air.  And being 
Mulder, when he fell off the wagon, he landed on a 
leggy, busty brunette.  Or a series of them, rather.  

After a season plagued by injuries, he'd retired 
from baseball and, at thirty-nine years old, people 
started referring to him in the past tense. 'You 
were Fox Mulder,' people would say, unaware how that 
stung.  At first, he answered politely, 'I still 
am,' but after a few weeks, especially when a pretty 
girl recognized him, he'd order a drink for her, 
another drink for himself, and answer, 'Yeah, 
sweetheart: I was.'

When reporters asked about his plans, Mulder said he 
wanted to spend time with his family, except his 
father had just died, he wasn't close to his mother, 
and his son barely knew him.  Frohike even wondered 
if Mulder had planned to patch things up with 
Phoebe, in which case someone should hit him in the 
head with a two-by-four.  Will idolized his father, 
but at fourteen, had trouble reconciling the golden 
public image, Phoebe's condemnation, and reality.  
Mulder wanted an instant family, and his son wasn't 
cooperating.  

Then again, William seldom cooperated with much of 
anything.

"Dad's seeing someone new," Will informed him 
tersely, calling Frohike's private line at eleven 
o'clock on a school night.  Frohike had told him he 
could call anytime, so he did.  Anytime.  If his 
phone rang after ten, it was Will or Fox Mulder, 
already halfway through a conversation and expecting 
him to catch up. "Did you know?"

"Dana Scully," Frohike responded.  He changed the 
channel on his television to match what Will was 
watching, then turned down the volume.  He could 
hear the dialogue just fine over the phone line.

"How long has he been shagging her?"

"Watch your mouth, William.  He's seeing her.  He's 
been seeing her for a few months, I think."

"She has a kid.  A little girl.  He wants me to meet 
them Saturday at noon in Central Park.  Ice-skating.  
He's taking them ice-skating, then to a movie.  
Mother says she's a bloody whore."

Frohike sighed.  Phoebe should take a long look in 
the mirror. "Your mother says everyone's a bloody 
whore."

There was a pause while Will took a sip of 
something.  Tea, probably.  He'd be lounging on the 
sofa in his undershirt and jeans, watching 
television, listening to the radio, with a book 
close by.  It had to be genetic, because Mulder did 
exactly the same thing.  The two looked alike.  
Moved alike.  Sounded alike, except for Will's 
American slang and British accent.  Having both in 
the same room was a little eerie.

"Well, I'm not going," Will announced, and the sofa 
squeaked as he shifted rebelliously.

"I think you should.  At least meet her.  She sounds 
nice."

"I don't care how nice she sounds," he answered 
airily. "She's just like all the others, and I'm not 
going."

"Suit yourself."

He heard newspaper rustle.  Will must be looking at 
the photo of Mulder and Dana on the society page. 
"She doesn't look like the others," he commented. 
"She's short.  And he says she has red hair.  Just 
what I need: a redheaded stepmother." The paper 
rustled again. "He's serious about her, you know."

"Yes, I know.  He's very serious.  And he wants you 
to meet her."

"Well, I'm not," Will said haughtily. "I'll tell him 
I overslept."

Frohike knew this ruse. "Do you want me to go with 
you?"

"Well, if you want.  If I even go."

"Well, if I have time, I'll be in front of your 
mother's building at a quarter till twelve on 
Saturday.  Is that what you want?"

He could hear the wheels turning as Will thought it 
over. "I'm not saying I'm going."

"I'm not saying I'm going with you," he answered 
sarcastically.

"I'm not ice-skating," Will added. "And if I don't 
like this woman, I'm leaving.  And I'm not putting 
up with her bratty kid. I don't care what Dad says."

Will cared a great deal what his father said.  And 
what he did.

"Goodnight, William."

Will mumbled goodnight and hung up.  Frohike 
replaced the receiver, got a cold beer from the 
refrigerator, and waited.  There was no sense in 
going back to bed.

Within ten minutes, the phone rang again. 

"I asked Will to meet Dana and Emily Scully on 
Saturday," Mulder announced, the same television 
program blaring in the background. "And he said he 
would."

Frohike sipped his beer and propped his feet on his 
coffee table, pushing a broken short-wave radio 
aside. "He did?" he answered.

*~*~*~*

"Can you go by yourself?" he asked Emily outside the 
filling station's ladies' room, ardently hoping she 
could.

Emily nodded, so he set her down and waited.  At the 
pumps, the station attendants finished filling the 
truck's gas tank, then cleaned the windshield and 
raised the hood to check the oil.  Frohike hadn't 
asked them to do that, and as the hood slammed 
closed, Dana woke, sitting up in the cab.  She 
opened the door and got out slowly, pushing her hair 
back from her face as she looked around.

"Bathroom break," he said, going to her.

"Where are we?"

"Near the Pennsylvania border.  Emily needed to stop 
again."

She nodded.  There was an old bench, and he motioned 
for her to sit down.  He sat beside her, leaning 
forward and looking each way down the lone stretch 
of asphalt.  There was the filling station, and a 
greasy little diner across the street, but otherwise 
nothing but road for miles.

"This doesn't feel real," she said, shaking her 
head. "This whole day: it doesn't seem real.  I keep 
waiting to wake up."

"I know.  I don't think we were followed.  I think 
we're fairly safe.  I'll stop soon and let you and 
Emily rest a few hours.  I have a place in mind."

"And then what?"

"And then you disappear.  Change your appearance; 
change your name.  I'd like to get you out of the 
country, but I doubt you could get across the border 
right now."

"So that's it?  Emily and I vanish?  What about 
Mulder?  He shot that man because of me.  There are 
people after us.  He has to-"

"Don't worry about it," he assured her. "We'll take 
care of it." He took a deep breath, filling his 
lungs with warm, clean air. "Yes, you and Emily 
vanish until we're certain it's safe.  That's what 
Mulder wants: for you to be safe.  I'll give you a 
phone number: a person who can relay messages, but-"  

"I can't just take his money and abandon him.  He 
doesn't know how dangerous-" 

"Yes, he does."

She looked up, as if searching for some pattern in 
the clouds. 

"I did this.  To him.  To Will.  To everyone."

"You didn't do anything," he answered.

A delivery truck rattled down the road, bound for 
the horizon.
 
She started to say something, but the bathroom door 
opened, and Frohike got up to get Emily.  He picked 
her up the way Mulder did, trying not to put 
pressure on her joints.  She'd washed her hands: he 
could smell the pink powdery soap from the gas 
station bathroom as she held on to his neck.

There was a soda machine, and he dropped nickels in 
and opened the door one-handed, giving Emily three 
cold glass bottles to hold.

"We bought sodas," he told Dana when they returned 
to the truck, as if she hadn't just watched them do 
it. "Do you want one?"

"Not yet," she answered, which was what she'd said 
when he offered a late lunch.  He'd bought Emily a 
burger and shake, but Dana asked for lemonade, then 
sipped it for hours.

"You need to eat something," he reminded her, 
although soda wasn't a food group for anyone except 
Will and Mulder.

"Do you want me to drive?" she answered, taking a 
bottle.

"It's manual." He hadn't even known she could drive; 
Mulder chauffeured her everywhere.  And, though it 
wasn't top priority at the moment, Frohike liked his 
new truck with all the gears intact. "Three-speed.  
Is that all right?"

She nodded, reaching for the keys.  The woman had 
outwitted some sort of government hybrid breeding 
program, and kept Fox Mulder more or less in line 
for almost two years.  She could roast a turkey, 
balance a checkbook, and he'd once watched her 
wrestle a man back from Death.  Odds were, she could 
drive a truck.   

He put Emily in the middle of the bench seat, 
holding her soda, then got in the passenger side as 
Dana slid behind the wheel.

"It's on the column," he said when she looked for a 
gearshift.

Dana surveyed the set up, then turned the key, put 
the Ford in gear, and eased to the edge of the 
parking lot.

"Which way are we going?"

"West," he answered.

She turned right, shifted into second, and headed 
for the sunset.

*~*~*~*

The first time he laid eyes on Dana Scully, she was 
wobbling across the ice in Central Park, clutching 
Mulder's hand and laughing carelessly.  Her eyes 
sparkled, her breath hung white in the icy air, and 
her red cheeks reddened further as Mulder kissed 
her.  Shutters clicked, and one of the most famous 
images of the era was born: Mr. Baseball embracing 
his beautiful girlfriend as they glided across 
Wollman Rink.  All seemed right with the world.

The second time, almost a year later, in 1954, she 
was walking beside Mulder's hospital gurney as it 
was wheeled out of Surgery.  She was still in her 
bloodstained evening dress and stiletto heels from 
the night before, and she kept one hand on his 
forearm, unwilling to let him go.  His face was 
shadowed with stubble, hers with exhaustion and 
fear, but her eyes were determined.  Mulder was 
trying his best to die, but no one died on Dana 
Scully's watch without her permission.

It was the best of times and the worse of times, and 
his opinion was the same in both instances: she was 
one hell of a woman.

He'd been sleeping when the phone rang, and picked 
up the receiver to hear Will jabbering that his 
father had just been shot.   

"Shot?" Frohike repeated in the darkness, half-
awake.  He'd talked with Mulder that afternoon, and 
gotten the full report on Emily's convalescence and 
Dana's mid-term grades.  As soon as Dana finished 
her shift at the hospital, they were going out to 
dinner to celebrate.  And, unless he was mistaken, 
Will was supposed to be with his mother in New York.

"I was a brat and they wanted his wallet and they 
were looking at Miss Scully so he told us to run and 
they shot him. The medics said he was dead, but Miss 
Scully said he wasn't," Will babbled between sobs, 
and Frohike got on a redeye flight to DC.

When he arrived at the hospital, it was almost four 
in the morning.  Mulder was still in surgery, 
according to the nurse at the front desk, and when 
he asked about Will, she directed him past the 
lobby, through the double doors, and down a long 
white corridor.  Reaching the restricted part of the 
deserted hospital, he thought he'd taken a wrong 
turn, but then spotted Will, who was slouched on a 
folding metal chair in the hall outside Surgery.  He 
was holding Emily as she slept, and still wearing 
the rumpled suit he'd borrowed from his father.  He 
probably wasn't supposed to be there, but no one was 
making any attempt to get him to move.

William was very seldom where he was supposed to be.

"One of the nurses said the surgeons were closing. 
That mean's they're almost finished, doesn't it?" 
Will asked hoarsely. "That means he's okay, doesn't 
it?"

"It means they're almost finished," he answered, 
then leaned against the wall beside Will. "Did she 
say how he's doing?"

Will shook his head 'no' slowly.

"Where's Dana?  Is she all right?"

"She's with Dad."  

"Do you or Emily need anything?"

"Yeah.  We need my Dad not to die," the boy mumbled, 
looking lost.  Frohike put his hand on Will's 
shoulder and stopped asking questions.

There was a gray metal clock on the wall opposite 
them, and the ticking seemed intrusively loud in the 
silent hospital.  As the minutes passed into an 
hour, he left to call Byers and buy two cups of 
coffee that no one drank.  About five, Emily needed 
to go to the bathroom, so Frohike sat in the metal 
chair until Will returned with her.

Eventually, the swinging doors parted, and the 
gurney emerged in slow motion, with Dana beside it 
and the exhausted doctors following.  Frohike 
thought Mulder said she was an ER nurse, but it must 
have been easier to let her into surgery than argue 
with her.  She pulled the cloth cap off her hair and 
took off her surgical gown as she walked, handing 
them to another nurse.  The evening dress underneath 
was a strange rust color in front and dark blue in 
back, and it took Frohike a moment to realize the 
original color was blue, and the rust was Mulder's 
dried blood.  She stopped to slip off her high 
heels, then continued in her stockings, her feet 
leaving a trail of warm patterns on the cold floor. 

Will stood at the gurney approached, shifting Emily 
to his hip. 

"Dad?" he asked, sounding like a small child.  He 
started to touch his father's hand, then pulled 
back, frightened. "Daddy?" 

Will must have been expecting Mulder to open his 
eyes and say something sarcastic, but that wasn't 
going to happen.  Frohike had seen enough players go 
under the knife to know how they looked afterward: 
groggy, pale, uncomfortable.  Disoriented, often, 
but not like this.  Mulder looked like a corpse.

"There was a great deal of vascular damage, son," 
one of the surgeons told him gently. "And his brain 
was deprived of oxygen for an extended period of 
time.  The prognosis isn't good, but we're doing all 
we can."

"Miss Scully?  Dana?" Will said shakily, looking at 
his father's slack, ashen face.  Layers of bandages 
covered Mulder's chest and shoulder, and there were 
tubes and IV's running in and out of everywhere.  
His breaths were shallow and so slow that Frohike 
found himself anxiously looking forward to the next 
one.

"It's bad, Will.  Even if his heart keeps beating, 
they're not sure he'll ever wake up.  It took the 
ambulance a long time to get there and…" she trailed 
off, then repeated, "It's bad."

Frohike put a hand on Will's shoulder again, 
steadying him.

"We're taking him to Recovery.  As soon as he's 
stable, I'll come get you.  You can sit with him." 
She reached up, touching his cheek lightly with her 
fingertips. "Okay?"

Will nodded, not sure what else to do except agree.  
Dana kissed Emily's forehead as the girl slept, then 
followed the orderlies.

They maneuvered the gurney through the doorway to 
Recovery, and Will sank onto his folding chair 
again, holding Emily against his shoulder and 
staring straight ahead.

"He's going to die, isn't he?" he whispered, barely 
adding breath to his words.

"Not if she can help it," Frohike answered.

The boy didn't respond except to close his eyes 
against the too-bright lights and lean his head back 
against the cinderblock wall.  The hospital was 
silent, and Frohike could hear his own heart beating 
inside his ears in time with the ticking of the 
clock.  A tear slipped out the corner of Will's eye, 
then trickled down his cheek.  Frohike was supposed 
to pretend he didn't see it, so he did.  He closed 
his eyes, waiting, letting time swirl past 
unmonitored until it was necessary to think again.

Will sniffed, then took a long, shuddery breath.

On the other side of the wall, Frohike could hear 
the nurses moving around Recovery, monitoring 
Mulder.  Every few minutes, the doctors would ask 
for a report, and it would be the same series of 
dismal numbers.  Mulder was 'still holding on,' 
which was only positive given the alternative. 

He heard Dana speaking softly, assuring Mulder he 
was going to be all right and asking him to move his 
hand if he could hear her.

He didn't hear anything indicating Mulder moved.
 
"Doctors," a female voice called, then said Mulder's 
blood pressure, already too low, was still dropping.  

Within seconds, there were rapid footsteps as the 
surgeons returned. "We must have missed a bleeder," 
one said.

"We'll have to open him up again.  Damn it."

There were more footsteps, and the sound of air 
being forced into a blood pressure cuff again.  
Metal instruments rattled on metal trays, and glass 
clinked as nurses unhooked the bottles of blood and 
whatever else from the stands, preparing to take 
Mulder back to surgery.  Someone called out a string 
of grim-sounding numbers corresponding to vital 
signs, and the doctor cursed again.

"He won't make it," the first man responded.

Will heard the discussion and opened his eyes, 
breathing quickly.

"You have to try," Dana said.

"He won't survive, Miss Scully.  It's a miracle he's 
alive now."

"You have to try," she repeated urgently.

"I've tried!  I've been trying for eleven hours!" 
the surgeon snapped back. "His chest is hamburger!"

"You're not giving up on him!" she ordered tersely, 
and Frohike could envision her grabbing the surgeon 
by the lapels of his white coat to emphasize her 
point. "You give up when I give up, and I'm not 
giving up yet!  Do you want your picture on 
tomorrow's front page as the surgeon who let Fox 
Mulder die, because I'll make sure it's there!"

Something glass crashed to the floor, shattering and 
spattering and echoing into the hall, then there was 
a tense pause.

"Fine. Take him back," the surgeon conceded wearily, 
then asked, "How much blood do we have left?"

Frohike heard the orderlies moving the gurney, its 
wheels clacking across the tile floor.

"Three pints," a nurse answered.

The gurney came through the door again, turning 
toward the operating room.  Will stood, watching 
helplessly as the orderlies rushed his father past.

"That's not enough," the doctor said.

The nurse said they could call another hospital for 
more, and the doctor responded there wasn't time.

"What about Negro blood?" Dana demanded. "Use it," 
she ordered when there was stunned silence. The 
blood supply was segregated by race, just as White 
patients were treated in one part of the hospital 
and Blacks another. "Use whatever the hospital has."

"That still might not be enough.  We're wasting our 
time and-" he started, then caught sight of Will's 
face.  He stopped speaking, swallowed, then turned 
away, following the gurney to Surgery.

Dana stopped in the hall, hands on her hips, and 
took a deep breath.  She'd changed into a borrowed 
pair of white nurses' shoes and uniform, both at 
least two sizes too big on her.  

"You," she said suddenly, turning to Will. "Are you 
O-positive?  Your blood type: is it O-positive?"

Will nodded, wide-eyed, clutching Emily.  He hated 
needles.

"Find a nurse and tell her you want to donate a pint 
of blood.  Or two.  Whatever he needs.  Go!  What 
about you?" she demanded, pointing at Frohike. 

"O-positive," Frohike mumbled, expecting lightening 
bolts to fly from her fingertip.

"Go with Will.  Now!"

The doors to Surgery swung open as an orderly 
hurried out, giving Frohike a glimpse the nurses 
quickly cutting away the bandages as the anesthetist 
covered Mulder's mouth and nose with the black 
rubber mask.  In the adjoining room, the two 
surgeons were hurriedly scrubbing their hands.

"Now!" Dana repeated, and Frohike and Will turned, 
hurrying into Recovery in search of another nurse 
before Dana Scully found a syringe and started 
siphoning them herself.

*~*~*~*

"There wasn't much of a selection," he told Dana 
when he returned from his shopping trip, handing her 
the cheap brown wig.  She laid it on the table 
beside a brown eyebrow pencil, a new lipstick, a few 
toiletries, and the clothing he'd chosen for her and 
Emily.

"I get the feeling you've done this before," she 
commented, looking at the wig unenthusiastically.

"Maybe I just read too many spy novels."

"Maybe," she conceded tiredly.

Dana didn't ask whose guesthouse they were staying 
in, and Frohike hadn't offered.  He'd used a pay 
phone outside in town, making sure Dana's new ID's 
and passports would be ready on schedule.  He wanted 
to call Byers to check in, but didn't.  Whatever was 
happening in New York was happening; he couldn't 
change it.  His job was to keep Dana and Emily safe, 
and get them as far from Them as possible.

"I did some intelligence work in the Pacific during 
the war," he admitted. "They needed help, and I was 
a little younger then.  And taller."

It was the first time he'd ever told a soul.  When 
people asked what he'd done during WWII, he said he 
was a clerk.  And people believed him: that the Army 
had desperately needed forty-eight-year old, pudgy, 
balding, five-foot-nothing clerks with pop bottle 
glasses and no typing ability in the South Pacific.  
He had a scar on his ass from WWI, for God's sake.

"You were a spy?"

Frohike scratched the salt-and-pepper stubble on his 
jaw. "No.  More like a spy valet.  I set up their 
cover stories, made sure the men fit the roles they 
were playing, made sure all the pieces came 
together.  Not a lot different from what I do now."

She considered that, sinking into a chair and 
cupping her hands around a glass of water.  The 
guesthouse hadn't been used in a while, and the air 
was still stuffy, despite the laboring air 
conditioner.  Moisture beaded on the outside of her 
glass, streaming down to the tabletop in little 
rivers.  A drop of perspiration trickled from the 
base of her throat and disappeared down the neck of 
her wrinkled blue dress.  He tried not to watch it.

"Were you at Pearl Harbor?"

"No.  Not that day."

She dragged her thumb across the glass, wiping a 
clear arc. "I had two brothers there.  One made it." 
She was quiet a moment, then exhaled forcefully and 
blinked. "Sorry.  Hormones," she said, smiling 
tiredly and shaking her head. 

In the bedroom, Emily rolled over, pushing the 
covers off, and Dana started to get up again.  Her 
mother had taken off the grimy pajamas her daughter 
had been wearing when they fled the hospital that 
morning, leaving Emily to sleep in a pair of white 
cotton socks and panties.

"I'll get her," he offered, going to the bedroom and 
pulling the top sheet over her again.  When he 
returned, Dana was still at the dining room table, 
taking tiny sips of water. "She's sound asleep," he 
said awkwardly. "Why don't you join her?"

She shook her head. "I can't sleep."

"I'll listen if you want to talk."

Predictably, she shook her head again.

"I don't suppose I could convince you to eat 
something?"

"I did.  While you were out.  There were crackers 
and some pears-"

She stopped speaking when the phone rang, sounding 
piercing and shrill in the stale air.  They both 
stared at it.

"Is it-" she started.

"No.  It's nobody.  No one knows where we are.  Not 
Mulder, not Byers: no one.  The pitcher who owns 
this place is in Florida right now.  He's not going 
to be calling the guesthouse."

"Maybe it's a wrong number."

"Maybe."

He hadn't spotted a tail.  They'd only stopped four 
times since Manhattan: gasoline, bathroom breaks, 
and the burger joint.  He'd chosen their route 
randomly, staying on the back roads so anyone 
following them would be obvious.  Aside from the 
filling stations, the carhop at the drive-up burger 
place, and the clerks at the drug and department 
store an hour ago, the only human he'd had contact 
with was the call he'd just made from the pay phone.

Frohike continued staring at the ringing phone, the 
skin on the back of his neck tingling.

"We have to go," he said suddenly, reaching for his 
keys. "Now!"

Dana cleared the table in one motion, sweeping 
everything but her water into the shopping bags.  
Frohike went to the bedroom and picked up Emily: 
pillow, blankets, and all, and carried her outside.  
Dana followed, bringing his old service rifle and 
looking like she had at least a fair idea how to use 
it, if necessary.

"No, the garage," he ordered as she started for his 
truck.  She opened the garage doors, and he nodded 
to the Packard. "The keys should be in it.  Back it 
out." He opened the passenger door and pulled the 
seat forward, laying Emily in the back.  She opened 
her eyes groggily, then went back to sleep.   

He returned to the driveway and started his truck, 
waiting while Dana quickly backed the stately 
Packard out of the garage.  He parked his truck in 
its place, grabbing the bags of cash and taking them 
with him.

Dana slid across the front seat to the passenger 
side as he closed and locked the garage door.  He 
tossed the Macy's bags into the car, then floored 
the gas and spun the steering wheel as he closed the 
driver's door.  The Packard spun around on its 
white-wall tires, a long, luxurious expanse of cream 
and polished chrome.  The motor purred almost 
silently as he shifted gears, then moved forward, 
gliding smoothly down the dusty driveway.  It was 
dusk, but he left the headlights off.  When they 
reached the paved road, he rolled down the window, 
listening for any cars he couldn't see.

All he heard were crickets.

Beside him, Dana fished in the bag from the 
department store until she found a scarf, then tied 
over her hair.  She leaned over the seat, making 
sure Emily was covered.

He'd stop at the first place they found and switch 
the Packard's license plate, just in case.

"Did we just steal a car?" Dana asked, rolling down 
her window.    

"Its owner said 'stop by anytime.  Just make 
yourself at home.'"

The night air flowed in, cool and moist, as the 
Packard slid quietly through the forgiving darkness.

"And you think this was what he meant?"

"Probably not," Frohike responded, turning on the 
radio.

*~*~*~*

It was late November, so his work was fairly quiet.  
Anything that needed arranged or announced to the 
press could usually be done by phone.  There was no 
reason why he couldn't stay in DC, though no one had 
specifically invited him.

According to Will, Mulder had wanted to leave the 
hospital immediately after the Demerol overdose, but 
his blood pressure wasn't stable enough.  Even 
sixteen hours later, a doctor had accompanied him 
home in an ambulance, monitoring his vitals and 
giving him something to deaden the pain.  As the 
paramedics maneuvered the stretcher up the stairs 
and transferred Mulder to his own bed, he didn't 
seem to feel a thing.  The doctor checked him again, 
then wrote his home number on a card and gave it to 
Dana, telling her to call anytime.

Dana went to the window, watching as the ambulance 
drove away. On the big bed behind her, Mulder hadn't 
moved.

"How are you going to do this alone?" Frohike asked 
from the doorway, his hands in his pockets.  

"I'll manage.  He wanted to come home.  He's safer 
here," she answered, going to the bed and putting 
her hand on Mulder's.  He mumbled unintelligibly, 
then drifted away, snoring softly.

"You really think someone tried to kill him?  
Again?" he added.  

Reporters were asking questions, and Frohike wasn't 
sure what to tell them.  From what Will said, his 
father had been cooperating with the muggers.  From 
the proximity of the shooter and the gun being left 
at the scene, it looked more like a hit than a 
mugging-gone-bad.  And then the unrecorded Demerol 
overdose was just too convenient a mistake.  The 
police were saying attempted murder, but they were 
dragging their feet about it.

"Yes," Dana answered quietly, sounding tired.

"Why?"

She left the bedroom door open, but switched off the 
lights. "I don't know.  I just know They did."

He mentally assigned a capital T to her 'They.' 
Lowercase t was two muggers in an alley and a 
medical error; Uppercase T was Them, and far more 
inexplicably dangerous.

She descended the stairs, stopping in the foyer to 
take off her white shoes and feed the hungry fish.  

Will glanced at her, making sure everything was all 
right, then went back to watching television with 
Emily.  He'd volunteered to baby-sit overnight while 
Dana stayed with Mulder, which meant the kitchen 
sink was full of dishes, the refrigerator was empty, 
and he'd thoughtfully piled all the dirty clothes on 
the bathroom floor for her to pick up.  Currently, 
Will and Em were sprawled on the rug atop a nest of 
pillows, blankets and sleeping bags, still in their 
pajamas, eating junk and passing a bottle of grape 
soda back and forth.

Dana picked a path across the living room, going to 
Mulder's desk.  She took a deep breath, then sat 
down, scooting the chair forward.  She pushed the 
papers and files aside and reached for a notepad. 
"We'll need groceries," she said to no one in 
particular. "And gauze, tape: medical supplies.  
Someone will need to go to the drugstore.  His 
prescriptions need filled, too."

Will looked over his shoulder again, then started to 
get up.

"I can do that," Frohike offered. "Just make a 
list." He gestured for Will to relax, then brought a 
chair from the dining room and sat beside her at the 
cluttered desk. "Whatever you think you'll need."

She nodded, then paused to rub her eyes before she 
opened the center drawer, riffling through a 
Mulderish collection of odds and ends. "I'm not sure 
where his checkbook is."
 
"I'll take care of it," Frohike assured her.

"No, I can have Will sign his father's name.  He can 
do Mulder's signature perfectly, but I have to find 
the checkbook, first."

"Miss Scully," he said quietly. "I'll take care of 
it.  We will; it's what we do.  Langly can pay the 
bills and make sure you have housekeeping money.  
Byers can handle anything Langly can't.  We'll take 
care of everything else; you just take care of 
Mulder."

She nodded again, barely moving her head.  There 
were dark shadows under her eyes, and her shoulders 
bowed in exhaustion.  She'd been trying to work a 
late shift the previous night, so she was still in 
her nurse's uniform and cap.  She'd said she was 
taking time off from the hospital to take care of 
Mulder, but she still had medical school.  And 
Emily, who was just getting over a nasty bout of 
pneumonia.  And Will, who, despite his desire to be 
helpful, tended to be a fulltime job in himself.

Frohike forgot, sometimes, how small she was.  She 
seemed larger.

"I know you don't want anyone in the house, but what 
about a few bodyguards outside?" he suggested. "I'd 
feel better, and you'd sleep easier.  It would just 
be until we're certain he's safe."

She didn't respond for several seconds, then said 
softly, mindful of the kids across the room: "And 
when do you think that will be?" 

Frohike didn't have an answer because he couldn't.  
His job, at its core, was to protect his clients, 
but he couldn't protect Mulder when he didn't know 
who or what the threat was.

The babies, or lack thereof, Mulder and Dana had 
conceived the previous winter were a taboo subject.  
The few times he'd tried to broach it, Mulder either 
changed the topic or found a reason to get off the 
telephone.  Frohike understood that the pain was 
still too fresh, but there were just too many 
unanswered questions; too many pieces that didn't 
quite fit together.  Arthur Dales, the FBI Agent who 
investigated Dana's disappearance, had all sorts of 
theories about government projects and genetic 
experiments and aliens.  His theories sounded 
ludicrous, unless one was familiar with how the US 
Government thought.  

And Frohike was.  America wasn't subtle.  Secrecy 
wasn't its strength, and it knew it.  The US 
government didn't conceal its lies; it just put them 
in plain sight and wrapped them in even bigger lies.  
It was an effective slight of hand: give the 
audience a pretty magician's assistant and some 
pyrotechnics to stare at, and they'd pay little 
attention to the reality behind the illusion.  

In front of the flickering black and white screen, 
Emily and Will, along with the rest of the nation, 
watched Senator McCarthy's second round of hearings 
of the House Committee on Un-American Activities.  
The witch-hunt had begun in the fall of 1947 and was 
still going strong: tearing lives apart and ruining 
careers.  Among those who had been questioned or 
accused: Orson Welles, James Cagney, Walt Disney, 
Dorothy Parker, Gregory Peck, Arthur Miller, Lucille 
Ball, and young Shirley Temple.

To Frohike, the hearings and accusations and 
paranoia about communism had all the makings of an 
excellent smokescreen.  And there had to be 
something the government needed so much smoke to 
hide.  The United States of America was no more in 
danger of being overrun by communists than it was of 
being overrun by dinosaurs.  He didn't know where 
the deception ended and the truth began, but he knew 
there was more happening than met the eye.  And that 
Dana, and now Mulder, was somehow caught up in it.

"I don't know," he answered long after the question 
had been forgotten.

"I do." There was a picture of Will on the desk, 
with a second snapshot wedged into the lower corner 
of the wooden frame.  It was a photo Frohike had 
taken of Mulder, Dana, Will, and Emily playing in 
the snow in Central Park last December.  Dana pulled 
it free, examined it for a long time, then watched 
the TV screen. "I need you to do something for me, 
Mr. Frohike," she said slowly.

"Of course.  Anything," he agreed, always the sucker 
for a pretty lady in distress. "What do you need?"

"I need you to hold a press conference. Tell the 
reporters you think communists might be behind 
Mulder's shooting.  He's an all-American hero and 
the Reds tried to have him killed because of it."

Frohike's eyes widened in surprise. "Is that what 
you think?"

"No, but it's what I want you to say.  It's what 
will keep him safe."

"A preemptive strike," he realized, catching up with 
her line of thinking. "If They, whoever They are, 
would try to harm him again, the public would be 
outraged and demand an investigation.  You don't 
protect him; you get every red-blooded American 
baseball fan to do it for you."  

She nodded, still holding the snapshot.

"Miss Scully, I think you show a talent for covert 
operations." He tapped a stack of FBI files that 
Mulder had been fascinated with as of late. "Maybe 
you should abandon medicine and consider a career in 
the Bureau."

She smiled, barely moving her lips. "They don't 
allow women in the FBI, Mr. Frohike."

"And they have that arbitrary height requirement," 
he quipped. "Yes, I can hold a press conference.  
I'll do it today.  Anything else?"

"Yes," she started, then hesitated.  He could see 
her debating silently. "I want you to put this in 
the newspapers," Dana said, handing him the snapshot 
of the four of them. "I'll write a caption.  Have it 
run with the article."

"I can't," Frohike said immediately. "This has Will 
and Emily in it."

Speculating about communists and letting the 
reporters run with the story was one thing, but 
Mulder didn't allow his son's name or photograph in 
print.  Ever.  When he'd begun dating Dana, he'd 
expanded that rule to include Emily, and except for 
a few Hollywood rags, the papers and magazines 
complied.  

"It's important," she insisted. "I wouldn't ask 
otherwise."

His head had started shaking 'no' as soon as his 
fingers touched the snapshot, and it hadn't stopped 
yet.  He liked Dana, but his allegiance was to 
Mulder, and no reason she could possibly give could 
convince him to violate Mulder's wishes. 

She ignored him and picked up a pen, composing a few 
lines, then tore the page off the pad and handed it 
to him as well.  He took it, glancing back and forth 
between the snapshot and her neat cursive caption 
about a 'majestic' December day Central Park.

"There's no book in this photograph.  You aren't 
carrying a blue book.  Or a paperclip.  Miss Scully, 
this makes no sense at all."

"It will make sense to the right people.  Please," 
she requested.

"To which people?  Mulder would have my head on a 
platter if I did this," he protested, staring at the 
sheet of paper. "I'm sorry, but I can't-" he 
started.  He read the caption she'd written, then 
reread it, and a small light bulb began to flicker 
above his head.  

He knew which people.

At the close of WWII, Operation Paperclip imported 
Nazi scientists to the US, partially to acquire 
their research, and partially to keep it out of 
Soviet hands.  It wasn't his branch of intelligence, 
so he knew little about the project except it 
existed.  And that the government denied it existed, 
of course.  In the Pacific, the Kamakura Conference 
did similar for the Japanese scientists of Unit 731.  
The arrangement, though morally repulsive, had 
advanced American knowledge of virology and bio-
chemical weapons by decades.  He'd heard whispers of 
what was gained from the Nazis: years of research on 
genetics, physics, and medicine.  Both projects 
remained classified, which likely meant both were 
still in operation when Dana enlisted as an Army 
nurse, and when Emily was born in 1949.

"Is this what I think it is?" he asked in a hoarse 
whisper.

"That depends.  What do you think it is?"

"I think it's the opening move in a dangerous game.  
A very dangerous game." 

For whatever reason, she knew about Paperclip.  Not 
just about the project: something vital.  Valuable.  
Something worth Mulder's life.  She was sending a 
message, but what the message was or to whom it was 
being sent, he could only imagine.  And whatever 
cards she was holding, she seemed sure of her hand. 

"They already made the first move.  I'm just 
responding.  And upping the ante."

"Miss Scully, are you sure you know what you're 
doing?" 

"I'm keeping us safe," she answered evenly, her chin 
tilted slightly upward in defiance. "Then I'm 
washing dishes and fixing dinner." 

There was a moan from the bedroom as Mulder woke, 
mumbling about dogs and boxcars and calling for her 
as he thrashed around.  Dana hurried upstairs, and 
Emily trailed after her, bringing a threadbare 
stuffed kitten.  Frohike watched them go, then 
tucked the snapshot and piece of paper into his vest 
pocket.

He liked a woman who fixed dinner after she saved 
the world.

*~*~*~* 

A storm had passed through about four a.m., and the 
muggy remnants lingered over a collection of broken 
branches and debris.  The radio announcer said a 
tornado had been spotted, and power lines were down 
all over town.  The motel had electricity, though: 
the bulb above the door of Dana and Emily's motel 
room flickered hesitantly, trying not to attract 
attention. Every other window of the horseshoe 
shaped motel was dark, its occupant still asleep.

In retrospect, he wished he'd bought the blonde wig.  
The choices had been black-black, white-blonde, and 
brown, and the brown was a little too dark against 
her fair skin.  Even with the sunburn across her 
nose, now beginning to peel, the contrast was 
slightly startling.

Dana's lipstick was darker than usual, and the 
straight, shoulder-length brown wig covered her 
auburn hair.  She'd cut Emily's hair into a short 
bob, and put a dress and a hat on the girl; a real 
hat, not Mulder's old baseball cap.  Dana wore the 
slim black skirt and dark blouse he'd selected, 
creating an artsy, beatnik look unlike anything he 
associated with her.  Which was the idea.

"Hello, Mrs. Miller," he said, opening the passenger 
door for her.

"Good morning," she answered softly, holding the 
seat forward so Emily could crawl into the back.  
This time, the car was a mass-produced, middle-aged, 
Buick; one of about ten thousand on the road.  She 
didn't ask where he got it, or where he'd stashed 
the Packard they'd driven cross-country.

He put her suitcase in the trunk, noting she'd 
filled out the luggage tag with her new name.  No 
home address.  For now, she was Donna Miller.  The 
new passports and driver's license were in the 
suitcase, along with a few spare aliases.  He'd 
converted some of the cash to bearer bonds, sent 
some to a numbered Swiss account, and the rest lined 
the bottom of her new train case in ten-thousand-
dollar bundles.

After returning their motel keys to the clerk, who 
barely looked up from his sci-fi novel, Frohike 
pulled out of the parking lot and turned toward the 
train station, passing through the dark, silent 
town.  It was a short drive, and rather than wait 
inside the station, they sat in the car underneath a 
streetlight, leaving the engine running.

"Your ring," he reminded her, gesturing to the 
diamond setting.

She looked down, exhaled, twisted it off, and 
offered it to him.

"No, Mulder said for you to keep it.  Just-"

"Just don't wear it," she said for him.

"Right," he agreed. "Just don't wear it."

She curled her hand around the ring as she looked 
down the tracks, toward the faint blush of sunrise 
behind the storm clouds.  After a few minutes, she 
took off her necklace and threaded the chain through 
the ring so it was beside the gold cross.  She put 
her necklace on again, dropping the cross and ring 
down her blouse and out of sight.

Frohike should have objected and told her to take it 
off, that both the ring and the cross were too 
recognizable as links to her old life, but he 
didn't.  He offered her a plain wedding band and she 
put it on without looking at it.  She didn't seem 
surprised that it fit. 

"Do you want to go over the plan again?"

Dana shook her head.  She understood.  She was a 
widow; her husband just passed away serving his 
country; it was very painful for her to talk about.  
Keep it simple: answer simply, live simply.  Keep 
moving.  Keep to herself.  Contact no one from her 
old life.  If she felt like she was in danger, she 
probably was.  She had a telephone number to call if 
there was an emergency, and there would be an ad in 
the Sunday New York Times when it was safe to come 
home.  Until it was, she and Emily stayed in hiding. 

Dana was quiet a long time, watching passengers 
arrive, unload, and make their way to the platform.  
In the backseat, Emily colored, replacing each 
crayon in the box after she used it so they stayed 
in the original order.  Frohike had bought her the 
big box of Crayolas with the silver, all four blues, 
and the built-in sharpener.

"Are you all right?" he asked.

"I was just wondering," she answered seriously, 
turning her face toward him. "Where are we, Mr. 
Frohike?"

She and Emily had been asleep when they arrived last 
night, but he hadn't realized she didn't know. 
"Topeka.  Topeka, Kansas."

"And where are Emily and I going?"

"West.  Somewhere between here and LA, pick a 
station and get off the train.  The more random, the 
better.  From there, the first train or bus that 
comes along: get on it.  Repeat as necessary."

She nodded, then went back to watching the tracks. 
He turned the air conditioner on so the windows 
would stop fogging, and the man on the radio said 
another storm was on its way.  

"You can do this," he reminded her, trying to sound 
comforting.

"I feel like I'm abandoning him."

"I'm sure he feels exactly the same way."

"He wanted this so much," she told the window, 
putting her hand on her stomach again.  Lightening 
flashed in the distance, followed by a rumble of 
thunder a few seconds later. "And it's turned into a 
nightmare."

Frohike worried his lower lip, not sure how to 
respond.  If that baby was what They thought it was, 
it would never be safe, regardless of whatever she 
had in a locker in Central Park.  He'd overheard her 
conversation with Mulder about not having it, about 
having an abortion before she miscarried.  Frohike 
tended to agree. Staying pregnant was an unnecessary 
risk, especially when she'd be alone, but it wasn't 
his decision.

"I'm sorry." She took a shaky breath and wiped her 
eyes. "God, I hate hormones."

"It's okay.  It goes well with your grieving widow 
persona."

He grinned, and she chuckled half-heartedly and 
sniffed.

"Mommy: the train," Emily informed them, gathering 
up her crayons and coloring book.

"There's the train," he repeated.

"Yes, there's the train," she echoed.

Frohike walked around to open her door, letting her 
and Emily out, then handed her the train case. A 
porter came to take her suitcase, leaving them 
standing awkwardly beside the car. The wind picked 
up, whipping her skirt against her legs and blowing 
her hair over her face. She tied a scarf around her 
head, making sure the wig stayed in place.

He tried to think of something memorable and 
reassuring to say, but only came up with, "Good 
luck.  Take care of yourself.  And take care of 
Squirt," he added, using Will's nickname for Emily.

"You too.  Take care of Mulder and Will," she said, 
settling Emily on her hip, and clutching the train 
case with her other hand. "Don't let them live on 
scrambled eggs, coffee, and TV dinners."

"I won't," he promised, putting his hand on his hat 
to keep it from blowing off.

He watched her walk away across the wet pavement, 
thinking she shouldn't be carrying Emily while she 
was pregnant; thinking there were at least a 
thousand things he needed to caution her about that 
he hadn't; thinking there had to be a happily ever 
after in this somewhere.  

He watched as she and Emily bought tickets and 
boarded the westbound train, then waited to see if 
one of them would come to a window to wave goodbye.  
Neither did.  Rain began to pelt the roof of the car 
and the brim of his hat, drumming relentlessly.

He watched as the silver passenger train slid out of 
the station, down the miles of tracks across the 
plain, and into the storm on the dark horizon.  Once 
it was out of sight, he exhaled tiredly, pulled the 
wet brim of his hat lower, switched on the Buick's 
headlights, switched on the windshield wipers, and 
put the transmission in reverse. 

Melvin Frohike: 1; Bad Guys: 0

*~*~*~*

Epilogue II
A Moment In the Sun: Bellefleur

*~*~*~*

Most days, he enjoyed being Walter Skinner.  He was 
Sharon's husband, Anna and Walthari's oldest son, 
and his late Uncle Sergei's namesake.  He was no 
one's father, but that didn't bother him as much as 
people often assumed it did.  He had a nice house, a 
nice car, and a nice boat, though it seldom left the 
dock.  He was the guy all the other guys in the 
neighborhood borrowed tools from.  He could grill a 
mean T-bone, rebuild a transmission, tell if a dress 
would fit his wife just by eyeballing it, and, if 
push came to shove, iron his own shirts.

He'd enjoyed being Walter Sergei Skinner for roughly 
fifty years.  He just didn't enjoy being Assistant 
Director Skinner these days.

He put his back to the diner, staring at the stretch 
of wet asphalt that led through the one-horse town. 
The claustrophobic phone booth was cold, and smelled 
of old cigarettes, damp wool, and mud.  Outside it, 
the heavy clouds masked sunrise, and a layer of fog 
lingered over the gravel parking lot.

"Just left of Middle-of-Nowhere.  Somewhere in 
northwest Oregon, I think.  There was a mechanical 
problem with the plane and we had to put down here."

"Are you all right?" Sharon asked, her voice muffled 
by the long distance line.

"I'm fine.  We landed fine.  A deputy's going to 
drive us to Portland.  We'll get a flight there and 
be home tonight.  You won't even have time to miss 
me."

"Of course I will.  Take care of yourself."

"Sharon-" He glanced over his shoulder, making sure 
his agents weren't eavesdropping. "It's pretty here.  
Quiet.  Lots of forests, mist, sky.  We could build 
a cabin in the woods."

"Would you wear flannel?"

"I would wear flannel every day," he promised. "And 
I'd stop shaving and spend all my time splitting 
firewood."

"Is there a Macy's near our cabin?"      

"Don't they have a catalogue, City Girl?"

"Hum.  I'll think about it." She paused, and it 
sounded like she took a sip of coffee. "See you 
tonight?"

"I'm not joking."   

"You've been saying that for months, Walter."

"I've meant it for months.  Hoover's had his twenty-
five years out of me.  Let's get as far away from 
Washington as we can."  

There was a long pause, then a lukewarm, "We can 
talk about it when you get home."

He nodded, said goodbye, and then opened the phone 
booth door so the cold, damp air rushed in.  The 
bell on the diner door jingle-jangled as he entered, 
sliding into the booth as their order arrived.  His 
two agents picked up their forks, but Skinner looked 
at the platter of greasy eggs, limp toast, and burnt 
hash browns warily, then up at the blonde waitress.

"Change your mind, sweetie?"

He wondered what about his scowl and terse black 
suit had screamed 'pat my ass, pinch my cheek, and 
call me sweetie.' He shook his head.  There wasn't 
anything but a heart attack on the menu anyway.  She 
cracked her gum and sauntered away, giving his two 
agents something to look at.  

Once the view was over, the agents dug into their 
food, discussing the Seattle investigation between 
mouthfuls, and gesturing with their forks to make 
points, emphasizing their own brilliance. Bored, 
restless, Skinner poured cream in his coffee, 
watching it swirl gray.

"Would you like a fresh cup?" another waitress 
offered as she passed. "That one looks pretty old."

"How can you have old coffee at seven in the 
morning?" he asked, looking up at her.

"We work at it," she answered, then returned a 
moment later with another steaming mug. "Can I get 
you gentlemen some coffee?" she asked his agents, 
and they shook their heads without glancing up.

'Can I get you gentlemen some coffee?' he heard the 
same voice echo in a corner of his mind. 'You look 
like you just came from the office; can I get you 
gentlemen some coffee?' 

Whatever the memory was, he shook it off and 
answered, "Thanks…" He checked her nametag. "Laura."

"You're welcome." She hesitated a half-second, then 
quickly walked away with his old mug, clutching it 
with both hands.

Lacking anything better to do, he watched her with 
the customers at the counter, refilling cups and 
delivering and removing plates. She seemed familiar, 
but he couldn't place who she was.  Her mousy brown 
hair was pulled into a low ponytail, and she wore 
black-rimmed glasses and no makeup, making her look 
like a bookish teenager, though she wasn't.  Over 
her blue uniform, she had on a baggy brown cardigan 
in an attempt to conceal a shapeless figure.  She 
wasn't eye catching, but he got the sense that was 
the idea.  She didn't look like a beautiful woman, 
but she gave the impression of one.

"Sir?  See something on the menu you like, sir?" one 
of his agents taunted, and was greeted with an icy 
stare.  Skinner would lay money both the agents were 
dirty, but they were Hoover's pets.  There were too 
many of those these days; too many men looking to 
make a name for themselves at the expense of 
innocent people.  It was too easy to point a finger 
and say 'communist' or 'homosexual,' then form an 
investigative committee, look patriotic, and let a 
career unfold.

Without a word, Skinner got up, picked up his mug, 
and headed to the counter, bypassing their blonde 
waitress, who'd finally decided to make the rounds 
with the coffee pot. "How 'bout a warm up?" he 
asked, straddling one of the revolving stools at the 
end of the counter.

Laura nodded, turning to pick up the pot, then 
adding half an inch of hot coffee to his cup.  The 
little metal cream pitcher was empty, and she 
brought him another, keeping her head down and 
seeming uncomfortable.

"I'm sorry.  I don't mean to bother you, but do I 
know you?" he asked politely, feeling awkward.  He 
didn't make a practice of striking up conversations 
with strange women.

"No, I don't think so."

"I'm Walter Skinner," he said, offering his hand, 
which she shook hesitantly. "My wife Sharon and I 
live in Alexandria.  What's your last name?"

Her mouth twitched to say one thing, then answered, 
"Samuels.  Laura Samuels.  I can't imagine how you'd 
know me."

"I can't either.  You seem familiar, but obviously, 
I don't.  Again, I'm sorry for bothering you."

At seven-thirty, the deputy sheriff arrived to pick 
them up, and his agents took their checks to the 
register, chewing their toothpicks while the owner 
rang them up.  Skinner slid off the stool, still 
watching Laura at the other end of the counter.  Why 
he would know a truck stop waitress in a no-name 
town was beyond him, but he couldn't shake the 
feeling he did.

'A truck stop waitress.  The others he nailed like a 
truck stop waitress,' he kept remembering a voice 
saying. Agent Dales' voice. 'The other descriptions 
he nailed like a truck stop waitress. Oh, sorry, 
sweetie. Sorry, sweetie.'

"Mulder," he mumbled.  It was Mulder's girlfriend 
Dales had been apologizing to.  He looked at the 
waitress again, trying to get the overlay of the 
woman he remembered to fit her.  She noticed him 
watching and vanished to the back of the diner.

"What?" his agents responded in unison.

"Nothing.  Go with the deputy and I'll catch up."

He waited until they were outside, leaning on the 
hood of the squad car and smoking their cigarettes 
impatiently.

"Miss Scully?" he said quietly, catching her in the 
hallway as she came out of the ladies' room. "You're 
Dana Scully, aren't you?"

"No, I-I don't know what you're talking about."

She tried to step around him, but he blocked her 
path, putting his body between her and the rest of 
the restaurant. "Mulder brought me the film.  It's 
safe.  You're safe.  Your daughter's safe."

She took a shaky breath and repeated, "I don't 
know-"

"Yes, you do.  I know who you are.  I'm a friend, 
Miss Scully."

"I don't know you.  I don't know who Dana Scully 
is," she said forcefully. "I'm trying to do my job, 
and I'd appreciate it if you'd leave me alone."

He backed away, apologizing.  Maybe he'd made a 
mistake.  He'd seen Mulder's girlfriend once, a year 
ago, and he'd been focused on Mulder.  The only 
attention he'd paid to Dana Scully was to note she 
was attractive, in love with Mulder, and to answer 
that he preferred white turkey meat to dark.

He paused in the parking lot, looking through the 
diner window.  She was still standing in the hall 
outside the restroom, watching him.  One hand rested 
on her stomach, stroking protectively.  She wasn't 
dumpy, he realized: she was pregnant.  As soon as 
she saw him watching, she dropped her hand and 
turned away.

"That didn't take long," one of his agents said 
snidely as he joined beside the deputy's patrol car.

"Go with the deputy.  I'll call Portland and make 
arrangements for someone to pick me up later." 

They opened their mouths to protest, but he cut them 
off, saying it was an order.  Inside the diner, 
across the street, Laura was behind the counter 
again, waiting on the truckers.  

He wasn't mistaken.  That was Dana Scully.

*~*~*~*

He'd given the case one glance and decided, 'Dales.' 

An ex-baseball player's girlfriend vanished, most 
likely with a purse full of cash and jewelry, the 
love-struck player started making noise about 
kidnapping and conspiracies, made a few calls to 
some high-placed baseball fans, and the file wound 
up on Skinner's desk.  It was a waste of time and 
effort just waiting to devour Bureau resources.  

Special Agent Arthur Dales, please report to 
Assistant Director Skinner's office.

Three months later, the woman was found near a 
railroad switching station in DC after a botched 
abortion.  Dales had tossed out a few wild theories, 
and no one had listened.  Announcing he'd seen an 
alien lobster creature crawling out of a man's mouth 
a few years back had pretty much blown Dales' 
credibility with the FBI.  The case was closed in 
April, and Skinner hadn't given it another thought.

But, by December 1954, Dales had a gleam in his eye 
that foretold inclement weather better than any 
barometer. 

"Fox Mulder, the baseball player?" Skinner had asked 
in disbelief, resigning himself.  Nothing Dales had 
to say was ever brief. "The one who was just shot?  
Is he even out of the hospital?"

"No, Fox Mulder the tooth fairy," Dales retorted 
impatiently. "Of course, Fox Mulder the baseball 
player.  I told him we'd drop by tonight.  He has a 
house in Georgetown."

"Sure.  Then, after, maybe we'll drop in on Bigfoot 
and the Loch Ness Monster and see if they want to 
look at Bureau files.  No," he said forcefully. "Go 
waste someone else's time."

"It'll take ten minutes," Dales insisted, looking 
like a kid about to be turned loose in a toy store 
with his birthday money. "And you'll get to see 
Mulder's little honey in the flesh."

"Agent Dales, I can't begin to convey how little 
interest I have in seeing Fox Mulder's 'little 
honey.'"

"It will take ten minutes.  Maybe twenty," he 
hedged. "Ten minutes."

It had taken three hours.     

*~*~*~*

The elementary school was within walking distance, 
but then, everything in Bellefleur was within 
walking distance.  It was a typical small town: 
trusting, friendly.  People waved.  No one gave a 
second thought to a man in a trench coat standing at 
the edge of the school playground, watching.  At 
ten-thirty, children filed out of the building, 
zipped into a kaleidoscope of winter coats, with 
their mittens pinned to their sleeves so they 
wouldn't lose them.

In the end of the line, next to the teacher, was 
Emily Scully.

*~*~*~*

Hoover kept files on just about everyone of any 
importance, but he had an especially thick one on 
Fox Mulder.  After spending the evening at Mulder's 
house, Skinner went back to the Bureau and read 
through it in amazement, trying to figure out why a 
man with such a brilliant forensic mind had spent 
more than a decade playing centerfield for the New 
York Yankees.

The answer was simple: Mulder had turned the FBI 
down.  He'd declined, married, dropped out of 
school, moved to New York, and, in January 1939, 
become a father.  It wasn't hard to do the math.  

The file went on to record a stellar baseball career 
interrupted by a stint in Europe during WWII.  There 
was the usual blackmail material: a short list of 
women he'd been to bed with, some well-known 
starlets, but most not; a note he occasionally went 
to AA meetings.  A few minor scrapes with the law 
that he'd called in favors to fix, including getting 
abortion charges dropped against Dana Scully, which 
was all but admitting he'd fathered the child she'd 
aborted.  And he'd paid her hospital bill.

Skinner was interested to learn Mulder wasn't 
Emily's father.  He'd assumed Mulder and Dana were 
long-term lovers, though she hadn't struck him as 
the type of woman cocky, newly-wealthy athletes 
tended to keep as mistresses.  Then again, Mulder 
wasn't a cocky, newly-wealthy athlete.  He'd have 
been perfectly happy behind a podium at Oxford, 
buried in academia and wondering why his lectures 
were so popular with the undergrad girls.

Curious, he pulled the file on Dana Scully and found 
it empty except for cross-references to files 1949 
DKS-ALK and 1954 DKS-FWM, which weren't codes 
corresponding to any government agency Skinner was 
aware of.

*~*~*~*

For the first time in his career, he flashed his 
badge to gain access to something he had no 
authorization to investigate.  The school principal 
hesitated, but finally relented, summoning Katie 
Samuels to the office.

"I can't imagine what the FBI wants with her," the 
woman protested while they waited. "Katie's new 
here, but she's a bright girl.  She's quiet.  She's 
never any trouble."

"I'm sure she isn't," he answered, spotting the hall 
monitor returning with Emily. "Thank you.  This will 
only take a few minutes."

He walked to meet Emily halfway, noticing the 
principal watching him with her arms folded and her 
lips drawn thin in disapproval.  

Everything in the school seemed undersized, as 
though he'd stumbled into Munchkin Land.  Miniature 
water fountains and desks and bookshelves: it was an 
entire world eye-level with his waist and he felt 
awkwardly out of place.

He squatted down, and Emily regarded him warily. 
"I'm not supposed to talk to strangers," she 
informed him, her forehead creasing.

"But I'm not a stranger; I'm Mulder's friend, 
remember?  You told me about Bub, and George's Town, 
and flashing flashlights, and Mulder and your mommy 
getting married.  Remember?  I'm Walter.  I'm more 
than six."

She shook her head 'no,' looking around nervously.

"Yes, you do.  Emily, I need to ask-"

"That's not my name!"

"Shush," he hushed her. "I promise I won't tell 
anyone.  Do you remember who I am?"

She bit her lip, looking over his shoulder at the 
principal.  

"Do you remember me coming to your house to talk to 
Mulder?  After he was shot?  Your mommy was taking 
care of him."

"My real Daddy shot Mulder.  And then Mulder shot 
him," she said uncertainly.

He blinked.  At no point in Mulder's odd narrative 
of the events leading up to bringing Skinner that 
autopsy film was there any mention of shooting 
anyone. "Did your Daddy die?" he asked. "Emily, when 
Mulder shot him, did he die?"

"You're finished now," a woman's voice said sharply 
from behind him. "Katie, come here," she ordered, 
and Emily hurried past him.

Skinner glanced back, then stood, finding himself 
eye-to-eye, or rather, eye-to-top-of-her-head with 
Dana Scully.  Or Laura Samuels.  Or whoever she was.  
The principal must have called her when he'd asked 
to speak to Emily.

"You have no right to question my daughter," she 
said icily, making him glad she wasn't holding a 
gun.  He'd always had the gut feeling Dana Scully 
was far more dangerous that Fox Mulder.

*~*~*~*

He was one of the Assistant Directors of the FBI, 
for God's sake.  He'd protected politicians, 
business tycoons, famous actors, generals; he was 
fairly jaded to the appeal of fame and fortune.  Not 
much shocked him and not much impressed him, 
especially not celebrity.

And then there was the eight year-old boy inside him 
who wanted to jump up and down and squeal, 'It's Fox 
Mulder, oh my God, it's Fox Mulder!' and ask for an 
autograph.  The man was a legend: not because he was 
an incredible athlete, although he was, but because 
he made it look effortless.  He made baseball a 
gentleman's game, and made every American boy sure 
they could grow up to be him.

Unfortunately, Mulder seemed unaware he was supposed 
to be exciting.  Larger than life.  That there 
should be a movie soundtrack playing around him at 
all times: something by Sousa.  

"Come in," he'd invited when Skinner showed up on 
his doorstep with a stack of unsolved cases.  Mulder 
had been wearing an old gray flannel shirt and blue 
jeans, no shoes, and holding a half-eaten turkey 
sandwich.  In the background, American Bandstand 
blared from both the television and the radio, and a 
dark-haired teenage boy was sprawled in the sofa, 
the telephone cradled against his ear. "Let's go to 
the kitchen," Mulder had suggested, "It's quieter."

"Dad, I can't hear!" the kid snapped in a British 
accent.

"I wonder why?" Mulder snapped back, throwing a 
cushion at his son. "We have a guest.  Can you get 
your feet off the couch, Will?"
 
The boy ignored him in favor of whoever was on the 
other end of the telephone line.  Mulder leaned 
close to Skinner and whispered a request.  

"No, my dad's just being square.  It's nothing," 
Will muttered into the phone, knowing they could 
hear him. "So where you wanna go?" A pause, then an 
expectant grin. "Of course I have wheels, baby."

As per his instructions, Skinner whipped out his 
badge, flashed it at Will, and said tersely, "I'm 
Assistant Director Skinner with the FBI.  I'd like 
to speak with you about plagiarizing a term paper.  
Do you realize that's a federal crime, son?"

"Oh, shit!" the kid responded, dropping the phone 
and scrambling up. "That wasn't my idea!"

Behind Skinner, Mulder doubled over laughing, one 
hand clutching his chest.  His son's mouth hung 
open, then, realizing he'd been tricked, frowned 
angrily. "You're not funny!" Will protested, hurling 
the cushion back at his father much harder than it 
had been thrown at him. "You scared the hell out of 
me!  That's not funny!"

"Neither is that little line on your report card 
changing a D to a B," Mulder said, "That's forgery, 
right Mr. Skinner?"

Skinner nodded helpfully.

"I hate you both!" 

"You're good," Mulder had told him as they pushed 
through the kitchen door to the relative silence 
there. "Usually he has to know someone for several 
minutes before he hates them."

"Is it always this exciting around here?" Skinner 
asked, opening his briefcase.  He kept waiting for 
the pomp and circumstance, but there was only a 
regular guy, with sock feet, an old shirt, messy 
hair, a rebellious son, and breadcrumbs on his 
counter, doing regular guy things.  With a Porsche 
parked in front of a house that probably cost more 
than Skinner would make in ten years.  A Yankee's 
cap hung beside the kitchen phone, and he had the 
urge to touch it, just to see what it felt like.  
He'd sniff it, but that would make him a pervert.

Mulder shrugged his good shoulder. "Scully and Em 
will be back in an hour," he'd offered. "They went 
to the grocery store." 

Skinner waited for 'and then we're flying to Paris 
for champagne cocktails.' 

"We're having macaroni and cheese," Mulder added, 
nodding enthusiastically.  

*~*~*~*  

"Please just answer me.  Does he know where you 
are?" Skinner persisted, following her across the 
schoolyard and down the sidewalk.  Inside the five-
and-dime, customers stopped browsing to watch them; 
this was the dramatic highlight of the winter season 
in Bellefleur. "He doesn't, does he?"

She ignored him and kept waddling as fast as she 
could, clutching her daughter's hand.  Emily looked 
back nervously, stumbling as she tried to keep up. 

"Does Mulder even know about that baby?"

She whirled around, five feet, two inches of 
ferociousness. "Leave us alone!"

"Or is it not his baby?" That seemed unlikely, but 
there was a wedding band on her finger.

"How dare you!" she exploded, making him take a step 
backward on the snowy sidewalk. "Who do you think 
you are?"

"I told you: I'm a friend."

"You're not our friend.  If you were, you'd leave us 
alone!"

She turned away again, pulling Emily after her.  
When Emily stumbled, her mother bent to pick her up, 
started to stand, then gasped and put her daughter 
down quickly.  Dana put one hand on her belly, then 
awkwardly fell forward onto her hands and knees, her 
face contorted in pain.  

*~*~*~*

Mulder had been recovering from gunshot wounds to 
his chest and shoulder, and often Skinner could see 
him pushing to finish reading a file or creating a 
description of a suspect.  

"Why are you doing this?" he'd asked one afternoon, 
after hearing Mulder lie to his girlfriend over the 
phone.  She'd called from school, and he'd assured 
her he was resting, had taken his pain pill, and 
eaten the lunch she'd left, when he'd done none of 
those things. "I mean: I'm glad you are.  This is 
groundbreaking forensic science, but-"

The 'but' was 'the FBI isn't going to give an ex-
baseball player credit for solving their cases.' 
Skinner had paid him the Bureau's consulting fee, 
which Mulder probably used to have someone put a new 
wax job on the Porsche.  It wasn't about money or 
glory, and Mulder's dissertation involved using 
solved cases, not being the one doing the solving.

"I had a sister," Mulder answered after a long pause 
and two sips of tea. "We were in the woods behind my 
parents' summer house, I turned my back, and she 
vanished.  They never found her body.  And they 
never caught whoever took her."

"How old was she?"

"Nine," he responded softly, then cleared his throat 
and picked up the file again, sifting through the 
stark crime scene photos of a half-dozen victims.

"I'm sorry," Skinner said uncomfortably.  It was 
awkward to see the cracks in the hero's armor.  
Instead of giving some pat answer, Mulder leaned 
forward, putting three of the photographs in front 
of Skinner and pointing out some obscure detail 
present in all three.  He moved on, speculating on 
the killer's MO, and wanting to act like his sister 
had never been mentioned.  So Skinner had let him. 

*~*~*~*

Just as he'd seemed too large for the Bellefleur 
Elementary, Emily seemed too small for the oversized 
chairs in the hospital hall.  She sat alone, her 
feet swinging far above the floor, encased in white 
anklets and little black and white saddle shoes.  
She wore a plaid wool jumper, and she was arranging 
the pleated skirt neatly so the plaid lined up.

"Your mommy's going to be fine," he said awkwardly, 
sitting on the chair beside her. "Do you want 
something to drink?  Coffee?  No," he immediately 
amended, "Hot chocolate.  Would you like some hot 
chocolate?"

She shook her head 'no,' not looking up.

"Are you hungry?" he tried.

Another nod.

"Emily- Katie, your mommy's fine.  The doctors are 
taking good care of her.  She had, uh, a bellyache."

Emily raised her face, looking at him like he was 
stupid. "My mommy's going to have a baby.  It's 
growing in her belly.  Inside the womb."

"Oh," he said, embarrassed. "Yes, that's right."

He took off his eyeglasses, wiping them with his 
handkerchief, wondering what the hell he was doing 
here. So Mulder got his girlfriend pregnant. Again. 
So, for whatever reason, they parted ways. Again.  
So Dana wanted to live in Nowhere, Oregon under an 
assumed name. Skinner could be halfway back to DC by 
now, but he was sitting in a hospital just left of 
Middle-of-Nowhere, interfering with something that, 
unless a crime had been committed, wasn't his 
business in the first place.

"Is Mulder going to come?" Emily asked quietly, 
watching the doctor enter her mother's room at the 
end of the hall.

"I don't know.  Do you think I should call him?"

She shrugged that she didn't know. "He came last 
time.  When Mommy got sick."

"Mulder came to the hospital when your mommy was 
sick?" The plot thickened. "What happened?"

"They had a fight."

"Who had a fight?  Your mommy and Mulder?"

"No, Mulder and Uncle Bill.  The police came and 
made Mulder leave.  And then we weren't supposed to 
talk to Mulder.  But he called Gammy's one time 
while Mommy was sleeping." She leaned forward, 
taking him into her confidence. "And I talked to 
him.  Mommy doesn't know."

"Oh."

"Gammy said not to tell her and never do it again.  
She said it was Mulder's fault Mommy was sick."

"Oh."

"Bub says a womb is an elephant fart," she added. 

"Oh."
 
*~*~*~*

He'd known he was in trouble when they didn't invite 
him to sit.  The men around the conference table let 
him stand while they finished their cigarettes, as 
if he were a junior agent.  Hoover stayed behind his 
desk, focusing on something outside his office 
window, and never said a word.

"We have a question about one of your expenditures," 
the Deputy Director finally informed him, leafing 
through a sheaf of papers.

Skinner waited. 

"George Hale," he said casually. "The Bureau's 
contracting with him as a forensic expert?"

Skinner waited.  He'd filed all the paperwork, gone 
through all the channels, and made no attempt to 
hide who George Hale really was.  It was just a name 
to go on the reports.  Anyone in the FBI could 
easily crosscheck the files. 

"George Hale died in 1938, Assistant Director."

"Yes, he did.  It's an alias for Fox Mulder.  Surely 
you recall that, sir.  You signed off on his 
background check."

The Deputy Director's cheekbones broadened as he 
gritted his teeth. "You will cease contact with Mr. 
Mulder.  I will instruct him to return all Bureau 
materials immediately and you will refrain from 
contacting him in the future for any reason.  If he 
contacts you, you will refer him to me."

Skinner put his hands on his hips is disbelief. "May 
I ask why?"

"It's a matter of national security," another man 
answered, smoking his cigarette languidly.

"National security?  Fox Mulder?  If you've read his 
file, you already know the FBI tried to hire him 
once.  Now, after he's a veteran and a national 
icon, he's a risk to security?" His only answer was 
a puff of smoke from the old man at the far end of 
the table. "How is he possibly a threat to national 
security?" Skinner demanded.

"He's a homosexual," came a response, and a pile of 
glossy photographs slid smoothly across the table.

Skinner picked it up the top one, examining it for a 
few seconds. It was unquestionably Mulder, bare-
chested, spooned up in bed to a smaller figure.  The 
person lying in front of him was covered with a 
sheet from the waist down, and Mulder's arms were 
around the chest, but the face belonged to a young 
man.  The arms and shoulders, however, were 
decidedly feminine. 

"His girlfriend wears a little gold cross around her 
neck," Skinner responded, tossing the photograph 
back and tapping the base of his throat. "Whoever 
glued that together: it would be more convincing if 
he'd take it out of the photograph."

"Then he's a pedophile."

Skinner tilted his head, realizing how this game was 
played. "And I suppose you have incriminating photos 
of him reading a bedtime story to his kid?  Why are 
you doing this?  What has he done, aside from help 
solve some of our toughest cases?"

"Would you like to see his communist party 
membership card?"

"No, I'd like some answers," he shot back. "I know 
this man.  He's about as far from a security risk as 
you can get."

"With all due respect, Assistant Director Skinner, 
if you know him so well, maybe we should look a 
little closer at some of your associations."

"Are you threatening me?"

"Let's say we're cautioning you," the smoking man 
responded.
 
*~*~*~*

His only experience with small children was having 
been one himself.  When they'd married, he and 
Sharon had been eager to start a family, and had 
applied themselves wholeheartedly to that end.  If 
effort counted, they should have a dozen children, 
but months, then years, then decades slipped past.  
The doctors scratched their heads and told them to 
keep trying: all the plumbing seemed to be in 
working order.  Eventually, they'd grown tired of 
focusing on the plumbing and decided to just enjoy 
the facilities, leaving post-WWII America to boom 
without them.
 
Emily had finally accepted a cup of hot chocolate 
from the vending machine, but wrinkled her nose at 
the layer of chocolate sludge at the bottom and 
drank barely half.  The nurses offered cookies, but 
she shook her head, not hungry.  She sat quietly, 
arranging her pleats or watching her feet, then fell 
asleep, her head on one plastic chair and her 
backside on another.  He covered her with his coat, 
not sure what else to do.  Mulder had never shared 
the details of the girl's illness, but Skinner knew 
it was serious.  Possibly terminal.  He didn't know 
if she was supposed to have medicine or treatment or 
if there was someone he should call, and when he 
asked Emily, she mumbled that her name was Katie now 
and he should ask Mommy.

"Sir?" the doctor said, coming toward them.  

He left Emily and went to talk to the doctor 
privately, in case the news was bad, but she woke 
and trailed down the corridor after him.  To his 
surprise, she reached for his hand, slipping her 
warm fingers between his.  He glanced down at her, 
wondering how so much composure fit into such a 
small package.

"Your wife and baby are going to be fine.  She's 
just a little rundown, but we're giving her fluids. 
We'll monitor her overnight, but everything should 
be fine.  She can go home in the morning."

"She's not-" Skinner started, then just nodded. "I'm 
glad."

"She's resting, but you can see her," the doctor 
said, holding the door to Dana's room open for them. 
"Just for a little bit."

She was propped up on pillows, her head tilted to 
one side as she slept.  Under the sheet, her belly 
was more obvious.  Her glasses were gone, as was the 
brown wig, and her face seemed thinner, more 
shadowed and hunted.  Her auburn hair fell in waves 
across the pillow, and there was a series of ugly 
purple marks on her arm where someone had tried 
unsuccessfully to put an IV in before finding a vein 
in the back of her hand.  A small gold cross hung 
from her necklace, with a filigree engagement ring 
beside it.  Even from a distance, the diamond was 
impressive.

He hesitated at the door, but Emily went to her 
mother, standing beside the bed uncertainly for a 
moment.  Dana opened her eyes groggily as Emily sat, 
making the mattress dip. "Mommy?" she said 
apprehensively, looking at the IV.

"Are you all right, honey?" Dana turned her head, 
trying to focus on her daughter's face.

In response, Emily lay down beside her mother, 
resting her head on her shoulder.  Dana put one arm 
around her, stroking her hair, and put her other 
hand on her belly.  She bit her lip, looking at the 
bare hospital walls as though trying to remember 
what had happened or where she was.

"She's exhausted," Skinner said from the doorway. 
"It's after ten o'clock at night, but I wasn't sure 
where to take her.  Is there someone who can keep 
her tonight?"

"No, there's-" She stopped, trying to gather her 
thoughts. "There's-" Dana shook her head slowly, 
trying to clear it, and looked around the room 
again. Her gaze stopped on him, and she blinked as 
she tried to place who he was.

"Assistant Director Walter Skinner with the FBI.  We 
met last fall at Fox Mulder's home in Georgetown."

She inhaled and started to sit up.

"Don't.  You're supposed to rest.  I'm just here to 
help.  Emily's fine.  The baby's fine, but the 
doctors want you to rest overnight.  Do you want me 
to call Mulder?"

"He said he should," Emily whispered to her mother.

Dana nodded slowly, but it seemed to be an 'I 
understand' rather than a 'yes, call Mulder' nod. 
"Could you give us a minute, Mr. Skinner?" 

"Of course," he answered, backing out of the room 
and closing the door.

He leaned against the smooth wall beside her door, 
folding his arms.  He needed to call Sharon again.  
He needed to check in with the Bureau.  His stomach 
growled, reminding him he needed more sustenance 
than hospital vending machine coffee.

A nurse approached, her shoes squeaking against the 
floor. "Is Mrs. Scully all right?" she asked, 
pausing, clipboard in hand.

"She's fine.  She just wanted some privacy."

"Of course, Mr. Scully," the nurse responded, 
smiling sweetly, then moved on.

'Mr. Scully,' he mouthed in tired bemusement.  The 
admitting nurse had gotten what he said turned 
around and assumed he was Mr. Dana Scully: Dana 
being his first name, not hers.  It didn't seem 
worth correcting them.  The whole day had taken on a 
surreal tone and that capped it.

He rested the back of his head against the cool, 
solid wall, then turned as the door opened.  Dana 
emerged, dressed in her waitress' uniform, and 
shrugging her winter coat over it.  Her auburn hair 
was pulled back in a ponytail, and she pressed a 
Kleenex over the place on her hand where she'd just 
removed the IV.  Emily held onto her mother's skirt, 
looking both ways to make sure the coast was clear.

"Where are you going Miss Scully?" he asked in 
disbelief. "You're supposed to be resting."

She responded by walking calmly away from him, to 
the elevator.

"Miss Scully?" he called, following her. "Where are 
you going?"

Emily glanced back at him, then up at her mother.

"Miss Scully?" he repeated, hands on his hips, as 
she waited for the elevator.  Dana stared straight 
ahead, then, as the doors opened, stepped inside.  
She turned, pushing the down button.  Beside her, 
Emily waved bye-bye as the doors closed. 

*~*~*~*

Sharon teased him that at heart, he was an overgrown 
hall monitor with a badge and a big gun. He'd told 
her he'd gone to grammar school in a one-room 
schoolhouse: they didn't have monitors, much to his 
disappointment.  He liked order, though: having a 
clear distinction between right and wrong, duty and 
dishonor. But following the rules wasn't always the 
best way to protect the public.  He was aware the 
world wasn't black and white, but shades of gray.  
The older he became, and the further he rose in the 
FBI, the more the moral high ground was a slippery 
slope. It was getting hard to tell the heroes from 
the villains, but he still tried, damn it.

Yes, Agent Dales had been out of line showing Bureau 
files to a civilian, but Jesus: it was Agent Dales.  
Bigger fish to fry and all that.  Yes, Skinner had 
involved Mulder in cases before Mulder had security 
clearance, but the background check had been a 
formality.  Fox Mulder was a good guy.  Maybe not an 
angel, but on the right side.  He certainly wasn't a 
threat to democracy.  Or heterosexuality.

The Deputy Director instructed Mulder to return all 
Bureau materials, which he'd done immediately. Dales 
had been suspended for two weeks without pay, then 
returned to his cubbyhole to mutter about aliens and 
conspiracies.

The morning after his conversation with the Deputy 
Director and the smoking man, Skinner unlocked his 
desk drawer to find dog-eared paperback novel with 
two men embracing on the cover.  To reinforce the 
point, a communist party card bearing his name 
served as a bookmark.  It didn't matter that he 
wasn't a communist, or that the closest he came to 
being a homosexual was having a third cousin who 
liked show tunes.  He was if They said he was.

That was when he'd begun making noises to Sharon 
about leaving the FBI.

Then the Mad Bomber Case had made its way to his 
desk.  The bombings had plagued New York for more 
than a decade, but were rapidly escalating.  
Previously, the bomber targeted only Consolidated 
Edison office buildings, but by spring 1954, was 
striking libraries, subways, stores, and theaters.  
The bomber wrote to the police, taunting them.  In 
each instance, the area was evacuated and the bomb 
found, but the entire city was wary of going out.  
With each bomb, there was less warning, and more 
chance someone would be harmed.  An hour's notice 
before a bomb would have exploded in Grand Central 
Station had been the final straw for Skinner.  He'd 
left his agents to scratch their heads, and gone to 
The Plaza.

After several unreturned messages, the helpful 
concierge mentioned Mulder wasn't there, but was 
expected that evening.  When Skinner ambushed him, 
he expected Mulder to tell him to kiss his ass, but 
Mulder hadn't.  He'd told him to watch Emily, and, 
in five minutes, gone through the case like he was 
reading the bomber's mind.  Mulder had barely even 
seemed to be paying attention.  The hotel as buzzing 
about he and Dana getting married, and Emily was 
chattering away, then complaining about her stomach, 
yet Mulder's description of the bomber had been dead 
on.  When the FBI arrested George Metesky a month 
later, he'd been exactly the man Mulder described.

Skinner had begun to suspect that was the FBI's 
objection to Mulder: not that he couldn't help catch 
the bad guys, but that he could.  And there were 
some bad guys the FBI didn't want caught.

"Mr. Skinner," he'd heard the smoking man said from 
behind him, in The Plaza lobby. "You're a long way 
from home." A chill ran down his spine at the 
unspoken message: 'And your wife's home alone.'

Skinner had probably seemed perfectly cool on the 
outside, but inside, the moral mechanisms of his 
conscience jammed and grated like an over-wound 
watch.  Mulder looked confused and slightly hurt at 
Skinner's sudden formality.  Skinner had stammered 
something about Dana and Emily being very special 
before the polished doors closed and the upholstered 
elevator carried Mulder and Emily to the penthouse.  
When Skinner turned, the smoking man was gone.  

There hadn't been a fast enough flight out of New 
York, so he'd borrowed a car and drove back to DC, 
seldom dropping below ninety miles per hour all 
night.  He found Sharon asleep in their bed, her 
reading glasses sliding down her nose and her book 
open in her hand.  He'd stripped nude and curled up 
behind her, holding her tightly in the darkness and 
pulling the covers over them.

*~*~*~*

He'd passed the point of common sense without a 
backward glance and was approaching the signs for 
Point of Ludicrous.  Even if Mulder had killed 
Emily's 'real Daddy,' Skinner had no jurisdiction.  
He wasn't Agent Dales; he didn't just investigate 
any crime that interested him.  There was protocol.  
Procedure.  It was a local matter, not an FBI 
investigation.

"Open up or I'll come back with a warrant," he told 
the battered door, the light from inside seeping out 
beneath it.  He doubted he could really get a 
warrant, but she didn't know that.

Dana opened the door, positioning most of her body 
behind it.  The apartment sat atop a bakery, a block 
off the main road through Bellefleur.  An old pickup 
truck drove past, its headlights temporarily 
illuminating the dark street.

"I just need to clear something up," he assured her. 
"That's all.  I got your address from the diner.  I 
told you: I'm a friend."

Her old eyes seemed out of place on her young face.  
She'd changed onto slacks and loose sweater, and her 
hair was twisted into a hurried knot on top of her 
head. "I don't understand what I've done," she said 
evenly. "Why are you bothering us?"

"I want to talk to you.  Please, may I come in?"

Dana looked at him, then over her shoulder. Nice 
girls didn't invite men into their apartments at 
night. It wasn't proper, whatever the circumstances.

"Or we could go get a cup of coffee," he amended. 
"Or something to eat.  I just need to talk to you."

"About what?"

"About Mulder."

"Mommy?" Emily called from behind her, emerging from 
the back of the apartment in her pajamas, with a 
toothbrush in her hand.  It had to be long past the 
child's bedtime, and she sounded cranky.

"Do you have slippers on?" Dana asked without 
looking, and Emily answered that she did. "Find your 
coat.  Please wait just a minute, Mr. Skinner," she 
requested, starting to close the door.

Skinner put his hand on it, keeping it open.  He'd 
played this game once before.  She'd managed to 
vanish from the hospital lobby, and he didn't want 
her shimmying out the back window of her apartment.

Dana reached for her coat, wrapping it around her 
shoulders, then slipped her feet into a pair of 
canvas shoes.  She took her house key and her 
daughter's hand, then instructed him to follow her 
down the old wooden steps and around to the back 
door of the closed bakery.  Shivering, she unlocked 
the steel door, and he followed her through the 
kitchen, to small booth near the front window.  The 
glass display cases were lit, casting an eerie glow 
behind the register.  The air was thick with yeast 
and sugary icing, and the tiled table was cool under 
his fingertips.

Emily slid into the booth, laying her head on the 
table tiredly.

"If I get you a muffin, will you eat it?" Dana 
asked. "What about a doughnut?" 

Emily nodded, and Dana retrieved one from the case, 
leaving a nickel beside the register.  She put the 
stale doughnut on a napkin in front of her daughter, 
where it sat uneaten. 

"Please understand I'm not trying to pry into your 
private life," he assured her awkwardly. "Whatever's 
happened between you and Mulder is your business. My 
concern is: I know there was an attempt made on his 
life last year. It was my understanding the man who 
shot him was never identified.  But today, Emily 
told me her 'real Daddy' shot Mulder, and that 
Mulder had shot him. That's what concerns me: if a 
crime has been committed. Or if Mulder's shooter can 
be identified."

"If you think a crime's been committed, why not call 
the police?"

"Because I'm not sure one has.  Or the circumstances 
involved.  I have no proof Mulder shot anyone. 
There's no body, no missing person's report.  The 
only evidence I have is the word of little girl."

Dana hesitated, putting her hand on her daughter's 
back and making sure she was asleep. "I don't know 
who her father is," she said quietly. "Neither does 
she.  There is no 'real Daddy.'"

"You didn't quite answer me, ma'am." 

She still hadn't admitted to being Dana Scully, or 
to actually having known Mulder.  It still struck 
him as odd that she'd have an empty FBI file 
referring him to another file so top-secret he 
didn't know of its existence.  Watching her with 
Emily, it seemed out of character for her to have 
aborted Mulder's child, or to conceal this one from 
him.  Or, even if Mulder wasn't interested in this 
baby, he couldn't see him refusing to support it. 
The story: a tempestuous romance between a young 
woman with questionable morals and a wealthy ball 
player who'd had his fun and moved on, didn't ring 
true.  It reminded him of a play with poorly cast 
leads: still an interesting story, but he didn't buy 
the actors in their roles.
 
He paused to adjust his glasses, trying to remember 
all of Dales' nonsensical theories about aliens and 
experiments and Dana Scully.  Skinner hadn't really 
been listening; Dales had so many nonsensical 
theories that they all blended together.

"You're afraid of something," he finally said, 
trying to sound trustworthy. "I understand that, and 
I will do everything in my power to protect you and 
your daughter.  And your baby.  But I need you to be 
honest with me.  I need to know what's happening.  I 
need to know about that film Mulder brought me.  I 
need to know where he got it.  Or, or where you got 
it," he added, considering that possibility for the 
first time.

She looked at him, her eyes giving away nothing.

"I can keep you safe, Miss Scully."

A car rolled past the bakery, and she turned her 
head, watching it, a hand instinctively going to her 
belly. 

"Do you really think so?" she asked evenly, and 
Skinner swallowed.

Dana slid put of the booth and stood awkwardly, 
jostling Emily's shoulder to wake her.

"We aren't finished," he said in his stern voice.

"I think we are," she answered, managing not to 
cower in fear.

Asleep, Emily mumbled for her mother to carry her.

"I can't, honey.  Mommy can't.  You have to walk."  

"Can't; hurts," Emily muttered, raising her head 
sleepily.  Two red streams trickled from her nose, 
becoming heavier until blood flowed over her mouth 
and chin.

"Uh-oh," Dana said, quickly reaching for a paper 
napkin and pinching her daughter's nose shut. "Tilt 
your head back."

Emily complied.  Not knowing what else to do, 
Skinner retrieved more napkins, then hovered 
helplessly. "Is she all right?"

Dana stroked Emily's hair soothingly. "Fine.  Just 
sprung a leak, right?" she said gently.

He heard choking, and Emily leaned forward suddenly, 
struggling to breathe.  She coughed, spraying 
crimson blood everywhere, then looked to her mother 
helplessly, starting to cry.

"Shush, shush, shush.  Just a nosebleed.  Just a 
leak.  No shots.  No more doctors," Dana assured 
her, moping up the mess.  

"I wan' Mul'er," Emily pleaded nasally. "I wan' go 
home."

"We can't go home, Em.  It's not safe." Dana 
squatted in front of her, wiping off some of the 
blood, but mostly just smearing it.  

Skinner offered another napkin.

"It's stopping.  It's stopping," Dana assured Emily, 
giving her the napkin to hold under her nose. "All 
over.  Let's put some ice on it: make it feel 
better."

She leaned forward to pick up her daughter, but 
Skinner stopped her, holding out his hands.  Dana 
nodded that it was all right, so he picked up Emily 
and followed her mother through the dark bakery and 
up the frozen stairs to her apartment.

The interior wasn't what he'd expected.  An unwed 
mother on a waitress's salary: he'd expected 
poverty, but there was no sign of it.  The apartment 
was sparse, but comfortable.  A vaporizer purred, 
scenting the air with Vicks, and a radio was on, 
tuned to the news.  The radiator kept the rooms 
slightly warmer than he found comfortable, and 
warmer than many poor families were able to afford 
during the Oregon winter.  It wasn't the overall 
picture that told him there was money, but the 
little amenities: a new toaster, a blender, a 
telephone.  Emily's thick coat and well-made saddle 
shoes.  A basket of oranges in the kitchen in 
December.  Dana seemed to be able to afford the 
things she wanted to afford, and she wasn't doing 
that waiting tables in a truck stop.

Mulder could have written her a check and told her 
to get out of town when he found out about the baby, 
except that didn't sound like Mulder.  Or she could 
have blackmailed him, except that didn't sound like 
Dana.  Or explain why she on the other side of the 
country, living under an assumed name.  Or wearing 
her engagement ring on her necklace.  Or why Mulder 
wasn't moving Heaven and Earth to find her, her 
daughter, and his baby.  When she'd disappeared 
before, Mulder had done everything in his power to 
find her, and this time he wasn't lifting a finger.  
No matter how Skinner did the math, it didn't quite 
add up.

His eyes stopped on an open, half-filled suitcase on 
the bed at the end of the hall.  Dana must have been 
packing when he'd knocked on the door.

"Put her on the sofa," Dana requested, heading for 
the kitchen. Skinner set Emily down, and heard the 
freezer open and close.  Water ran, a cabinet 
banged, and metal pots clanged. "Ice," Dana said, 
returning.  She passed a cube-filled dishtowel to 
him to hold. "A washcloth.  And a bowl."

"What's the bowl for?" he asked as Emily leaned 
forward, vomiting blood into the metal mixing bowel.  
She must have swallowed it when she was choking, and 
what had been a little going down looked like a lot 
coming back up. "Is she all right?" he asked 
nervously.

"Just fine," Dana murmured, setting the basin aside 
and wiping her daughter's face with a wet washcloth. 
"We're just fine, aren't we?" she added, like she 
was trying to convince herself as well.

Emily nodded unconvincingly, her lip trembling.

Dana wiped away the last few smears, then reached 
for the ice pack. "It's all over.  Close your eyes, 
honey."

"I wanna go home," Emily pleaded. "I want Mulder."

"Honey, we can't."

"Why can't you?" Skinner asked softly. "Why can't 
she call him?  It's just a phone call."

"You aren't helping," Dana hissed through her teeth, 
and he stepped back. "We can't call him, honey.  You 
know why.  It's too dangerous."

"Grammy?"

"No, we can't call Grammy, either."

Emily's face crumpled, and she started to cry 
tiredly.  Dana sat on the sofa beside her, putting 
her arms around her daughter and holding her close.  
 
Skinner reached for the telephone on the end table, 
dialing the FBI switchboard. "This is AD Skinner.  I 
need a secure line out," he told the operator, then 
handed the receiver to Dana. "Tell her to put you 
through to whoever you like." 

She took the receiver, staring at it. 

"It's secure," he assured her. "No one's listening.  
The call will look like it originated from the FBI 
in Washington."

Emily stopped crying and watched her expectantly.

Dana nodded, put the receiver to her ear and said 
shakily. "New York City, please.  The Plaza Hotel." 
There was a paused, then Dana nodded again. "Fox 
Mulder, please." She bit her lip, holding the phone 
with one hand and rubbing Emily's back with her 
other as she listened. "William Mulder?" Another 
pause. "No, no message.  Thank you," she said 
softly, then handed the receiver back to him.

"They're not there?"

She nodded 'no,' and Emily curled into a ball again, 
sobbing miserably and mumbling about doctors.

"Try the house in Georgetown."

She nodded 'no' again.  

"I know Mulder.  I know what kind of man he is.  And 
whatever's happened, as soon as he knows where you 
are, as soon as he knows about this baby, he'll be 
here within hours," he assured her.

She looked at her tearful daughter, then at the 
phone, then down at her swollen belly, biting her 
lower lip.  As he watched, trying to figure out what 
else to say or do, Dana covered her face with her 
hand and began to cry silently.

*~*~*~*

The assumption was that he was an early riser, but 
it was really self-defense: if he was in the office 
by seven, he might be able to wade through the 
meetings and paperwork and be home by seven at 
night.  That meant getting up around five, and 
Sharon had long since stopped making him breakfast.  
On weekends, when he got up at eight, she cooked.  
Weekdays, she made sure there was orange juice and 
English muffins before she went to bed.

He reached up, wrapped his fingers around the top of 
the doorjamb, and stretched.  The sun wasn't up yet, 
and the yard was still covered in cool dew.  
Alexandria was silent.  He scratched his chest and 
yawned, getting ready to meet a long day.  Every 
other house on the street had a newspaper on the 
porch, but his waited smugly in the center of the 
wet front lawn.  Every damn morning.

'It's a conspiracy,' Skinner told himself, squishing 
barefooted across the grass, getting the hems of his 
pajama bottoms wet.

Across the street, a car door opened, and he looked 
up.  Nothing had happened since the smoking man 
caught him talking to Mulder at The Plaza Sunday 
night, but he could feel it coming, like an 
approaching storm.

"Mulder?" he said in disbelief, as a man emerged 
from a new, black Chrysler, bringing a small metal 
canister and a handgun, which he tucked into the 
waistband of his trousers.  William was in the 
driver's seat, and he watched nervously as his 
father approached the house.  

"Mulder?" Skinner repeated.

"I'm sorry.  I was afraid to go to your office," 
Mulder said quickly.

Skinner didn't bother to ask how Mulder had 
discovered his home address or what he was doing 
parked across the street at barely five in the 
morning. "Is something wrong?  Has something 
happened?"

"I need your help.  Will you help me?"

"Of course.  Of course I will.  Come inside."

Mulder turned back to the car, nodded curtly, and 
his son nodded back.  Mulder had a dangerous air 
about him, like a lion when his pride was threatened 
or a soldier when the enemy hit too close to home.

Feeling naked in his t-shirt and pajama bottoms, 
Skinner picked up his own gun from the table beside 
the front door, carrying it to the kitchen in case 
the bad guys were in the pantry.

"I need you to take this to the smoking man," Mulder 
said rapidly, handing him the canister of film and 
sounding like he'd rehearsed his words. "She said 
you'd know how to find him.  Tell him I want to make 
a deal.  Tell him there are copies, and if anything 
happens to Dana or Emily Scully, or to Will, or me, 
this film will play on the evening news.  Can you do 
that?  Do you know how to contact him?"

"I have a pretty good idea.  Mulder, slow down and 
tell me what's happened.  What is this?  Where did 
you get it?"

"It doesn't matter.  Just tell him that: if anything 
happens to them.  Or us," he added, gesturing to the 
car outside. "Anything.  You'll do that?"

"Yes."
 
"Thank you," Mulder responded, turning toward the 
front door. "Will and I will be away for a few days.  
A few weeks, maybe.  I'll call you."

"If you think you're in danger, I can take you into 
protective custody.  Let me just get dressed and-"

"Last year, They tried to kill me.  Yesterday 
morning, They pointed a gun at my son's head.  My 
phone's tapped.  My friend's phones are tapped.  
Yesterday afternoon, someone searched my rooms at 
The Plaza, looking for that film.  Forgive me, but 
you can't even come close to keeping us safe, 
Assistant Director.  Just make the deal."

"Mulder," Skinner called after him, following. 
"These men are the major leagues.  What is this film 
that you think They're going to make a deal?"

"It's Pandora's box," he answered simply, then 
repeated, "Thank you," as he walked out.

Skinner stayed at his heels. "What about Dana and 
Emily?  You said you and your son would be away.  
What about Dana and Emily Scully?  Where are they?  
Are they safe?"

Mulder hesitated, his shoulders bowed from the 
weight of the world. "I don't know."

"You don't know?" Skinner echoed in disbelief, 
talking to the back of Mulder's head as he jogged 
across the street.  As he got in the passenger side, 
Will started the engine, then pulled away from the 
curb.
 
Skinner stared at the car as it drove away, then at 
the film canister.  It gave no clue as to what might 
be inside except the label: 'Roswell, New Mexico 
1947: Project Blue Book'.

Still barefooted, he trudged to the basement, 
reaching to turn on the bare light bulb.  It took 
him a few minutes to find their dusty old projector, 
then he opened the canister and threaded the film 
through the machine.  He found an extension cord, 
plugged the projector in, pointed it at a dark, bare 
wall, and flipped the switch.
 
He leaned on a workbench, squinting uncertainly as 
he watched doctors examine a creature on a table, 
seeming to be conducting some sort of autopsy.  
Halfway through, he stopped and rewound the film, 
watching it again.  He knew what it looked like he 
was seeing, and what he couldn't possibly be seeing, 
and his mind struggled with all the possibilities 
between the two extremes.

He knew there was a base near Roswell, New Mexico, 
and Project Blue Book was a top-secret military 
aircraft project based in the Nevada desert.  In 
1947, the Air Force claimed to have retrieved a UFO 
near Roswell, then amended that, saying it was a 
weather balloon.  Either the government lied and it 
had been a UFO, and he was watching a film of an 
alien being autopsied, or it was a hoax created by 
the government to cover up something larger.  Either 
way, Mulder was right: the grainy, flickering film 
stock was Pandora's box.

*~*~*~*  

He remembered Dana offering him Aspirin and a glass 
of water.  She'd said her head ached and gone to the 
medicine cabinet in the bathroom.  She'd offered, 
and Skinner, temples throbbing, had taken two of the 
white pills she shook out of an Aspirin bottle and 
into his hand.  He could have sworn he watched her 
take two as well.

But he didn't remember falling asleep.  He'd carried 
Emily to bed for Dana, then returned to the living 
room and thought he'd rest his eyes until she 
finished tucking her daughter in.  When he opened 
them it was dawn, and he was sprawled on an armchair 
in her apartment.  The taste in his mouth indicated 
he'd been snoring, and his neck was stiff on one 
side.

Skinner looked around, expecting Dana to be nearby, 
but she wasn't.  He pushed up from the chair, going 
to the back of the apartment.  Emily's bed was 
vacant, and the blanket and pillow were missing. He 
checked, finding the dresser drawers and the 
medicine cabinet empty.  The crayon drawings and 
worksheets that had been on the refrigerator were 
gone.  The suitcase was missing, but everything else 
was exactly the same.  The radio still played the 
morning news, the radiator still rumbled its warm 
belly, and the basket of oranges was still on the 
kitchen counter.

He stumbled outside, squinting at the weak winter 
sun.  The bakery was busy, as was the hardware store 
beside it.  His head felt groggy and he shook it to 
clear it.  Those must have been some Aspirin.

No one in Bellefleur seemed to know where she might 
have gone, or where she'd come from: only that Laura 
Samuels and her daughter Katie had been in town a 
few months and kept to themselves.  The school was 
still waiting for Katie's records to arrive, but 
said she was a bright little girl, though often ill.  
There was no checking account, no library card.  The 
diner paid Laura in cash.  She'd paid her rent and 
utilities in cash; big bills, the woman at the 
electric company remembered.  Her boss at the diner 
had a theory she was running from her husband, and 
quietly confided in Skinner that she was going to 
have a baby in a few more months.  The diner owner 
wished her luck.

Not sure what to do, he returned to Dana's 
apartment, checking for some sign as to where she 
might have gone.  There wasn't one, but he hadn't 
expected there to be.  Skinner tilted his head from 
side to side, then rolled his tense shoulders.  

He picked up the telephone, debating on having the 
police put out an APB.  A pregnant redhead and a 
sick little girl shouldn't be too hard to locate, 
and she'd pulled a slight of hand and given him 
something besides Aspirin to make him sleep so 
soundly.  That had to be some sort of crime: 
annoying a Federal Agent.  He dialed, then hung up 
before the police answered.  Whatever Dana was 
running from, he couldn't save her.  He couldn't 
protect her, her daughter, or her baby.  The best 
thing he could do was just let her run.

He pulled a chair from the kitchen table, turned it 
around, and sat down heavily at the edge of the 
abandoned living room.  Reaching for the phone 
again, he asked the operator to connect him to 
Alexandria, and after a dozen rings, was rewarded 
with Sharon's sleepy, "Hello?"

"Hi," he said softly.

"Walter?  What time is it?  Where are you?"
  
"Early.  Oregon."

She yawned. "Still in Oregon?"

"Why don't you fly out, Sharon?  It's beautiful."

"Fly out?"

"Get on a plane.  I'll explain when you get here."

She hesitated. "Walter, what is it?  You sound 
different."

He looked around Dana's apartment. "I'm not going 
back to the Bureau.  Ever.  Whatever they're doing, 
I don't want to be a part of it anymore."

She laughed nervously, then stopped laughing. "You 
mean it this time, don't you?"

"I mean it.  My next call is to Hoover.  Get up, 
shower, pack a bag, and get on a plane to Portland. 
I'll find a car and meet you there."

"Portland.  That's just left of Middle-of-Nowhere, 
isn't it?"

"No, Portland's the social hub of Oregon, City Girl.  
Where I am right now: I'm just left of Middle-of-
Nowhere.  And there's a store across the street that 
sells flannel, and one next door that sells axes."

"Walter," she mumbled in disbelief.

"I'll be at the airport.  I love you, Sharon."

"I love you," she answered quickly.  

She didn't hear that nearly enough these days.  For 
the last few years, she hadn't heard much besides 'I 
won't be home for dinner (breakfast, the weekend, 
Christmas),' and 'It's work; you know I can't talk 
about it.' 

"I'll have to find my blue jeans," she added. "I 
think I own a pair.  And my manicurist will be 
horrified.  I'm telling her this is your idea."

He laughed softly, then noticed the deputy sheriff's 
car rolling to a stop in front of the bakery.

"Assistant Director," the sheriff greeted him as 
Skinner descended the wooden steps. "Someone said 
you were looking to make a missing person's report, 
sir.  About that waitress: Laura Samuels."

"No," he said, shaking his head. "There must be some 
mistake."

*~*~*~*

Begin Epilogue III
A Moment In the Sun: Normandy

*~*~*~*

He'd never been with another woman.  He didn't think 
of himself as naive or prudish, but he'd been raised 
to believe he'd know when it was right.  And he had. 

He'd been twenty-six years old, standing outside a 
Wiltshire pub with Mulder, waiting for WWII to get 
back on track, when she'd walked by: a beautiful, 
blonde-haired, blue-eyed Polish Jew. There was just 
something about her: a fragility and loneliness, 
like a spider's silk thread adrift on the wind. 
She'd dropped her packages, he'd rushed to help, and 
by the time they'd established in broken English 
that she was Susanne Modeski and he was Lieutenant 
John Byers, he was already in love. They were 
married thirty-six hours later.

In almost thirteen years, he'd never regretted it.  
And if Susanne ever regretted her rash decision to 
marry a Virginia farm boy, fresh out of law school, 
in the middle of a surreal war, and about to board a 
ship bound for D-Day, it never showed.  They had the 
American dream: he was senior partner at the firm, 
she raised their twin girls, and they vacationed in 
Aspen.  Dinner was on the table when he arrived 
home, except Thursdays, when the girls had piano 
lessons.  On Thursdays, he worked late, then met 
Susanne, Ana, and Katy for spaghetti and meatballs 
at a bistro a few blocks from his office.

It was idyllic.  Everything he'd ever wanted.  
Everything he'd wanted to believe life should be.  
And too perfect to be true.

He knew what he'd seen last spring.  One minute, 
Alex Krycek was pointing a sawed-off shotgun at 
Mulder, then there was a shot, then there was Alex 
Krycek's body on the pavement with half his head 
missing.  Then, within seconds, there was nothing 
except the shotgun and the leather jacket Krycek had 
been wearing.

The day Mulder shot a man who wasn't really a man, 
and Dana and Emily went into hiding, Byers went 
home, still shaking, took his telephone apart, and 
found a small electronic listening device hidden 
inside it.  Susanne returned from the grocery store 
in time to hear their bedroom mirror shatter, and to 
find him staring at the tiny hole in the wall behind 
it.  It was a camera.
 
That was Tuesday, May 31, 1955.  That day, the 
Supreme Court ordered school desegregation should 
begin "with all due speed." RCA introduced color 
television.  Salk's polio vaccine was deemed safe 
and effective. 'The Ballad of Davy Crockett' was on 
the radio and "The Seven Year Itch" was in theaters.  
And he woke up from the American dream.  

He'd told Susanne it was the mob: he'd unknowingly 
represented a client who had dangerous enemies, and 
those enemies had no qualms about spying on or 
harming his family.

In a way, it was the truth.

Their new house was a weathered stone cottage with 
enough space that the girls could have their own 
bedrooms, with a few to spare. There was a big, old-
fashioned kitchen, a dank, dusty basement, and a 
stuffy attic. There was a pond, a meadow, a garden, 
a meandering path through the woods, and the entire 
coast of Normandy for a backyard.

Paris was two and a half hours away, and they could 
board an overnight train at dusk in Bayeux, sleep as 
it glided through Berlin, and meet Susanne's mother 
in Warsaw the next morning.  There was no nanny or 
housekeeper, and their only neighbors were farmers, 
fishermen, and dairymen: friendly, country, French 
people.  And so far, Byers hadn't seen any of them 
dissolve into green goo.

Life was quiet.  As Mulder said, it was almost safe.

He traveled to Manhattan about once a month, but for 
all practical purposes, he was Of Counsel status 
with the firm: his name was on the letterhead, but 
his role was consulting.  He planted an orchard, 
painted a shed, and wrote long letters to old 
friends.  He checked for microphones and cameras 
once a week, listening to his wife's sighs as he 
took the radio, television, and telephone apart yet 
again.  As the summer of 1956 faded in yellow and 
orange splendor, he peeled and cored bushels of 
apples for Susanne as she tried her hand at making 
jelly.  He reread the classics, discovering new 
meaning in his favorite passages.  He walked on the 
beach, examining the rusting remnants of the Allied 
invasion a decade earlier.  And he found himself 
looking across the Atlantic Ocean at dusk, watching 
the waves and wondering who or what was out there 
watching back.

There was a flowerbox of mums outside the kitchen 
window, and Susanne gave it a teacup of water, then 
closed the window and turned back to the stove as 
the kettle began to whistle.  She was still in her 
robe, and was humming a lullaby he'd heard her sing 
to the girls when they were small.  

The faces across from him at the breakfast table 
could have been Susanne at eleven years old.  Ana 
and Katy had their mother's features and fair 
coloring, along with the slim coltishness of early 
adolescence.  Today, Katy had a ponytail, but that 
was the only difference.  The girls didn't dress 
alike so much as they followed the dress code of 
their generation: blue jeans, bobby socks, saddle 
shoes, cardigans, and, when he looked closer, his 
white oxford dress shirts.  He'd wondered what had 
been happening to all his shirts: his daughters had 
confiscated them.

"I don't think you can wear that," he commented 
neutrally, then thanked Susanne as she filled his 
teacup.  The teabag blushed ginger, and steam rose 
from the surface of the water, swirling lazily.  

"We asked.  Mother said it was all right," Katy 
responded for both of them.

"They are old shirts, John," Susanne explained over 
her shoulder, her words marked by the strong 
consonants and even tempo of her homeland.

"No, I don't mind the shirts.  There are rules about 
girls wearing slacks to school."

"But we're not going to school," Ana explained while 
her sister chewed.

"You're not going to school?" Byers put down his 
teacup, concerned. "Of course you are.  You have to 
go to school: education is very important.  And if 
I'm going to drive you, you'll have to hurry," he 
reminded them. "I need to meet Mulder and Dana at 
the station in-" He checked the clock. "An hour."

Both girls were blinking at him in confusion.

"Hurry," he repeated gently, taking one last sip of 
his tea, then set the cup aside and stood. "Go 
change your clothes, girls."

To their credit, his daughters started to get up.

"It is Saturday, John," Susanne reminded him softly. 

"Saturday?"

Ana and Katy nodded in agreement, two identical 
blonde heads moving in unison.

"Oh," he responded.  He'd lost track of the days.  
He knew Mulder and Dana's train arrived from Paris 
on October 27th, but he hadn't realized that was a 
Saturday.

The girls sat down, finishing their breakfast.  He 
glanced up at Susanne sheepishly, and she smiled and 
ruffled his hair.  He smoothed it back into place, 
and picked up his teacup again.

*~*~*~*
 
Because he wasn't a sports fan, Byers was the one 
soldier in the Allied Army who hadn't known who Fox 
Mulder was.  To him, Mulder was just the guy in the 
chow line who liked sugar in his coffee and ketchup 
on everything else.  He was a good shot, and a good 
soldier.  He couldn't follow a map, but he could 
remember every bit of information on it.  He was 
bright, with a good head for numbers and an ear for 
languages.  He got seasick.  Homesick.  And he had a 
son named William.

It took more than a year for Byers to realize Will 
was no longer the infant in Mulder's photos, or that 
his marriage was on the rocks, or that his wife and 
son were in war-ravaged London, not Boston.  Mulder 
had also neglected to mention the bodies they found 
in the German concentration camp were his mother's 
Jewish relatives.  It was only at the tail end of 
the war that Byers understood what happened behind 
Mulder's eyes when he looked down his rifle at the 
enemy: half his family vanished into Nazi Germany, 
and Hitler's army was encroaching on London.  

Rule number one about Fox Mulder: he was a nice guy, 
but threaten his family and he'd shoot to kill.

If they met for the first time now, years later, 
Mulder wouldn't say he'd just finished his 13th and 
final season with the Yankees, including a 10th World 
Series victory.  He wouldn't talk about being a 
veteran or attending Oxford or consulting for the 
FBI.  He'd say he was Dana's husband, a father, and 
about to be a grandfather.  And if it was late at 
night, and he was feeling wistful, he might say he 
was Samantha's big brother.

As Byers parked beside the station, he spotted Emily 
on Mulder's shoulders, her hooded head bobbing above 
the crowd of arriving passengers. Dana had Benjamin, 
though it looked like she was holding a bundle of 
blue blankets with a hat on top.  The baby opened 
his mouth for a Cheerio from the Tupperware cup 
Mulder held, explored it with his tongue, and 
considered it thoughtfully before spitting it out.

"Mulder!" Byers called, raising his hand, wading 
through the stream of passengers.  

Mulder turned and waved, then said something to 
Dana, who waved as well, smiling.  A few passengers 
watched them, admiring the pretty picture: the 
petite redhead in her tailored suit, and the tall, 
handsome, athletic-looking man beside her.  He was 
protective; she was lovely; their children were 
beautiful.  An affluent American family vacationing 
in the north of France.

The autumn afternoons were warm, but the mornings 
were cool and wet, and the breeze off the ocean 
carried a chill.  Dana pulled a blanket around the 
baby's head, then had Mulder stoop so she could 
tighten Emily's hood before they followed the 
porter.  Behind her mother, secure on Mulder's broad 
shoulders, Emily surreptitiously loosened the 
drawstring again.

"My God, you kept the Studebaker," Mulder said as 
Byers opened the back of the station wagon for the 
porter. "How did you justify putting that on a boat 
and shipping it to Europe?"

"Studebakers have a long-standing reputation for 
reliability and-" Byers began before he realized he 
was being teased and grinned self-consciously.

Mulder gave him a tired, lopsided smile.  Instead of 
a hug or handshake, he offered a Cheerio, rattling 
the cup enticingly. "They're nummy-nummy," he 
promised.

The wind ruffled his hair and whipped the sleeves of 
his jacket like the sails of a ship.  Up close, in 
the morning sun, the stubble on his jaw had flecks 
gray, and there were fine lines around Mulder's 
eyes.  Up close, he looked less like a legend and 
more like a tired hero.

"How are you?" Byers asked as everyone got in the 
station wagon: Dana in the back seat with Emily and 
Mulder in the front, holding Ben.

"Fine," Mulder answered immediately, then glanced 
back at Dana, making certain. "Are we fine?" She 
must have nodded, because Mulder sounded more 
certain when he said, "We're fine."  
 
*~*~*~*

There was no good way to cross the Atlantic with an 
eight-month old and a just-turned-seven-year old. It 
was twelve hours between New York and London by 
jetliner, then on to Paris, where they'd landed long 
before the sun rose.  Luckily, Dana said Emily and 
Ben had slept the whole way, waking only as they 
boarded the train north to Normandy.

The children had slept; the grownups had not: Mulder 
and Dana were nodding off during the drive from the 
train station to Byers' home.  Dana unpacked, then 
laid down for a ten-minute catnap that turned into 
four hours, and after getting the kids settled in, 
Mulder joined her.  The girls were having a good 
time showing off their toys and fussing over Emily, 
which left Susanne to fuss over Benjamin.  

"He is such a good boy," she marveled, carrying Ben 
into the living room.

"I think he's Daddy's boy, aren't you?" Byers said, 
putting his book aside. "Are you Daddy's boy?"

From Susanne's arms, Ben regarded them with his 
clear blue eyes, then went back to his bottle.  He 
was a quiet, contemplative child with Mulder's dark 
hair and Dana's fair skin, almost too pretty to be a 
boy.  Mulder had said he was almost walking, though 
Byers didn't see how: Ben's feet never touched the 
ground when his father was present.  He'd grin and 
gurgle and make a few sounds, but most of the time 
he just watched, silently taking in the world.

Susanne sat in the old rocking chair, draping a 
blanket over the baby.  After he finished the 
bottle, Ben nuzzled against her breast, closed his 
eyes, and settled in for his nap.  She stroked the 
fine chestnut fuzz on his head, and patted his back 
in time with a sad, exotic lullaby.

Byers leaned forward, watching as she rocked Ben. To 
his surprise, when he'd told her Mulder and Dana 
would be visiting, the girls' old baby accoutrements 
reappeared from the attic: a rocker, a highchair, a 
crib, a wooden playpen, and boxes of toys, bibs, 
diapers, and clothes.  Byers hadn't realized she 
still had all of it, let alone moved it across an 
ocean. They'd talked about more children, especially 
a boy, but in almost twelve years, there hadn't been 
so much as a false alarm.

"I don't think Mulder's going to let you keep him," 
he said quietly, knowing she was thinking along the 
same lines as he was.

"He is just such a good little boy," she repeated 
softly in her movie-star Polish accent, seeming 
uncomfortable with his scrutiny. "That is all.  It 
makes me think.  The girls are growing up.  During 
the day, the house seems so quiet.  But it is not 
going to happen, is it?"

The rocker creaked against the wooden floor, a pot 
on the stove in the kitchen gurgled, and there was a 
fit of giggles, then 'shushes' from Ana's bedroom.

"Susanne, we haven't really been trying.  Not in a 
long time."

"We have not been not trying, either, John."

He and Susanne were almost forty: statistically, 
they should be becoming grandparents, not parents 
again. Susanne had been expecting when he'd returned 
from WWII, so except for a few dreamlike nights in 
Wiltshire and Paris during the war, they'd been 
parents their entire marriage.  He barely separated 
the two: it was 'Susanne and the girls,' seldom just 
'Susanne.' She was correct: they had a hard time 
filling the silence when it was just the two of 
them.

The door of the guestroom opened, and Mulder ambled 
out in his t-shirt and wrinkled trousers, shrugging 
his shirt on, then scratching the back of his head.  
His face was creased from the pillow, and his hair 
flattened on one side.

Byers leaned back, and Susanne stood, guiltily 
offering the sleeping baby to his outstretched 
hands.

Mulder looked at them blearily, then mumbled, "God, 
get your own," as he carried his son back to bed.

*~*~*~*

'We made it, but we were damaged in route.'

The comment had been delivered with a half-smile, 
and Mulder's dry, self-deprecating wit: simple words 
from the heart of a complicated man. 

Mulder was contracted to finish the season with the 
Yankees, which had meant being on the road for weeks 
at a time.  Dana had stayed in the Catskills with 
Ben and Emily, away from prying eyes, and taking 
some time to adjust after almost a year in hiding.  
Whenever Byers had asked how Dana and Emily were, 
Mulder just said 'better,' and changed the subject. 

'We were damaged in route.' When Mulder wanted to 
specify further, he would.  There was no use asking.

The shower adjoining their guestroom ran once, for a 
long time, and two clean people emerged, looking 
flushed.  Dana had changed into a skirt and sweater, 
and her damp hair was beginning to curl as it dried.  
Mulder was in his favorite gray flannel shirt: a 
collection of patches, stains, and mended places 
rather than a garment.  His blue jeans sat low on 
his hips, and he ran his fingers through his hair, 
getting it as neat as it ever was.  He still had the 
rock-solid leanness from playing season, which made 
Byers glance at his own stomach self-consciously.  
Susanne had been working on fattening him up, so for 
the first time in his life, he couldn't quite be 
described as a beanpole.

They'd debated going out to dinner, but Will was on 
his way from Evreux-Fauville Air Base, where he was 
stationed for the moment, and they weren't sure when 
he'd arrive.  Instead, Susanne was cooking, and 
everyone else was milling around the kitchen, 
sneaking tidbits and claiming they were trying to 
stay out of the way.

"You were a medical doctor, yes?" Susanne asked, 
trying to make polite conversation with Dana as she 
sliced and diced.  

She'd only met Dana twice: one Christmas in Aspen 
and one in Georgetown after Mulder was shot.  She 
knew Dana had been a nurse, had been in medical 
school, and Mulder had dated her on and off for 
several years.  Ben had been born before they'd 
married, but they were married now, which made it 
semi-acceptable in Susanne's mind.  Like everyone 
else, she assumed Dana had been widowed soon after 
Emily's birth, and Byers let her assume. 

"I started medical school.  I didn't finish.  Emily 
was sick.  Benjamin was coming," Dana answered, 
avoiding details. "I would like to go back, someday.  
I would like to practice."

"Really?" Mulder said in surprise, and there was an 
uncomfortable pause.  

Dana shrugged. "Someday.  Maybe."

"Oh," Mulder responded neutrally, looking like he'd 
forgotten where he'd put his keys.

"Susanne, you attended college, didn't you?" Byers 
asked, knowing she had and hoping to move the 
conversation along.

"I did.  The University of Berlin.  Before John and 
I were married."

"Were you there at the same time as Wernher von 
Braun?  Or Heisenberg?" Mulder asked curiously.

"They were physicists: quantum mechanics, 
theoretical physics-"

"Nuclear fission," Mulder added, pantomiming a 
silent explosion.

"And I was studying chemistry."

"Alfred Grotjahn was there, wasn't he?" Mulder 
asked. "And Hans Gunther.  And Victor Klemper, 
chairing Gesellschaft fur Rassehygiene."

The Society for Racial Hygiene.  Eugenics.  Byers 
recognized the names as Nazi scientists, many from 
the Nuremburg Trials.  It seemed odd, but logically, 
in the late thirties, in Germany, Hitler was in 
power, which meant there were Nazi scientists at the 
University of Berlin with Susanne.  Byers had never 
really thought about it. It was like Dana attending 
medical school: before they'd married, before the 
war, Susanne was a university student.  Aside from 
being proud that his wife was bright and well 
educated, it had little bearing on their lives now.

"I was studying chemistry," she repeated, her words 
more clipped than usual. "A long time ago.  Now, we 
get the best grades on science projects," she added 
quickly, smiling and ruffling Katy's hair.  Katy 
shrugged away uncomfortably.

"You knew them, though, didn't you?" Mulder 
persisted, staring at her as he held Ben. "You would 
have had to."

"There were no Jews at University once Hitler was 
the Fuhrer."

"But you don't look like a Jew.  I do.  My sons do.  
My aunt and grandmother did, but you don't.  They 
couldn't pass, but you could."

"Mulder," Dana warned as Byers opened his mouth to 
object.

"What was the holdup with your passport?  You made 
it to England, but the government wouldn't let you 
immigrate to the US, even after you'd married an 
American citizen.  I remember, and I always wondered 
why that was.  You were expecting, and Byers wanted 
you away from the fighting, but they wouldn't let 
you leave England until after the war.  Most Jews 
had no problem immigrating: Einstein, Freud-"

"Mulder!" Dana said sharply.

Byers tried to say something, but he was too stunned 
to speak.  Susanne's family had made it out of 
Poland in the back of a truck, hidden among bags of 
seed corn.  Her mother still had a coat with a 
yellow Star of David sewn on it: she'd shown it to 
Katy and Ana.  Obviously, it was a painful memory, 
and obviously, Susanne didn't want to talk about it.  
And Byers would have thought Mulder would be the 
last person to push her.

Mulder kept staring at Susanne, grimly determined, 
like a dog with a bone.  Byers knew that look: he 
wasn't sorry and he wasn't dropping the subject.  
Ana and Katy had put down their carrot sticks and 
were glancing at their mother, then at Mulder, then 
at their mother, stunned.

Susanne seemed shaken, but she held Mulder's steady 
gaze. "It was a long time ago," she said evenly, 
enunciating carefully. "Now my girls get the best 
grades on their science projects."

Dana exhaled and started to apologize, but was 
interrupted by wheels crunching on the gravel 
driveway and a motorcycle's engine rumbling as it 
coasted to a stop.  Metal squeaked as the kickstand 
went down, and a young man in a blue Air Force 
uniform got off the bike, shrugging off his bomber 
jacket and looping his sunglasses on the front of 
his shirt.  He started to run his fingers through 
his dark hair, then remembered it wasn't long enough 
to be windblown.

"Bub," Emily announced, spotting him through the 
window and sliding down from her chair.

Dana apologized again, then got up and followed her 
daughter.  Katy and Ana went with her, leaving 
Mulder, Byers, and Susanne in the kitchen.

On the front lawn, Will picked up Emily, then gave 
Dana a one-armed bear hug, swinging her around so 
her skirt whirled up and her slip and the tops of 
her stockings showed.  She admonished him, then got 
a real hug, with Will resting his head on her 
shoulder for a long time, looking like a little boy 
who had to grow up too fast.  

Mulder glanced at Susanne again, then turned, 
carrying Ben and going to greet his older son.

"Yes, I knew them," Susanne admitted as he passed 
her. "But I did not know who they were.  No one did, 
then.  They were just men, not monsters."

*~*~*~*

Benjamin was the kind of child that made Byers wish 
he had a son, and Will was the kind that made him 
careful what he wished for.  Byers didn't dislike 
the young man by any means, but to the father of two 
little girls who insisted on growing up much too 
quickly, William Mulder was Trouble with a capital 
T: too handsome, too charming, and too practiced at 
putting those mischievous brown eyes and lazy grin 
to good use.  He wasn't a chip off the old block; he 
was an entire chunk.

In March, the secretary had buzzed in, apologizing 
for interrupting the meeting and telling him a Mr. 
Mulder was on the line. It was an emergency, she 
said, but then, whenever Mulder wanted something, it 
was an emergency.  Byers sighed, excused himself, 
and picked up the telephone in the conference room.    
In the background, competing with Will's uncertain 
voice, was a pressured chaos of noise: a siren 
dying, wheels clattering across a hard floor, and 
indistinct droning over an intercom.

"Slow down and tell me what's wrong," Byers had 
requested, gesturing for the other lawyers be quiet. 
"Are you all right, Will?  Where are you?"

"At the hospital.  The hospital in Kingston."

"What happened?  Are you hurt?  Or sick?"

"I-I didn't see him," Will stuttered, struggling to 
speak. "It was raining; he ran the stop sign.  I 
didn't see the car.  I didn't see it."

"But you're okay?" Byers asked. "Did you call your 
father?"

"The doctor called him a couple hours ago.  He's 
coming.  Oh God, he's gonna kill me."

"He's not going to kill you, Will.  Calm down.  It's 
just a car.  As long as you're all right: that's all 
that matters." There was a long pause, and Byers 
asked, "Are you all right?"

"Yeah.  No," Will answered, his voice breaking. 
"Shit, I don't know."

Mulder had been in Florida for spring training. Even 
if he were already in the air, it would be hours 
before he landed in New York.  

"Let me talk to the doctor," he requested. "Give the 
phone to your doctor, and let me talk to him."  

"A-all the doctors are with Maddie."

Byers' chest tightened.  It was hard to keep track 
of Will's conquests without a scorecard, but he 
recognized that name. "Was she with you?"

"Yeah."

"Is she okay?"

Will took a shuddery breath. "No.  Can you come? 
Frohike can't come.  He said to call you."

He exhaled slowly, looking back at the attorneys 
around the conference table, waiting to start their 
firm's meeting.  He had seventy-two hours until he 
returned to Normandy, and his secretary had every 
second booked solid, trying to squeeze a month's 
worth of work into three days. "Will, I-"

"She's pregnant."

He bit his lip hard, closing his eyes. "I will be 
there as soon as I can.  Just sit tight." 

Contrary to what Mulder claimed, he could drive 
faster than thirty-five miles per hour.  He honked 
and weaved, but it still took eons to get through 
Manhattan traffic, then he flew up the new I-87, his 
borrowed sports car's wheels humming over the miles 
of slick asphalt ribbon to the mountains.  It began 
to drizzle, then to storm, and he fumbled with the 
unfamiliar knobs and switches, trying to watch the 
road while he battled the foggy windshield.  The 
wipers slapped back and forth, cutting a clear arc 
across the glass as the rain drummed on the car's 
canvas roof.

It was a miserable day: cold and gray and so wet 
even the sidewalk should have been spongy.  The 
hospital air conditioner had forgotten it was March, 
and Byers shivered despite his suit and trench coat. 

"I guess this is the part where I promise I won't be 
any more trouble," Will said tiredly, turning away 
from the window in the lobby.  He had a few Band-
aids on his forehead, a vividly bruised and scraped 
cheekbone, and his left arm in a sling.  His shirt 
was gone; there was a rip in the leg of his jeans 
and smears of blood across his white t-shirt.  For 
once, he'd lost his cocky facade, and he looked like 
he wasn't sure if the universe was real or not.

"Are you okay, Will?"

Will smirked half-heartedly as he sank into a 
plastic chair, moving like his whole body ached.  

Byers stood in front of him, holding the briefcase 
he'd inexplicably carried in from the car.  He 
opened his mouth several times, searching for a 
neutral tone before he asked, "How is Madelon?"

"They had to remove her spleen." Will took a careful 
breath. "I don't even know where my spleen is."

"She's still in surgery?"

"She's back.  Her father's with her.  She wanted to 
talk to him alone.  He doesn't speak English, so he 
doesn't know about-" He glanced up, then down again, 
picking at the rip in his jeans. "Go ahead: say it."

Byers didn't have to.  This was exactly what Mulder 
never wanted for his son, and Will knew it.  His 
father was holding onto a normal life by a gossamer 
thread, and this was exactly what he didn't need.  
Dana, Will, and Emily had been his world, and Will 
was all that was left.

Will hung his head miserably.

Byers exhaled and set his briefcase down. "Have you 
thought about what you want to do?" he asked softly.

"Maddie wants to keep it. She wants to get married."

"And what do you want?"

"I told her I wanted the same thing."

"But what do you want to do?"

"Anything except tell my dad," Will mumbled. "Jesus 
Christ, he's gonna kill me."
Byers sat beside him, not sure what to do except 
wait for Mulder to arrive.  Frohike was Will's 
confidant and partner in crime, but he was in 
Florida, trying to keep his ballplayers in line.

"Do you want me to call your mother?"

"God no," Will muttered.

He watched the clock on the wall, its metal hands 
inching away the afternoon.  Will studied it, then 
leaned his head against the wall, closing his eyes. 
"I have a chemistry mid-term in ten minutes."

"I don't think you're going to make it." 

Will bit his lower lip until it went white, then 
opened his eyes, glancing around the lobby.  The 
florist was delivering a tray of bouquets, with the 
senders' get-well messages perched on little plastic 
pitchforks.  A nun loaded them onto a metal cart, 
then pushed it toward the elevator, smiling 
sympathetically as she passed Will.

"If Dana comes back," he said softly. "If Dana comes 
back, she and Dad could take the baby.  He wants a 
girl.  They could get married, and they could adopt 
the baby, and that would make everything all right.  
Right?" he asked uncertainly.

Byers swallowed his lecture about responsibility and 
being a man, and answered, "She's not coming back, 
Will.  Not after this long.  Your father knows that, 
whether he says it or not."

For a second, Will had that spoiled, petulant 
expression Byers detested, then he just looked 
scared and lost. "I don't know what to do."

"I think you'd better decide," Byers answered 
gently, as Mulder emerged from a taxicab, then 
sprinted for the hospital entrance.

"Will?" he said as he burst through the doors, then 
dodged around a slow-moving man on crutches, his wet 
cleats squeaking. Mulder was still in his pinstriped 
uniform, and the shoulders of his baseball jersey 
were spotted with rain. "My God; are you all right?"

Will stood stiffly, wiping his palm on his jeans.

"Oh my God, son," Mulder repeated, his shaking hands 
hovering over Will's bruised face, then the sling 
keeping his left arm immobile. "Are you okay?"

Will nodded, and Mulder put his arms around him like 
he was cradling glass.  His son closed his eyes and 
laid his head on his father's shoulder, shifting 
until he found a position that didn't hurt.

"God.  My boy.  My baby boy.  All in one piece.  
That doctor scared the hell out of me," Mulder 
whispered, rubbing Will's back, then burying his 
face in his hair and inhaling deeply.  Byers 
expected Will to pull away, but he didn't.  Even 
when Mulder moved back, he was still, letting his 
father catalogue his injuries. "What happened?"

"I didn't see the car.  I'm sorry.  It was raining.  
He ran a stop sign.  I just didn't see him and I-I 
couldn't stop in time.  He, he hit Maddie's side.  
Hard.  She's upstairs.  She had to have surgery."

"Maddie was with you?"

Will nodded silently.

"Is she going to be all right?"

"She's going to have a baby," Will said as quickly 
as possible, like his father might misunderstand if 
he said it fast enough. "We want to get married." 

Mulder froze, and the only thing that moved were a 
few damp strands of hair on his forehead as the air 
conditioner vent blew them.  Will couldn't do it, 
but his father could: Mulder could have absolutely 
no expression.  It was how Byers knew something was 
really wrong.

"Are you sure?" Mulder asked after several long 
seconds.  That was the all-purpose 'are you sure:' 
are you sure she's really pregnant, sure the baby's 
yours, and sure you want to marry her. 

Will seemed to wilt a little, then nodded almost 
imperceptibly, and after a heartbeat, Mulder nodded 
back. "Okay.  I'll, uh, I'll- Let me find a cup of 
coffee and a men's room, and then- And then I'll be 
right back."

"I think there's a cafeteria," Byers offered, and 
Mulder looked at him in surprise.  He must have been 
too focused on Will to notice Byers standing there.

"Thank you for coming," Mulder said crisply as they 
walked down the hall, leaving Will in the lobby.

"He called my office.  He was upset."

"I'm sure he was."

"Mulder-"

"Thank you," Mulder repeated, then turned and 
disappeared into the restroom.

Byers heard water splashing, and a screech as the 
faucet turned off.  There was a pause, then a crash 
of metal accompanied by a stream of curses that 
would have made a sailor proud.

He pushed open the men's room door as Mulder slammed 
his fist into the paper towel dispenser a third 
time, knocking the metal cover off and sending the 
roll of scratchy brown paper towels unfurling across 
the tiles.  He kicked the roll for good measure, 
then leaned back against one of the sinks, clutching 
his hand and staring up at the ceiling.  Unless 
Byers was mistaken, he was struggling not to cry.

"Are you-"

"No," Mulder answered in a strangled voice. "How the 
hell do you think I am?  And what the hell is he 
thinking?  He's seventeen years old."

"He is seventeen.  And you have full custody, now.  
He can't get married unless you give permission."

Mulder blinked, still looking at the flickering 
florescent lights. "Maddie's a nice girl."

"If she was a nice girl, she wouldn't be in 
trouble."

The look Mulder gave him was so venomous that Byers 
stepped backward.  He pulled a clean handkerchief 
from his pocket, offering it to Mulder from a safe 
distance.

Once the anger faded, Byers didn't think he'd ever 
seen anyone look so sad.  Empty.  Lost.

"I've known a nice girl who got in trouble," Mulder 
mumbled as he wrapped the handkerchief around his 
bloody knuckles, then tied it awkwardly in place.

"I know you have," Byers answered as he slid down 
from his moral high horse. "I'm sorry.  I didn't 
mean it that way at all.  Come on: I'll buy you a 
cup of coffee."

*~*~*~* 

"You know you're welcome to stay as long as you 
want," Byers said softly, finding Dana alone on the 
porch after dinner. "And if there's anything Susanne 
and I can do, please let us know.  We want to help."

Mulder was standing at the edge of the back yard, 
holding Ben and staring at the ocean in the 
distance.  Will was with him, tall and slim, the 
breeze blowing his Air Force uniform.  The sun 
hovered above the horizon, and the almost-full moon 
was rising, pressing through the vast fabric of the 
sky and giving birth to the beginning of night.

"Thank you," Dana answered, finding her polite smile 
and putting it on again.

"I don't mean to pry, but is he all right?"

"He has a lot on his mind right now."

"I understand," he said, though he didn't.  

Mulder got it all: family, fame, fortune.  All of 
it.  He'd wrestled with the Devil and won.  Alex 
Krycek, whoever or whatever he'd been, was dead.  
Dana was back.  Ben was healthy.  Emily seemed to be 
slowly getting better.  Will wasn't dead or in 
prison.  This was where the hero coasted off into 
the sunset, but all Mulder did was stand there and 
stare at it, holding one son and standing shoulder-
to-shoulder with the other.

"How far is it?" Mulder called, looking back. "The 
bunker?"

"About forty-five minutes up the coast, then a short 
walk," Byers answered, after taking a moment to 
realize what Mulder meant.

"Would you drive us?" he requested, backlit in 
scarlet by the clouds. "I want Will to see it."

Byers nodded, returning to the house long enough to 
tell Susanne where he was going, get his jacket, his 
car keys, and find an old pair of loafers.  It was a 
silent drive, then he parked on the roadside, near 
an ancient stone fence, and led the way.  Mulder and 
Ben followed, and Will brought up the rear.  The 
shadowy footpath meandered through the woods and 
hedgerows, along the edge of a cow pasture, then 
opened to a cliff littered with broken chunks of 
concrete and twisted metal, and what looked like the 
doorway to an old root cellar or a pharaoh's tomb.

Mulder hesitated, walking around to look at the side 
of the unassuming, squat cement bunker hugging the 
face of a cliff.  Byers could see him tense, as if 
he still expected brown-uniformed German soldiers to 
be waiting inside.

"It's empty," Byers reminded him, knowing that as 
silly as it sounded, they both needed to hear it.

Will ducked into the narrow gray passage, and Mulder 
followed, cradling Ben's head with the palm of his 
hand.  The inside was empty; anything of value or 
nostalgia had been carried off years ago.  The 
cement walls were pockmarked with bullet holes, and 
large chunks had fallen from the ceiling.  All that 
remained of Hitler's great seawall were cramped, 
damp bunkers like this one, with its rifle slits 
looking out toward the ocean.

"This is where it happened," Will said, sounding 
like he didn't quite believe it. "D-Day."

June 6th, 1944 was the greatest invasion by sea the 
world had ever seen. One hundred and fifty thousand 
soldiers came ashore that day, most never having 
seen combat before.  The Germans had the north coast 
of France heavily fortified, and even with air and 
battleship support, the Allies knew the first troops 
on the beach would be slaughtered. Seasoned soldiers 
would retreat from certain death, but green troops 
somehow didn't think the bullets applied to them. A 
few experienced captains and lieutenants were 
assigned to lead, but the rest of the men had no 
idea what they'd face when the landing vehicles 
reached the shore and the gangplanks dropped.

He and Mulder had been in the third wave, probably 
actually the fourth by the time they'd made it to 
shore: seasick, soaked to the skin, trying to scream 
commands and locate their men over the machinegun 
fire and mortars.  The tide was coming in, devouring 
the beach and forcing them forward.  Their rifles 
were wet and useless, and the water was pink with 
blood.  Bodies floated facedown in the choppy sea: 
soldiers shot as they waded and swam ashore, or 
drowned by the weight of their gear or because they 
couldn't swim.  Around them, on the sand, weren't 
men, but pieces of men.

"The big guns were mounted here," Mulder told Will, 
looking through the rifle slits to the golden sand 
of Omaha Beach in the distance. "Seventy-five and 
eighty-eight millimeter heavy artillery, aimed at 
our ships off-shore.  When they fire, it's like a 
freight train screaming across the sky.  In the 
trenches down there were the machineguns: German  
MG-42's.  1200 rounds a minute.  They fire so fast 
it sounds like canvas ripping."

Byers stayed at the back of the dark bunker, 
restless.  He'd been here, but always alone.  He'd 
never brought Susanne or the girls to see the bomb 
craters and rows of rusting razor wire among the 
weeds.  This was what he wanted to protect his 
family from, not share with them.

Mulder turned Ben so the baby could look at the 
waves eroding the sand. "I'd seen combat in Italy, 
but nothing like this.  This was Hell on Earth, and 
it was the most afraid I've ever been in my life.  
Anyone who says he wasn't afraid that day is lying.  
D-Day had nothing to do with courage or patriotism, 
and everything to do with necessity.  You'll be 
amazed what you can do when there's no choice.  And 
no going back."

"Yeah," Will mumbled, leaning his elbows on the 
front wall of the bunker and staring out at the 
darkening sky.

"We weren't trying to save the world, Will, or be 
heroes.  Or make history.  We're just trying to do 
what has to be done and make it out alive."

Byers shifted again, aware Mulder was switching 
between the past and present tense.

Will nodded slightly, then swallowed.

"I'm proud of you," Mulder continued softly. "You 
know that, don't you?  It's okay to have doubts.  
It's okay to be afraid."

Another nod.  This father-son fieldtrip seemed to 
have an entire subtext Byers hadn't anticipated. 
Will was one of those people who always seemed to 
land on his feet, but he'd jumped in headfirst into 
the deep end this time: a new wife, an unplanned-for 
baby, and a career that took him far away from both.

Byers had witnessed this drama once before, as had 
Will.  Firsthand.

"You can do this, Will. I know you can.  Just step 
up to the plate.  And hold on to the bat this time."

Will smirked, then pushed back, looking up at the 
crumbling ceiling. "So you took this bunker?" he 
asked, abruptly changing the subject. "You and Mr. 
Byers made it up here and took the bunker?"

"God no," Mulder answered. "One of the Navy 
destroyers finally got it.  We were-" He pointed 
vaguely toward the beach, looking for landmarks. 
"Over there.  Miles from where we were supposed to 
be.  Our landing vehicle was off-course and Byers 
lost his glasses and the radio coming ashore-"

"And Mulder had the map," Byers chimed in. "We 
didn't know where we were.  We're lucky he didn't 
have us storm Belgium."

"I knew exactly where we were, Lieutenant Byers."

Byers gave Mulder a 'sure you did' look and turned, 
climbing over the rubble in the doorway and emerging 
to a world bathed dark crimson by the sunset.  The 
sun had settled in behind the ocean, casting an 
otherworldly glow across the water, and over hunks 
of broken cement so large it look like the gods had 
been shooting dice.  The salty breeze rustled his 
hair, and prickled the bare skin above his beard.  
It seemed strange to hear nothing except the waves, 
and Mulder and Will's muffled voices in the bunker.  
No machinegun fire, no screams, no mortars, no calls 
for help.  It seemed peaceful, except for the echoes 
in his mind.

This was where they'd won the war.  The fighting had 
dragged on another year or so, but this was where 
they'd made their stand and driven Hitler back.  
Byers didn't enjoy being on the beach again, but he 
knew what it stood for, and he liked it between his 
family and the rest of the world.

"Did your father tell you he dragged me halfway up 
that beach?" he asked Will when he and Mulder 
emerged a few minutes later.  When Will shook his 
head, looking interested, Byers continued, "I was 
hit in the leg as we came out of the water.  It 
wasn't fatal, but I was loosing blood, I couldn't 
run, and there was no cover.  And we were under 
fire.  He grabbed my collar and dragged me almost 
two hundred yards, until we found a foxhole."

Will grinned, liking this story, while Mulder looked 
around for something else to talk about.

"He wasn't supposed to do that," Byers explained. 
"We were told specifically: if a man was hit, leave 
him behind.  We needed to get up the beach as 
quickly as possible, and we couldn't do that if 
every soldier was trying to save his friends."

"He owed me three bucks," Mulder defended himself, 
then looked at the golden beach, shifting Ben to his 
other arm.  For a long time, he stood very still, 
his eyes far away.  

Byers remembered what he'd said as their landing 
vehicle approached the beach twelve years ago.  
Mulder had checked his rifle, then looked at Byers 
sitting across from him, keeping his head down and 
trying not to vomit again. 'You look out for my boy, 
Byers.  The address is on my tags.'

'And you look out for my wife,' Byers had responded.  

Mulder had nodded, then lurched forward as the boat 
struck something underwater and stopped, fifty feet 
offshore, and the gangplank splashed open into the 
choppy water.

William would have been five, maybe; he and Susanne 
had been married a few weeks.

"Dad?" Will said worriedly. "Mr. Byers?"

Mulder exhaled, glanced at Byers, and added in his 
glib, deadpan manner: "Come to think of it, Byers, 
you still owe me three bucks."

Mulder slapped him on the back, then looped his arm 
around Byers' shoulders affectionately as they 
walked back to the car.

*~*~*~*

It was his favorite time of day: the long, cool 
lowering hour as late evening sank into night.  The 
yellow harvest moon was a few slivers from full, and 
it pushed back the last of the blue and violet 
shadows, covering the fields in expansive black.  
Above, the sky glittered in a thick blanket of 
stars, unmarred by city lights.  The dog went out 
one last time, then settled her old bones in front 
of the hearth with a wet sigh.  The dinner dishes 
were dried and put away, the children were in bed, 
and the house belonged to the grownups.  Fairy time, 
his grandmother had called it: when the rational day 
gives way to the magic of night.

"Burgundy, I think," he said, taking another sip 
from the wineglass, and nodding that it was still 
good. "Or Bordeaux.  Fine Bordeaux."

They'd found the bottles in the wine cellar when 
they moved in, forgotten under layers of dust.  The 
house had been empty for ten years, and most of the 
labels were missing, so when he and Susanne were 
adventurous enough to open a bottle, they could find 
anything from a smoothly aging red to vinegar.

"We don't know what this one is either, but John 
said it is old, red, and good," Susanne explained as 
she carried another bottle to the living room.

Mulder and Dana were on the sofa with their backs to 
the kitchen, and their feet propped on the ottoman.  
Will sat on the floor beside the radio, searching 
the stations for one that met everyone's approval.  
The first bottle was on the coffee table, about an 
inch of wine still available inside it.  The rest 
had been divided between Dana, Susanne, Byers, and 
Will, who, to everyone's quiet amusement, asked his 
father's permission before accepting half a glass.

Again, Mulder declined, crossing his ankles and 
adjusting his arm around Dana's shoulders as she 
sipped hers. "What are the chances of me getting you 
liquored up and taking advantage of you?" Byers 
heard him murmur to Dana, after Susanne returned to 
the kitchen.

"I wouldn't rule it out," Dana whispered back from 
behind her glass. "It's good wine."

"You think they'd notice if we took another shower?"

"Probably, Mulder."

Will must have overheard, because he rolled his eyes 
and turned the radio up. "God," he mumbled to 
himself, sounding disgusted.

Byers caught Susanne's wrist as she returned with 
another bottle of mineral water for Mulder, silently 
pulling her back to him.  He put his arms around her 
waist, fitting her back against his front, and 
listened to the slow, hypnotic jazz on the radio. 
"That discussion we had earlier?" he whispered, and 
she nodded slightly. "I've been thinking about it, 
and I think it's a good idea."

The more he watched Mulder with Ben, the more he 
wanted to be a father again.  Now.  Like this.  Now 
that he had the time and resources to care for his 
family the way he wanted to.  

When the girls were small, he'd been struggling to 
make ends meet: a new wife, two babies, a cramped 
apartment in Brooklyn, and a one-man law firm with 
too much overhead and not enough income.  He 
remembered weeks when Mulder was his only client.  
He remembered weeks when his secretary got paid, and 
he and Susanne lived on beans, rice, and peanut 
butter.  He remembered her nursing the girls because 
they couldn't afford formula and the doctor telling 
her that Katy and Ana would be malnourished.  He 
remembered catching the subway into Manhattan before 
dawn, and returning home, shoulders aching, feet 
stinging, long after dark.  

He'd trudge up the stairs, swearing to himself that 
he was going to become a plumber, and then the 
apartment door would open to Susanne in her apron, 
his dinner staying warm in the oven, and his girls 
clean and dressed for bed.  He'd hang up his hat, 
coat and jacket, shed his shoes, and lie in bed with 
the three of them, reading stories until the girls' 
eyes grew too heavy to stay open.  Often, Susanne 
couldn't stay awake either, and he'd turn the oven 
off so his dinner didn't burn to a crisp, move the 
girls to their cribs, and return to bed with 
Susanne, preferring staying with his wife to eating.

He remembered, in those lean years, knowing he could 
catch the seven-fifty subway six blocks from his old 
office and still make it home in time to put the 
girls to bed.  He remembered never missing a night.

"But what if we cannot?" Susanne whispered back, her 
words smelling of sun-warmed Italian vineyards. 
"What if something is wrong or it is too late?"

"Then we cannot, but it can't hurt to try." He 
paused, enjoying her against him. "I think I would 
like to try, if you would."

"I would," she said softly, leaning her cheek 
against his shoulder.

Mulder tilted his head back, glancing over the top 
of the sofa.  He looked at Byers with his arms 
around Susanne, then, without comment, went back to 
watching his sock feet and the crackling hearth in 
front of them.

"Hey Will?" he said carelessly, stroking Dana's arm.

"Hummm," Will responded from the floor, trying to 
ignore the old folks.

"Those people who say these are the best years of 
your life?"

"Um-hum."

"They lie," Mulder informed him, then grinned and 
turned his head, making a low purring sound in his 
throat as he kissed Dana's earlobe.
 
Will rolled his eyes again.

*~*~*~*

Occasionally, it would still happen: he'd be in a 
store or on the sidewalk, and spot Susanne a few 
yards from him, occupied with shopping or the girls.  
He'd watch her, follow her unobtrusively, thinking 
to himself, 'That is one enchanting woman.'  

'You're married; you aren't supposed to be enchanted 
with other women,' his conscience would remind him, 
and send twinge of guilt down his spine.

'You're married to her,' his higher brain would 
realize.

'Oh yes: that's right,' he'd remember proudly, still 
a little surprised.

He reached around Susanne, turning the lock on their 
bedroom door.  The lights stayed off, but the moon 
outside the window lit the walls soft yellow.  The 
air was just cool enough to give her chill bumps as 
he unfastened the front of her dress, kissing her 
swollen lips, her throat, the hollow of her neck.

"Cold?" he whispered, and she nodded, her eyes huge 
and blue in the darkness. "Come to bed."
 
He reached to pull loose a tie he wasn't wearing, 
then started on his shirt buttons, backing them 
toward the bed.  She stepped out of her shoes and 
let her dress fall to the floor, leaving her slip 
and stockings.  One of the straps fell off her 
shoulder, showing her white bra, and he traced the 
outline of her garter up her thigh.  She was pale 
smoothness under his hands: soft skin and slippery 
silk and nylon.  He loved the tastes and textures of 
her; he'd committed them to memory long ago. 

"Give me a thousand years and I might get tired of 
looking at you," he whispered, stroking her cheek.

"My John," she murmured sadly, caressing his name 
with her lips. "My sweet John.  You love me so much, 
don't you?"

He pushed her hair back from her face. "Yes, I love 
you," he answered, just in case she wanted to hear 
it a millionth time.

To his surprise, instead of kissing him, she laid 
her head on his chest, against his heart, and stayed 
there for a long time.  He put his arms around her, 
uncertain what was suddenly wrong. 

"Susanne?"

She slipped away, sitting on the edge of the bed, 
and studying the rug.  He sat beside her, his 
unbuttoned cuffs flopping and his shirt open. 

"What is it?"

"What Mr. Mulder said: me marrying you to become an 
American citizen- That, that is not true."

"Of course it's not true.  I don't know what got 
into him."

She looked at him sadly, then hunched her shoulders 
and went back to examining the rug, her hair falling 
over her cheeks and hiding her face. "I do not want 
you to think it is true.  You are- I think you are 
the kindest, gentlest man I have ever met. I married 
you because I was lost, and you found me."    

"And I'm thankful I did," he answered softly, hoping 
that was the right thing to say.  Susanne was always 
cool, calm, and collected.  Before today, he had 
trouble recalling the last time he'd seen her upset.

"You knew there was someone else.  Before we met."

"Yes, I knew." She'd told him before they married, 
in case he might change his mind.  He hadn't. 

"You never asked who he was."

"According the Kinsey survey, up to fifty-percent of 
college-educated women have had premarital-" he 
started, then just said, "I thought if you'd wanted 
to tell me, you would have."

They'd been in their mid-twenties when they met.  
While he found promiscuity unacceptable, they 
weren't teenagers.  He'd dated, even seriously a few 
times, and he'd always imagined Susanne had been 
engaged and her lover had died, either in the war or 
in the death camps.  

"I should have told you."

"Susanne, it was thirteen years ago.  It didn't 
matter to me then; why should it matter now?"   

"I should have told you," she repeated, not looking 
at him. The fair skin on her shoulders and bare arms 
was covered in gooseflesh, and he pulled the blanket 
from the end of their bed, draping it around her.

"All right," he said quietly. "If you want to tell 
me, tell me." 

Outside the window, the wind rustled the tree 
branches, making the dying leaves whisper secrets.  
The curtains billowed in the darkness like white 
ghosts, and he could hear his heart beating faster.

"One of the professors at University," she said 
after a few tries. "One that Mr. Mulder said.  I 
worked on his projects.  I was the only woman, the 
only one who had not finished my doctorate.  I was 
so proud." She paused, adjusting the lace hem of her 
slip. "What Mr. Mulder said was true: by the late 
thirties, Jews were not welcome at University.  
Jewish students were expelled; Jewish professors 
retired or were fired.  But I stayed.  He said my 
research was important, and he convinced me it was 
just a small lie.  No one would question me: I look 
Aryan, I speak German.  He said he loved me. He said 
he could keep me safe.  He said he could keep my 
family safe, when the time came.  I did not know 
what he meant by that, then, but I trusted him."

Byers opened his mouth to ask a question, then 
closed it again.

"I was an organic chemist. I worked in a laboratory, 
not with people.  Tables, formulas, reactions.  It 
was all here," she pointed to her temple, "And on 
paper.  On slides under the microscope, sometimes.  
There would be a question and I would do research 
and answer.  This is how genetics work; this is how 
they do not work.  This is why you cannot combine 
this cell with that one.  Sometimes they would ask 
the strangest questions, and I could not imagine why 
anyone would want to know such things."

She adjusted the lace hem again, pulling it over her 
knees. "My research would go to the medical doctors, 
so I never saw the end result, or even knew why the 
question was being asked.  Sometimes, the doctors 
would have data, and ask me to analyze them, to say 
what went wrong or what would work better.  It was 
all numbers, but sometimes details would slip 
through and I could figure out what it was: animal 
experiments: reproduction, euthanasia, and xeno-
transplantation: combining one species with another.  
Futile experiments; things that would never work.  
The mortality rate was so high, and the experiments 
were careless, as if no one cared if the lab animals 
lived or died."

"They weren't experimenting on lab animals," he 
said, voice breaking, and not quite believing his 
ears.  He'd seen the end result of those experiments 
at Dachau, at one of the death camps in Germany.  He 
remembered vomiting all over his boots, and Mulder 
being strangely calm as they searched the camp and 
executed the remaining German guards, then, when 
they ran out of things to shoot, the guard dogs.  

"But I did not know that," she insisted. "All they 
told us was that people were being resettled.  The 
Jews, the gypsies, homosexuals, the feebleminded and 
crippled: they all just vanished." She stopped to 
take a shuddery breath. "One day, I opened a file, 
and someone had left a memo in with the other 
papers.  They were testing a Formalin solution, 
injecting it into the uterus to sterilize females.  
The data I was given said the subjects were female 
rabbits.  This memo said they were 'utermenschen.' 
Subhumans.  Jewish women." 

She bit her lip. "He lied to me.  He kept me in that 
lab, doing research for his Nazi friends.  He said 
he hated Hitler.  That he did not believe in racial 
purity and he was secretly working against it.  I-I 
called my family, told them to get out of Poland 
immediately, however they could.  I got in my car, 
and I drove.  I had papers and money: I could get 
through the checkpoints.  From Berlin to Paris, then 
to Marseilles, then a ship to French-occupied 
Morocco to meet my family and buy visas to Lisbon. 
In London, the intelligence officers detained me, 
but let my family go on to America."

He stared at her, trying to comprehend how his 
beautiful wife could have any association with the 
stacks of dead bodies they'd found in Dachau.

"I-I married you because I loved you.  I still love 
you," she whispered desperately. "You have given me 
so much: children, a home.  I love you.  Please stop 
looking at me like that, John."

"The camera in our bedroom in New York," he said 
evenly, staccato-like. "The bug in our telephone: 
they weren't monitoring me; they were monitoring 
you."

"No.  Why would they?  The war has been over for a 
decade.  What would they want with me?"

"It's not over!" he barked before he could catch 
himself, and she flinched.  

On the other side of their bedroom wall, Mulder 
cleared his throat loudly, letting them know he 
could hear them.

Byers took a breath, trying to stay calm. "That 
research you did: the experiments those men did: it 
didn't stop.  Those men never stopped, Susanne; they 
just got better at it."

*~*~*~*

Mulder was a romantic at heart, and he adored Dana 
and Emily.  If he wanted to believe there was some 
conspiracy involved in Dana having a daughter out of 
wedlock, Byers saw little harm in it. Emily needed a 
last name; Mulder needed stability.  As his friend, 
Byers recalled having concerns about Dana Scully, 
especially after her mysterious three-month 
disappearance and 'miscarriage,' but he wasn't 
dating her: Mulder was.  Mulder was a grown man; he 
made his own decisions, and it did no good to try to 
reason with him.

Love was blind, or, at least, conditionally myopic.

Byers had always been able to push the pieces into 
some semblance of order in his mind: Alex Krycek was 
an obsessed psychopath who'd seduced or, more 
likely, forced Dana, with Emily being the end 
result. Perhaps she'd repressed that memory, given 
the circumstances, and replaced it with one of 
government doctors and secret projects.  Years 
later, Krycek kidnapped Dana, forcing her to abort 
the baby she carried.  Later, in a fit of jealous 
rage, he shot Mulder and staged it to look like a 
mugging.  He even went to their house in Georgetown, 
looking for Dana and Emily, and when he'd cornered 
them outside Frohike's apartment building last year, 
Mulder put a bullet in his head.

Until the day Krycek died, Byers had been able to 
arrange the facts to fit his perception of the 
world, but there was no denying what he'd seen: 
Krycek had looked like a man, talked like a man, but 
he hadn't been.  And if he was Emily's father, by 
whatever means, she wasn't entirely human either.

Occam's razor was never intended for little girls.

For the first decade of their lives, Katy and Ana 
had campaigned for separate bedrooms, desperate to 
avoid sister cooties.  Now that they had them, he 
often found them like this: both in Katy's bed, 
asleep amid a nest of discarded Nancy Drew novels, 
textbooks, and diaries with miniature brass locks.  
Tonight, they had Emily between them, and were 
curled up like a trio of sated kittens.  Three half-
empty glasses of milk were leaving rings on the 
nightstand around a plate of cookie crumbs, and 
there was a dirty kiss of chocolate on Emily's lips.

Katy slept like a log, but Ana opened her eyes as he 
stepped into the room, sensing his presence. "I'm 
just checking on you," he whispered, tucking the 
blankets around them. "Go back to sleep."

"Emily wanted to stay here," Ana whispered back in 
the hushed darkness. "We're having a slumber party."

"That's fine." He kissed her forehead, then 
collected the plate and glasses to take to the 
kitchen, trying not to clink them together.

"What time is it?" she asked groggily, as if it made 
any difference.

Emily started to stir.

"Late.  After midnight."

Ana nodded, rolled to her side, and slipped back 
into unconsciousness as easily as she'd slipped out.  
Standing beside the bed, Byers watched for a long 
time, studying their serene faces.  His girls didn't 
sleep with a nightlight, but they'd rigged one for 
Emily by draping a scarf over a small lamp.  Their 
stuffed animals had joined the party as well, lined 
up to guard the foot of the bed.  Among them was a 
very well worn Kitty, his glass eyes missing, his 
fur loved off, and his tail hanging by a thread.

"Mr. Byers?" Emily said softly, as he was about to 
turn away.

"Yes, Emily?  Are you feeling all right?"

She yawned, then asked, "Does Santa come to France?"

"Yes, he does," he assured her quietly, nodding. 
"Not for a few more months, but he comes."

"Mommy says Santa is meta-for-ical," she informed 
him sleepily. "Mulder says Mommy's a party pooper."

"Go back to sleep, sweetheart."

She snuggled deeper into the valley between the two 
pillows. "Bub says Santa's a fat pervert who likes 
to play with elves, and someone should call the 
law," she mumbled, then closed her eyes again.

Balancing the glasses on the plate like a skilled 
waiter, he moved Kitty from the foot of the bed to 
Emily's arms, then stood in the doorway, studying 
her in the red light that filtered through the 
scarf.  She was such a sweet, beautiful child. 
Bright.  Much-loved.  If she wanted the moon, Mulder 
would write a check and Dana would get a stepladder.

Each time Byers had tried to broach the subject of 
Emily's illness, Mulder answered his questions with 
more questions.  Less than two years ago, there had 
been endless specialists, medicine, and hospitals, 
and Dana had all but swabbed people with alcohol 
before she'd let them near her daughter.  A few 
months ago, Emily had been close to death, rapidly 
losing the battle between her red blood cells and 
her immune system.  Now, when Byers had asked, all 
Mulder said was 'wash your hands and try not to 
sneeze on her.'

According to Langly's monthly summaries, soon after 
Dana, Emily, and Ben returned, Mulder made a large 
purchase from a medical supply company.  Byers had 
checked, making sure it was a legitimate expense: a 
small autoclave, a specialized refrigerator, a 
microscope, IV poles, and everything necessary to 
collect and store blood, or to perform a transfusion 
without going to a hospital.  All they'd need was a 
nurse qualified to do the procedure, and a suitable 
donor.  Dana was a nurse, and Mulder and Will were O 
positive, except Will joined the Air Force shortly 
thereafter.  Which left Mulder.  

Byers had assumed Ben was ill, but Mulder assured 
him the baby was fine, that the equipment was for 
Emily, and then changed the subject.

Emily's and Mulder's blood cells should be no more 
compatible than two strangers', yet they were.  He 
and Dana weren't related, and Emily wasn't his 
biological daughter. The only possibility remaining, 
aside from a statistical anomaly, was that Mulder 
was related to Emily's father, and that sent a dark 
chill trickling down Byers' spine.

"Did they finally settle down?" Mulder's voice 
asked, and Byers jumped, rattling the glasses.  He 
steadied them with his free hand before they crashed 
to the floor. "Sorry, I didn't mean to startle you."

"I-I just didn't hear you.  Yes, they're asleep."

Mulder's flannel shirt was unbuttoned, with the 
sleeves casually rolled up.  Above the V-neck of his 
undershirt, a fading scar ran from the base of his 
throat and disappeared underneath the white fabric.  
He must have realized Byers could see it, because 
Mulder adjusted his t-shirt uncomfortably, then 
started buttoning his shirt, watching his fingers.  

"Did you know," Mulder started awkwardly, still 
working with the buttons. "Your wife is on the 
porch?  She's, uh- She's just sitting."

Byers switched from watching him button to watching 
the floor, not really focusing on either. "Oh," he 
eventually said, then turned and watched his feet 
follow Mulder down the stairs.

Will was on the sofa, sprawled in the black oblivion 
of sleep with one hand hanging off the edge and an 
oversized foot propped on armrest.  His lips were 
parted slightly, and his eyes twitched beneath his 
eyelids as he dreamed.

"Hey, Daddy-O," he mumbled as Mulder pulled the 
blanket so it covered his escaped foot, then lifted 
Will's hand back to his chest.  
      
"Hey, Slugger," Mulder whispered, smoothing what 
remained of Will's shorn hair.

Someone, Dana probably, had taken a roll of film of 
Maddie showing off her belly, and one of the black 
and white snapshots was propped against Will's empty 
wineglass on the coffee table.  Mulder picked it up, 
squinted at it expressionlessly, then silently put 
it back, and rubbed Will's foot before he moved on.  

The logs in the hearth were falling into molten 
orange cinders, hissing and sparking and dancing 
around the room as firelight.  The front door was 
closed, but the window was slightly open, and the 
cool air whistled as it stole in.  Mulder paused to 
look out, scanning the horizon as though making 
certain it was safe before he relaxed for a few 
hours.  Byers stood beside him, wondering what it 
was that he watched for.  At least Mulder had a 
glimpse of the enemy; Byers felt like he was 
shooting at shadows.

"A very smart woman told me everything has a price, 
and I had to decide if what I'd gain by being with 
her was worth what I'd lose.  I think she's worth 
it.  I always have," Mulder said quietly, letting 
the curtains fall over the window. "But that's me."

Byers nodded thoughtfully, not sure what they were 
discussing.  Mulder wasn't looking at him, but Byers 
had the uncomfortable feeling of being exposed.
 
"Goodnight, Byers."

"Goodnight," he responded automatically.

When Mulder pushed open the door to the guestroom, 
Byers saw Dana in bed, reading.  Ben was asleep in 
the corner, safe in Katy's old crib.  Dana turned as 
he entered, and lowered her book, saying something 
Byers couldn't hear.  As the door closed, Mulder 
answered affirmatively, sinking onto the bed beside 
her.

Byers watched the door, feeling like a stranger in 
his own home. Time seemed distant, impersonal, like 
he was standing still as the world turned around 
him, a complicated tangle of secrets and lies. His 
wife had been one of Them.  Them: the Nazis, the 
government scientists, the madmen, the corrupt 
elite: the evil he'd gone to war to stop before it 
spread to a global plague.  More than a decade 
later, he found he was sleeping with the enemy, and 
sitting across from her at breakfast each morning.

More than a decade later, he was still in love with 
the enemy.  All he'd ever wanted was a home, a 
family, and love, and she'd given him all three.  
The gingham dog and the calico cat chased madly 
around his brain, threatening to devour each other 
and leave nothing but stuffing and rags.         

Mulder was right: Susanne was on the porch, just 
sitting, with her white robe wrapped tightly around 
her.  She didn't move as Byers approached, or as he 
stood on the steps beside her.

"You shouldn't be out here without a sweater," he 
said softly. "Even a light breeze can raise the wind 
chill factor, making it feel ten to twenty degrees 
colder and-"

She shivered, but continued staring into the 
darkness as if she wasn't even aware of his 
presence.  The sky seemed endless, like infinity 
sprinkled with a dusting of stars.

"Susanne..."

"At first, I did not tell you because I could not.  
Do you understand that?"

"Yes, I do." There were still parts of the war he 
couldn't talk about.  Not honestly, not in detail.

"I waited for someone to come to our door," she 
continued in a hoarse whisper, not looking at him. 
"To say 'You are not a good wife, you are not a good 
mother.  You do not deserve this.  You are a war 
criminal.  You come with us.' But they never came."  

"Susanne, you're not a war criminal.  How could you 
know what was being done with your research?"

"How could I not know?" She wrapped her arms tighter 
around her body. "How could I be so naive?"

"I think we were all naive, then." 

He'd meant that to be comforting, but it didn't end 
up sounding that way.

"I'm sorry, Susanne.  When you told me- Clearly, I 
didn't handle it well.  Please come inside.  We'll 
talk, if you want."

"What is there to talk about?"

"Just come inside.  Please?  Let me try to explain."

She still hadn't turned her head, so he descended a 
few steps and turned so he stood directly in front 
of her, blocking her view of nothing.  She was 
crying, and the wind was pushing the angry tears 
back from the corners of her eyes, defying gravity.

"Please," he repeated, and his heart beat twice 
before he added, "I love you." 

She looked up, then stood and let him lead her into 
the house.  As soon as the door closed, she pressed 
her wet face against his neck, shivering and sobbing 
silently, as though she wasn't allowed to make a 
sound.  He put his arms around her, wishing they 
were strong enough to shield her from the world. 

On the sofa a few yards away, William shifted 
restlessly, kicking his blanket off again.  The fire 
crackled, the wind whistled, the dog snored, and the 
leaves tapped politely on the windowpanes.  The 
October night surrounded them like a velvet cocoon, 
keeping the monsters at bay for a few more hours.
 
*~*~*~*

The overhead light seemed too bright, so they turned 
on the one in the pantry, letting it spill out on 
the wooden floor in pale yellow puddles.  The flame 
under the teakettle was liquid blue, and the kettle 
creaked and moaned as it came alive.  Seated at the 
kitchen table, they spoke in hushed voices of secret 
things, playing connect-the-dots with a series of 
random numbers.

He'd poured Susanne the last of the red wine, trying 
to get her to calm down, and she clutched the goblet 
with both hands, holding it rather than drinking it.  
He sat across from her, running his fingertip around 
the rim of his teacup while he waited on the kettle. 

"I know what I saw, Susanne.  I'm just not sure how 
to explain it," he told her, still feeling like his 
voice was too loud in the empty kitchen.

It was strange to hear the words come out of his 
mouth after spending so long lurking in the corners 
of his mind.  It seemed to give them flesh, make 
them real: both more and less frightening, like a 
nightmare by the light of day.  

"Eugenics was alive and well in America and Europe 
before World War One," he continued. "We like to 
believe the Nazis originated the idea of racial 
purity, and forget we've sterilized the 'genetically 
inferior' since the turn of the century in the U.S., 
and encouraged the 'genetically fit' to reproduce.  
What the Nazis did: it's only a difference in 
degree.  We've been building better humans for fifty 
years."

Her voice was still shaky, like her hands, but she 
answered, "Naturally occurring, yes: parents passing 
on preferred traits: that is possible.  That is what 
Hitler did.  But what you are describing, John: 
human-hybrids: that is not possible.  That is 
science fiction.  You cannot combine human with 
nonhuman.  Aside from blood, plasma, and minor 
grafts, you cannot even combine human with human.  
The body rejects foreign tissue."

"But it doesn't reject it before a child is born, 
does it?" he said. "Early on, foreign tissue can be 
introduced and the baby incorporates it into its 
body.  Is that true?"

That was the product of a late night, slightly 
intoxicated conversation with Frohike, and Byers was 
never sure whether to believe it or not.  When he 
was in his cups, Frohike had his own brand of 
paranoia that made Byers' ideas seem quaint.

"Yes," she admitted. "A fetus has no immune system.  
For a while, yes, I suppose a human-hybrid could be 
created.  But once it nears term, it will reject the 
tissue and it will die."

"But what if it didn't?" he said softly, and the 
pressure inside the teakettle begin to build.  He 
fussed with his cup, spoon, and saucer, needing to 
put something in order. "What if, through some 
means, it could be brought to term?  A living, 
human-hybrid baby.  What then?"

She shook her head tiredly, her forehead wrinkling. 
"If it was possible, the offspring would be fragile.  
Sterile, probably.  Each time the cells reproduce, 
there is a chance of rejection.  There would likely 
be auto-immune problems-"

"Auto-immune hemolytic anemia?"

"Possibly: the immune system attacking red blood 
cells.  It is hard to speculate.  And even if we 
could create hybrids, why would we?  Why go to such 
lengths to create something so delicate?  From a 
scientific viewpoint, whatever trait the government 
valued, it would be easier to reproduce it through a 
naturally occurring mutations in humans than try to 
hybridize it with animal genetics."

"What if it wasn't animal genetics?" He leaned 
closer to her. "What if it was alien?" he whispered. 
"Alien genetics introduced into a human child?"

Susanne stopped toying with her wine glass and 
stared at him, her eyes wide and her lips parted in 
shock.  She waited, as if making sure she'd heard 
correctly.  Byers worried his lips between his teeth 
and waited with her, giving that time to sink in.

The kettle shrieked, startling them.  He twisted in 
his chair to turn off the heat, forgetting about 
their tea.

"You are serious, yes?" she finally asked.

He nodded.  And waited a little longer.  He was her 
John: he invested long-term, couldn't tell a joke, 
drove a Studebaker station wagon, and defined 
'casual' as a starched, short-sleeve dress shirt.  
She teased him about being such a fuddy-duddy, but 
he preferred to think of himself as orderly. Well-
informed.  Precise.  Moral.  A Victorian gentleman 
born after his age.  Regardless, 'adventure' wasn't 
his middle name and he wasn't given to flights of 
fancy.

"In the summer of 1947, a flying saucer crashed in 
Roswell, New Mexico," he explained quietly. "It was 
in the newspapers, though the military later said it 
was a weather balloon. I looked up the article. That 
fall, the House of Un-American Activities Committee 
began investigating again.  HUAC.  It's the perfect 
cover: our government had the data from the Nazi 
experiments in genetics, embryology, immunology. It 
had its own ongoing eugenics projects: naturally 
occurring, as you say.  After the saucer crashed, it 
had alien genes and technology.  And anyone who 
dared question their activities was branded a 
communist."

Susanne glanced at her still-full wine glass, then 
carefully set it on the kitchen table, deciding 
she'd had enough to drink for one night.

"I'm not crazy, Susanne.  Think about it.  Think 
about the scientific advances we've made in less 
than a decade.  We've discovered DNA.  Harnessed the 
atom.  Broken the sound barrier.  Developed the 
heart-lung machine.  We're not far from putting a 
rocket into space.  Even with the foundation of Nazi 
research to build on, that still doesn't explain all 
our advances.  Name any other period in history when 
mankind has made so many leaps-"
 
A door opened, and Byers stopped mid-sentence as 
rapid footsteps moved through the living room. Still 
in his blue jeans and t-shirt, Mulder bounded up the 
stairs, with Dana a few steps behind him in her 
pajamas, her robe fluttering after her.  

Byers hadn't heard Emily, but Mulder must have.  And 
when Mulder ran, it was bad.

Byers watched them tensely, then looked up as their 
feet hurried down the hall to Katy's room.  The bed 
squeaked as someone picked Emily up, and a faucet 
turned on in the bathroom, running until it got 
cold, then wetting a washcloth.  Another nosebleed: 
the third of the day.

Mulder's and Dana's voices upstairs were urgent, but 
indistinct, and Byers could hear Emily coughing, 
struggling to breathe.  He waited for it to stop, 
like the first two had, but the kitchen clock kept 
ticking away the minutes.

There was no sound indicating Ana or Katy was awake, 
so he and Susanne just sat, waiting.  Dana was a 
nurse, and they'd be in the way.  It seemed wrong to 
do nothing, but there was nothing they could do.
 
Susanne helped him watch the ceiling. "Should we 
call a doctor?"

"No," Byers answered immediately, his chest tight. 
"They don't want any more doctors.  She's had enough 
doctors."

In the living room, the old dog got to her feet, 
pacing restlessly, then whined and nuzzled Will, who 
slept on.

"Is it leukemia?" Susanne whispered, sounding as 
powerless as he felt.

"Anemia.  Auto-immune hemolytic anemia."
 
In the guestroom, Ben started crying, frightened and 
wanting his daddy.  As Byers stood to get him, glad 
to have something to do, Susanne's goblet cracked, 
then shattered, sending bits of glass through the 
air and wine flowing across the tabletop.  She 
jumped back in surprise, her chair squeaking, and 
her white robe splattered with dark red liquid.

"My God!  Are you hurt?  What happened?"

"I do not know.  I did not touch it," she said.

Upstairs, he could hear Emily's frightened voice, 
and Dana trying to comfort her.

The hair on Byers' scalp bristled as the wine drip-
dropped rhythmically to the floor. "Don't move.  
There's glass everywhere and you don't have any 
shoes on."

"I did not touch it, John," Susanne insisted.

Ben continued crying, and Mulder's footsteps hurried 
down the stairs, calling to his younger son that it 
was all right.  Byers shivered, though he didn't 
recall being cold.  A goose was walking across his 
grave, his grandmother would have said.

"John-" Susanne started shakily, then gasped as the 
bulb in the pantry exploded, raining to the floor in 
a tinkle of glass, and the kitchen went black.

"Don't move," he warned her, trying to figure out 
what was happening.  His body felt like it did when 
a storm rolled in: instincts tugging at the base of 
his brain and awakening senses forgotten for a 
million years.  He could feel the pressure building, 
the air moving over his skin like a living thing.  
It was magical.  Sensual.  Beautiful, primal, 
frightening, and far beyond his control.

Upstairs, he heard four loud pops: the bulbs above 
the bathroom vanity exploding, then the one in the 
guest bedroom as Mulder reached for Ben, murmuring 
to him until the shrieks subsided.

Within seconds, the house was silent again except 
for the water running upstairs, the fireplace, and 
Mulder's voice soothing his son.  Byers took a deep 
breath, his heart pounding in his chest.  

"John," Susanne said a third time, her voice small 
and lost in the darkness.

"I'm here," he answered, then listened, realizing 
the kitchen clock had stopped ticking.
 
*~*~*~*

God forgive him, but when he finally understood what 
Mulder was asking over the crackling trans-Atlantic 
telephone line, his first thought was that Mulder 
was drinking again.  His second thought was that 
Mulder couldn't afford two ex-wives.

"No, not Will.  Me," Mulder had repeated. "I'm 
getting married.  Saturday morning.  I know it's 
short notice, but can you come?"

Byers' lips had moved soundlessly, trying to form 
words, and he had to remind himself not to drop the 
telephone.  Susanne stopped making lunch, holding 
the bread knife in midair, and watched him 
curiously.

"Byers?"

"We'd- Susanne and I, we'd planned to be there for 
Will's wedding.  We, we have reservations."

"So do I," Mulder quipped good-naturedly. "But 
that's not for two more weeks.  I need a best man 
this Saturday."

"And you're asking me?" Byers squeaked. "Who, wh-
who, uh, who are you marrying?"

"Take a breath, John.  You sound like a hoot owl, 
and you're starting to hyperventilate.  Who do you 
think I'm marrying?"

Byers searched his memory, trying to think of any 
woman Mulder had even mentioned since Dana and Emily 
went into hiding.  No one Byers could recall.  When 
he wasn't playing ball, Mulder spent his time holed 
up in the Catskills, two hours and a world away from 
Manhattan, as he put it.  He put on a good show for 
the cameras, but since Will's baby announcement, 
Byers, Frohike, and Langly had all been holding 
their breath, waiting for the other shoe to fall.

"Wait, she's up." The phone shifted, and Mulder's 
muffled voice requested, "Say hello, honey."

"Hello, honey," Dana's voice mumbled sleepily, then 
asked if there was coffee.

Something hit Byers' shoe, and he realized he'd let 
go of the receiver.  He scrambled after it, pulling 
it back by the cord, his hand shaking as he put it 
to his ear again.  Susanne pantomimed 'who are you 
talking to?' and when he mouthed, 'Mulder,' she 
shook her head and went back to making sandwiches.

"Byers?  John- Are you there?" Mulder was asking. 

"I'm, I'm here.  My God.  Yes, absolutely, I'll be 
there.  If I get a flight this afternoon, I can be 
there Saturday morning."

"Great," Mulder responded. "I appreciate it.  We'd 
appreciate it.  I'll explain more when you get here, 
but Byers-" He paused, his voice softening. "I have 
someone for you to meet."

"W-Who?" His brain seemed to have a case of the 
hiccoughs.

"His name is Benjamin.  Ben.  Isn't it, buddy?" he 
added quietly, talking to someone close by.

"Who's Ben?"

"He's, uh, mine," Mulder answered. "He's my son."

"Oh my God," Byers had managed.

*~*~*~*

In the kitchen, Susanne's broom dragged slowly, 
precisely across the floor, gathering slivers of 
glass before they could bite tender feet.  She got 
every nook and cranny, then went over the floor and 
baseboards with a damp rag, making sure.  Byers 
watched her on her hands and knees, wanting to tell 
her it was the middle of the night and he'd do that 
in the morning, but kept his mouth closed.  It was 
her way of restoring order to an upside down world.  

Dana sat on the swing on the front porch, wrapped in 
Mulder's oversized flannel shirt, staring blankly at 
the dark horizon. The wind ruffled her hair, blowing 
it around her face.  Mulder stood a few feet away, 
leaning back against the banister, looking at ease, 
but tracking everything around him with the watchful 
eyes of a soldier.  The thousand-yard stare, they'd 
called it in the Army: when a man spends too long 
watching for the enemy.

There was no clock in the house that still worked, 
but Byers supposed it must be after two.  Maybe 
almost three.  Time had slipped out of alignment, 
into a muddled jumble of real and unreal. It was the 
aftermath of the witching hour, and the beginning of 
the long, empty wait for dawn to burn away the 
night: when fevers broke and babies came, and logic 
became disjointed.   

Mulder turned his head, noticed Byers watching them, 
and returned inside, leaving Dana to listen to the 
ocean.  He checked on Ben and Emily, who were asleep 
in the guestroom, then joined Byers at the living 
room window, near the hearth.

"I'm sorry," he said softly, words that seldom 
passed Mulder's lips. "We never meant to- I-I just 
thought France would be a nice change of scenery for 
Scully.  Emily wanted to see the Eiffel Tower; we 
could see Will-"

"Don't be sorry," Byers assured him. "We want to 
help.  This just isn't quite what I'd anticipated." 
He looked through the window at Dana, who sat 
unmoving on the old swing. "Is she all right?"

Mulder paused, choosing his words. "It's hard for 
her: Em being sick.  And Ben.  As much as she loves 
him, he frightens her a little bit.  She feels 
helpless, and Scully doesn't like feeling helpless."  

"But Ben doesn't frighten you?"

"No, he doesn't frighten me."

Whatever force had shattered the light bulbs and 
Susanne's wine glass, it wasn't natural.  Not as 
Byers understood Nature to be.  He and Susanne had 
been in the kitchen, directly under Katy's bedroom, 
and hadn't heard Emily wake.  There was no way 
Mulder could have heard her from the downstairs 
guestroom, behind a closed door.

"Can, can you read my mind?" Byers whispered after a 
few false starts.

"No," Mulder answered, as though that was just a 
routine question. "Lately, I've realized I can sense 
things, especially if the emotion is strong, but I 
can't read your mind.  Some people I can sense 
better than others."

The last log in the hearth split, sending orange 
sparks up the chimney, and startling Byers.  On the 
sofa, Will shifted, but didn't wake.

"I've read of experiments involving ESP," Byers 
said, trying to sound calm. "In the 1930's, Oxford 
University did a series of controlled tests with 
Zeener cards, and-" 

He stopped as Mulder looked at him, his face painted 
in stark light and shadow by the fire. 

"He who fights with monsters should take care lest 
he become a monster.  If you gaze too long into an 
abyss, the abyss gazes also into you."

"That's Nietzsche."

Mulder nodded. "Knowledge is a seductive thing, 
Byers.  It's easy to ask questions, but you have to 
ask yourself if you really want them answered.  You 
can tell yourself it was a power surge, replace a 
few light bulbs, and go on with your life."

"No, I want to know," Byers heard his own voice 
answer unsteadily. "What was that, Mulder?  What are 
you?"

"Your friend," he answered, then added, "My mother 
is a German-born Jew; my father worked for the State 
Department.  Intelligence.  I always assumed she was 
a war bride, but it's possible their marriage was 
arranged.  They had two children: my sister and me.  
And when she was nine, my sister vanished.  I was 
with her in the woods: she didn't run away; she 
wasn't kidnapped; she just vanished." He swallowed 
dryly. "Girls are born with all the ova they'll ever 
have.  Scully told me.  Did you know that?  To pass 
on a male's genetics, you have to wait until 
puberty, but in females, the ova are present at 
birth.  Before birth, even."

"You think They waited until your sister was old 
enough to demonstrate the same, uh, abilities you 
have, then took her?"

"I think so.  Whether it was intentional or a fluke, 
a natural, latent gene got switched on in Samantha 
and me.  And we can pass it on.  Ben has it.  Will, 
as far as I can tell, doesn't, but he could still be 
a carrier."

Byers nodded, wanting him to continue, but Mulder 
waited a long time before he spoke again.

"I think I was superfluous: the boy that came before 
the girl They wanted.  Aside from keeping track of 
me, I don't think They gave me a second thought 
until I met Scully.  And when They realized the 
opportunity, They capitalized on it." 

He cleared his throat. 

"I see them sometimes.  In my dreams," Mulder said 
in a rough whisper. "Twin girls: happy, redheaded 
toddlers.  Safe.  Loved.  I see Samantha, still nine 
years old.  She's happy, too.  But sometimes I see 
other children.  Dark-haired babies: identical boys 
and identical girls.  Rows of them: maybe seven or 
eight of each.  Like Samantha, but not.  And what's 
inside them, when I can feel them: it's dark, too."

"Do you think any of what you see is real?"

"I don't know.  I know some of it isn't." Mulder 
shifted his hands on the windowsill, still watching 
Dana on the porch. "We're real, though." He tilted 
his head toward her. "She and I."

"If what you're saying is true, you have to-"

"What?" he interrupted. "I have to what?  Notify the 
proper authorities?  The death camp, Byers: do you 
know who granted immunity to the men who did that?  
Who continued their work?  You know who took our 
first babies and left Scully to die?  Do you know 
who's behind Emily's birth?  Do you know who shot 
me?  Who pointed a gun at Will and would take Ben 
the same way They took Samantha if They knew what he 
can do?  Do you know who those men are?  The proper 
authorities, Byers.  Old Glory, apple pie, Mom, and 
ticker tape parades: God bless America."

Mulder pushed away from the window, restless, like a 
dangerous animal confined to too small a cage.

"Don't tell me what I have to do.  I have to protect 
my family.  I waited almost forty-two years just to 
be normal. To have what every other man has.  Just 
to be able to come home at night and kiss my wife 
and read a story to my kids before bed.  And maybe 
have my daughter-in-law bring my grandson over so I 
can stuff him full of sweets and tell him stories 
about when Papa was a boy.  You've had that all 
along, but I just got it, so don't tell me what I 
have to do, Byers."

As Mulder paced, that storm-coming-in feeling 
started creeping up Byers' spine again. 

"I'm sorry.  I didn't mean to presume."   

Mulder exhaled, and the feeling subsided. "I know.  
I know you didn't.  It's-" He paused. "You said you 
wanted to know.  You said you wanted to help."

Byers hesitated.  He'd meant help in a 'baby sit for 
the afternoon' kind of way.  The last time he'd 
blindly agreed to help Mulder, he'd ended up an 
accessory to murder.

"We do want to help," Susanne's voice answered, and 
Byers turned, seeing her standing in the doorway 
between the kitchen and living room, still in her 
wine-stained robe, holding a dishrag. Under Mulder's 
penetrating gaze, she shifted, looking down. "I did 
not mean to overhear.  I was in the kitchen- I would 
like to help."

*~*~*~*

It was the last Saturday morning in May, just after 
the full moon crested.  The florists and caterers 
must have arrived before dawn to set up the white 
tent now beside the lake.  The sun was up, pulling 
the mist from the tops of the Catskill Mountains.  
The ranch's previous owner had bred racehorses, and 
miles of white fences enclosed the fields, now 
populated by a single fat pony.  An old, one-eyed 
cat prowled the perimeter of the house, his tail 
flicking as he kept watch over his domain.

As Dana came to greet him, she smiled uncertainly, 
looking vulnerable.  She was still in her robe, with 
her hair done, but her face bare of makeup.  She 
seemed paler than he remembered, and more watchful, 
but she was real.  Alive.  Standing on Mulder's 
front steps.  Mulder had never wavered in his 
insistence that she would come back, and Byers felt 
traitorous for not believing him.

"I'm early; I'm sorry I'm so early.  Eighty-two 
percent of commercial flights arrive at least thirty 
minutes late.  Whoever heard of a plane landing 
early?" Byers said clumsily, shaking the hand she 
offered as though they were being introduced for the 
first time. "It's so good to see you again."

"It's good to see you," she answered, taking his 
satchel.  An awkward pause followed, which Dana 
ended by adding, "Mulder wanted to talk to you. 
He's down at the lake.  Just follow the path."

The air was crisp, and the grass was damp with dew, 
collecting on the hem of his trench coat and dotting 
his wingtip shoes.  Under the tent, men were 
arranging tables and chaffing dishes, while beside 
the lake, chairs were being set up for the ceremony.  

It was a simple wedding sandwiched between a Friday 
night home game and a two-week road trip.  Two-, 
maybe three-dozen guests.  No honeymoon, but no 
reporters, no photographers, and no one except 
trusted friends and family.  No one in the press 
knew about the wedding, or that Dana had returned, 
or about Ben, and Mulder wanted to keep it that way 
as long as possible.

Frohike was meeting Dana's sister at North Beach 
Airport and driving her upstate; Langly was flying 
into Albany, as were Agent Dales and a man who'd 
been an Assistant Director of the FBI - hopefully, 
not on the same flight.  According to Frohike, 
Mulder's and Dana's mothers had been invited, but 
neither would be attending.

Mulder was lounging in a chair in the first row, 
wearing his suit pants and a white dress shirt, 
collar open.  He faced away from Byers, watching the 
fog rolling off the lake.  Except for metallic 
squeaks as the caterers worked, and petals and 
fabric rustling as the florists decorated, the only 
sound was the water lapping against the dock.

"Scully won't let me have a tilt-a-whirl or a 
dunking booth," he complained softly, looking back 
as Byers approached. "Or a cotton candy machine.  
They rent them, you know, and I think this shindig 
would benefit greatly from a cotton candy machine."

Byers looked around, trying to fathom where Mulder 
thought a cotton candy machine would fit into this 
pristine setting.

"I'm joking Byers," Mulder added, then nodded to the 
chair beside him. "Take a load off."

Byers sat, leaning over to examine the bundle 
nestled in the crook of Mulder's arm.  Somewhere 
underneath it, defying all odds, was a small baby, 
sleeping soundly.  

"This is Benjamin," Mulder said quietly, stroking 
the baby's cheek. "Ben.  He's three months old.  
He's beautiful.  And, since he got Daddy up at five 
a.m., he's taking a little nap."

Byers stared at the baby's peaceful face, trying to 
comprehend that he was real. "My God, Mulder.  Did 
you know?  All this time?"

Mulder nodded slowly, smiling as Ben pursed his 
lips.  He was a man in love.

Byers shook his head in disbelief. "Why didn't you 
say something?"

"It was safer not to." He studied Ben, then changed 
the subject, requesting, "Get the paperwork rolling 
for me to adopt Emily.  And Ben's birth certificate 
needs to be changed: my name isn't on it, and it 
needs to be.  My will needs to be changed, too."

"I'll get right on it."

Byers waited for further instructions, but Mulder 
was silent, holding his new son and watching the 
mist skimming the silvery surface of the lake.

"I'm getting married, Byers," he finally said 
absently. "In two hours.  For better or for worse, 
till death us do part.  Ani l'Dodi, v'Dodi li," he 
added in Hebrew. "The whole shebang."

Byers nodded, trying to be supportive.  Instead of 
pre-wedding jitters, Mulder seemed to be in one of 
his odd, contemplative moods.

Mulder exhaled and added, "And to that end, I'd 
better finish getting dressed," as he adjusted the 
blanket around the baby and got up.
 
Dana was making her way down the path from the 
house, carrying two steaming mugs.  Mulder smiled at 
her and exchanged the baby for one of the cups, 
blowing the surface of the coffee to cool it.

"My mother just called," she said, her voice a 
little shaky as she settled Ben against her 
shoulder. "She's changed her mind.  She's at a 
service station in Kingston.  Bill wouldn't bring 
her, so she drove.  From Alexandria.  All night."

"Your mother can drive?" Mulder asked over his mug.

Dana nodded, biting her lower lip. "Will just left 
to get Maddie.  I'm afraid to leave Emily for that 
long, I still need to get ready, and we'll have more 
people here any minute.  Could you-"

"You want me to go meet her so she doesn't get 
lost?" Mulder offered gently.

Dana nodded again.

"Your mother frightens me, Scully."

"Just lock your doors, roll up your windows, and 
come straight home," she advised, turning away. 

"We're gettin' married, honey," Mulder called after 
her, as though he'd just realized it. 

"Don't say that too loudly," she responded over her 
shoulder, then added a wink. 

Mulder chuckled and sipped his coffee, then stepped 
aside to let two men unfurl a long runner between 
the chairs, creating an aisle that ended at a small 
canopy: a nod to Mulder's heritage.  

"It would be better with a cotton candy machine," 
Mulder said wistfully, looking around at a scene 
that made 'picturesque' seem cliched. "But I suppose 
this will do."

"Congratulations," Byers answered, remembering his 
manners. "I hope you'll be very happy together." 

That came out sounding less certain than Byers had 
intended, but Mulder didn't seem to notice.

"Do you know those jigsaw puzzles- The huge ones: 
two-thousand pieces, almost all the same color?" he 
asked softly, watching Dana walk back to the house 
with his infant son. "You lay them out, and even if 
you get the outside edge, all the inside pieces just 
seem like a jumble of green and gray.  Do you know 
those puzzles?"

"Yes, I know those puzzles," he said uncertainly, 
the coffee mug warm between his hands and the steam 
drifting with the breeze.

"She's the picture on the box, Byers."

*~*~*~*

Despite the glare of the public spotlight, Mulder 
was an extremely private person, as was Dana. 
Neither asked to be extraordinary.  All they wanted 
was to be together, to raise their family, and to 
live their lives.  And, through some cruel twist of 
genetic fate, those were the three things they 
struggled hardest to do.

Byers and Susanne sat with Mulder at the kitchen 
table, listening as he explained fifty years of 
government conspiracy.  Mulder said that, beginning 
around the turn of the century, the US and Europe 
had attempted to create superior humans through 
selective breeding programs, but after WWII, after 
Roswell, those programs shifted focus.  It wasn't 
enough to build a better human anymore: the Russians 
could do that.  The US had the Nazi data and the 
alien tissue from the Roswell crash: America could 
create an alien-human hybrid.

The swing on the front porch squeaked as Dana 
shifted, and Mulder stopped speaking momentarily. 

He explained that the first experiments after 
Roswell were clumsy: creating hybrid pregnancies in 
unsuspecting women in the military, relying on their 
shame to keep them silent or to force them to give 
their babies up for adoption.  He said Emily was a 
product of those experiments, but didn't say Dana 
was never married to Emily's father.  He said Alex 
Krycek was deceased, but didn't mention the bullet 
that killed Krycek came from Mulder's gun.

Mulder said the experiments had evolved, becoming 
more adept at blending human and alien DNA.  That, 
using the hunt for communism as a smokescreen, the 
government tracked people's genetics, monitoring 
those whose genes would be most compatible with 
alien tissue.  Using them as unsuspecting test 
subjects.  Using their tissue.  Using their unborn 
children's tissue to further their project.  He 
never mentioned the first babies he and Dana had 
conceived: not that Dana had disappeared for three 
months, not that her pregnancy had mysteriously 
ended, not that she'd almost died herself.

"These men are dangerous," Mulder told them. "Above 
the law.  They'll stop at nothing to get what they 
want.  You need to understand that."

Byers glanced at Susanne. "We understand."

Mulder chewed the inside of his lower lip, then said 
slowly: "Emily has a rare, auto-immune anemia.  It 
can be treated with blood transfusions, but the 
donor's cells have to be compatible with hers.  In 
Emily's case, that means being compatible with alien 
genetics.  Not alien, per say, but able to co-exist 
with alien," he said, watching Susanne, gauging her 
reaction.

Susanne just nodded.

"I'm compatible, as staggering as the implications 
of that are.  And Emily seems to benefit from my 
immunities: if I have antibodies, she can use them.  
Mulder-cillin, Scully calls it.  She keeps saying my 
body wasn't designed to produce red blood cells for 
two people, but right now, I'm fine. Emily's getting 
better.  But I'm the only one we're sure she's 
compatible with, and we discovered that by dumb 
luck.  If something were to happen to me, or if it 
becomes too dangerous for Scully, Ben, and Emily to 
stay with me..."

He trailed off, unwilling to say it. 

"We need a plan B, if there is one.  A way to slow 
the anemia.  A way for her to be compatible with 
another donor.  A way to find another donor.  We 
don't even know what in my blood makes me a match."

Susanne nodded.

"I know what I'm asking for is a medical needle in a 
haystack," he said, now speaking solely to Susanne. 
"And we've already had the best doctors in the world 
tell us it isn't possible: there is no cure, and the 
only treatment they can offer makes her sicker than 
the anemia." He hesitated, soundlessly opening and 
closing his mouth several times. "I'm not ready to 
accept that.  The science at Johns Hopkins and 
Children's Hospital isn't the same science that 
created this child, and it isn't the science that's 
going to make her better. You knew those men; you've 
seen their science," he said, his eyes seeming to 
scan her soul.  This time, there was no accusation, 
just calm appraisal and a statement of fact.

"Yes," she said, barely audible.

"I can get you access to whatever equipment or 
information you need," Mulder offered. "Blood 
samples, medical records: whatever you need."

She nodded.
 
"Do you think you can help?" he asked hesitantly.

"I'm not sure.  I can try," she said softly. 

"Thank you." Mulder took a deep breath and got up, 
rolling his neck and shoulders tiredly. "We can talk 
later.  Right now, I should get my wife off the 
porch before she turns into a Scully-cicle."

As he reached the doorway to the living room, Mulder 
turned back, bracing his hands on the doorjamb. "If 
you discover there isn't a plan B," he said slowly, 
weighing his words. "I don't want Scully to know.  I 
don't want her to know about any of this.  Ever."

Susanne nodded again.

*~*~*~*
 
Byers didn't recall Mulder wearing glasses, but when 
Dana noticed him squinting at the photo, she handed 
him a pair from the pocket of the gray flannel shirt 
she'd borrowed.  He put them on, tilting the picture 
of Maddie and her belly so he could see it in the 
dim light.

"Did you look like this?" Mulder asked, glancing up 
at her. "With Ben? This big?"

"Bigger," Dana responded, toying with his hair as he 
sat on the ottoman beside the sofa. "This is her 
first baby, and she's still at the cute stage."

Mulder looked at the picture again, as if trying to 
fathom that.  Eventually, he put it back on the 
coffee table and jostled Will's shoulder gently.

"Aren't you supposed to report for roll call, 
Slugger?" Mulder asked. "Time to get up."

"...don't have school today," Will answered without 
moving his lips or opening is eyes.

"William, come on.  Gotta get up."

"Dad?" Will responded, grimacing unhappily as he 
tried to figure out where he was. "...time is it?"

"Almost morning.  After five.  You need to get back 
to the base."

"Shit.  Five isn't morning.  Write me a note," he 
mumbled sleepily, burrowing deeper under his 
blanket. "We'll call it an excused absence."

"Unfortunately, the Air Force will call it AWOL.  
Get up, go shower, and I'll see about coffee."

Will squinted at his father like a pampered pet 
denied his place at the foot of the bed, then 
started to go back to sleep.

"AWOL.  Summary court-martial.  Military jail, 
William," Mulder reiterated. "A note from Daddy-O 
won't cut it anymore."

Will grumbled unintelligibly and got to his feet, 
yawning and stumbling through the darkness toward 
the downstairs bathroom.  After some slamming and 
cursing, a faucet turned on, then the showerhead, 
and water splashed against the tiles.

"Did you talk to him?" Dana asked, her back to Byers 
as he stood in the kitchen doorway.

"We talked at the beach this afternoon," Mulder 
answered, resting his head against her thigh and 
looking up at her. "I talked, anyway; God knows 
whether or not he listened.  He loves Maddie, but 
he's so young.  Maybe I shouldn't have let them get 
married.  Maybe I..." 

He sighed and pulled off his glasses, rubbing his 
eyes.

"He made his decision.  You can't live his life for 
him," she reminded him.

"I just want him to be happy.  That's what I want 
for all of us: just to be healthy, happy, and safe.  
I don't think that's so unreasonable." 

"Neither do I, but I think your cape's getting a 
little threadbare tonight," she said softly, running 
her fingers through his hair again. "Saving the 
world may have to wait a few hours while you get 
some sleep, Superman."

Mulder rubbed his jaw against the fabric of her 
pajamas, making a rough, scratchy sound as stubble 
slid against cotton.

"Not the whole world, actually: only a very select 
minority.  Saving the world is more of a larger, 
long-term goal." He turned his head, looking past 
her, at the last of night outside the window. "It's 
almost full: the moon.  We'll have a full moon for 
Halloween," he said thoughtfully. 

"Again."

"Three years, Nurse Scully," he said in some pre-
dawn shorthand exclusive to the two of them. "A 
hundred lifetimes squeezed into 1,095 days.  One 
hundred and fifty-six Saturday afternoons.  Would 
you do it all again, if you had the choice?"

"You know I would, Mr. Marty Martin," she answered, 
stroking his cheek as he leaned against her.

"I know. I just like to hear you say it." He nuzzled 
her thigh again, exhaling, then deadpanned, "Are you 
wearin' lead panties?"

Dana nodded, and Byers heard her laugh softly.  

A hollow place inside him envied that sound.  Mulder 
and Dana had forgotten Byers was there, and, in a 
few seconds stolen between everyday worries and 
global conspiracies, gotten lost in each other.  
Their world was only the two of them.  In the vast, 
hungry darkness of the universe, two homeless souls 
had found an oasis.

Dana trailed her finger down the outline of Mulder's 
neck, then underneath his t-shirt, stroking the top 
of the scar that bisected his chest. 'A love line,' 
Byers had heard Dana call it, on another occasion 
when he'd accidentally intruded.  

Byers turned silently and, for lack of anywhere else 
to go, returned to the kitchen.  Susanne was at the 
stove, cooking nothing, and unfinished conversations 
hung in the air.  The silence from the living room 
was comfortable, but in the kitchen, it felt 
strained, like catgut strings over a guitar's frets.

"William's awake.  He needs to get back to the 
base," he said, his voice sounding foreign to him. 
"He'd probably like coffee."

Susanne nodded and started the mundane process of 
making coffee, seeming relieved to have a direction.  
After plugging in their seldom-used percolator, she 
stood and watched it, entranced by the creaks and 
rumbles as the metal pot heated.

"Susanne-" he started, not sure how he planned to 
finish his sentence.  

"Do you want tea?" she asked before he had to.

"No.  I-I can drink coffee.  Later.  I don't want 
anything right now."

She nodded and went back to watching the percolator.    

"Susanne-" he tried again.

"I should make breakfast for him," she decided, 
speaking rapidly as she reached for a skillet. "I 
should make breakfast for everyone.  An American 
breakfast: pancakes and eggs and-"

"I don't think anyone's hungry this early."

She stopped, her hand poised over the knob to turn 
on the burner.  Her shoulders slouched tiredly, and 
her head tilted down, as if exposing her neck for 
the executioner's axe.

"Do you think you can help Emily?" he asked, and she 
turned, looking ethereally pale. "Or were you just 
being polite?"

"I don't know," she answered in lost whisper. "With 
blood samples, the right equipment, and enough time, 
I should be able to discover what makes Emily and 
Mr. Mulder compatible, so at least they could find 
another donor.  Beyond that, I am not sure."

It was Byers' turn to nod.

"To find that, though: the precise link between 
humans and aliens...  If I find it, these men you 
and Mr. Mulder speak of: they would kill for that 
knowledge, John."

"You don't owe them anything, Susanne.  If you think 
it's too dangerous, all you have to do it say 'no'."

She looked past his left shoulder, not focusing on 
anything behind him as much as avoiding everything 
in front of her. "How can I say 'no'? Emily could be 
our daughter."

"Could she?" he asked hoarsely.  

He'd never questioned her about Ana and Katy, and 
he'd never had any reason to.  At the raw edge of 
spring 1945, after the Allies routed the Nazis from 
France, he'd finagled a pass and met Susanne in 
Paris for twenty-four giddy hours.  They'd written 
copious letters and talked by telephone when he 
could get to one, but Paris was the first time 
they'd seen each other since they'd married.  She'd 
shown him the Left Bank that afternoon, the Eiffel 
Tower that evening, and nine months after that 
night, they'd become the parents of twin girls.

His beautiful, bright, tall, blonde-haired, blue-
eyed daughters: he wanted desperately to believe 
that the timeline didn't fit.  According to her 
story, Susanne had left Germany several years before 
she'd conceived.  There was no tampering with her 
pregnancy, no ulterior motive to her marrying him.  
Two lonely, frightened people had found each other 
and fallen in love in the middle of a war.

She wasn't just cruising Wiltshire, looking for Mr. 
Gullible Good Genes and his American citizenship.

He wanted to be her Superman.

"Susanne?" he said, his voice rising an octave.

"John, no.  No, not like that.  Do not even think 
that.  I mean she is just an innocent little girl."

When he didn't respond, she hung the skillet back on 
the pot rack, lifting it with both hands as though 
it had suddenly grown heavier, and had trouble 
securing it on the hook.

"Is 'Susanne Modeski' even your real name?" he 
asked, worrying his wedding band with his thumb.

'Modeski' wasn't a Hebrew surname, but he'd assumed 
her family adopted it as an Anglicized version of 
'Moidecki' or 'Moidezki,' while 'Susanne' was the 
German equivalent of 'Susannah.' Her mother called 
her 'Nan,' which Byers had thought was a diminutive 
from childhood.

It was also, between Hebrew, Polish, and Yiddish, 
'Grace,' 'Ann,' and 'Nancy.'

The papers that allowed Susanne to flee Germany were 
forgeries, and any earlier documents had probably 
been destroyed.  The crumbling Nazi regime had 
burned the birth records, attempting to conceal the 
genocide of the Jews as well as the Lebensborn 
project: a quarter-million 'racially pure' children 
either born to unmarried Aryan women and SS officers 
and given to the government to raise, or kidnapped 
from occupied countries.  Many immigrants - Jewish 
and Aryan - arrived on Allied soil with only their 
fake passports and the clothes on their back, and 
were, for lack of any evidence otherwise, whoever 
they said they were.  It was possible, even likely, 
that when she'd bought a passport on the Moroccan 
black market in 1943, she became 'Susanne Modeski,' 
and the woman she'd been before ceased to exist.

"I cannot imagine being anyone but your Susanne," 
she finally said.

"You didn't answer me."

"John, I-" she started before her voice broke, 
leaving them in tense silence. 

He tried to say something, but he felt bone-weary, 
numb, and stretched tissue thin.  His eyes burned, 
his temples pounded, and his shoulders ached from 
the weight of the world.

He'd married a beautiful stranger, lived with her, 
loved her, and raised children with her, only to 
realize she was still as much a stranger as she'd 
been the day they'd met.

He needed a fact to quote.  He liked facts and 
figures, but the only related one he could think of 
was that almost six million Jews died in the death 
camps, and only twenty-one Nazi scientists were ever 
brought to justice in a court of law.

Byers wondered, as his tired mind began to drift 
past the edge of reason, if her German lover had 
been one of the men tried at Nuremburg.  That had 
been late November 1945, right after the war, and 
just before Katy and Ana were born.  They hadn't 
owned a television, but there was one in the window 
of the appliance store near their first apartment. 
He remembered stopping with Susanne, who was well 
into her seventh month of pregnancy, to catch a 
glimpse of the tiny, flickering screen one Saturday 
morning.  There had been a crowd, so he'd waited on 
the curb, holding their umbrella.  She'd watched for 
several minutes, huddled under a leaky awning in her 
too-tight winter coat, then turned away, took his 
hand, and walked on.  She hadn't looked back.

"I doubt La Sorbonne has the laboratory equipment I 
will need, but I am sure Oxford does," she said, 
avoiding looking at him. "I could go there.  That is 
not so far away: just across The Channel.  I could 
come home, sometimes."

At 'sometimes,' his head popped up, tilting to one 
side.  He'd envisioned her working on this research 
while the girls were at school. There might be trips 
to universities for the labs or libraries, but not 
extended stays.  He wanted to help Mulder, but not 
if that meant having Katy and Ana's mother away for 
weeks at a time.

"What do you mean 'sometimes'?"

"I-I mean I could- I could see the girls?  Yes?" she 
asked, looking at him from underneath her eyebrows, 
her blue eyes pleading. "Sometimes?"

He stepped forward, closing the gap between them. "I 
don't want you to leave.  Is that what you think?" 

She nodded miserably.

"You're my wife, Susanne, the mother of my children.  
All I want is for you to tell me the truth." He 
paused. "Whatever that truth is."

"I told you the truth!" she responded a little too 
loudly, her lower lip trembling. "And you do not 
believe me!  You think I am a Nazi harlot!  That I 
kill my own people!  I have my old research notes.  
In the attic.  They are packed between the boxes of 
summer clothes and the second-hand law books from 
your first office.  Do you want to see them, John?  
See what I did? Your wife?  Mother of your children?  
I have all the numbers.  Twin studies: mortality 
rate: ninety-three percent.  Xeno-transplantation: 
mortality rate: ninety-nine-"

"Stop it!  Please," he added.

Her face crumpled, and she wrapped her arms around 
her body, struggling not to cry.

He braced one hand on the stove beside her, and, 
without touching her, looked down at the spotlessly 
clean floor. "I believe you.  I-I just need some 
time to, to think.  To sort this out.  All of it.  
You.  Ben.  All of this."

"I am sorry," she managed.

"So am I."

"How can you possibly want me here?" she asked in a 
ragged voice.

"How can I possibly not?" he answered, his words 
bypassing his overworked brain and coming straight 
from his soul.

She lost her battle against tears and started to 
sob, covering her face with one hand.

Without raising his head, he slipped his hand into 
hers, toying with her cold fingers. "Ani l'Dodi-" he 
started, his voice creaking like a rusted hinge. 
"Ani l'Dodi, v'Dodi li."

It was one of two Hebrew phrases she'd taught him: 
'I am my Beloved's, and my Beloved is mine.'

She inhaled shakily, rested her head and one wet, 
white knuckled fist against his chest, and then 
stood motionless for a long time, waiting for the 
shadows to recede.  Eventually, as the night began 
to fray at the edges, his heart slowed beneath her 
hand, thudding dully instead of pounding in his 
ears, her fingers unclenched, and he closed his 
eyes.  

"Ani ohevet otcha," she whispered hoarsely, leaning 
against his chest as though it would open, and she 
could crawl inside and never come out again. 

"I know.  I love you, too.  I do." He put his arm 
around her, stroking the silky back of her robe.

Behind him, a man cleared his throat apologetically, 
the sound intruding into their fragile universe.

Byers exhaled and stepped back, expecting Mulder, 
but it was Will who asked, "Am I interrupting?"

"No," he lied as Susanne moved away, wiping her 
eyes, and opened the cupboard to get Will a mug. 
"Please sit down.  I think the coffee's ready."

"I was looking for my dad.  Or Dana.  Dad woke me, 
but he's not in the living room or their bed."

Byers massaged his forehead. "I think they may be 
otherwise occupied right now." 

"Occupied?" Will said skeptically, buttoning his 
uniform shirt.  He paused to yawn, then stretched 
sleepily. "No they're not; I was just in the 
shower."

Susanne salvaged the conversation by handing Will a 
cup of hot coffee, then asking if he wanted sugar.

"Lots of it.  Why is everyone awake?  And dressed?" 
he asked, noticing the dress shirt and slacks Byers 
had been wearing since the previous day.

Susanne kept her head down, fiddling with the fabric 
belt of her stained robe.  

"We were just talking."

Will looked unconvinced, but shifted his attention 
to spooning half of the sugar bowl into his coffee 
cup, leaving a sprinkle across the counter as well.  
He stirred his coffee with the sugar spoon, thought 
a moment, then asked, "May I use your telephone?"

"Of course," Byers answered. "Do you want me to put 
the call through for you?"

Will shook his head 'no,' reaching for the receiver 
as he took his first sip of coffee.  To Byers' 
surprise, Will had no trouble conversing with the 
operator in French, then waited, yawning again and 
licking off his spoon, while he was routed through 
to the switchboard in Kingston, New York.  It was 
more than an hour before dawn in France, but mid-day 
on the east coast.

"Bonjour, Madelon," Will said in a husky whisper 
that made Byers want to guard his daughters with a 
shotgun. "Comment ca va?" There was a pause, then a 
grin. "Yeah, I know that.  Dana showed me pictures.  
You're huge.  What are you gonna have: an elephant?"

Byers blinked, watching the years peel away.  He'd 
seen Mulder do this so often during the war, and 
Will unknowingly mimicked his father's posture 
perfectly.  If there was a lull in the fighting, 
Mulder was on a telephone, trying to get through to 
his wife and baby boy.  And Byers had been in line 
behind him, sitting on his field radio, and waiting 
for a chance to talk to Susanne.

Spring 1944 to autumn 1956.  More than twelve and a 
half years.  Six hundred and fifty-four Saturdays.

Will listened to whatever Maddie was saying, then 
ducked his head and responded softly, "I know.  I 
miss you.  Je t'aime aussi.  So much, honey."

The sky outside the kitchen window was black, but 
the stars had begun their slow slide toward morning.  
In the distance, lights twinkled in their neighbors' 
kitchens and barns: dairymen who milked by lantern 
light and fishermen making their way to the dock, 
just as they had for the last thousand years. Dawn 
would come soon, opening her rational violet eyes 
and pushing back the fairy magic of the night.  In a 
few hours, the girls would get up, and life would go 
on: the same, but not.

Yawning, Byers slid his hand down Susanne's sleeve, 
then over her wrist and fingertips as he left the 
kitchen.  When he entered the living room, the dog 
yawned and raised her gray muzzle, her tail 
thwapping hopefully against the stone hearth.  
Mulder must have rebuilt the fire, because flames 
were slowly licking their way over the logs, and 
warming the old stone walls.  

As he started toward his bedroom, Byers noticed 
Mulder's and Dana's door was open, revealing nothing 
in their rumpled bed except Emily and Ben.  He 
lingered in the doorway, studying them.  They slept 
like all children: cuddled together, safe, innocent, 
and certain one cry would bring their parents 
swooping in to chase away the boogieman.  Except, 
for Emily and Ben, the nightmare boogiemen in the 
shadows were real.

Byers had seen them; Mulder had slain them.

He patted the dog's head absently as she came up 
beside him, then turned, looking around his living 
room as if it might appear differently than it had 
the previous evening.  Will had turned on the radio, 
and The Five Satins crooned the opening notes of 'In 
the Still of the Night:' number twenty-four on the 
chart that week, according to the French announcer.  
The breeze had picked up, whistling under the sash 
and making the white curtains billow.

The dog sighed and lie down outside the guestroom, 
watching the front door, with one ear cocked 
sideways, listening for Emily and Ben.

A board creaked outside, and Byers went to the 
window, thinking there was an animal on the porch.  
Instead, backlit by the distant yellow moon, were 
Mulder and Dana, dancing slowly.  Mulder had gotten 
his shirt back, and he leaned down, his hands around 
Dana's waist, stroking the skin beneath her robe and 
simple blue pajamas.  She tilted her face upward, 
tiptoeing and parting her lips as he kissed her 
softly, almost reverently.  As the silhouette of 
their faces separated, she rested her head against 
his chest as they resumed dancing.

Byers doubted they could actually hear the radio, 
but it didn't seem to matter.

"John?" Susanne asked hesitantly, and he turned, 
noticing her across the room, spatula in hand. "I 
thought you were going to bed.  Did you change your 
mind?  About breakfast?"

She wanted to fix breakfast for him far more than he 
wanted to eat it.

"Or I could make tea," she offered.

"Tea," he conceded, and followed her back to the 
kitchen.

Will had pulled a chair away from the kitchen table, 
and was straddling it backward as he cradled the 
telephone against his shoulder.  He was on his 
second cup of coffee, discussing baby names in a 
rapid jumble of French and American slang.  It was a 
fruitless conversation: Mulder said the baby was a 
boy, and would be named Luc.  Byers wasn't sure how 
Mulder knew, but he'd lay odds he was right.

Rule number two about Fox Mulder: never bet against 
him, even when the chips were down.  Especially when 
the chips were down.     

Susanne turned on the burner under the kettle with a 
blue whoosh, and set an empty mug on the table, in 
front of Byers.

"Did you know that the beverage we know as 'tea' is 
virtually unchanged from what Emperor Shen-Nung 
discovered in 2737 B.C.?" Byers asked, looking up at 
her. "According to Chinese legend, the breeze blew 
some tea leaves into a kettle of boiling water, the 
Emperor tasted the resulting brew, and soon tea-"

He stopped as she smiled, looking tiredly bemused. 
"My John," she whispered, ruffling his hair. 

He pushed his eyebrows together in what Mulder 
called his 'puzzled puppy dog' expression. "You 
don't want to hear the rest of the story?"

"Of course I do," she assured him. "Tell me the rest 
of it."

Outside, on the porch, in the darkness, another 
board squeaked.

He cleared his throat and smoothed his hair into 
place as she turned away, reaching for the tea bags.