“Amor Fati: The Fated Love”
Act III: “The Leaving of the Three”

PROLOGUE:
--“From the other side…it all looks so easy.  Living on this side of the law…one can easily understand the cries from within the cage;  ‘I am innocent.  Why do you keep hounding me?  What have I done to earn this wrath?’  I will tell you what we have done.  We have fought for the Truth.  Ah, the greatest crime.  The greatest crime indeed.  I lie here tonight, in your arms where forgetfulness lives, and remember a past steeped in passion…and in blood.  My own, offered up like a martyr’s sacrifice…and yours, not offered but taken.  And I know that were you to hear all my pain you would hold me…and understand.   But I cannot tell you.  The hardest things between us always remain unsaid.  There are other concerns to think about.  And wonder.
--“Wonder.  There is that.  What is a guy like me doing…in a place like this?  With you?  With him?  Wonder.  I wonder that there is still wonder left in me, after it all.  And my God, I have begun to Believe in the impossible, finally.  I can, just maybe, believe in myself.  You gave me that...and I weep every day for it.  And I tell you while you sleep what we cannot say, awake.  Lying here in the night, stroking your beautiful hair away from your face and looking down upon an angel that somehow fell into my arms and transformed my lonely existence…whether I deserved it or no.  Say it again and again, my lips moving silently against the pressure of the night.
--“I love you, Scully.  I always have.  I always will.  And there is magick in those words.  Not chicanery but True magick.  There is Truth here unlike any I have ever sought.  And therein lies the hardest part.
--“From the other side…it all looks so easy.”--

(Fox Mulder’s Journal, May 13, 2002)
…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..

(Amor Fati, pt.41: “Tribulation”)

Joe and Andi’s Motor Court
Somewhere in Saskatchewan, Canada
May 14, 2002
4:03am

	It was the night, when confessions began and connections were made.  They had discussed the possibilities of Alex Krycek, of the Well-Manicured Man, of the things the Driving Man had told them…but there was little to be found there but conjecture.  Krycek couldn’t be alive--he’d had a bullet through the head--but yet he might be, in some form or another.  The Well-Manicured Man was plasma scattered on the pavement of a back alley in Alexandria…but there were clones, and god knew what else the Consortium had figured out how to do in the years leading up to their spectacular demise.  And that meant that the Smoking Man might still be out there somewhere; their age-old nemesis who would cast them down out of sheer principle despite his fondness for their dogged persistence.
“Why They would take the time to clone a pissant like Krycek is beyond me,” Mulder had murmured rhetorically…but in this particular case talk got them nowhere.
All the more frustrating and terrifying was the fact that talk got them no further when it came to what, if anything, could be done about their son.  “The most successful--and the last,” the Driving Man had said; did that mean that the precious few other children who had approximated his easy facility with the alien genes had been found by the hostile Rebel faction and…disposed of?  Was their Sweet William with his frightening but benign ‘talents’ really the only one of his kind left on this earth?  And how did that far-distant ‘Bureaucracy’ expect him to survive to take up his birthright when he was simply a babe, with no more self-determination than he could muster with a cry or a wheedling demand?  What could he accomplish alone, and with only the fragile support his parents could offer--parents who knew the Game better than anyone else, who had lived it for so long that they knew no other way; but who were yet pawns feeling their way blindly through alleys with no discernable exits or guides.  Sweet William; biologically unique even among his own kind, prey to the humans who stalked them, anathema to the Rebel replicants the government called ‘supersoldiers’, and coveted prototype to the Colonists who would stop at nothing to possess him…as the supersoldiers would stop at nothing to destroy him to preserve their fingernail-thin edge in this war of principle millennia in the making.
Turning restlessly in Mulder’s arms, Scully reached up to finger his scars again, gentle touch whispering over the minute damage that was the only evidence of his unimaginable torture at the hands of his alien captors the year before last.  Again the silent question, the one she had postponed asking until they were safe away and the threat of their trackers was once more a silent pressure in the back of their shared consciousness, no longer a matter of instantaneous need.  They were there; They would always be there, somewhere--following, watching, waiting like spiders in the shadows--but the amazing thing about the human condition was that one could get used to almost anything with the right amount of familiarity, and that further, the human brain could quietly and by sheer force of will close off the thoughts that were unnecessary when survival was no longer in question…for the time being.
As her fingers quested tenderly over the scar tissue on his chest, his arms, Mulder caught her digits swiftly in his own, breath held in the stillness of the late spring night with its fecund odors of pinesap and lovemaking, and lowered his forehead to hers, eyes shuttered and lashes brushing his cheeks as he mustered the strength to speak of his demons--for he knew that he had avoided the issue for far too long.  And in giving of her own strength Scully was forced to confront her own memories of that horrible time.  The silent question beckoned; --Why didn’t you tell me?-- and Mulder spoke finally, slowly, as if measuring his words in a bitter cup of remembrance better lost than retrieved.
“We weren’t communicating, and I didn’t want you to know…to have to dredge up memories of your own abduction.  And I didn’t want to remember.  To bring it all back…”  Eyes turned inward as he faced the helpless pain and horror of those three long months, Mulder went still, once again wandering the paths of unwilling memory.  He spoke like one waking from an awful dream, and holding him against the pain Scully encouraged him with the set of her face, by the soothing action of her hands, but the open way her body lay against his to release to her all that pain and terror so that the awful demons of memory might be exorcised and he might be healed of that time for once and all.
“They were there in the dark, all around me, every day.  Taunting me with my helplessness.  Laughing without changing expression, those bastards!  I could see their faces resolving out of the shadows and recesses of the ship, though I couldn’t turn my head or move."  His face twisted.  "Do I have to go into this, Scully?  Will it change anything?"
Their communication had become less drawn out, more open and honest as their relationship evolved and the dynamic of it progressed…but there were still very ingrained thought and behavioral patterns that they would instinctively revert to in times of emotional crisis, and she knew that this confessional would bring such a one on.  She could not let him turn away now. "No," she said softly, "But it may help you to get it out, Mulder."
He nodded and took a deep breath, knowing that he could not lie to her anymore.  His eyes turned inward as he went back into that place with his mind’s eye wide open, walking naked into the dark.  She held onto his hands as if urging him on, as if she could somehow communicate energy to him through their linked fingers, give him the strength to face this and see past it.  He began to speak again as if he had gone into the kind of trance she remembered from his post-hypnotic regressions with Heitz Werber, as if in that way he could somehow divorce his emotions from the retelling and buffer himself from the pain, the fear, the helplessness.  When he finally spoke his voice was flat and emotionless.
"I couldn’t move…couldn't even turn my head because the pincers held my cheeks and the pins were in my arms and my legs and my muscles were tearing from the strain and my joints were screaming in their unnatural positions, and my pelvis was belted into the cradle."  All in such a flatly emotionless tone, as if he was reporting the experience from afar.  "It was like a metal graft, that chair, and it was always cold.  It never warmed, no matter how long I lay there…I don’t know how long I lay there; years, decades…in a pool of my own blood and vomit and feces while my body lay dying all around me.”  Once again back in that place in his mind, Mulder’s voice took on a faint note of panic as the emotional residue seeped through his carefully constructed guard, and Scully began to fear that he might not be able to deal with the memories, that they might be too destructive.
"Mulder…"
"No, you were right; I need you to hear this.  You have no idea what it was like, Scully.  I could feel my body dying…like a shell slowly turning rigid and green with decay while my mind screamed that this was not possible, that this couldn’t be happening to me, that there weren’t supposed to be any real alien abductions…”  His voice began to ascend the registers as the memories took over his mind until he was back there in that Hell again…and all she could do was grip his fingers tighter and listen, be there as he had been there for her in the times when she had released her own demons.  He was back in there now, with no way out but to finish the journey.  He had held these horrifying memories in for so long without whispering a word…  For the first time she understood the principles of psychotherapy in medical terms, and the clinical metaphor came to her suddenly; psychological pain, this kind of mental poison had to be like an abscess building up in your mind.  When you finally lance it, it bursts out and must be prodded and let to drain clean before it could heal.  The pressure had built so long in Mulder that there was no stopping the flood now until it was done.  He had opened his eyes to look into her own, trying to share his thoughts with her, the frenzied working of his brilliant mind...the only part of him in that time that had been free.  “And once I had been forced to accept the reality that this unbelievably bad dream was real…" he murmured, then shook his head.  "I kept trying to take my mind away, to leave my body because stressors like that are supposed to contribute the Out-Of-Body experience…but I couldn’t make it work, and my body continued inexorably dying all around me while the pincers dug in…"  He made a face, voice suddenly angry.
"They were supposed to be experimenting on me, not just holding me helpless and watching me rot from the outside in.  I could feel it, Scully.  I could feel my DNA changing faster than it had during my experience with the piece of metal from the ship…and I could feel everything that was me slowly dying as my fluids leached out, as I became desiccated, dehydrated; a mummy, a corpse, living death kept alive by cruel implements that tore into my palate my chest and drilled and cut into all the parts of me, and…”  His body heaved as if he were throwing off the painful strictures that had once forced him to remain motionless, and he made a retching noise as he threw off the sheets and stood trembling by the window, as if having anything touching his skin at that moment would drive him insane.
Watching him in appalled shock from the dingy motel bed, Scully felt her throat close and her stomach clench.  Willing her own nausea away, she clasped her fists to her stomach in horror as she assimilated Mulder’s confession.  What it must have been like…  As in her visions at that time and her dreams of him, it was all suddenly so clear in her mind’s eye.  She could see his beautiful, beloved body contorted, stretched out like flypaper on the rack of the alien device, muscles tearing and overstretched tendons snapping with the unrelenting strain of the binding pins that forced their way into the bones of his legs and arms and spine…  Her clinical detachment could not stand up in the face of his unspeakable torture, and as before when they had found him in the coffin barely alive, she shuddered with reaction and a doctor’s sure knowledge of the hideous effects such treatment had on a person’s body.  She herself had seen the deleterious effects on his health that Their despicable torture had caused, but to the detriment of their relationship her mind had shied away from the pictures that they had drawn…until now.  Now, when together they were strong enough to face the failures of the past and the horrors they engendered to emerge on the other side, whole once again in the light of their Truth.
Standing in the watery light of the waning moon, Mulder had stilled the trembling in his limbs by sheer force of will.  Lifting the blankets she went to him.  She did not touch him, knowing that like a wounded animal he might strike out blindly from the terrifying place that his soul had entered in this moment of release.  As she approached he acknowledged her presence, murmuring into the night.
“I could feel you out there, searching for me, seeking for clues, never giving up.  I think that’s what kept me alive, even when I wanted nothing more than to die--knowing that no matter what They told you and no matter how long it took, that you would find me, that you would never give up.  I knew I was dying before and I didn’t tell you--I’m not sure why.  Maybe I was afraid to destroy that tenuous happiness we had built in those last months.  But this death was far worse than the other could have been…and the ironic thing is that it gave me a second chance.  I’d assimilated my new genetics, and when I woke I wasn’t dying anymore.  When I woke in that hospital…”  He turned to look at her then, eyes gleaming in the faint light from the window.  “When I woke up from that endless, bad, bad dream you were there…and that I never doubted it for a minute.  I thought I had my life back.”  He looked down, and her heart wrenched once again for him in that horribly lonely time, and for her own part in it.
“And then I saw how much everything had changed while I was gone.  My life wasn’t mine anymore, and it was like an insect frozen in amber had suddenly broken loose to fly into a world that had changed beyond recognition…and like that insect I was brittle, all my resilience taken from me.”  His voice cracked suddenly with loss, and she reached out a hand instinctively to give him succor, to hold him against the resurgence of the pain they had both felt in that terrible month…but she paused in midair, afraid still to touch him when he might not be ready for contact or solace.  Mulder tensed, shoulders hunching as he felt her abortive movement.  He shook his head angrily against the memories, but when he spoke his voice was quiet…and so plumbed with loss that she felt her own heart break.
“I needed you so badly, Scully,” he said softly, as if the admission cost him dearly.  “But you weren’t there; I had pushed you away…and the nightmares kept coming and coming…”  Unable to stand it anymore, Scully drew close and pressed her body lightly, tentatively to his tense and unyielding backside, feeling his clammy skin warm automatically with that contact.  He did not edge away, nor did he lean into her; he simply stood cold with shock and while she supported him, the steadfast fidelity of their bond never questioned in the decade that they had been together.
“I was there,” she said into his shoulder, finally able to press her arms about him in the night.  Feeling his bones beneath the unblemished flesh, amazed that he was even alive for her to hold after an ordeal that had indeed taken him from her for so long that she had lost all hope.  She shuddered and pressed her arms tighter, felt his ribs shift beneath the silky envelope of his skin.  They creaked in protest, but he did not move, and she spoke like one driven.  “I was there hurting for you, holding you against the nightmares, even when you could not ask me to be there.  I was with you every night until you came back to me.”  She had been.  Sitting on her bed, eyes open in the darkness each night while the worry and the unanswered questions of her pregnancy had mocked her, she had let her mind fly from her own fears and concerns to cradle him in her mind’s eye where he lay, most assuredly equally sleepless in the dark--and hoped against all hope that he would feel the pressure of her soul.
	As if he heard her thoughts, Mulder answered her.  “I know.  I could feel you…whether I wanted to or not.  I tried to deny it; to deny us…but it just couldn’t be done.  Wouldn’t just go away because I was feeling wounded…”
	At his self-depreciating tone she broke in briskly.   “Don’t do this to yourself Mulder.  You had every right to feel wounded in that time.  Your whole life had changed all around you.  You and I…we just had to find the faith to remember that some things never will.”
	“Finally,” he said, and she felt the sudden weight that lifted from him as he heaved an enormous sigh and reached out to catch her hand.  Healed.  Their fingers intertwined.  Reaffirmation.
“We’ve got to get some sleep, Scully; we’re on the move again tomorrow.”  He nodded to the baby carrier in the dark at the end of the weathered dresser.  “Pretty soon he’s going to get too big for that thing.  Hope he learns to walk soon, ‘cause I don’t think the Man is paying us enough to carry him all the time.”  He spoke lightly, allowing the heaviness of confessions and remembered pain to lift from the air around them, and Scully nodded in quiet agreement.
“A few more months.”  They didn’t even know if they would be alive in a few more months.  If William would be.  It was a gift of a child that their son could sleep secure in the blissful ignorance of the precarious nature of his existence.  They would bear that burden for him.  That was what parents did.
“A few more months.”  It was a pact.  They returned to the dingy bed and to what little comfort might be had in the night of their strangely dual existence; half in shadow as lovers, half in light as friends, in all things Partners in a fight fated to them since before birth.  There was a certain symmetry to be found in their situation.  It was enough that they had the wholeness that came from such surety in a world of insecurity--more than many people ever had in a lifetime.  It would have to be enough.  There would be no telling how long there would be nothing else to be had but fear.
X   X   X

(Amor Fati, pt. 42: “The Things That Would Never Be”)

Billy’s Esso Petrol and Food Mart
Somewhere in Saskatchewan, Canada
May 14, 2002
9:16am

They had been edging slowly but surely back toward the Atlantic Seaboard, running east through the provinces as if they were iron filings being drawn by a massive magnet back to their home.  But what was to be done once they crossed back over into lands they knew?  The deceptive feeling of safety they had experienced in Canada would serve only to blunt their readiness, to breed complacency in a team that had known only keyed-up readiness for nearly a decade.  Complacency or even a moment’s relaxation was not a weakness to be entertained for they who had a child to protect from god knew how many factions determined to take him away or to destroy him.
“Okay, ‘sweetheart’; what do you think?  Do we cross here, or do we just show up in Maine one bright and sunny morning?”  Parting from the flood of bus-bound passengers leaving the petrol station, Mulder rejoined her on the front stoop of the convenience store, returning his billfold to the back pocket of his jeans and shrugging to settle his vest over the edge of the waistband.  He was wearing his black turtleneck in the crisp morning air, which felt more like March than May.  William, freshly changed, bundled in blankets and clad in a pom-pom beanie, made a happy sound from the depths of his carrier in response to his father’s voice.  To Scully’s quiet joy the two of them had developed a close bond almost immediately, and Will always smiled when Mulder spoke to him.  Scully shivered slightly as the wind whipped around her trenchcoat and hitched the diaper bag back into position on her shoulder.
“Maine will probably be just as cold as it is here.  I don’t suppose you remember anything that North Dakota has to recommend it?  I certainly don’t.”
Mulder grinned at her and took the diaper bag from her chilled fingers.  “Oh, c’mon, Honey!  There’s always the usual!  Silos, refineries, semi-artic tundra…no forests though, nor mountains full of abominable snowmen and other assorted beasties.”  He pulled a moue of disappointment, and they grinned companionably at each other.  Scully was amazed sometimes at the ease of their relations in the light of day after a night of confessions and emotional upheaval.  Not that they hadn’t had practice.
Mulder’s eyes were still twinkling.  “We could always go back to that town in Michigan…”  He trailed off as she propped up her eyebrow warningly.
“Oh no, ‘poopycakes’; I’m not spending one more night in your house of ill-repute.  Though I will admit I was not the slightest bit surprised at your choice of establishment…”
“You two comin’ with, or what?” the bus driver broke into their lighthearted banter from his perch in the window of their transport.  “I got a schedule to keep, in case you hadn’t noticed.”
Mulder tilted his head to Scully and made a grand gesture.  “After you, Laurie-honey.”  She glared at him in mock annoyance, but took the cue and swept down the steps to the Greyhound.  As they resettled into their seats, Mulder shrugged.  “At least these Canadian buses are relatively clean.”  Scully watched him brush at his jeans fastidiously and shook her head, shifting their son around until she was comfortable with their situation.
“So, to continue our discussion…”
Mulder took a page out of her book and raised an eyebrow as he lifted one shoulder in a half-shrug.  “We should probably circle around some more.  Unless of course you think it’s a useless exercise.  In that case I don’t see why we shouldn’t just head straight back and take our chances.”  He could see her fear of that solution in her eyes even as she tried to veil it.  She was not ready to lose him to the factions that wanted to take him from her forever.
When she did speak, her voice was level and clinical, with the slight teasing air that said she didn’t want to disturb the faint peace that they had found in this day.  “Any hunches?”  She had much less of a problem with following a hunch than she once had.  
Mulder shook his head and looked at her teasingly from under his lashes.  “I never have,” he lied baldly, playing along.  “You?”
Scully smiled softly.  Trying to get a rise out of her.  She wouldn’t give him the satisfaction.  She would, however, give him logic.  “Actually, I was thinking that we might pass through St. Louis on our way home.  Maybe the trip will pull up a few more leads.”
“Another few weeks of motels wouldn’t bug you?”  His eyes pierced hers with knowing challenge, and Scully regarded him for a moment with equal bluntness underneath her sculpted brows.
“I knew what I was getting into when I signed on for this, my friend.  You had better quit while you’re ahead.”
He nodded and absently slipped his fingers into the carrier to twiddle them with his son’s.  “North Dakota,” he agreed, and turned his eyes downward.  He simply could not stand the naked terror in her eyes as she thought of losing him again.  He knew how he would feel if he lost her.  He nearly had, and more than once.  “Ready for bleak country, Champ?”
“Dada!” William announced loudly, and tugged Mulder’s fingers twice.  “Ship!”
Smiling ruefully, Mulder dug into his pocket and drew out the baby’s toy UFO, dropped in one of the aisles during the snack stop.  “Here you go, buddy.  You gonna hang onto it this time?”
William hummed happily and snatched the object from his father’s fingers.  It went immediately toward his mouth, where the baby crammed as much of the thing into the orifice as was humanly possible.
“How do babies not get every disease known to man, with all the stuff they get in their mouths?” Mulder asked her rhetorically, not expecting an answer.
“Natural immunity,” Scully replied softly, her joy in watching her man and her son interact dimmed suddenly at this reminder that their child was as different as he could possibly be and still be considered nominally human--and how it had happened, coming of the most human of acts.  Turning back in concern at the tone in her voice, Mulder grasped her free hand with his.
“Hey.  You said you just tried to count your blessings.  I do too.”  He tilted her chin up with two fingers as he had done after her first encounter with Donnie Pfaster, so many years ago, and the tenderness in his eyes took her breath now as it had then.  “He’ll be fine,” he said softly.  “Think of it as one less thing we have to worry about.”
She returned his smile a little tremulously; but as a matter of fact it was an enormous relief to know that she now had backup in this terrifying task.  Raising a child like William alone had nearly killed her, even without the constant threat that hung over him.  Mulder may not be Mr. Mom, thank God--but he was a quick study…and he knew the Game better even than she did.  It would have to be enough.  It was certainly far more than she had ever had or expected.  She would not fail or falter to seize what chances life threw her way; not now.  She knew Mulder would not either.  Little enough time…
The next hour or so of that interminable bus ride was spent rocking in the seats in separate thought.  Scully joggled the sleepy baby-William, like a sponge, had learned to catnap during their frequent travels, and any motion generally sent him into a semi-coma.  She would have to wake him for a feeding soon…but for now her thoughts dwelt on a conversation from the past, and on some of the long-buried lessons of the catechism.  Truth was God, and God was Love…but she had recently come to learn that the Truth was also alien, and as stark and unloving as anything could possibly be.  If Truth was God and God was Love, then the aliens were the odd ones out…unless there was something she was missing there.  Her mind hearkened back to her own spiritual Journey, begun in the unquestioning faith of a child, pausing midway within a lapsed Catholic in love with the crisp unadulterated facts of science-the new religion.  Partnered in a search for Truth with a Believer in phenomena she could not countenance, her faith in the religion of science had been marred only slightly until she had seen the evidence of God in herself, acting in and on her own life.  Miracles, and messages.  Messages that had turned her back to God for her search, rekindled her faith…until now when she had to face that what many people thought of as God may be alien, and that what only very few thought of as divine presence was probably the only such presence in the universe.
There was a God; of that Dana Scully had no doubt.  There was Spirit in the world, there was spirituality, and there were Miracles.  William-her son--was living proof of that dictate.  But the dogma was alien.  And that had been a bitter pill to swallow, indeed--for her entire acquaintance with what she had thought was God had been wrapped up in that dogma; the dogma of science and of the church, while spirituality--the supposed basis of man’s relationship with God--had eluded her.  Now face to face with the difference between religion and spirituality, the vast gulf that separated the Truth of God-as-Love, and the unwelcome half-truths of human-wrought belief with all of its strict tenets, and she had to admit now, alien intervention, she had found again that Spirit that had fulfilled her as a young and blithe child, before the head had learned to cloud the heart with five-thousand years of social conditioning...and it had made her whole, in body as it did in spirit.  Whole because she no longer struggled with the irreconcilable differences between science and faith…and so she could see God’s hand in science again, and in the world.   It was not about the laws, but about the movement...  And because she no longer questioned Faith in the unseen, the immeasurable, that meant no longer questioning Love, Miracles...or Fate.
“What are you thinking?” Mulder broke her reverie gently, warm hand taking up her cold one and chafing it gently between his own.
“I was thinking about something a priest told me once, that ‘sometimes we must come full circle to find the Truth’.”  She looked up from her inner reflection in time to see a swift parade of thought, memory, and surmise cross his features.
“Wait a minute, S…weetheart; a priest told you that?  I remember that case; it was the one with the stigmata boy…”
“Kevin.”
“Yeah, Kevin Kryder.  Loveland, Ohio.  And as I remember it, the boy’s father was the one who said it.”
“A priest also said it to me shortly afterward.  I…went to confession after that case.”
“That’s where you went?  While I was working?  Slaving over that ridiculous statement?  By that time you hadn’t been to confession for at least… ”
“Six years.  That case…shook me up a little, in a place that I thought I had left far behind.  I thought I didn’t need the Church anymore.  I had my science, I thought that that was enough.”  She shook her head.  “I was very wrong.”
Mulder squeezed her hand lightly.  “We all need faith in something.  I’m glad you found it when you needed to, during your cancer.  I know, I was even less understanding about your faith in God than I was about your faith in science.  Why didn’t you tell me to shove it, all those years?”
“Because I thought you needed your faith more than I needed mine, M...George,” she murmured.  “And I needed you to keep on believing…so that you could show me the way back to faith.”  She smiled gently into his eyes.  “And you did; though in a way you probably wouldn’t recognise.”
Mulder stared into her eyes for a moment, then broke into a grin.  “So tell me, ‘Laurie’,” he murmured, “have I ever starred in any of your confessions?”
She smiled back and replied in a very low tone.  “No, ‘George’, you haven’t.”  She returned the squeeze gently.  “I didn’t think there was anything here that I needed to confess.”
Mulder frowned slightly, looking if anything a little disappointed.  “Well, that’s a nice blow to my fragile ego.  And here I thought I might have rated at least one small confession or two…in the beginning anyway.”
Scully shook her head.  “Not a chance, my friend.”  She reached up then to touch his face lightly, amazed in spite of herself at how much easier it was to touch him now that she didn’t have to fear her own reaction to that contact.  But as the need for discretion about their relationship became moot and the sheer weight of the missing months now broke through their shields and healed their neuroses, they had slowly but surely begun to become more openly affectionate.
Yet still in their uniquely understated and bantering way, of course.   “You only have to confess the things you feel guilty about, the things you know are wrong.  Are you trying to tell me I should?”
His grin broadened.  “I didn’t make you feel guilty even once?  C’mon.  Throw me a bone, here.”
“Okay, ‘George’; I’ve been a walking ball of shame since the first night you set foot in my apartment.”
“Great.  I feel a lot better now.”  His eyes still twinkled, but his grin had subsided to a soft smile.  “I don’t think I’ll ever need to flog myself about us either, as long as I manage to keep you and William safe.  But if anything ever hurt you because of me, now, when so much already has…”  He shook his head and dropped his eyes as she opened her mouth to rebut that self-depreciating summary.  He grinned softly to turn aside the moment.  “Though I doubt a couple of years of fidelity will make up for a lifetime addiction to those movies that aren’t mine.  If those that will be saved during the Tribulation are the men who haven’t ‘defiled themselves with women’, then I guess I’m going to Hell and taking my video collection with me.”
Allowing herself to be diverted, Scully shifted the baby back into her lap and turned to face him fully.  “You never told me how you could be so well versed in scripture from the New Testament, but yet have so little familiarity with Jewish religious tenets.  In the Isaac Luria case you were a little at a loss if I remember correctly; but you seem to have quite a firm grasp on the Book of Revelation.”
“That’s where all the action is,” he answered flippantly.  At her candid look he sighed.  “Well, our family was nominally Jewish, but Mom was the only one that was really that involved in it.  It was kind of a touchy subject back then, especially if you were in the military, so Dad kind of played it low profile.  We went to synagogue with Mom a lot when we were little, but, and this really pissed my Mom off, my cousin Lynn had turned herself into the family pariah by converting to marry a Protestant, and she was always trying to get Samantha and I to go with her to the Church of England."  He glanced over at Scully.  "At the time I didn’t care which culture or denomination it was.  I was very involved in religion, and one House of God was as good as any other to me.  It didn't really matter to me which end of the spectrum you came from or which Book you used.  Even then I wanted to know it all; the scholar of the unknown.  I was fascinated and I read it all, though I never got deep enough into Jewish mysticism for cases like the Luria golem.  Mom didn't approve of cousin Lynn’s influence.  She was much more staunch than Dad was about our faith.”
Mulder was looking down now, avoiding her curious gaze.  “When it comes to stubbornness I guess I took after her.”  She knew her lover was not yet ready to recognise his true patrimony.  To admit that the man that raised him, however coldly, was not his father, and that the man that shared his genes was as cold, a hated enemy if more involved.  That his father was ‘CGB Spender’, the Smoking Man.  “Like I said, I was very involved in religion.  I believed wholeheartedly in God, in the inherent goodness of the universe, and of mankind.  And then…”
“And then your sister was abducted.”  Her hand reached out to him in understanding.  There were dimensions to Mulder’s past that she had never seen before.  Why should she be surprised?  She was sure there were still things about her own life that he didn’t know, and a few stories that she had yet to tell…or retell.
Mulder was nodding.  “It didn’t make any sense to me.  Why would a benevolent God allow such a thing to happen?  To tear my family apart, to allow my mother and father to divorce and my sister to disappear without a trace…  All I was led to believe was shattered, destroyed; every truth I held dear.  I decided from that day on to make my own Truth, to believe only what I could seek on my own, never again what others led me to believe.  I never knew at the time that what I would come to believe in the place of that Power I was led to as surely as I had been led to believe in God."  Before she could protest the self-denigration in that admission he had moved on.  "That day on the Vineyard I renounced God with all the acrimony of betrayed innocence, and I became indifferent to the blandishments of religion.  My God-shaped hole in the sky became a UFO-shaped hole, and all else was simple muffling of the goal.  I thought I’d found the real Truth, in the paranormal, and considered religion to be a lie masquerading as that Truth; the worst of swindles, because it was detracting from my own answer.  You’ve heard me say before that I believed that religion has been masquerading as the paranormal for centuries.  But it no longer affected me except as an annoyance.  I never cared enough even to be angry, never looked back…until I met you.”  He looked into her eyes, and the respect that shone there took her breath.  “Until I saw your dedication and your struggle to reconcile with your faith, to regain that lost comfort.  Anything that you, Dana Scully, believed was worth fighting that hard for had to be worth the pain and the indecision that it cost you…and no one can say that I don’t trust your judgment.”
Scully looked down at their clasped hands for a moment, whispered his name.  “Mulder, do you think that your childhood traumas with all things related to family make you fear this?  This thing that lies between us…do you fear what it means?”  She squeezed his hand gently, insistently, and raised her head to meet his eyes once more.  Despite the touchiness of the question he was looking at her with no evidence of retreat or redirection.  After a long moment of searching communion, he shook his head.
“God knows I’ve never had that a 'normal family'.”  He shook his head ruefully.  "But Scully, do you honestly think we could, or even should be mom and pop Calhoun?”
“No,” she answered him candidly.  “No, I think we’re doing just fine as we are, and we don’t need anyone else’s definitions.  But I needed to know if this worried you.  I never want you to feel guilty, or like you’re gypping me out of something, Mulder, because I’m not asking for anything more than that we are here in the same place at the same time, that we’re doing this together.”
“We are doing just fine.”  He pointed at the baby with his chin.  “He has both of us, and we have each other.  That’s all that matters, right?”  As if drawn by his father’s regard William woke, and turned lazy gray eyes to meet his parents’.  They turned green in an instant, and his flushed face broke into a sparsely toothed baby grin.
“See?  We’re all good; right Champ?”  He grinned at the baby, and as his gaze returned to hers it did not fade.  “Face it, ‘sweetheart’; you’re not going to be able to get rid of me.”
Scully smiled in return, feeling satisfied.  “Good,” she stated approvingly, and settled back against the rigid seat, closing her eyes gratefully.  She felt Mulder shake his head.
“Your mother is a lazybones,” he commented to William in an aside.  “You hungry?  I know I am.  What else did we get on that haul that I haven’t eaten yet?”
“Ba!” William agreed with alacrity, and took the proffered item without pause for thought.  Supremely unconcerned with the questions of fate, God, and family, his world was how it had always ought to have been, and he had no complaint thus far with the way the cosmology of his short life was arranged.
X   X   X

(Amor Fati, pt.43: “Safe Passage”)

Greyhound Bus #1121
Somewhere in North Dakota
May 14, 2002
4:15pm

A little south of Regina they had bid farewell to Greyhound Canada and took another bus headed south...a bus that had taken off from the US Customs station just as four expressionless suited figures had appeared at the doorway of the building they had just vacated to stand and stare after the departing vehicle.  They had been alerted by William’s squawk of surprise, but they had not been chased nor had they been held up at the border, and the experience had set Mulder to muttering even as it had left their son staring out the window at their stalkers in very un-babylike concentration.  If those were not simple customs agents-and with William’s reaction that was very unlikely--then the situation was all out of countenance with their past history with expressionless suited types, and it gave them both the prickles of unease.  They had no idea what to do with aliens that did not chase them...and they had discussed the uncomfortable possibility that they were being observed by at least one group, a group that seemed content with simple observation for the nonce.  Not only was it frightening to know that their whereabouts were not a secret to at least one faction, but it seemed that that faction was letting them through unmolested for some reason if not running some kind of covert interference for them.  Could they be the Driving Man’s ‘Renegades’?  Their son seemed to be able to tell the difference between those that meant them harm and those that merely observed, and he had shown only curiousity and surprise rather than fear or anger as he had with the Bounty Hunter.  Which could mean one of several things, not all of them good.
The discussion, based as it was entirely on conjecture, exhausted Scully.  It should be enough that they were safe at the moment...but in their case, no news was not always good news...and a missing chunk of information like that could easily derail them in their precarious state.
After about twenty minutes of quiet but intense speculation, Scully had finally shaken her head wearily.  “What can we do about it, M...George?  I’d like to know what They’re up to as well as you do, but...”  Regret coloured her tone.  It seemed to be almost an omen that they had been accosted the moment they had crossed the border from that relatively quiet country.  --Touch US soil and They can track you.  You leave relative peace behind, and you do it knowingly--  She wondered for a moment why they were willingly thrusting themselves back into that kind of constant danger...but she knew she would be fooling herself if she allowed herself to believe they were any safer in Canada than they were in the States.  At least here they would have access to more information; ignorance spelled death in this Game.  Flattening her lips, Scully lifted William from her lap and pressed his little hand to the window as they crossed the invisible border a few miles down the road from the harrowing customs stop.  “Say goodbye to Canada, Sweet William.  Bye bye.”  She bent and unbent his tiny fingers gently against the glass, feeling as if she were saying an inalterable farewell to a kind of lull that she doubted they would see again for a very long time.  
“Bye bye,” their son chimed in agreeably, then collapsed like a wet noodle back into her lap and dropped his head against his mother’s breast lazily, now that the danger was past not at all unnerved by his parents’ unease.  His fingers returned to his mouth, and his eyes closed as the travel doze overtook him once more.  Scully turned to Mulder with a shake of her head.  “Either They’re watching us or they’re not.  They didn’t seem ready to do us any harm.”
“I know.”  Mulder dragged his fingers through his hair impatiently.  “God, I just want to get off of the damned bus and get a good long look around.  I feel so blindfolded...and my ass is killing me.”  He tried to put on a grin, but it came out more like a wince.  Giving up for the moment, he jerked his chin at their somnolent son.  “At least Will travels well.  I wish I could pick up his trick.”
“He’s had almost as much practice as us,” she responded amiably, following his lead.  Tension could be controlled if you disconnect from it...and such was often necessary in their new life even more than it had been in their old.  So often they were unable to do anything with the information that came to them but wait to see how it would impact them later.  By dint of years of practice she packed up her own frustration and worry in the back of her head and forced herself to settle back into her seat, ignoring the protesting muscles in her back.  She was sure they had molded to the shape of a bus seat.  “So, no forests, no snow, no prehistoric killer insects or hidden spaceships...just flat country and the occasional oil well, and maybe a tail whose intentions we can’t seem to ascertain.  What do you think we’re going to find here?”
Mulder shook his head briefly and visibly forced himself onto the new subject, one over which they had some control.  There was no longer any use discussing their encounter in customs, they’d already hashed it out as far as they were able.  “Not much...but at some point this bus or another very much like it will take us to St. Louis.”  His face finally gave in and the accustomed grin slid into place as he waited for her reaction.  Scully kept her eyes closed and refused to rise to the bait.  She couldn’t count how many times he had snagged one of her suggestions and made it his own.  If she hadn’t gotten upset for nine years and counting, she wouldn’t now...especially not now when there were so many other more important things to think about
“Can’t find anything else in the paper, go to the source?”
“We have to go where the action is, Laurie-honey.  Don’t think you’re the only one worried about what it means.  It bothers me that there wasn’t any follow-up to that article we read.  It’s been like two weeks since we spotted it, and our little encounter back there was the closest thing we’ve had to action since Vancouver.”
“They’re probably just waiting for us to go there, George, so they can pick us up.  The trail is likely cold by now anyway.” 
“We’re just going to have to take that chance if we want to have any idea what we’re going back to whenever it is that we do go home.”  It was a good point.  They knew how to avoid notice and how to spot an ambush, but they had been flying blind for far too long.  Scully nodded, but her eyes were drawn out to the landscape passing by outside their window; flat, rippling fields of wheat and large patches of dense forest with still unevaporated runoff pooling beneath them.  The horizon was endless, and it made her feel that anything was possible and everything was waiting to happen...like they were in the sudden hush before a storm.  It was a good feeling and an uncomfortable one, largely because she knew it would probably pan out as she expected.  She’d had enough experience with these lulls to know that they didn’t last long, and when the storm came, it was usually a mind-bending tornado that swept up everything in its path.
Bus rides apparently led her to a reflective state, she realized as she rested her gaze on the panorama passing by outside.  Not very often did she or Mulder have the time to reflect on their lives.  Their time on this earth seemed geared around sudden bursts of frenetic activity and short breathing spaces between each occurrence where they simply rested from the unending strain that came of fighting for survival...and for what little Truth might be caught and held before it dribbled through their fingers like rain.  It was no wonder that they had managed for so many years to avoid any decision about their relationship in the midst of that storm.  Solid, loyal friendship was easier to deal with, and did not distract from the fight to survive...and evasion was easy when there were more important things happening, ready excuses like alien invasions and dangerous government cover-ups...and a child whose existence could be taken at face value and not explored because it was their lives in danger, and questions about the meanings could wait.  Too, she and Mulder had been playing with fire all those years, and that fire had quickened finally, William and this strange joint adventure being the result of that final, fateful touch that they had avoided for so long…for it had been a Pandora’s box that neither she nor he had been ready to open then, when their lives had depended so heavily on the crisp, emotionless, piston-like workings of their partnership.  And like cogs in a well-oiled machine they had ground on...but she knew that if he would have made the slightest overture, attempted to change the status quo in any way...suggested they hang out after work when she would not have felt the need to redirect or focus their discussion or feel self-conscious about who might be watching...
How had they ever gotten here?  Here, where they were to all intents and purposes married, after so many years of avoiding, redirecting, fear?
Looking back now at their early years, and past the comfortable familiarity that now lay between them--had done for so long--she could admit to herself, knew deep down inside where she could not lie that he had charmed and touched her from day one though their attraction had not developed beyond that simple latent spark until their relationship had already crossed that line from professional camaraderie to intimate friendship.  But by their fourth year together she had allowed her regard for him to go far beyond that of even the closest, most intimate friend, and she knew that, come to the point, she wouldn’t have stopped him had he tried to push the boundaries.  Her experience with Eddie Van Blundht had told her that, whether she wanted to admit it or not.  But she had been too wary of the change, of allowing him or anyone to have that kind of power over her again.  Certainly not when for the first time in her life she had struggled to maintain with a person to whom she was attracted and yet with whom she had a professional association the kind of relationship of equals that she had longed for but never attained with other men.  But along with the decade-long maintenance of that status quo had come stasis, an unchanging state of affairs that had finally forced any evolution of their relationship into a stalemate.  She had needed his respect far more than she had needed to further an intimacy that had already been fulfilling enough at the level that they had sustained for so long, and until she had become an accepted asset at his side she had felt still the sure knowledge that because it was his territory she had inhabited each day, she needed to maintain her niche in order to preserve her status as an equal in the power structure.
Now of course all such questions had become moot long since, and any incongruity that she now felt came largely from the relatively sudden way that they had both been required by the exigencies of fate to slip into their new unitary role.  Not that they had not had a couple of years to come to terms with the alteration...but they had functioned the other way for so long that the change had required almost a paradigm shift in thinking.  
Scully had analyzed her own reactions in the last year, hoping that she might have the chance someday to explore this new incarnation that she had dipped her toes into with Mulder for so brief a time before he had gone, and had come to realize that she had so long been compartmentalized due to the requirements of her life-Scully the partner, Scully the best friend.  Competent Scully the Doctor, rational Scully the Scientist, dependable Scully the Professional, and even staunch Scully the Ice Queen, an incarnation that had too often felt more like Scully the little girl playing in the big boys club.  She had never had the chance to stretch the part of herself she was now required to use, to see how it fit into the many facets of her own being.  Despite a few years of working at it, Scully the Lover was still a stranger, and Scully the Spouse even more so...and she had feared to allow those parts of herself free rein because they were not governed by rationality.  There was nothing rational about love any more than there was in faith, in God, or in fear...and she feared that embracing something irrational would force her to admit how little control human beings actually had over their own existence.  To relinquish that illusion of control, she was coming to learn, was the only rational course, the only way to stay sane, for it was to face a truth long buried by tools and facades that were built by the fearful.  Human beings, like any other animal, had little control over their own lives no matter what illusions they built to deny it.  The difference between the other animals and humans was that the only control they could exert was over their impulses; when to run, when to fight, when to hunt, when to sleep, whereas humans controlled only their thoughts and perceptions of the world.  Scully was beginning to realize that the way in which one viewed the world could be either prison or tool; therein lay human choice and free will...and therein lay the only power.  Facing that truth was the bravest thing she could do.  She would not lose Mulder’s respect, she would not lose her own...and no one else’s mattered anymore.  She must live as she saw fit.
But because of her unpracticed fear in that regard, she remained unsure of how well suited to the task she might be, even after all the time she had spent hoping that they might have the chance to try to make it work within the limited room their complicated lives left them.  She understood suddenly Mulder’s own worries on that score, and wondered if they would ever get up the balls to discuss it openly.  One thing was certain, though.  They had spent years dancing that fine line between the territoriality of work partners and that of dear friends that could become something more, and neither had ever said a word about their reasons for such terrified possessiveness.  For her part, she knew that so much of her life had by that time become wrapped around Mulder and his Quest that she had been hard-put to find her own reasons to continue without him after his abduction.  In the face of that horror she had learned to live for her own reasons and for her unborn child’s, shifting the balance of their relationship in the direction of that new priority at his return...but before their son had arrived, her entire life outside of their Quest had faded or been taken away, and all that she had known, finally, was the x-files and Fox Mulder.  Finding the happy medium between those two priorities, the old and the new, was both easier and more difficult now that the Quest and the Child had become one.  Easier because both relationship and child could remain central, no longer distractions from the Fight...and harder because the old ways must be transferred to the new without the loss of that underpinning cycle of shared belief that kept them whole.  
And so the unspoken that had once lain beneath the surface of their partnership must now be laid bare that they might continue.  She must initiate an open discussion of the unspoken, almost marriage-like nature of their working...and, she admitted it to herself now, their non-working relationship, for she doubted that Mulder ever would.  He would coast along as they were, focusing on the Quest to save their son and the pressing demands of survival, for they were one and the same, and they were his mission, his crusade as Samantha had been, once.  But they had both been too long possessive without taking the chance of making a claim, both of them trying to stand aside in the early years to allow each other the space to find that no other relationship could ever fulfill either of them as this one had and did.  She knew without his saying it out loud that Mulder had already considered her his significant other in this life, and long before she had been forced to face the question herself.  It may not have been a marriage in the most popular sense, but that he thought of her and them that way, especially during that limbo time, gave credence to the subtle currents by which their relationship moved; a relationship that was in many ways more intimate than any marriage.  And so they continued to evolve, and they must learn to adapt.  Running on old steam would not get them where they needed to go.  Scully the Lover was determined to make it work.  She had seen what it was like to lose the strength of this Truth...and their Fight could not afford to crumble from within. 
xxx
Mulder was looking down at his father’s ruby ring where it lay cradled in their clasped hands.  “Its crazy how your past creeps up on you sometimes...especially now when things like this seem so unimportant.”  He looked up from the ring, catching her eye, and unexpectedly volunteered something that she had never bothered to wonder about.  “I was nearly married once, you know,” he murmured to her.  It was almost as if he had followed the path of her thoughts with her and was now confessing some long-forgotten misdeed.  Scully regarded him in surprise.  Unexpected...definitely unexpected.  “Back in ‘88,” he went on without pause, “when I’d just started in Violent Crimes.  She left.  It was a mistake...but I still wore the ring for a while.”  As if suddenly feeling the weight of her incredulous stare, he shook his head, looking across the aisle and out the far window, letting his gaze rest on the landscape outside as she had done earlier.  “I was still young enough to be idealistic at that point, I guess.”
Scully stared at the back of his head for a moment, narrowly avoided clearing her throat.  “I didn’t know,” she murmured finally, neutrally, not wanting to ask and yet needing to know.  She thought that was before he had met Diana Fowley, but...and never a whisper.  Never a word.  She ought to be stunned, but instead she was just silent.  She had nearly married Jack Willis, would have married Daniel; who was she to protest such revelations?  She did clear her throat then, fighting for a noncommittal tone.  “What happened?”  To her surprise, Mulder turned to her and regarded her with his old, slightly mocking sardonic look.
“Oh, c’mon, Sc...Laurie, you saw what I was like when you first met me.  I was even worse then, in a way.”  He shook his head and stared into the space in front of him once again.  “To say that I was pretty screwed up would be an understatement, before the x-files gave me some purpose and direction for a life I felt was treading water, stagnating, going nowhere unless it was spiraling out of control.”  He grinned ruefully at her.  “I guess I’ve always been a little unbalanced.  Finding that Basement gave me a reason to take care of myself; gave me something to focus on.  I mean I was smoking a pack a day, I had no real drive, and I had lost any idealism I ever had when I was twelve years old.”  He looked at her with a ghost of his old smile.  “I guess I was kind of a cynical kid, and I grew into a pain in the ass to be around.  She couldn’t take it...couldn’t take me.”  He shook his head again.  “Actually, she left right after I met Dr. Werber and had my first regression.  I had stopped paying attention to anything else, and by the time I maneuvered myself onto the x-files I was already completely focused there.  I can be pretty single-minded.”  His grin faded as he looked at her a little grimly.  “Diana Fowley was a rebound...but she never knew that.  Bill Patterson was pretty annoyed with me too, as you might have noticed when you met him.  Thought I’d betrayed him...or maybe that I’d betrayed my own promise.”
How had he known what she’d been thinking?  “I’m glad you told me,” she replied softly, and she meant it.  How had she never known this?  Had she really been more open about her own past than he had been about his?  She thought that unlikely.  More probable was that Mulder had never felt that any of those details were important because they hadn’t added anything to the Fight.  They were part of a past that was so remote to him that it seemed like another person’s life...just as her idylls with Jack and with Daniel Waterford felt to her now.  A different life, a different path; roads that both of them had eschewed long ago in favour of another, more harrowing journey through self-discovery and into this indeterminate existence that they now faced...together.
“Did you ever yearn for just one solvable case?  Like you used to have in VC?  Whenever we got put on those open-and-shut cases that no one else could manage you were always so thorough.  I understand why you didn’t stay in VC, but I can see where Patterson was coming from too.”
“I was good at my job in VC, Scully,” he answered quietly.  “I could wish that my chosen field lent itself more toward an easy kill-ratio; but then the point would be lost, wouldn’t it?  I think it was more about the ride.”
“I think everything is,” Scully answered him as softly, and pulled his hand into her lap, letting him know that she was there, that it changed nothing.  After a moment he reached up with his free arm and stroked an errant lock of her hair out of her face, pulled her to him.  She rested her head against his inviting shoulder, one hand holding their son safely on her lap.  “I’m going to have to re-do the hair next week I think.  The roots are starting to show.”
Mulder didn’t answer, only pressed his lips to the crown of her head and then laid his cheek against the soft pillow of her hair.
“And you still need a haircut,” she murmured just to have something to say.  Wondering if thinking of the last time he’d worn a ring brought about any second thoughts in him when he looked at the one he wore now...for all of the many and some of them ambivalent reasons that they wore them.  Wondering how she would feel about the rings they wore if he ever said they were more than just for show.  In her heart they were, and she knew that in all the ways that mattered he felt it too...and that’s all that did matter.
xxx
They had no incidents that night as they took a room in another nondescript motel indistinguishable from any of the others they had spent most of the last decade in, swept it for bugs and settled in for the night.  But Mulder’s unexpected revelations of that day bubbled around in her head, and Scully for the first time since Vancouver felt driven to write in her journal.  It was, after all, a tome about the nature of relationships, and about the world that affected them so.  About her son, and about God.  The insecurity of each day lived unsure of future moments.
In many ways her journal had become the vehicle by which she might get out the things she couldn’t dare to say to Mulder out loud all those years, and now the fears that she knew she could voice to him if she so chose, as well as the things she could not say to their son until he was old enough to understand.  She had begun this process when she had first been diagnosed with cancer, knowing that Mulder did not and would not understand, because she had needed him to.  Explaining things to him had taught her to explain things to herself...helped her to get in touch with her own feelings and motivations.  If Mulder ever did read the whole thing she thought she would die of embarrassment, for as an accounting it was as honest as his own journal surely was.  For all that, despite a mild curiousity she felt no desperate need to invade his privacy again, and knew he felt the same about hers.  They were both very private people, and in this enforced closeness they both needed a place in which they could remain private.  But they had learned to really talk a lot more than they used, and the accounts would no longer be a bar to their own communication.  The journals now could be a place for fears, and for the future, no longer for the past.  The present they would take care of now, before it had the chance to pass them by.

--“Today we had another encounter.  It has led me to think, now that I have the time.  I think, sometimes, in the night; in the peace that exists for us between battles, where we regain for a time the comfort and safety that only we share, just us three.  I wonder, what is this thing that keeps us running, to, and away?  And to what, and away from what?  Toward some unseen goal that only he can see, and I have learned to believe in despite…and away from a fear that we all know exists.  For it is a daily pressure on the backs of our minds, this fear, this threat and danger.  And the inarguable existence of the one has come to prove the nature and existence of the other--a weight of evidence that in the end, despite my noble resistance, I could not make untrue, make its weight less or its meaning any other than that which I have come, finally, reluctantly, to embrace.  In the end, I could not make less earth-shattering the final conclusion I have been forced to draw.  For in my fear I had thought that to deny it would be to remain safe; but I have seen through you, my son, that whether I admit or no my silence would not keep you safe; for the danger exists with or without my belief.  And so I must believe…because there is more to lose now if I err on the side of freedom than on that of caution.  For where before there was only us two…now there is you. 
--“My son, someday you will ask us why.  Why must we always be moving, Mother?  Why must I never have a home, or my own name, or a family that extends beyond us three?  And we will only be able to tell you that though I had never wanted such for you; oh God, believe me my child I did not, for such was my lot that I would never wish to pass on again…we will only be able to tell you that such is our fate, and that it is a fate that your father and I chose long ago--a fate that has unfortunately extended beyond us to affect your own.  For we chose you, and chose to involve you; perhaps selfishly, though in the end the choice was taken from our hands that you might be born despite our reconsidering and our fears.
--“Perhaps that is the message, then, and you were meant to be as my mother and my family believe…for in the end we come to learn that though we might have chosen at any time before to let you go, to release you from our precarious existence in order to keep you safe, we cannot now that we know that you are a part of it all…as much if not more a part of it than we two.  For you, my son, are the key.  The key to things so great, movements so massive, one child must surely buckle under the weight--even one so strong as you are.  And now we must beg the question: where do we go from here?  When all bets are off, and no one holds the cards?  Where is there anywhere safe enough and quiet enough to raise a child to fight a Future that is already upon us?  Can it even be done?
--“I want to Believe.”--

She wanted to believe that they would have the chance.  She wondered if they ever would.
xxx
Sauget and Carondelet suburbs
St. Louis, MI

St. Louis had been an oppressive industrial warren of cars, exhaust, gray close air and looming glassy structures girded with gray concrete…the kind of place that made watching out for alien spooks and government ambushes difficult if not impossible.  The suburb of Sauget was a nice contrast; pretty and picket-fenced, the kind of neighborhood that made Mulder instantly suspicious and sarcastic.  With its pale-coloured buildings and nice architecture it carried a much lighter feeling than existed in the city that they had entered with some trepidation earlier that day.  The day was May 20, 2002.  It was 3:15pm, and they had been reunited for a little less than a month.
Laurie and George Hale Anderson and their son had come to Sauget ostensibly to reconnect with estranged relatives.  The car they’d rented had been indistinguishable from any of the several hundred others that their alter egos had rented in similar suburbs and cities across the nation over the last decade.  The circumstances, however, were entirely different.  Make or break; they would either find information here that would lead them closer to home, or they would find a trap...or they would find nothing.  A cold trail.  Information that let them nowhere.  It was a gamble, just as everything in their lives was a gamble.  They had driven toward the local police station warily, keeping their eyes open for signs that they were being watched.  They reached the station in one piece, checked their cover story.
“Make sure they know how worried you are, Laurie,” Mulder said intensely, gripping the steering wheel.  “Flaunt Will so they know you’re just a panicked mother.  Be distraught.  If you convince them that he’s your sister’s kid and he’s the result of fertility treatments in that clinic, they’ll be sympathetic and might tell you something about the case that we haven’t heard yet.  It’s worth a shot; they had to have released some details to the public by now.”
Scully was nodding as she unbuckled her seatbelt and twisted back to free William from his restraints.  “Where are you going to be?”
Mulder grinned at her.  “Poaching,” he teased in typical Mulder fashion, but his eyes were serious.  “Go girl.”  Just like him to hand her off without a convenient excuse.  Without another word, Scully slipped out of the car and pulled William out of the back seat.  Mulder pulled away in the car and rounded the curb to the side parking lot, leaving her standing alone on the asphalt with their son in her arms.
--If he sneaks around back and causes a riot I’ll kill him-- she thought.  They couldn’t play fast and loose anymore.  They had to keep a low profile.  Mulder was never the subtlest of people, though; whatever self-confidence he lacked he made up for it with single-minded intensity.  Compressing her lips into a thin line, she shrugged a little to settle herself into the part she was going into the police station to play, and turned resolutely to stride up the blue-edged wheelchair access ramp and through the smoked-glass security doors.  Pausing in the act of entry, she surveyed her appearance in the ready-made mirror.  Jeans.  T-shirt reading, ‘Aloha!  Been to Hawaii today?’  Not the average attire one would expect from Dana K. Scully, former agent with the Federal Bureau of Investigation.  Damp brown hair in the utilitarian ponytail that was her favourite disguise outside of sweatpants and jogging shoes.  Baby.  Well, that might be a giveaway...but the hair and the sunglasses were a nice touch.  It was bright in Sauget of a sunny spring afternoon.  Taking a deep breath, Laurie Anderson shoved the door open and stepped into the cool interior of the precinct house.
Long desk.  Uniform behind it.  A dozen desks behind that.  A cop shop like ten thousand others they had entered in their ambivalent FBI career.  The officer at the front desk had nodded genially at her.
	“Hi there, ma’am.  Can I help you with anything?”
	“Yes.”  --You aren’t the official and capable Agent Scully here.  Be unnerved.  That shouldn’t be too hard in present circumstances--  “Yes, I…at least I hope so.  Officer, could you…are you able to give me any…information about…cases?”
“Well, that all depends, ma’am,” he said in a kindly and patient tone.  “What cases do you need information on?”
“Well, I heard that it was your…precinct or whatever that was investigating that case with the man who broke into the fertility clinic, and I just…”
“Do you have some connection with the suspect, ma’am?” the cop asked, sounding a bit more interested.  He had tensed and leaned forward, a predatory look in his sharp features.
“No, I…no,” she answered softly.  “It's just that my baby here--his name is James--he was…well, he’s my sister’s kid, but she died and we came to finalize his adoption and pick up his medical records; we’re his godparents…but she was getting fertility treatments at the Carondelet clinic.  That’s how he was born.  My husband and I came here to get him and take him home with us, but…when we heard about the fire and that…man…”
“Oh.”  The cop looked a little less ready to pounce suddenly.  “Well I doubt that you have anything to worry about then, ma’am.  All the records from that clinic were regularly forwarded to a hospital near here by electronic transfer, and they’re still sealed.  I’m sure nothing on your sister or her little boy there has been lost.”
“Oh…it's…it's not that; I was just wondering if you had found out anything that might indicate that any of the doctors there might be…involved in whatever that man did.  The paper seemed to say that they were, and I just wanted to make sure there’s nothing there that might endanger Jimmy…that he’s safe.”  That was certainly not a far stretch.  She drew a deep sigh, slumped her shoulders theatrically.  “I just want to put it all behind us and have a good life with Selena’s boy.  We’ve never had a child, and I don’t…I don’t think my husband or I could handle any more surprises.  Not just now.”
The officer’s face softened and he nodded in sympathy.  “I wish I could tell you more, ma’am, but all we can make public we already did, and it’s in the papers.  We can’t give out details on cases that are still being investigated; it might foul up the investigation.  If you haven’t seen all the press releases I can show you the whole stack, but that’s about all I can give you at this time.”
Scully nodded and hiked William back up onto her hip.  “I…I’d appreciate that sir.  I think it would ease my mind…and my husband’s.  Just so we know that he’s okay…”
The cop nodded and held out a hand over the desk.  “Just stay here for a minute, ma’am, and I’ll get you those statements.”  He turned from the desk and said something to the detective just behind him, then turned a little impatiently.  “Take a seat, ma’am.  I’ll be right back.”
Scully went over to sit in the hard fiberglass seat and wait the man’s return, firmly thrusting down the impatience that bubbled up under her collar.  --Just give me the clinic address and we can be gone-- she muttered to herself.  She doubted she would be able to suss out the identity of the “unnamed suspect” from reading the releases, but at least if they knew where in Carondelet this clinic was, they would be able to go there and nose around themselves.  If the thing had been listed in the phone book they wouldn’t have had to go through all this trouble, but apparently the clinic had been built in the last year.  
The officer was back in a moment with the releases, and he bid her luck as he went back to the desk, occasionally eyeing her from behind the counter as she rapidly perused the documents.  It had been a month.  There were several more entries since the one they had read while they were up in Vancouver, but none of them mentioned any further involvement by Doggett and Reyes, nor did they say any more on the “unnamed suspect” they had pursued from the clinic other than that he was in custody and that the investigation was ongoing.  The Bill Weis murder was apparently ongoing as well.
The press knew less than she did.
Back in the sunny Illinois afternoon Scully shaded William’s fluffy head from the glare and waited for Mulder to come around and pick them up.  It took him a while.
“What did you find?” he asked as she got back into her recently vacated passenger seat after buckling the baby into the back.
“Not much.”  She fastened her seatbelt and leaned back out of the shaft of sunlight bathing her torso.  “Nothing further on either case or on that “unnamed suspect” John and Monica were chasing, but I managed to figure out the approximate location of the clinic.”  She looked at him.  “We need to pick up a street map.  We’re looking for the cross-streets of Lancashire and Passaquoit.  Hopefully those are fairly large thoroughfares in Carondelet.”
Mulder nodded and looked ahead for a moment, gripping the wheel.  “We can’t do much once we get there, Laurie.  The place is being watched by more than the local yokels.  I don’t suppose they managed to recover any of those records.”
“If they did, I doubt They left behind any that we might be interested in, George.  There was supposed to be a regular electronic transfer of records to a nearby hospital, but I’m pretty sure its been cleaned out too, by now…very quietly.”
Mulder put the car in drive and slowly pulled away from the curb, still staring ahead.  “Unless this whole case stirred up more publicity than They needed.  They could be waiting for this thing to die down before They come back.”
“It already has died down.  The local PD is just going through the motions at this point.”  She turned her head to look at him, understanding very much his need to find the answers in this case.  “C’mon M…George.  You know these people as well as I do.  They wouldn’t take that chance.  I just wish we could approach…our sources, see if they found anything while they were here and the thing was still stirred up.”  She reached over to cover his free hand with hers where it rested on the shifter.  “We might be as far as we can get from this end.”
He glanced over at her sharply and then returned his gaze to the road ahead.  “I don’t believe that any more than you do, Laurie.  If I do, we’ve failed, and we can’t fail.”  He jerked his head back toward the backseat where their son sat burbling to his stuffed UFO.  “Not if we want to keep him safe.”  He shifted his grip and lifted her hand to his mouth, kissed the knuckles gently...and his face slid back once again into that well-known and beloved lopsided half-smile that she had come to depend on for her peace of mind.  “He’s our lucky rabbit’s foot.  We’ve got faith, hope, and luck…and destiny.  Let’s go find us a conspiracy.”
Scully could not but smile as they looked ahead to the rest of the journey.  For some reason she felt inordinately lucky just to be here.  With William.  And with Mulder.  Nothing seemed too serious with all that pain left behind forever.
xxx
Carondelet was as pretty as Sauget, if a bit more built up, less of a neighborhood type place.  The clinic was empty when they found it, police tape across the doors, closed for business.  No one came to meet them at the entrance, and after a quick peek through the glass Scully convinced Mulder that there was nothing they could find here that hadn’t already been recovered by those from whom they were running.
At a loss, Mulder had decided to take a gamble.
They found an Internet café out of the way on the edge of St. Louis.  Fingers poised at the keys, Mulder glanced at Scully briefly from where she stood over his shoulder with William grabbing at his hair and nodded.  Account falsified.  He was ready to drop the Boys a line…and hopefully through them Doggett, Reyes, Skinner…and Scully’s mother.
“What do you think?  Should I throw him a bone?” Mulder quipped.  Scully didn’t answer, and after a moment he nodded and bent over the keys.

>>Slam dunk, Dawg!  What's up with our man B.W.?<<

At Scully’s slight smile Mulder looked defensive.  “Hey, he did a good job.  I can admit it.”
Scully nodded and slid her arms around her mate type in her own short message.

>>24lbs, 26in.  Thank you<<

She looked at Mulder and nodded back.  Mulder clicked send, and they high tailed it out of the café and St. Louis, heading south.
Scully fell asleep on the bus to Memphis, and dreamed the kind of dream that she had come to recognize as more than a dream.  John and Monica sat in the well-known and beloved basement office, like home where the furniture had been moved.  Jarring, yet still familiar.  They were talking about the case and about herself and Mulder in a desultory fashion when the phone rang.  In the dream it was Doggett that answered, moving through the golden half-light from the tiny windows as if underwater.
“Jahn Doggett.”
“Agent Doggett.  Long time no see,” spoke the gravelly voice of Melvin Frohike.  “Is Agent Reyes there with you?”
“She is.  What are you boys up to?”
“We’ve gotten something you two should have a look at,” the gravelly voice muttered conspiratorially.  “Can you get away?”
Doggett looked up and nodded at Reyes once, eyes full of an indefinable emotion.
“We’ll be right down.”
Scully dreamed a journey through familiar gray corridors riddled with slate-coloured suits and brick-striped ties, the echoing parking structure at once so familiar and yet so far away, and a silent drive that ended in a seamy doorway at the end of some anonymous back-alley drive.  Dreamed the complicated series of locks turning and sliding in the echoing alley, dreamed John and Monica entering a new underground hovel looking neither to the right nor to the left.  Dreamed a silent conversation with the Lone Gunmen, at the end of which Byers handed Reyes a folded piece of paper, dreamed John leaning over Monica’s shoulder as the document was read.  Dreamed their eyes meeting, and a nod.  Farewells and an exit.  Back in John’s car they turned to each other, discussing earnestly.
“Can we tell Skinner?” Monica asked worriedly, eyes swimming with concern.
“I don’t even know if we can risk tellin’ Mrs. Scully.  But she deserves to know, and so does the Boss.”
“What do you think we should do?”
In the dream Doggett nodded quietly to himself.
“We head for the nearest Innanet café an’ tell ‘em what we know.”  He glanced back over at his partner.  “It’s the only thing we can do.”
Monica nodded.  “I’ll go talk to Maggie after we’re sure they’ve gotten the reply.”
“Laurie?”
Scully opened her eyes to confront Mulder’s gaze, olive-green in the fading light.
“We’re at a stop if you want to get out with Will and stretch your legs.”
Scully stared at him for a moment, disoriented, then for the first time noticed the orderly filing out of their fellow passengers.  “Mmmmm?  Oh.  Yes…are you coming?”
“I’ll be right behind you.”  God, that goofy smile of his made her heart do flip-flops…especially when he took her off guard.  On impulse she reached up to cup his face with her hand.  His smile deepened, cheek creasing against her palm.  He needed to shave.  She loved him so much that sometimes she feared the strength of that emotion.  She barely noticed the sweet smile that crossed her own face.  Mulder did notice.
“Where are we?”
“Someplace nameless on the 55.  You hungry?”
“Hmmm?  No.  But we might need something for the baby.”
“Well, I guess it’s a date.  I’m out of seeds.”
She nodded, still not quite back in the moment.  Mulder seemed finally to pick up on her distracted state of mind.  “Hey.  You okay?”
“I’m fine, M…George.  I was just…I was dreaming.”
“Must’ve been a good one.  You didn’t make a peep.”
	She looked at him steadily for a moment, then smiled.  “I think we’re going to have something waiting for us in Memphis.”
	Mulder’s smile broadened.  “Oh yeah?  You have another hunch?”
	This time she smiled openly back at him.  He was far too pleased with himself when he figured her out.  She wouldn’t hand him a victory so easily; she never had yet.  “Maybe something like that.”
	Mulder turned and hefted their lolling son, who woke with a cranky sound.  An accomplished traveler, he hated to be disturbed while in his mini-coma.  Patting the small terrycloth-clad back absently, Mulder inclined his head back along the now empty aisle.  “Tell me about it out there.”
	They made a quick stop in the convenience store to pick up sunflower seeds and applesauce for the Mulders, then stepped back outside into the deepening twilight to pace the gravel.  Mulder was the first to break the companionable silence.
	“Have you been having them a lot lately?  These dreams that are more than dreams?”
	Scully glanced up at him sharply, but gave in and nodded after a moment. 
	“Since you were taken.  I could see you sometimes…”  She met his eyes again, this time holding the gaze.  “It was just how you described it.  At first I thought it was just my imagination, but when you told me how it was…”
	He nodded understanding and she rushed on, avoiding further mention of the details of those ‘dreams’.
	“It happened again after we got you back…after we weren’t talking.  I could see you in your apartment, alone…it stopped after you started coming over again.  I thought they were gone…but after you left I could see you sometimes.  Out here.  Awake, listening…missing us.  Worrying.  My rational mind tells me that the dreams are just a product of loss, of emotional distress, but then I wonder…”  She got those feelings, she admitted now, ever since his near death in New Mexico when Cancerman had tried to kill him.  She had known that he was alive even when there had been no room left to hope; had felt somehow unable to admit his death or to settle into the reality of it even after they had put him into the earth last year, when intellectually she had thought she had lost him forever.  Now though she would shy away from admitting to any psychic tendencies, she no longer second-guessed her instincts about Mulder.  She knew that they had forged some kind of bond, similar but different from the way she knew in an instant when William was in trouble or hurt.  She just...felt it.   She pressed her lips together, shook her head slightly.
“Do we really know how much pregnancy might alter or…focus something like this?  Change our perceptions along with the rest of our brain and body chemistry?  It happened with B.J. Morrow...but Aubrey was a slightly different situation than...than ours.  And if dreams are answers to questions we haven’t yet figured out how to ask...”
Mulder just looked at her for a moment as if forcing himself to let a golden opportunity to razz her go by like a summer rain cloud, but he was adult enough to realize that she was letting him see a vulnerable side, one that he would like to see more often.  He dropped his hand to hers and began walking again.  “I believe,” he said after a moment, and his voice was serious as he murmured his response, “that we all have latent psychic ability; that sometimes we are closed off to it by the programming inherent in our society, that for some of us it takes a traumatic event or an instance of great need to reestablish our connection with these responses, help us to find those old pathways again.  I don’t doubt that pregnancy might assist in reopening those channels…but I think there’s more to it than that.”
She nodded.  “I just saw our…co-workers back at the office.  They got a phone call from our other associates and made a special trip.  The last thing I saw before you woke me was a café sign…and they were discussing whether…who they could tell.”
Mulder’s face didn’t change, but she knew that he accepted her dream as something more without ridicule or razzing, for which she was grateful.  After a moment he said, “Well I guess we’ll see soon enough what they decided.  I just hope they have good news for us.”
X   X   X

(Amor Fati, pt.44: “Child Of Man”)

Cranfield City Cemetery
Outskirts of Natchez, MS
May 29, 2002
11:26am

“I feel like flashing a badge or waving a gun or something.  Maybe that’ll get someone to take us seriously.”
Scully glanced up at Mulder from where she squatted on the edge of the police line that surrounded the closest disturbed gravesite, rolling the dark grainy soil of the Mississippi Alluvial Plain between her vinyl-clad fingertips.  After a moment she stood and stripped off one prophylactic to shade her eyes from the full-on glare of the midday summer sun, the silky talcum from the glove sliding between her fingers with pleasant familiarity.  Well, late spring, but it felt like August here near the Gulf.  Humid as all get-out.
“Yeah, but I doubt they’d believe us if we told them we’re officials from out of town who just happen to make it a practice to tote their child around to crime scenes.”  She shook her head.  “It does feel a little strange to have no official reason to be here muscleing in.  I wonder what they’ve got over there.”  She glanced at him again, but he was looking across the vaguely fluttering yellow crime-scene ribbon to where the local PD were bustling around the second and apparently more attractive gravesite, his face predictably expressionless as he squinted into the glare.  Behind her in his backpack, Will made a grumbling sound.  He was well protected from the beating sun by the makeshift awning spread over the top of the nylon and aluminum apparatus they used to carry him now that he had officially outgrown his Snugli, but that didn’t mean he enjoyed the heat.
They were dressed like a cute touristy couple out for a stroll and attracted by the excitement of the constabulary find, and such an identity only served to get them frustratingly close to the scene without getting them close enough to learn anything important.  Mind still turning over what they knew, musing over their unexpected stroke of luck, Scully reached up to joggle William’s hand absently, hoping he wouldn’t start fussing now.  He’d had prickly heat once last summer when he was barely three months old, and it had not been a pleasant experience.
“I don’t suppose we could tell them Will’s a great police psychic?” Mulder cracked with a totally straight face as he nodded at the scene ahead.  “Or better yet, a psychic surgeon so we can have time alone with the body.”  His eyes flickered to her briefly.  “We could tell them you’ve become experienced at assisting him with autopsies...”
“You’re funny,” Scully responded blandly, her eyes never leaving the investigation ahead.  It was…inordinately frustrating to be stuck here outside their normal sphere of influence--and just when they might be onto something.  They had stumbled into this case by pure serendipity after a frustrating roadblock had stopped them in their tracks last night.
xxx
The Computer Hideaway
West Memphis, AR
May 24, 2002

St. Louis may have been a bust in a way, all leads cold…but it had been a necessary step to their next destination.  The next necessary step had been West Memphis, just off the I-55 where they had checked the mail account.  After a short but anxious wait Mulder had grinned in triumph and brought the single message up full-screen. 

>>31 1/4, 91 1/4.  Miss N with a handshake.  Some trouble with the Boys, but Mom, Boss-man, everybody okay, this end<<
>>You're welcome.  Give them both a hug for me<<

Getting up from the chair suddenly, Mulder had swung her and William into his arms and led them in a triumphant dance despite her confusion at the cryptic message.  But then, some parts were not so cryptic.  At the mention of her mother, her eyes had filled with tears.  Mulder dipped her and the baby both, then pulled her back up and reached out to brush her cheek.  “Don’t worry.  Skinner’s running interference for us, and everybody’s okay.  And now they know that we’re okay.  It’s all good.”  He frowned.  “I wonder what he means about the Stooges though.”
Scully shook her head impatiently, trying to clear her eyes, then freed one hand to dab at them briskly.  It was such a relief to know her mother was okay, that…  “Who knows what kind of trouble those guys can get themselves into.  If it was serious, they would have said something.”  She willed herself to believe that, knowing that there was little they could do to help even if something had gone terribly wrong.  Shaking off the thought, she tilted her head to the message still displayed on the screen.  “What are we looking at here?”
Mulder had pulled her in against him, and she had gratefully rested her head against his chest for a moment.  “Unless I miss my guess, those are coordinates.”  He had grinned down at the top of her head and rubbed William’s back where he squirmed between them.  “I got to know what they looked like when I dropped by that ‘southern installation’ to pick you up a couple of years ago.”
Scully had brushed at her eyes again, annoyed that she would be so emotional at the simple mention of her mother…though she knew the cause.  That was home talking to them.  The first place in her life to be such, now lost to her, maybe forever.  Half-angrily she turned her thoughts away from loss and to business.  “I still don’t know how you found that.”
“Luck.  What I can’t for the life of me figure out is why our associates would skip out on the Sauget investigation if there was still something to find.”
“Maybe they got shut down.  We’ve both been there.  They’re probably just glad we’re able to use the information they couldn’t.”  Mulder had made a face above her head before he leaned over to delete the message.  She had disengaged herself from him and gone to pick up a drink for the baby while he dismantled the mail account.  As they had stepped outside onto the street the speakers above the door to the café had changed songs.  'I put on my blue suede shoes, and I boarded the plane...'  Scully had looked up in time to see a look of sweet reminiscence cross Mulder’s face.  “You ever been here before, George?” she asked in a generous tone.  “I’m sure we could find the time for you to stop by Graceland.  I know you’re interested in that little piece of history.”
She had watched as his face turned a slight shade of red.
“I came down her once to do just that, as a matter of fact.  Remember when I was forced to take that vacation a while back?  The second time you got your photo in an case file?”
Now it was her turn to look ill at ease.  The second night they had spent together he had run his fingers wonderingly over the now smooth edges of her tattoo.  “You know the Ourborous has a fascinating history,” he had told her.  “It’s a symbol of eternity used by nearly every ancient culture on this earth.  A sign that the wearer understands the cyclical nature of fate and destiny.”  She remembered her arousal at the caress, and looked up in time to see him smile.
“I don’t suppose you grabbed a map while we were at the depot, Laurie?  Where’s our best bet, do you think?  Gas station or library?”
The West Memphis Public Library was just down the street.  Miss N.  Natchez, Mississippi.
xxx
Billings Bed and Breakfast for Fine Friendly Folk
Auburn, MS
May 29, 2002
10:21am

In Natchez they had taken a room at a bed and breakfast in nearby Auburn, but had turned up nothing the first night and were not sure quite where to start.  They were just finishing off the very palatial Southern breakfast served by their comfortable-seeming hostess the next morning when Mulder had sat up straight in his seat with a wordless exclamation.
“Hey, Shelly-honey!  I think we’re being given a second chance.”
Scully had looked up from her omelet in time to field the small local paper Mulder thrust at her over the top of the coffee cups.  “What is it?”
“Second page, about halfway down.”  Mulder’s face was suffused with an almost jubilant glow.  “When you think you’re down for the count, fate takes a hand.”
She’d picked up the paper with slight misgivings and glanced over the second page.  “’UFO’s sighted over Natchez three nights running.  Not swamp gas this time, claims local fire chief.’”  She raised her eyes to meet her ‘husband’s’.  “Okay, I’ll admit, that’s fairly convenient.”
Mulder, still grinning widely, had opened his mouth to give one of his insouciant replies when the voices of the married proprietors of the establishment suddenly broke into their discussion.  The disagreement floated across the room to the ‘Henderson’s’ from where the unlikely-seeming couple stood in the open doorway to the kitchen.
“And I say I don’t care a damn if it is Addie’s boy found the graves!  That doesn’t mean we ought to go runnin’ down to Cranfield to gawk with every other soul who stops by.  My Lord, Myron; they’re likely to have a thousand tourists stoppin’ by as it is!  And us with customers to take care of!”
“I just thought you might like to offer her your support, love, seeing as how she’s been your best friend since time began and all.  But if you think she doesn’t need you, well…”
“I can call her if she needs my support, Myron.  I don’t need to up and run off across town and leave you alone to neglect our guests.  See; you’re neglectin’ em now!  Weren’t you just fetching for to open up some more sugar for these kind folks to have their coffee proper?”  Leaving her husband muttering in the doorway of the kitchen, Velma Billings swept up to their table in all her impressive bulk and favoured them with a kindly smile.  “Can I get you anything else while Mr. Billings looks for that sugar, Mr. and Mrs. Henderson?”
“No, we’re fine, thank you Mrs. Billings,” Scully began.  She glanced at Mulder.  His eyes were gleaming with predatory fascination as he seized instinctively on a possible case of interest, and she glared at him in silent warning to let her handle needling their hostess for details.  The last thing they needed was to stand out in anyone’s mind.  Mulder was grinning in a worrying fashion, however, bouncing a jubilant William on his lap.  Scully nearly groaned aloud at the mischief twinkling in her man’s eyes.  William, for his part, was grinning in equal content, small chubby face festooned with homemade blueberry jam and crumbs as he vibrated on his father’s knee.
“I’m sorry, but we couldn’t help overhearing your discussion with your husband, Mrs. Billings.”  Mulder had put on his best unthreatening smile as he ceased jouncing their son and leaned forward, trying to look merely interested.  “What exactly did your friend’s son find in…Cranfield, was it?”  He had ignored Scully’s long-suffering sigh.
“That man!”  Mrs. Billings burst out like an exasperated steam train.  “He eats us out of house and home and never gains a pound.  The whole neighborhood believes I starve him to take care of the guests.  And now he goes and disturbs you folks at your breakfast!  My Lord!  It’s a wonder we have any business at all, the way that fool man carries on.”
Mulder began to look frustrated, but before he could continue with what he thought of as tact, Scully forestalled him by leaning forward herself, resigned to playing along as usual.  “Your friend’s boy didn’t get into any trouble, did he Mrs. Billings?”
“What’s that, chile?  Well, I don’t expect you’ll want to hear all that, and not a sweet young couple like you with a baby!  It must be your first vacation since before he was born!”
“Well, sort of,” Mulder agreed, burying his impatience in a sip of coffee by habit.  It was unsweetened, and he made a face at its strong bitterness.  Scully smiled smugly over the rim of her own cup as she drew in the heavenly aroma.  Ambrosia with cream.  No sugar to wait for.  She took a sip of the coffee, watching as Mulder patently ignored her to turn back to the older woman with an indulgent smile, voice lowered conspiratorially.  “You see, Mrs. Billings…well, the thing is, my wife here has a secret passion for murder mysteries, and she’s been thinking of trying her hand at writing one herself.  She always keeps her eyes open for those little details that might spice up a scene.  Since we’ve been vacationing here she’s said she might possibly use Natchez as the setting for a large part of the book.  It turns the second honeymoon into kind of a research trip, but I love her too much to care; isn’t that right sweetheart?”  Scully gaped at him, for a moment forgetting her coffee.
“Is that so?  Well, my Lord, that’s wonderful, child!  Are you gatherin’ material right here in our little establishment for your book?  What a hobby.  Oh, dear, that’s quite exciting!”  Mrs. Billings was positively beaming at her as she tugged a nearby chair over to their table.
Scully set down her coffee cup and gave their hostess a pained smile before nodding in assent.  Mulder would pay for that one later.  The last time he’d done this he had everyone in the Falls at Arcadia convinced she was into the same New Age wackiness that her sister and Agent Reyes espoused…and he’d done it just to get her goat.  She looked down at the hot creamy liquid, wondering how he would react if she poured the next cup in his lap.  She smiled sweetly up at Mrs. Billings.  “Yes, that’s right,” she replied gamely, and feigned a bright expression hoping it would mask the sour glare she wanted to throw at her ‘husband’.  “Will Senior is right; I love those murder-of-the-week novels.  They’ve been a weakness of mine for years.”  She didn't look at Mulder, but she could feel him grinning at her discomposure.  Maybe she could get hotter coffee.  Much hotter.
“Well, my goodness, where do I begin?”  Face alight with the unexpected chance to share the local gossip, Mrs. Billings tugged her captured chair into position and settled slowly into it, ignoring the dangerous creaking sounds it made.  William looked sharply up at the sound and blatted a complaint.  Mulder joggled him a bit and handed him his UFO toy absently, still watching the woman like a hawk.  	
“How about with what supposedly happened at this gravesite your friend’s son found.  What was so surprising about it?”
“Well, now.  Mr. Henderson, I expect the police won’t like that folks in the next town already know about this, but people will talk.”  She clicked her tongue at the futility of trying to keep such a tantalizing secret from the populace.  “Addie’s boy was out for his run before dawn…he’s a track star, you know; he won all sorts of district honours lately, and last year he went to State for…what was it?  A thousand meters?  Long jump?  I don’t rightly recall.”  At Mulder’s genial nod she clucked again.  “There I go, running on at the mouth.  He’s a good boy, though.  Runs every morning, and he always passes by the local cemetery, only this time he saw some grave robbers in there digging up some poor woman’s dead child…and two or three other folks as just got buried that evening.  I tell you, the hair on my neck just rises up thinkin’ about it!  I mean, my Lord!  What is the world coming to?”
Scully could almost hear Mulder’s blood pressure rising.  She was beginning to get a little impatient herself.  “I assume he called the police.  Did they catch the grave robbers then?”
Recalling herself back to her subject with a start, Mrs. Billings’ eyes open wide.  “Oh dear me no, Mrs. Henderson; they didn’t, more’s the pity.  Addie raised a good boy; you never saw a better, but no one could keep his head at seein’ such goings on.  He let out a yell when he saw them lifting a corpse out, and set his dog on ‘em.  Now Aldous is as sweet as pie, but set him on a body and he’ll keep ‘em in one spot till Gabriel blows his horn.  That dog came runnin’ in, scatterin’ grave robbers like they were quail, and all but one of them run off.  I guess the last one stood his ground an’ just stared that dog down so’s it right gave up, and then threatened Addie’s boy to call the dog off or see him shot.  Well, that scared Randy so much that he gave a yell to Aldous and ran like he was a sprinter.  I bet that boy would have beat any of them at a track meet.  Anyways, he called the police as soon as he got to a pay phone, and they got to the cemetery a few minutes later, but the whole bunch of those villains had gone, and took the body with ‘em.  There were those two other graves as were emptied out the same night.”
Here their hostess leaned forward to catch them both in her web, eyes wide as she prepared to part with the real kernel of the story.  “The thing is, when Addie called me to tell me the news, she says Randy saw that body real good, and it looked awful small for it supposin’ to be the Avery girl.  She was good and big-boned, and for all she was troubled in her health the last couple of years after all those bee stings, no one could figure out why she died…but she oughtn’t to have shrunk, now ought she?  But Addie says Randy said that the body he saw was barely bigger than a twelve year old, and all shriveled up and skinny like it had been there twenty year' instead of two.  Can you believe it?  Lord, I bet that boy will never be able to sleep again!  I know I wouldn’t!  And there have been just all sorts of to-doings around since the other night when they had the funerals for those other two poor souls as were disturbed in their eternal rest.”  She pointed with one set of chins at the open paper in front of them.  “And now look at that!  I suppose you havin’ just read the paper you saw the thing about the UFO sightings!  I just remembered it seein’ your boy chawin’ on his toy over there.  I declare, right here in Natchez, and in the same night.  Why, between what Randy saw and all this to-do, I doubt I’ll get a wink of sleep all week!”
Mulder sat back and shared a quick glance with Scully, who returned the look in what could only be described as calm disbelief as she wondered for the thousandth time just how in the hell he did that.  Drop Mulder in any obscure town or city on the map, and he would find an x-file there.  And this one she couldn’t force him to pass off as unimportant.  Not if it was related to the Project that threatened their son.  They had seen this sort of thing in Bellefleur, but why clean out three graves?  Would they all have been Syndicate experiments, or could one or two of them be alien replacements…or worse?  Shaking her head, she decided it was about time to take over the questioning.  After all, it was her book they were supposed to be researching.
“I suppose the police have no idea who the grave robbers are?” she asked while absently stabbing her fork into the remains of her cooling omelet.
“Well, I hear tell they’ve found all sorts of interesting things in and around the poor Avery girl’s coffin that might help them along, but it hasn’t been on the news so far.  Apparently they got off scot-free with the other poor folks’ remains, or so I guess cos they ain’t found hide nor hair of them.  Addie called me about six, but who knows what they might find; it’s only just four hours since the police came by.  I hope they catch those delinquents!  I don’t think I could sleep knowing people as crazy as that are out in the world runnin’ free as jaybirds!  Lord, where is that man with the sugar?  Pardon me, folks.  I always said if you want something done you got to do it your own self.”
Mulder watched the imposing woman march purposefully toward the kitchen door.  “Now there’s a woman that a man should fear,” he commented, grinning like a kid with a new puppy.  “She could walk right over poor Myron there and he’d probably thank her and say it was for the best.”
“Murder mysteries!  M…Will, how did you know this was going to be…the sort of case we like to look at?”  Scully’s voice was high with disbelief.
“I didn’t.  I don’t have hunches, remember?”  He sighed at her level look.  “Okay, so it could be just some out of date experiment by…our former associates, but from such places do the purveyors of the New Project haunt…and obviously They’re still interested.  You going to finish your eggs?  You have some research to do in Cranfield.  For your book.”  He grinned irrepressibly at her and began to toss napkins and silverware haphazardly onto his plate, suddenly very much in a hurry.  William decided that this looked like a great game and reached out to take the butter knife from his father’s hand, throwing it onto the napkin-covered pile with a muted clatter and laughing uproariously.   Mulder handed him a dirty spoon and turned to look expectantly at Scully as the baby’s tiny arm flung forward.  Scully threw her partner a frosty look as the spoon bounced off the rim of the plate and skittered halfway across the table, then leaned forward and pried the next piece of ammunition from their son’s grubby fist.  “No no, William.  Don’t do what Daddy does.”  She set the spoon down on the edge of her own plate and glared at Mulder.  “Great, now he’s going to think its okay to throw silverware around.”
“At least he’s using his hands," Mulder answered, eyes twinkling, and shifted the baby away from the table in an evasive maneuver.  "Good arm, Will.  Keep working at it.  That’s my Willie Mays.”  He returned his eyes to his ‘wife’.  “Better finish using your fork before he takes it from you.”  Scully ignored him, returning to her congealed cheese omelet.
“You’re not going to get your coffee,” she muttered as she washed down the last bite.
“I’ll take it to go.  C’mon; before They show up and make it look like nothing happened.”
xxx
At any rate, they had gotten to the Cranfield Cemetery before the local PD had packed up shop, and now were stuck behind the police line wishing they could have their badges and the protection of the Syndicate back…just for one day.  None of the local press was willing to give them any details, and nothing could be seen of the other two gravesites but a bunch of uniformed backs.
Suddenly, though, the uniformed wall broke and a young deputy stepped away from the ring followed by a kid that looked to be about seventeen.  Tall, thin and gawky with a runner’s legs and knobby knees, he stood with the deputy for a moment alternately nodding and shaking his head, then said something in an affirmative tone and started to jog away from the scene.  Oversize purple shorts and jersey fluttering the Cranfield Seminoles across his skinny chest, the teenager ducked under the police line near Scully and turned to stand behind the tape as if it were a fence.  His face looked a little pale as he gazed back on the scene.
“Are you Randall Archer?” Scully asked him quietly.  The boys started and turned to face them, face paling further.
“Yeah.  Who…who are you f-folks?”  He seemed to be on edge, and no wonder.  The sheriff had probably been grilling him all morning.  He had a stutter that was probably not usually this pronounced.  Scully smiled to put him at ease, trying on Mulder’s harmless look.
“Just tourists.  We’re staying at the Billing’s Bed and Breakfast in Auburn and they told us about your adventure this morning.  I’m Shelly Henderson and this is William Senior.”
“Ah…p-p-pleased to meet you, Mr. and Mrs…ah, Henderson.  The cops told me not to tell anyone about this whole thing, but m-m-Mama’s already tellin’ half the county, so I guess its not such a b-b-big deal anymore keepin’ it a secret.  Did, ah…did Aunt Velma tell you a whole lot ab-b-bout this?”  He waved one skinny arm around as if encompassing the entire situation.
“They told us what your mother told them.  Have the police caught any of the grave robbers yet?”
“My wife is writing a murder mystery, so she’s uncommonly interested in the goings on here today,” Mulder broke in helpfully when the kid started to turtle.  One too many interrogations.  They’d have to handle him gently.
“Oh, ah..a..m-m-murder mystery?  Wow, that m-m-must be a lot of fun.  Are you g-gonna use Natchez for the setting?”
“I’m thinking about it,” Scully answered him, trying not to press her lips together.  The last thing she wanted to do was send the kid deeper into his shell.  She wished she had that coffee cup back, though.  Pretty soon the whole county was going to be asking how her ‘novel’ was going.
“Wow.  W-w-well, they haven’t caught any of those f-freaks yet, but the way they ran from 
A-a-aldous, they must be in the next county by now.”
“Is that Aldous?” Mulder asked with a smile, pointing to a very large, very heavy, very clumsy-looking black and tan hound sitting to one side of the ring of law enforcement.
“Y-yeah.  Aldous!”
Scully let out an involuntary hiss at the shout.  The dog perked up one ear and came lolloping over, but the cops didn’t look up.  They probably wouldn’t think much of Randall Archer’s talking to tourists just yet, guests of his mother’s friend or no.  She shook her head and opened her mouth, but Mulder was already crouching next to the slavering beast, patting and rubbing like a professional dog handler.  The hound thumped its tail good-naturedly.  “Hey Aldous!  Good man!”  He looked up at Randall.  “I used to have a big dog like this once.  His name was Heinrich, but my sister called him Philibert.  He looked scarier than he was.”
Randall made a face at Philibert, but joined Mulder in crouching on the other side of the dog, patting absently.  “H-heinrich?  Is that German?”
“I think so.  How many of these grave robbers did he scare off?”
“I-I think there were s-s-six or seven…but it was still pretty dim out.  They haven’t c-c-caught any of ‘em yet.”
“Seven!  Man!  Anything strange about them that you could remember?”
Randall looked at him for a moment, glanced down.  “Deputy Wright d-didn’t think it was more than just strange, b-b-but all o’ those ol'boys had suits on.  S-suits!  To go diggin’ up somebody’s g-grave.  Three somebodies!  I b-bet they got those suits all c-covered in mud and stuff.”
“Stuff?”  Mulder’s eyes were kindly, but he was thrumming with energy; she could feel it from where she was standing.  As for herself, Scully was sure that every pore on her body had sprouted expectant ears as Mulder helped the kid along.  “Like graveyard stuff, you mean?”
“Nah; whatever it w-was in those coffins; the other ones where they got away with the b-bodies; or anyway there weren’t none left there from what I saw.  Some of whatever it was spilled out and got in the dirt.  Some k-k-kinda goo.  Deputy Wright says its p-probably some byproduct of the embalmin’ f-fluid, but it sure looked funny.  Th-they’re sendin’ it out to the University of South Miss to have some d-doctor have a look at it.  Whatever was in that embalmin’ stuff, it s-s-sure did make Lizzie Avery’s body look funny.  It d-didn’t even look like a person should at all.  I g-guess I should be happy it wasn’t all n-n-nasty and rotten so I won’t be gettin’ nightmares.”
Just then Deputy Wright started walking toward the tape, head down.  “Hey, Randy; you got a coupla more minutes?  Sheriff Caulder thinks you oughtta not tell the news guys…hey!”  He looked up from his pad and saw that Randall wasn’t alone.  “What’re you people doing here?  No tourists allowed!  Randy, come on up in here and talk with me a minute more.  You people head back to wherever you came from.  There isn’t anything to see here.”
Mulder nodded and waved, releasing Aldous as Randy gave them both a nervously apologetic look and ducked back under the line to trot over to the Deputy.  “Sorry, deputy,” Mulder called out.  “We’ll head out.  Good luck!”
“Mulder,” Scully hissed as he stood up from his crouch.  “What were you…”
“Romancing a boy’s dog is the best way to his heart, Scully.  Samantha had a dog that looked just like that.  His name was Philbert, but I always wanted to call him Heinrich.  I think she read it in some book…but he was mine, after, so I called him Heinie.  He ran away during the divorce.  We never saw him again.”  He turned to look at her challengingly, eyes clear of memory as he forced his mind into action.  “What say we make an appointment to visit to the University of South Miss?  It’s on our way.”
xxx
University of Southern Mississippi
Hattiesburg, MS
May 30, 2002
8:06am

Leaving behind the stately southern plantation homes of Natchez, Dunleith and the Rosalie house as the afternoon drew on, the rental car bearing Mulder and Scully and their precious burden passed through the Homochitto National Forest and through Forrest County to Hattiesburg and the University of South Miss.  Their 'second honeymoon' now over, the once-peaceful Magnolia State passed them by like a dream slowly fading to unwelcome reality as the semiarid countryside floated by the smudged windows of the dated rental car.  They took another nondescript motel room in Hattiesburg that night, and William spent morning of his first birthday in a campus lobby with his parents, awaiting an audience with a Dr. Terrence Monroe of the South Miss Chemistry Department.
“Why’s he fussing?”
Scully looked up from where she was bouncing the toddler on the naugahyde seat and brushed her dyed locks out of her eyes with her free hand.  “He doesn’t like it here.  There’s something wrong.”
“Probably senses the chimeras in the substance…unless They’ve already beaten us to the punch.”  He turned from his alert perusal of the hallway and spiraling staircase to regard the mother of his child, a sudden tenderness in his eyes.  “Hey, if They are here, and this goes sour, I want you to grab Will and run,” he said softly.  He raised his hand from the sweaty surface as if to caress her cheek, then shook his head.  “Don’t look back.  I’ll take care of it.  He’s our number one priority.”  
Scully stared at him for a moment, her face grim, and tried to ignore the way her guts froze at his words.  She hardened her voice, made it flat with denial.  “I thought we had decided that we were all in this together.  Besides, how far would he and I get alone?”
“A lot further than you would if They catch you.  You did it for nearly a year.  You can do it again without me.”  At the bleak look on her face his hand finished the journey to her chin and lifted it to face him.  “Hey, its not like I want to get nabbed.  I want to be there for all of this.  All the way.  But if it comes down to all of us or just me, I’ll let them have me.  He has to make it, and that means you.  God knows I couldn't do it, and one of us has to raise him,” and she could almost hear the unspoken ‘Scully’ at the end of that phrase, “because if it’s not us it's Them…and then we’ve all lost.  All of us.”
Their eyes locked for a moment.  Finally, reluctantly, she nodded and pulled her chin away from his fingers to turn back to the baby, who had stopped fussing and was looking intently up at the echoing stairwell.  Someone was descending, his footfalls murmuring eerily over one another in the cool still air of the air-conditioned lobby.  Mulder looked up sharply, Scully following his gaze.  The man approaching the base of the stairway was tall with an athletic build, clad in a light blue buttoned down shirt and slate-coloured striped tie, slate-gray slacks.  He reached the bottom of the stair and started toward them, holding out one hand in greeting.
“Hi there.  Dr. Terrence Monroe.  Are you the Hendersons?”
Mulder came to his feet swiftly and held out his own hand.  “Will Henderson.  This is my wife Shelly, and that’s Will junior.  We were in Natchez yesterday and…”
“Yes, yes, an awful mess.  Most unusual.  I must say your interest in the matter is quite surprising, but if you’re writing a murder novel you could do worse than come to USM.  We have quite a forensics department in here, if I do say so myself.”
“That’s what we’ve heard.  Shelly here took some community access classes on that sort of thing before we had the baby and she’s never gotten over it since.  She could probably tell you which colleges have the best labs in the country, though what she was ever going to do with such information besides go on Jeopardy, I couldn’t tell you.  And then she says she’s decided to go ahead and write a book.  What could I say?  Here we are, right in the middle of some kind of great body-snatching scheme.”
“Well, I wouldn’t necessarily say that,” the doctor said amiably with a small half-admiring, half-patronising glance at ‘Shelly’.  “There was really only the one body, and it was checked out by the coroner out there.  A lot of abnormalities, but the family wanted her buried again and no one could see any reason to gainsay them.  Apparently the girl had been in poor health for years before she passed on; ever since she had a bad allergic reaction to a bee sting when she was ten or eleven; nothing but health problems for the rest of her short life.  God rest her soul.”
Scully gave Mulder a significant look.  “I’m sorry; did you say there was only the one body?  What happened to the other two; did the grave-robbers get away with them?”
“Oh, no one seems to be quite sure about that, ma’am; that’s where it gets strange.  Funny thing is, it looks like there were never any bodies in those other two graves.  All that they found in there was some sort of thick organic residue, which is what they’ve sent on to my lab here.  I was fascinated enough to look deeper into the case after I sent over my initial findings.  The stuff looks like some sort of biological material, almost as if the people that were supposed to have been in those graves had dissolved…and whatever dissolved them did a wonderful job.  I’ve never seen any bacterium or acid work this thoroughly, leaving nothing behind.  Found no trace of either anyway.  Unexplained.”  Dr. Monroe’s eyes had lit up and were looking far beyond them now.  “But if that residue is all that remains of those two bodies, it certainly doesn’t match their cause of death, one from heart attack and one from an embolism.  I couldn’t even get any DNA out of the stuff.  Total molecular breakdown.  If I could isolate the cause of this I’d be set for the rest of my life.  On such things are reputations made.”
Scully wasn’t one to let anyone live in daydreams of glory for long.  “Dr. Monroe, couldn’t the embalming chemicals have formed some sort of dangerous compound if they were improperly mixed, some kind of solution that could dissolve the bodies before breaking down itself?” As if realizing how unlike a casual student housewife she had just sounded, Scully tightened her lips in a short grimace and shifted William’s weight on her hip.  The baby banged his toy UFO on her shoulder a few times in a desultory fashion as the professor snapped back to the conversation.  Luckily, however, the man was too engrossed in the mystery to notice how odd ‘Mrs. Henderson’s’ query had sounded.
“I had considered that, ma’am, and I looked at the compounds six ways to Sunday.  The thing is, even if that sort of freak reaction could occur--which I doubt it would, but merely to test a hypothesis--should such a thing happen, it would have had to act extraordinarily fast.  These two people had their funerals just that evening, and the caskets were opened up before they could even be buried.  Sure must have saved the grave robbers a lot of effort.  I hear they like to get in quick before the things are buried, which is why security guards are posted around.  But the guards were found knocked on the head.  Poor idiots.  Whoever those robbers were, they must have gotten the shock of their lives when they opened the caskets up to find no bodies to sell off or carve skin from.  They must’ve thought it was all a horrible joke, or someone else had beaten them to the punch.”
Scully was sure she had never heard such a threadbare hypothesis in her life.  She didn’t dare look at Mulder, sure she would see naked incredulity in his face.  She would have been right.  Mulder was feigning shocked disbelief, and she tried her best to follow suit.  “So that’s what the local police have posited?  That this was the work of some very uneducated black market skin thieves?  There’re actually people that do that?  Colleges that will pay for bodies like that even after they’ve been embalmed?”
“They are known by rather colourful terms like ‘cadaver rustlers’,” the Professor smiled mirthlessly.  “among other interesting epithets.  And skin is one organ that can be...er...revived that long after death, though after embalming and lack of refrigeration...if they know what they're doing, they usually come after these people while they’re still in the morgues.”
Scully nodded, jumping in before Mulder could overdo it with his wide-eyed act...as if they’d never seen this before.  If they weren’t in such a tense situation she would have been tempted to laugh at his ridiculous play-acting...and if the subject matter didn’t bring back the horrible realization that occurred to her every time she remembered the way he had been buried alive.  If he had not been at least nominally Jewish, the undertakers would have embalmed him alive, and they would never have been able to...  She rapidly halted that line of thought and the horrible pictures that it evoked, focusing her mind brutally on the case in hand.  She directed her eyes at the Professor, trying to keep her usual cool look from her eyes.  “They must have been uneducated enough to believe that they could get something useful because the victims died of short trauma effect.”  She feigned confusion herself.  “If that was the case then why dig up the Avery girl’s grave?  Certainly at two years she was too long dead to qualify.”
“Shrewd, yes, very shrewd my dear.  It doesn’t really fit, does it.  Nice opening for your mystery.  Finding no bodies in the target graves, the dastardly troupe swiftly chooses another grave, mistakenly thinking it was worth the effort.  And then they open the third one and it’s far far too old.  I wonder that they opened that one at all.  Fascinating case.”
“Ignoring for a moment that the culled organs, including skin, would be useless by that time, have there been any leads at all on that substance they found in the caskets?  Sure they didn’t dissolve those two bodies to hide the evidence of organ snatching or whatever?”  Mulder was as deadpan as he had ever been, but Scully could hear the undercurrent of tension in his voice.
“Nothing.  Primordial soup, barely identifiable strings of proteins in no recognisable arrangement.  No acid did that, as I said, and no known biological agent works that fast; there would be bones left, denser tissue even.  If this residue was from some sort of fast-moving decay of the bodies at all, that is.  Because otherwise it is unidentifiable.  Maybe they took those bodies whole after all.  Maybe they weren’t organ snatchers at all, and I can tell you I’ve never heard of dumber ones if that was what they were really after.  Which leaves us right back where we started on the question of exactly what the substance is and why it was in the coffins.  A mystery.  Wonderful starting point for a novel, certainly, though I would counsel you to wait till the case has been resolved before you offer it up to a publisher.  Officials can get quite annoyed when details in a book mirror too closely the details of their investigations.”
“Speaking of which, thank you for being so free with your information, professor.  We didn’t expect all this, but its nice to have all the details; its makes it easier to set the scene.”  This book thing was actually working.  Not that she would admit that to Mulder.  She was still going to make him pay later; she’d been too tense to do so on the trip over.
“Well, I didn’t expect it would make much of a difference; I already sent them my findings.  I’m 
going to keep at it, of course, but unless I find something that isn’t there, its really academic at this point, at least from their point of view.  It could become my personal Holy Grail, though, if they would let me keep my samples.  But I’ve been requested to return them at my earliest possible convenience.  I really don’t see how leaving a drop or two here would hurt anything, but they’re running the show out there.  I might have to demand my rights as a paid researcher.  The police in these parts don’t want to lose our services.  This department has worked very closely with them several times in the past.”
Scully nodded, feeling Mulder tense at her side.  “Just one more quick question, professor.  Was there any report of bee stings on the other two bodies when the coroner’s report came in from Natchez?  Anything else at all to connect them to the Avery girl or to point out why they would have chosen to disturb such an old grave with those two sitting ready to pluck right there?”
“What?  Bee stings?  No, why should there be?”  He reached under his arm with one hand and brandished a sheaf of papers.  “Got the reports from the medical examiner right here.  The first one, the heart, says, ‘damage to the left ventricle consistent with heart attack.  No report of arrhythmia before collapse, though some significant fatty deposits found in heart and surrounding tissue.  Small bruise on left temple concurrent with fall.  Small...mark on right side of neck behind ear consistent with insect bite or other allergic response.’  Well I’ll be damned.”  He flipped to the next report, suddenly alert and eyes narrowed    “Here’s the embolism.  ‘Damage to left frontal and temporal lobes consistent with sudden pressure of blood on brain.  Clot found in upper left parietal lobe just above left ventricle.  Scratch on right ankle, laprodectomy scar.  Small puncture on right wrist concurrent with bee sting.  No pre-existing allergy.   No diagnosis of high blood pressure in medical records.’”
The professor looked up from his sheaf of papers and met two sets of eyes.  “Did you people know I would find this?”
Mulder shook his head, obviously trying to look guileless and failing miserably.  “It was just a hunch, right Honey?  It didn’t seem like anyone was looking for a way to tie the three victims together.  The only thing that stood out in the Avery girl’s medical history was that bee sting and all her health troubles stemming from that event.  Do you think the bee stings or whatever they were have something to do with how these two died, how the bodies ended up the way you say they did?”  Mulder was never very good at turning aside suspicion from himself.  The professor wasn’t buying it.  His eyes had narrowed yet again.  He looked suspiciously first into Mulder’s face, then into Scully’s.
“Your wife isn’t really writing a book, is she?”  His voice began to sound a bit annoyed.  “Who are you people, and why are you pumping me for information?  You had better tell me before I feel obliged to phone the police on this matter.”
Scully opened her mouth to try to rescue the situation and give them a graceful way to excuse themselves.  And in that instant all hell broke loose.  Forgotten at her shoulder, William suddenly let out a small shriek and pointed his baby arm accusingly toward the stairwell.  “MA!  No!” He announced angrily, bouncing in her arms like a volleyball.  Mulder’s head jerked up at the same time as hers did.  There were three men in suits coming down the stairwell, which was suddenly filled with the echoes of feet.  There was no need to stop for consultation.
“Mulder, now!”
“Go.  I’ll be right behind you.”
“Hey, I asked you a question!  I’ll ask it one more time.  Who are you people?  And who are they?”
“Mulder, you’re coming with us.  NOW!  Don’t try to be heroic!”
“DA!”
The three spooks thundered down the last turn of the stairs and broke into a run as they hit the lime-and-white tiles of the lobby.  The professor stared at them in surprise, his protests cut off as if he was a faucet that had been twisted suddenly hard to the right.  Scully grabbed the diaper bag off of the faux black leather seat and dodged past the confused scientist, already making tracks for the door.  William was leaning out behind her, still shrieking.  
“DADA!”
As if pulled by fishing line cast out by his son’s agonized wail Mulder turned to follow, his shoulder colliding with the professor’s.  They both staggered off balance.  Everything seemed to move in slow motion.
“Run, Scully!”
“Mulder! C’mon!”
Mulder yanked his balance back by sheer force of will and grabbed the coroner’s reports from the professor’s nerveless hand as he dove past the shocked man.  The suits had crossed the hall.  He dodged out the door right behind Scully, who was just rounding the corner of the pale green edifice.  The parking lot seemed miles away.  Mulder caught up to her and grabbed her free arm.  “They probably came to toss the lab,” he gasped.  “Sheer good luck for them we showed up here at all.  Let’s get the hell out of here before we find out the hard way if They have an army on campus.”
Scully risked a glance behind them and nearly lost her footing in mid-dash.  Two more suited men stalked around the corner of the building just as the first three burst out of the dark revolving doorway of the mint green stucco and terracotta Chemistry department.  Mulder didn’t have to look as he loped behind Scully through antebellum southern columns and past stately red brick.  He caught her in the open and grabbed the bag from her shoulder, stuffing the papers awkwardly in amongst the baby paraphernalia.  They took a curve in the paved path at breakneck speed and skidded over a wet spot in the concrete left over from a recent rain.  The parking lot was about a hundred yards ahead on the other side of a straggly belt of magnolias broken by tiny wisteria-laden arbors and peridot-coloured leaves of pollen-coated dogwoods.  On the way to their appointment Scully had been struck by the disheveled, stately loveliness of the campus.  She hardly noticed it now as they dodged desperately under the closest arched pathway, with the matted curtains of Spanish moss brushing their hair into wild disarray.  As they struck the pavement of the parking lot, William howled at them as if encouraging them to further speed.
They reached the car, hit the remote.  The alarm gave an agonized screech as the locks snapped open, and the fugitives tossed in the bag and dove in as one.  No time to belt William into the back.  Scully hit the locks as Mulder gunned the car to a start and peeled out of their spot.  Two suited men bounced heavily off of the rear of the vehicle.  They had just made it.
Mulder spoke only after they had careened out of the parking lot and were halfway across campus.  “You two okay?”
Scully quickly inspected the baby and nodded breathlessly, looking back as if any moment expecting a fleet of sedans to peel out behind them.  “Are they following?”
“Probably.  You better crawl back there and strap him in at the first light.  Unless They’re right behind us, 'cause car-seat or not I’m not stopping then.”
The first stoplight showed no pursuit as yet.  As Mulder watched the mirror anxiously, Scully lunged into the back seat with the baby and strapped him in quickly and efficiently, all the while ignoring his outraged commentary on he proceedings.  She climbed back over as the light went green and settled herself back into shotgun, strapping on her seatbelt with jerky, frustrated movements.  Mulder glanced over at her, the flush in his face finally settling.  His expression was as bland as ever, but he was positively radiating excitement.  The bastard had missed this chase-scene stuff!  He had returned his eyes to the road almost immediately, but his eyes still glittered.
“What, Mulder?  If you want me to say it I will.  You were right.  And I’ve given up trying to figure out how you do it.”  She definitely owed him at least one light slam.
His lips twitched.  “You’re not trying to tell me you think this has something to do with aliens, are you Agent Scully?” he asked with a tone of mock incredulity.
She glared at him for a moment, trying to decide whether to be incensed or resigned at his misplaced humour.  She finally settled for resignation, lightly coloured with chagrin.  “Not even I would be so farfetched, Mulder.”  She let out a massive exhalation and turned to rest her chin on the back of her hand as she leaned out to check the passenger side mirror.  “We can’t have gotten away that easily.  They know where we are now, whether They’re back there or not.”
“I know.  We go back to the motel, take the next bus out.  Nice and anonymous.”
“We can’t keep doing this, Mulder.  Chasing breadcrumbs with a baby on board.  One of these days we won’t get away, and we’ll be handing him right over to Them.”  As if knowing he was the topic of discussion, William blatted again in the back seat.  Mulder’s eyes darted from the mirror to her to the road again in an endless dance.
“I think it’s a little too late to worry about that now, Scully.  It’s started.  The Fourth would be perfect; a four-day weekend this time, nice and warm.  If that passes us by then I guess They aren’t quite ready.  In that case, Labor day or Thanksgiving I think we’ll hear about a lot more bee stings, and if it’s too cold by then, then early next year.  And I don’t know how much vaccine or how many cancer-chips those Rebels will have whipped up by now, but its obvious that it can’t be gotten to everyone that’s infected before we have an outbreak.”  He looked over at her again as he maneuvered for a left turn, then glanced into the back seat.  “Happy birthday, Will.”
xxx
Motel 6
Hattiesburg, MI
10:13am

 	“We’ve got to go back.  It’s the only way we can get a handle on this.  We’ve got to warn the people we’ve got on our side.  And we need to know where.  We can already figure the when.”
Scully met Mulder’s eyes across the dim room where he was repacking the few bits they had taken out of the bags during their brief night’s stay.  “Mulder, this could have been another mistake, like Texas, or another test like They did on those schoolchildren in South Carolina.  There’s no guarantee that They’re gearing up now for the final offensive.  And even if They were, would They tip Their hand this way?  This is exactly the sort of publicity They don’t need right now if They’re going to make this surprise attack work.”
“Maybe a few bees got loose early.  Maybe these were test subjects.  But we’re too far away from the hub right now to see more than pieces, and its going to get us killed, and William taken.  A frontal assault from us is what They least expect now.  We’re lurkers, fugitives.  We’ve lost our access.  DC is the last place They expect us to go.”  
Scully stared at him as if he’d gone mad.  “Mulder, they want to kill you.  They want to take our son.  And if they don’t, the Rebels will do exactly the opposite.  It’s just to dangerous.  If we go back now...”
“Listen, if all this happening using our government offices as the central hive, we have to get near centre of it to make any difference.  What difference does it make for Will if he’s a thousand miles away from the nerve centre when he has to do what he has to do?  We’ve got to start heading back, Scully.  It’s the only thing that’s worth the risk.”
Scully suppressed a shiver that began in her belly and traveled up to where it sat frozen in the base of her spine.  “Being in the right place at the right time doesn’t do us any good if you get arrested, Mulder.  Then we’re right back where we started, except I’ll know exactly where you are.  They’ll have you, and I can’t…I can’t do that again.”  She raised tortured eyes to his face.  “The whole point of us leaving was to stay together, keep him safe.”
Mulder looked over at her from where he was bent over his suitcase, his eyes glittering sardonically with a suppressed anger that she knew was not really directed at her but at himself--because for some reason he still thought he was to blame for being unable to stop Them...no matter how ridiculous that might be.  This was an abrupt turnaround from a rather similar conversation they had had a couple of weeks ago in the twilight of some roadside hole-in-the-wall.  Scully had been laying awake quietly worrying over the three co-workers they had left behind.  "I hope Monica and Doggett are doing alright out there on their own.  Kersh is enough to deal with without the kind of roadblocks that we've encountered over the years, and neither of them is exactly of the mindset to deal with the conspiracy cases."
Mulder had shifted slightly, easing his shoulder deeper into the rustling mattress.  The idea of a couple of comparative rookies being left in charge of the official end of his crusade, his livelihood, tended to make him jittery and annoyed.  "Well luckily they have Skinner there to catch the ones they miss.  I'll have to admit the guy's gotten good at picking up on the x-file bouquet, and compromised or no, he's with us all the way now.  He won't let anything slip.  And Reyes has the view, and Doggett has the discipline.  They might be short on autopsies," his fingers had tapped against her side in a kind of tiny tribute, "but the thing is, we'll be drawing most of the heat as far as the alien stuff goes.  They'll probably mostly see monsters and mutants while we deal with Them."
She had sighed and forced herself to relax into the pillows.  "And the Gunmen are keeping an eye on the databases in case something comes up.  I know they have it covered as well as can be expected and they'll contact us if something requires our attention.  I just wish..."
She hadn't said it, but he had understood.  --I just wish we could have it both ways--  Neither of them would have given up their son for anything...but the only way they knew to keep him safe was to remove themselves from both circulation and access.
"We go back, and They get one of  you, Mulder.  And I won't go through that again."
Apparently Mulder was now tired of waiting on the edges.  “Yeah, well what are they going to get me on, Scully?" he grunted.  "Tax-evasion?”  He grimaced and thrust the purloined autopsy reports in the front pocket of his suitcase.  “The real irony of this whole situation is that it’s these Rebels who are now in control of our government, and we ought to be lending our not inconsiderable talents in Their support, to assist in that Fight.  And we would be but for the existence of that child over there; a child who must be kept alive as a bargaining chip between the galactic equivalent of Democrats and Republicans…because the Radicals are pushing for a long shot and they can’t seem to get enough votes.  Isn’t that the pisser of them all?  Will is our saving grace and our Achilles heel.  And I could never regret him for an instant.”
Scully paused in her own preparations to look up at him a little grimly.  “Neither could I.  I was hoping you wouldn’t.”
Mulder shoved the last article into the bag and pulled up the zipper with a sound like a final punctuation.  He walked over to Scully and grasped her upper arms, looked deeply into her serious blue glare.  There was nothing there in those candid green eyes but naked bone-deep honesty.  “I never could,” he murmured, willing her to believe that his priorities had indeed changed.  “No matter what, Scully.”
She searched his gaze for a long moment.  Behind them, Will stirred restlessly, already strapped into his carrier and paying halfhearted tribute to his bottle, all the stress of the last hour forgotten now that relative peace reigned.  Scully’s eyes flickered to the baby instinctively and then back into her lover’s lucent eyes.  His body rang with sincerity against hers.  She felt the energy that was in him transfer to her, fill her with hope and a familiar urgency to act, to know the Truth.
“If we do this, its make or break.  I doubt we’ll ever get the chance to run again.”
Mulder’s lips tightened.  “We’ve just been putting it off, Scully.  We both know that.”  Sighing, he lowered his head until his forehead rested on hers; the embrace that centered their lives.  “It’s the only thing we can do.”
X   X   X

(Amor Fati, pt.45: “Further Revelations”)

Conecuh National Forest
Covington County, AL
June 07, 2002
4:16pm

	Conecuh Forest in southeast Alabama were redolent of mulch and decay, that rich, dry, sneeze-inducing smell that said a place was very old and very much alive; alive in a slow way that had nothing to do with human concerns that burn brightly and die quick.  Curtains of Spanish moss decked the sides of the small highway out of Dixie Alabama and screened the bulk of the forest from their view, lending a mysterious and slightly ominous air to the Rhode-Island sized stretch of underbrush-free wood.
	Mulder stood on the side of that tiny strip of tarmac, a gilded silhouette looking out.  A mysterious and beloved figure plucked out of a painting, like that of the man contemplating life from a pier dipped in sunset.  Wondering, maybe, what would happen when they emerged from the other side of this wood.  Wondering what they would find out there.  Maybe wondering what they would not.  Forests had always held secrets for them.  It was like an unwritten law.
	Scully watched him for a moment unobserved before she approached him from behind to tap his shoulder with the edge of the Styrofoam cup.  He turned as if waking from a daydream and juggled a bottle-toting William long enough to take his share of the steaming coffee from her.
	“Sugar?”
	“Enough to poison you.”
	“Perfect.  Thanks.”
	They stood companionably side by side sipping their respective habits and gazing into the woods.  Scully felt it too.  The sense that something was holding its breath for them.  Waiting for some kind of sign.  They had gotten used to a slower paced life, out west.  But the closer they moved towards home, towards the hub, the shorter that hiatus between Events seemed to become.  It had been three days.  Something was bound to happen, soon enough.
	“Do you think They know where we are?”  Her voice broke the stillness, and both Mulder and the baby glanced over at her in unison, a sight which made her smile and hide her amusement behind a curtain of hair.  Mulder’s glance shot down to the baby and then back up to her face.  He smiled too, but that smile faded quickly.
“Maybe.  Maybe They’ve always known where we were, have been letting us feel pleased with ourselves for a while, knowing They could always pick us up again whenever they wanted.  Or maybe They’re guiding us toward something.  Or maybe something else is guiding us towards something.  Something we need to know.”
	“Do you believe in that Something Else, Mulder?”
	Again he met her eyes for a long moment.  There was silence.  But he spoke, finally.
	“I have to.  We have him.”  He pointed south with his chin, and William made a contented sound and folded himself against his father’s shoulder as if to say, ‘Yes, and I have both of you waiting on me.  Who’s the lucky bastard?’  After a moment, though, the baby squirmed back around and rejoined the avid perusal of the woods that he had engaged in with his father.  Mulder’s eyes returned to the thicket of trees as if drawn by a magnet while he absently controlled the baby's wriggling demands for freedom.  But after a moment's regard he shook his head, stooped, and carefully set down his coffee cup on the edge of the asphalt.  Then to Scully’s surprise he released their son with the air of a man engaging in a necessary experiment.  Faced with unexpected freedom, the toddler didn’t look back or hesitate, simply stepped off the road with one wobbly stride and began to stagger down the short slope toward the trees.  Like a nestling trying out unsteady locomotion he missed a step on the small grade and tumbled to his padded rear.  Scully felt her surprise swell to alarm.
“Mulder!  Wh…”
“Sssssh…watch.”
William had not begun to cry.  He seemed very intent, his eyes never leaving the forest ahead of him as he rolled to his knees in the dust and crawled to the bottom…where he stood again and began to toddle toward the musty verge like a thing possessed.  A glad little cry erupted from him as it seemed he would make his goal.  Glancing at Mulder accusingly where he stood unmoving, Scully made an impatient sound and dodged down the incline after the child, picked him up and dusted the red dirt off of his behind.  Never taking his eyes from the trees ahead, Will began to squirm and to make fussy sounds of protest.  He strained forward and held his arms out toward the wood, crowing,  “Ma!  Maaaa!  Down.  Dooown!”  Scully looked into the forest herself and shook her head decisively before turning her to head back up the slope.
“So what the hell was that?” She asked irately as she rejoined her partner on the roadside, baby still anxiously wriggling by her ear.  For God’s sake…he was trying to clamber over her shoulder and resume his interrupted journey back down at the verge.  Her belly was still a bit hollow from the shock at Mulder’s callous use of their infant son to prove a point.
“He likes the woods,” Mulder answered, grinning innocently.  
Scully favoured him with a ‘look’.
“Don’t give me the brow, Scully.  He’s telling us there’s something in there.  I'm pretty sure he's right.”  He turned to her, eyes fixing on her own and filled with challenge.  “Don’t you feel it?”
Her lips flattened to a thin line.  “I don’t want to feel it,” she cut him off sharply.  “We have a bus to catch.”
“We can catch the next one.  There’s something in here we need to find.”  At her disbelieving look he turned as if guided by radar and snagged the arm of a passer-by walking up to the last gas station on the other side of the road, here on the outskirts of town.  “Hey, buddy.  You from around here?”
The man looked down at Mulder’s hand on his arm and nodded warily.  Mulder didn’t let go.
“Yeah.  Dixie born ‘n raised," he grunted.  "Why?”
“Anything special about those woods?”
The man plucked at the Chevron logo on his grease-spotted gray coverall and nodded, still wary.  “Yeah.  They’re hainted.”
“Haunted?  By what?”  Scully was not about to let Mulder dragoon them into another roadside safari just because of a hunch, spooky child or no.
“Y’know, the usual.  People goin’ in and not comin’ back out.  Weird shadows slippin’ through at night.  Some folks think some kidnappers or gang of criminals is hangin’ around in there.  Me, I think it’s a bunch of kids playin’ tricks.  Saw that Blair Witch thing too many times, ask me, cos thang is, no one ever thought those woods was hainted in any more than th’ usual way until about two year' ago.  That’s hen all the stories started up.”
Mulder grinned triumphantly at Scully.  “Anything else?”
“Yeah.  My dog won’t go in there.  Most dogs love the woods.  But Mitch won’t go past a mile in, and he’s lived here all his life.  Never had a problem before two year' ago.”
“Is it safe?”
The man looked at Mulder and gave a sort of half-snort.  “Yeah, hit’s safe.  As long as you’re in daylight it’s safe.  ‘Bout as safe as any woods, I reckon.  Hey, you gonna let me go?  I got to put a starter in the Macy’s pickup.”  Mulder released the man’s arm and he stalked off, snorting to himself.  “Tourists!”
“Whaddya say, Scully?  You up for a short daylight excursion?”
“It’s not going to be daylight much longer, Mulder.  You’re crazy.”
“A mile in is all we need to do.  If we don’t find anything we’ll hole up here for the night and head out in the morning.”
Now she felt justified in a small explosion.  The man could be so mule-headed, and for no real reason at all.  “What for, Mulder?  To find what, exactly?  In the middle of nowhere between point A and point B?”
“Woods don’t just become haunted in two years, Scully.  Even the Blair Witch took twenty or thirty to get a legend rolling.  I don’t remember any x-files from this location, so whatever this is, it’s recent…and William thinks there’s something in there we need to see.”
“And I say we have no time for side trips and x-files, Mulder.  Not if we want to make it back home alive.  Anything could happen in the woods.  With us it usually does.”
“What could happen in two hours?  Tell me one thing?”  He grinned boyishly at her.  “C’mon, Scully; it’ll be a nice trip to the forest.”  
She wasn’t falling for it.  “We have a baby!” she nearly shouted, and jiggled the child at him as if for emphasis.  “Haven’t you had enough of hunches and close calls?”
“What, we can’t go for a hike in the woods with a baby?  People do it all the time.  It’ll be a nice change, and after weeks on buses, we could use a little exercise.”  His eyes were actually twinkling with challenge.  “Besides; what if I’m right and there’s something in here that will help us?  We can’t work from research anymore; there’s no research to work from.  All we have anymore are hunches…and him.”
Scully stalked up and thrust their son into his arms.  “If your hunch is right in two hours we’ll all be cocooned in a tree-top or sucked into a hole by invisible prehistoric hunters, abducted, or something equally attractive.  I don’t like woods, Mulder, for the same reason you obviously do.  I’ve lost too much in one forest or the other.  I nearly lost you.  I don’t want to try it again, and I sure the hell don’t want to lose him!”
“One hour.”
Scully threw up her arms.  “Oh for God’s…Mulder, why?”
“Cos I’m begging you.  Pretty please.  If you say yes I’ll do diapers for a week.”
Scully stared at him for a moment, exasperated.  She dropped her head and glared at one booted foot, the hem of her jeans stirring languorously in the light breeze.  A leaf whipped past her patent leather toe and sidled off the road to settle at the edge of the forest as if saying, ‘C’mon.  Catch me!  Right in here.’  She was ready to say yes, to capitulate as usual…but she was annoyed.  She always said yes.  Always.  --Well then, why change now?--  'But why give him the satisfaction?' the stubborn side of her brain muttered back.  With a sound of vexation she turned her back and walked away for a moment, hands on her hips.  She knew Mulder was watching her and waiting.  The truth is she was just plain scared, for exactly the reason she had told him, and more.  She feared woods now, though she would never have said as much out loud.  Some of the worst, most lonely and fearful moments in her life had come while trapped in the woods or stemmed from visits to their dark interiors.  Losing Mulder had been the last straw.  That had nearly killed her, and at a time when she had had far more to live for than ever before.  Now she had twice as much as then to lose.
But it wasn’t even that track record that held her back from giving in to his whim, nor was it only plain stubbornness because she nearly always did.  It wasn’t even the sheer irresponsible and pointless illogic of the act that grated.  She had come to love and need Mulder’s irresponsible illogic over the years, to depend on it to shake her out of her too-cautious existence.  Nor was she one to let her fears rule her.  She always got back on the horse.  She had gone back to face woods numerous times after she had begun to hate them…but again, as in the last time, she had a feeling.  A bad feeling.
She had not been able to tell Mulder about the panic that had risen up to choke her when he had left to check out the wood in Bellefleur again, and on that fateful night she had lost him, she had thought, had feared, for ever.  But when he had said that he had to go back and he was not going to let her come back with him a dark tremor of absolute terror had run up her spine, propelling her into his arms despite the fact that they had been in the hall outside the office, in plain view of anyone who wanted to see.  It had been that dark fear, that stomach-hollowing feeling that was half panic that had forced her to whisper in his ear, “I won’t let you go alone.”  For despite the fact that she did not quell from and in fact had come to treasure the kind of light teasing that would surely ensue, she could not admit to him that she had begun to have hunches, could not have said, ‘Mulder, I have a bad feeling about this.  Please don’t go.’  She had no idea, in retrospect, if he would have stayed had she asked him to…but she doubted it.  He had still been chasing his demons…and they had finally caught up to him in the most personal way possible, had cost him precious moments of his life that he would never get back.  Meeting those demons, finally, had in the end turned him from his headlong path to destruction and given him a new lease on life…and a new appreciation of what that life might give to him if he would only allow it.  But all the same, all she could seem to see in her mind's eye was the year of unmitigated horror and agony that that moment's decision had spelled for them both.
And now she had that feeling once again.  The feeling that things were about to get incredibly clear, and time was beginning to expand.  There was something here that she needed to pay attention to, a signpost.  Once she had begun to actively notice those signs her life had altered in a subtle way, like a train shifting to a parallel set of tracks that would eventually lead to a whole new horizon.  That horizon was before her now, the lines of possibility stretched out in front of them like wires humming with a static charge and waiting to be activated with a touch here, a tweak there.  Something was going to start here, if it had not already.  Something always started when they entered the woods.  It was as if some kind of eldritch magick swept them up in its wake and carried them off on untrodden paths to who-knows-where.  It was not always a bad thing, this force that swept them up in its indestructible course; Mulder had changed after that last feeling, changed in many ways for the better, becoming more patient, more aware of others, less likely to toss aside the small important things in life for the sake of the flame that drew him, moth-like, to its glow.  His priorities had been rearranged, rather as her bout with cancer had rearranged her own priorities.  Coming face to face with mortality had the tendency to make one more invested in life, more willing to live it day by day.  And so Mulder had become more wary of loss even as he became more relaxed and more prone to a warmer humour than she had ever seen from him…and to a humility that she had never seen from him in days gone by.  A willingness to let go and let God, to trust in fate.  But did that mean she wanted to risk that feeling again, hoping that it would all come out all right?
In the end what decided her was the realization that if she did not go with him he would hand over the baby and go alone…and that was the greatest part of the terror.  In all the times that they had entered the woods or any other dangerous situation side by side, he had come out all right and so had she.  When this feeling had struck her before she had known, known deep in her gut where it counted that if she let him go without her he would be in far more danger than he ever could with her by his side.  She had sensed it for a moment, like a precognitive flash in which one could see the threads of fate twining:  just so, one makes this decision while standing at a nexus of possibilities.  This path, and everything will be different…forever.  Or this path…and it all stays the same--and only one of these paths is right.  She had had this discussion with Mulder once, at a time when she had been at a similar nexus in her life.  And that night she had chosen to be with him fully, finally, a choice that had led them directly to this moment.  Now it was here again, that nexus.  This choice and the path would be set for this next nexus.  Choose another…and you will go nowhere, and your doom will be written, for better or for worse.  In her memory she could hear Mulder's voice murmuring to her through the muzziness of approaching unconsciousness.  "I don’t think we can know.  I mean, how many different lives could we be leading if we made different choices?”  Her own, rolling out of her despite the weariness of her mind, a question that needed to be pursued, to get it all straight.  “What if there was only one choice, and all the others ones were wrong?  And there were signs along the way to pay attention to?”  And then the part that she had not been able yet to acknowledge, drifting to her through the waves of sleep that had engulfed her mind before the conversation could become dangerous.  “All the choices would then lead to this very moment.  One wrong turn and we wouldn’t even be sitting here together.  Now that says a lot.  That says a lot a lot a lot.  I mean, it's probably more than we should be getting into at this late hour."
He would go.  Alone.  And every time that either of them had gone into a dangerous situation without the other to cover their back, the situation had gone horribly, inalterably wrong.  She could not let that happen again.  Mulder was her lucky rabbit’s foot, and she knew she was his.  Rub it before you go, but bring it with you in case you need that magic again when you are within.  For if you leave it behind it does you no good, and the moment is gone before you know you had it.  If he would go in, she knew she must follow…to keep him safe.  To be his luck.  The difference was this time that it wasn’t just them.  Things would never be the same again; they could never again walk blithely into danger without any consideration.  They had William.
But then maybe that was the point.  He was the point of the whole affair.  Perhaps Will had to be at this Event, whatever it was, for it to be successful.  This choice, and they will be taken into danger, but William will be able to effect some necessary change by his very presence.  That choice and we will be allowed to go on.  And in either scenario she gave her son away to a destiny that would lead them to the next nexus…a nexus that gave up any control of his destiny to the Power or Powers that had proclaimed for him at his birth--and no matter which choice she made, she must relinquish her son to the workings of Fate.  But they would be alive.  Dead or stymied they could do nothing to affect that future which was the reason that he existed at all.
	Mulder was waiting when she came back.
	“One hour.”
	He grinned like a kid who’d just been told he could indeed have the ice cream cone he had wanted so badly.  “You won’t regret this, Scully.  We’ll be fine.”
	She regarded him calmly.  The decision had been made and there was no taking it back.  She had passed the nexus.  This time, she would go with him and be damned for it.  “If only we could be sure we’ll be coming out in that hour, I’d be a lot happier.”
xxx
“You know why I had to have you two come; you know that, don’t you?  I need you on this.  All the way.”
“Why?  Because I have a knack for getting to the bottom of things?” she asked blandly as she picked her way over a writhing root in her path.
“Yeah, that, and you’re great at covering my ass.”  He grinned at her like a fool as he stalked ahead, smashing aside the sparse undergrowth and hanging beards of moss with a dead cane he’d picked up about a hundred yards in.  On his back in the blue backpack William gurgled happily, glad to be heading into this tommyknocker paradise.  Walking behind them, Scully had the sudden insane surety that they had stepped into a novel like that horrible Steven King book where the UFO in the woods takes over the small New England town.  Not that this looked like any forest in New England.
“I’d feel better covering your ass if I had a gun I could actually carry under my own name.”
Mulder turned around sharply, panicked look painted over his face.  “What, you don’t have your gun?”
Scully twisted slightly to show him the bulge in the waistline of her jeans and watched as his face crumpled in relief.  “I had you.”
“No you didn’t; you had nothing.”
“I had you big time.”
They were silent for a while, hiking ever further into the far too quiet woods with the mulchy red soil crunching softly beneath their feet.  Rather than dwell on her surroundings, Scully forced her thoughts around to more manageable problems; problems she could cope with and over which she might have some control.  Now that they were going back, they had to worry about Kersh again where before they could dismiss him as a dangerous charlatan, now no longer their problem but Doggett's.  Kersh worried her like a mouse gnawing at the back of her brain.  She never had been sure if the guy was an operative of the Rebels or an agent of the Colonists; they had far too little information.  He had helped her to hide Mulder away last year…but because he, like the Colonists, believed that William must not be raised to follow in his father's paths, or because he wanted to save Mulder from the attempts on his life that would put him forever outside any chance of affecting his son's future, as the Renegades hoped?  How to know?  The man had obstructed them in their quest for the Truth from day one.  Could he be caught somewhere in between?  Could he be playing off both sides, a renegade third party like that Driving Man they had encountered in Vancouver?  Back when all they had had to contend with was Skinner, she had felt some bedrock under her about where they stood with the highers-up.  Losing Skinner for the labyrinth of Kersh had been a blow to the x-files unlike any other since the burning.  But if that hadn’t have happened, if Skinner had remained their superior and had ended in knowing more, would he be stuck in same place as Kersh likely was now, trapped between protecting Will for the Colonists and in the process hunting down Mulder to keep him away from his son, and the even less attractive option of destroying the son to retain the father?  And now that Skinner did know more, could he help them or not?  And where the hell were these Renegades, these opportunistic leeches who had had the foresight to try to save both the child and the man; where were they now?  When would they decide they had enough backing to openly assist this two-person crusade, to help her tiny family to survive?
Mulder had pulled a little ahead during her ruminations.  They had to be about a mile in by now.  “Mulder,” she began, when something hit her hard from behind and knocked the wind out of her as it knocked her legs out from beneath like buckled bowling pins.  Struggling to pull her gun from the waistband of her jeans, she looked up in shock in time to see an apparition in dark clothing leap up from nowhere to grapple with Mulder.  Their arms raised together in a stately ballet…and another dark apparition slipped up behind her lover and clouted him over the ear with a heavy object.  Mulder dropped like the kingpin in a set of ten, at the last minute twisting himself impossibly to avoid landing on their son.  From the nylon backpack, William began to cry in surprise at the impact.
She got her gun out and had somehow rolled to one knee.  “Back off!  Right now!”  The two dark-clothed figures stepped back but did not put up their hands.  Scully eyed them as she struggled to her feet, winded but otherwise fine.  Still holding the gun on the closest of the two figures, ran low over to Mulder and knelt by his side, scanning his wound with an expert eye while she trained the other on the marauders over the barrel of her sidearm.  “Who are you?  What do you want?”
One man glanced at the other.  There was something…odd about both of their faces…something expressionless.  The one who had been nudged spoke first.
“You shouldn’t be here.  We weren’t ready yet.”  His voice was toneless.  “You must go back.”
 	“What the hell are you talking about?  Mulder, are you ok?”
“Yeah.”  He put his hand over his ear and winced.  “He didn’t hit me hard enough to put me out.”  He squinted up at her.  “Will okay?”
“I think so; he's been through worse.  You have a bad knock on the head, Mulder; it’s bleeding and you could have a concussion.  Can you see well enough to draw a bead?”
“Watch me.”
“Good.”  She pulled his spare pistol out of his ankle holster and handed it to him with her free hand, keeping her sights on their attackers with the other.  Mulder did a sort of half-roll in the dust and pulled up into a crouch, blinking unsteadily at the two figures before them…but there was nothing unsteady about his grip on the gun, and the muzzle didn’t waver.
“You heard the lady.  What the hell is this all about?”  With Mulder on them, Scully spared a glance at the baby in the pack.  Behind his father Will had ceased crying and was looking up at their attackers with an expression that she could only catalogue as wary amusement.  He gave a gurgle and began to smile as he stared.  Simultaneously each of the two men pressed a hand to his temple.
“Hey.  Keep your hands still!” Mulder barked, but neither of the two paid him any heed.  They stood with their fingertips on their temples and stared at William.  Then they looked at each other and nodded.
“Mr. Mulder, Dr. Scully, I think you both should come with us.  We had no idea that the child was so far advanced, or we would have acted sooner.  You may have just tipped our hand…but the damage is done.”
“How do you know those names?  What do you mean?  And why in the hell should we go anywhere with you?  We should be frog-marching you to the cops.”
“Neither of us have permits under these names for these guns, Mulder,” Scully interrupted him flatly.  “The last thing we need is to be taken into custody ourselves.”  She returned her gaze to the men they held at bay.  “How do you know us?  I’ve never seen either of you before.”
“You have Him.  We know the signature of his mind.”  The Speaker grimaced at their son, who giggled delightedly in reply.  “Our associate in Vancouver told us you would be heading back, but you weren’t supposed to be this far south.  We were hoping when you passed through Natchez and saw our work that you would think it was the 'Colonists' and pass us by to avoid the area.  We aren’t ready for you yet.”
“You people cleaned out the bodies in Natchez?”  Mulder was no longer wavering as he thrust his feet under him and stood.  “What did you think you were going to accomplish?”
“We have kept our eyes open, Mr. Mulder.  From our observations we have ascertained, as you have, that Their latest test was successful.  They, as you have already surmised, are very nearly ready.  Had we not gotten there first They would have contained the specimens and taken them on board the colony ship to be tested for virility in this new incarnation.  And unfortunately, this new strain is very strong…and very difficult to contain; more vicious by far than the erudite former keepers of this planet though certainly less so than that primitive sample your associates had unearthed in Texas.  We had to act, though we might be found out.  Those who have been seeded give birth to abominations.  The abominations were destroyed before they could be taken by those who would be encouraged by the results.  We would have removed the corpse of the old test subject, the one tortured by your human Project, but we were taken off our guard.  And now here you come.  Our operative whom you met in Canada will not seem surprised, I wager.  He seemed quite impressed with your offspring at your last meeting, and urged us to take action…but we are not ready.”
The muzzle of Mulder's gun lowered slightly.  “You’re Renegades!  Like the Driver!  What’re you doing hiding out in the middle of nowhere?  And if that was you cleaning up Natchez, then who the hell were the suits in Hattiesburg?”
The Renegade eyed emotionlessly for a taut moment, as if trying to decide how much to say.  In the end he seemed to come to a silent decision.
“We cannot be tracked here; there is a small deposit of magnetite on the far side of the clearing where we reside for a time, and it turns aside both Their instruments and Their mental scans...and it keeps the... ‘replacements’ away.  This of course means that it muffles our own equipment as well, a double-edged sword.  And so we are reduced to doing visual sweeps of our perimeter, incapacitating the intruders and returning them to the woods' edge and beyond the range of our camp.  We cannot afford to be discovered."  The Speaker's silent companion stared at him, his expressionless face somehow managing to convey disapproval.  The gaze was returned, and the Silent One dropped his eyes, cowed.  The Speaker returned to their conversation as if nothing at all of moment had occurred.  "The operatives you ran into in Hattiesburg were not ours, though we do often shift into suits to hide our identities.  People in suits are seldom questioned.  I can only assume that those you saw in similar guise were operatives from one of the many factions within your own government."  He paused.  "And now you must come with us.  We have much to discuss.”
Scully stared at Mulder, taken aback.  Not a dangerous nexus, then, but a turning point.  Would seeing William for themselves be what it took to convince these fence-sitters to take action?  After their last meeting with the Driving Man they might have taken their son to one of these pockets had they known where to go; and now they literally fall into one.  Serendipity, the purest chance…or something more.
But Mulder was not done with being stubborn.  "I don’t see that we have to come with you at all," he grated, voice bristling with bravado.  "You people can't even decide where your loyalties lie.  Why should we trust you?"
"Because you have no one else.  You are caught between hammer and anvil, and you are all alone.  Because you have no information with which to decide what to do next.  Because you have spent two months wandering slowly back to the center of things, fearing to move ahead, fearing to remain behind.  Events outpace you because of your ambivalence.  We can help you to decide what you must do.  And perhaps you can show us what we must do.  We can aid each other.  And because we cannot allow you to leave until we have our surety of you.  You know now where we are.  You may reveal us to our enemies, and that would be our disaster, perhaps yours as well.  There are not so many of us that we can spare an entire enclave to your eventual capture.  Come; we will not harm you without a majority vote."
"I don't know about you, Mulder, but I don’t find that entirely reassuring," Scully muttered as she helped to pull him up to an even keel.  But there wasn’t much else that they could do.  Wordlessly they formed up into a column with the Speaker leading, then Mulder and the baby, Scully following him with a steadying hand on his shoulder and her gun dangling ready from the other.  The Silent One took up the rear.
xxx
They padded through the woods for the better part of a half an hour, covering perhaps another mile on a more easterly heading than they had taken on the way in.  Their surprise meeting with the Renegades had occurred a mile almost directly south of the town, in the cleared section of the forest.  Now they entered into a far more tangled and breathless section of virgin Alabama wilderness, the trees much closer together and the moss in ever thicker curtains.  Near the end of the mile an occasional outcropping of dark stone began to mark their path as if materializing out of nowhere.  From Mulder's back, William made a small mewling sound and took in his surroundings with interest, his small mahogany head turning from one side to the other.  Without warning before the largest outcropping they had seen yet, the Speaker called a halt with an upraised hand.  "Wait here."
Scully spared a quick glance behind her at the Silent One as their guide stalked ahead.  Silent he was, and motionless, eyes staring straight ahead into the thicket into which his superior, or so she supposed he was from their earlier exchange, had disappeared.  There was no sign of hostility in his demeanor; it was as if he did not acknowledge their existence unless told to do so.  But occasionally his dead-seeming eyes would light on William, and then they glittered.  With a shiver, Scully stepped up closer to Mulder and murmured under her breath, "How you holding up?"  He nodded shortly but didn’t speak, his eyes trained on the outcrop behind which the Speaker had disappeared.  "Do you think we're close?  This must be the magnetite they were talking about."
Mulder was barely breathing.  She could feel the tightly wound spring of his readiness as he raised his gun-hand and briefly checked the slide.  "Could be.  If that's the case, be ready.  He could be alerting the sentries.  Or he could be getting together a posse to come out and overpower us, take the baby by force."
As if she did not already have enough pleasant thoughts to enjoy.  Nodding once, she spread her legs a little and shifted her grip on the now-warm butt of her gun.  They waited for endless minutes in the unnatural stillness of the forest as their tension communicated itself to each other in an endless loop through the channels that they shared.  They were keyed up, jumpy.  It wouldn’t do to make a mistake.  As if reading her mind, Mulder suddenly squared his shoulders and drew in a deep, calming breath.  She followed his example, shook loose her locked muscles.  They had to be ready for whatever came.
Whatever they had been expecting, they could never have been ready for what did come.  After an interminable span their guide reappeared from behind the large jumble of stone…alone.  He stood before the rock unmoving, apparently waiting for them to close the distance.  Without pause the Silent One stepped around them and walked toward the Speaker, plainly considering his babysitting finished for the day.  Mulder shrugged and dropped his free hand to brush hers.  "Ready?"
"Yeah."
They approached the strangely bulbous deposit of magnetite cautiously.  Up close it resembled a melted pile of slag incongruously dropped in the midst of the trees by an absentminded giant.  As they reached its base where their attendees waited, Scully reached up and touched the baby's hand--to reassure him or herself, she was not sure.
"Our holding is on the other side of this outcropping.  While you are in our care you must consider yourselves in protective custody, and abide by all the rules one would expect of a guest.  You must give your word that you will not expose us, either to those who would be our allies, or those who have been our enemies.  You must not harm any of our own, and you must not seek to damage any of our devices.  In return we will promise not to harm either you or your child, nor will we take him from you as you so obviously fear.  We would have no way of keeping him safe as of now, and having him would make our enclave a target when we are forced by necessity to remain unseen.  Therefore we will have no reason to remove him from you who do so very well under the circumstances."  Mulder and Scully exchanged glances and followed the Speaker and the Silent One around the rock.
On the far side of the outcropping, camouflaged by the thicket and the scattered piles of stone there was a tiny red dirt clearing, about fifty feet square and almost entirely taken up by what seemed to be an old hunting cabin surrounded by canvas tenting and small campsites.  From behind the idly flapping canvas could be seen dozens of moving shapes clad in ragged gear and walking in a way that seemed both purposeful and mazy.  As this untidy hideaway came into full view Scully stopped dead and stared, feeling a shudder of almost instantaneous recall as she took in a sight that matched almost exactly the Montana hideaway of Absalom, the man who had made it his mission to recover abductees in the process of metamorphosing into replicants.  The man who had brought so many of them to the Renegade alien healer they had known as Jeremiah Smith.  The man who had nearly saved Mulder before their misguided SWAT team had fallen upon his refugee camp and destroyed the operation beyond the chance of recovery.  That moment, the hideous irony of it had impressed itself upon Scully's brain as one of her deepest regrets in the wake of Mulder's 'death' over a year ago, but she had never thought that she would have to face such a scene again.  Stopping a step ahead of her as he realized that she had fallen behind, Mulder turned to glance at her in concern, his eyes questioning.  He would have no reason to remember the place.  She shook her head and resumed walking.  It was nothing.  Nothing.  Just a resemblance.  She wished she could quell the cold feeling of dread that rose in the pit of her stomach.
Their guides had not stopped.  They were some fifteen yards ahead, walking briskly as if in a hurry to rejoin their small faction in the dooryard.  Fanned out before the doorstep, approximately thirty roughly-dressed men and women, their faces all eerily similar, stood motionless, waiting in ragged array to receive them.
As Mulder and Scully approached with their peerless and long-awaited son, two more Renegades stepped out of the cabin door.  As they parted to move into the dooryard the portal was exposed, yawning like an empty mouth.  Standing in the ragged doorway like a statue from another time, clad in shorts and a t-shirt and looking disheveled but healthy, stood the stumpy figure of a sixteen-year-old Gibson Praise. 
X   X   X

(Amor Fati, pt. 46: “Old Friends And New Enemies”)

For the second time that day Scully stopped in her tracks.  "Mulder!"
Mulder for his part seemed equally stunned.  If they had ever thought to meet Gibson Praise again, it was not here in the middle of an Alabama forest in the company of several dozen alien or part-alien political renegades.  He had disappeared from protective custody himself almost two years ago after the Alien Bounty Hunter had tried to collect his going rate on the boy in the middle of the uncharted Arizona wasteland.  An Alien Bounty Hunter that had looked like Mulder, but who could not replicate the signature of that man's mind.
They approached the dooryard slowly, no longer seeing the Renegades hovering around them.  As they came within ten feet of the cabin Gibson held up his hand, face expressionless as any shapeshifter.  His face took on an intense look, almost as if he were listening for something, straining to hear a note carried on a bare breeze.  His eyes focused on William with the sudden sharp regard of a hunting hawk.  They then went unfocused again, and the arm dropped.  Scully moved to take a step closer, but Mulder grabbed her arm sharply.  "It could be a trap," he whispered.
Scully didn’t take the step.  He was right.  For all they knew this could indeed be a shapeshifter…or any one of another dozen or more ways to take them in, put them off their guard.  As if hearing their thoughts, the young man in the doorframe allowed a sudden ghost of a smile to cross his lips.  "Oh, its me," he said softly, almost inaudible even in the silence of his surroundings...but his words seemed to ring out despite.  The teenager looked uncomfortable with the sudden onslaught of verbalisation, but he forged ahead anyway.  "Look at your son if you need any proof."
As one they looked up at the baby in the backpack, like puppets whose strings had been jerked peremptorily.  William was leaning crazily out of the nylon contraption the way he only did when he saw a long-lost family member and wanted to be transferred to new arms.  His mouth was open as if shouting without words and he was grinning ferociously, his gleaming stubs of baby teeth winking in the thin shafts of sunlight that streamed through the spore-laden air of the clearing.  He stretched out his arms but made no sound where at any other time he would be shouting to be let down, to be released to rush headlong to this delightful new person.
"He wanted to come to me.  He could sense my mind from the edge of the woods.  He's never heard one so close to his own, though Mulder can sometimes come close…when he is near any device which might activate his potential or stimulate his altered DNA.  There are a few such similar mental signatures on this planet."  Gibson tore his own eyes from the child to look up at them.  His voice was rusty, as if long disused in present company.  "You can let him come to me.  I swear to you now, none of us will take William away from you.  If you cannot trust your eyes, trust his instincts.  He wants to come.  I think he was meant to.  This meeting is long overdue; a meeting of minds."  His face broke into that grim smile again, so like and yet so unlike the unchildlike child they had known in the year that they had seen the final proof of the Project's true mission.  "Bring me William."  Such was his air of quiet surety that without thinking Mulder stepped closer to the pounded dirt porch and squatted before it as if without thought.
"Mulder…" Scully warned, a step behind, but Mulder shook his head.
"It's him, Scully.  I don’t know how we could have expected this, but I think somehow we should have.  There is no other way this could have happened."  He reached up behind him to slide the strap from his shoulder.  The aluminum frame slid off his back and settled to the ground.  Mulder pulled the support frame out so that the device would stand on its own and began unbuckling his son, who was hooting silently, still straining toward Gibson Praise like a child possessed.  As the last restraint came undone Gibson dropped to one knee and held out his arms; not demandingly, but expectantly.
"Put him down.  He'll come to me.  He knows me now."
Mulder hesitated for a moment, then lifted their son from the contraption and placed him on the flat scraped surface before the door.  Gibson and the baby regarded each other for a moment, their faces strangely akin.  They seemed to holding a long conversation without words while William swayed before the high step like a little old man who had had too much to drink.  After a moment he stuck one finger in his mouth and grinned, a wide gummy baby grin, then giggled and gleefully held out both chubby little arms in an offering to be picked up.
"Friend!" he crowed.
The final ‘d’ was a bit fuzzy, but the word was quite clear.  Mulder and Scully regarded each other in surprise.  "Oh my God; Gibson…" Scully murmured in a shocked tone.  As Gibson picked up their son and looked into his eyes, communicating on an open conduit that neither of his parents could ever accomplish with him, Scully's eyes filled with tears unbidden.  Their son, that beautiful bright angelic boy who now had one tiny hand on this familiar stranger's face like a starved man seeking contact after ten years lost in the bush; their son was so different!  No matter what they might have done to try to ensure his safety, his happiness, their son would never, could never have or enjoy what they would call a 'normal life'.  She had been a fool to even think that he might be better off in any other milieu than the one in which he had so far been raised.
As if hearing her thoughts in a communion of their own, Mulder reached out and slid an arm around Scully's shoulders, standing so that she had to move with him.  He then propelled her away from the small tableau on the step and crouched with her under a tree a short distance off to one side.  They huddled together, held each other like rocks in the flood while their eyes took in the wonder of a son positively glowing with potential and a sort of inchoate joy as he communicated fully and completely for the first time in his young life with the one person on earth who could understand him.  The Renegades did not move off, but watched the entire scene with glittering eyes as if listening in on a long-awaited conversation and sizing up all the possibilities they could seize from an unforeseen moment.
After several minutes had passed with no signs of abatement, Mulder stirred and looked around at the other denizens of this musty retreat, sizing them up.  As if this was some sort of signal, the Speaker approached them from the far side of the porch.
"The child has a very long attention span for his age," the alien commented emotionlessly.  The two former agents looked up at him, but he showed no sign that he was aware of their perusal, still gazing at Gibson and William where they conversed in their silent manner in the doorway.  "The problem remains that though you can keep him safe, you have until now had no way of assessing his full potential or his strengths, nor of training him for the task to which he has been assigned.  That adolescent hybrid up there could be considered an abomination by our race, but he has gifts that we cannot cast aside, for we must use every advantage that is given us…and he can see into your offspring's mind, assess his potential and tell us whether he may be the one for whom we have been waiting."
"So we are all tools to you, one way or the other.  You guys are just as bad as the Colonists."  Mulder looked around the clearing contemptuously.  "How many in this camp are alien?"  His voice seemed to carry only disdain and no curiousity, but Scully could feel the tension singing through his frame where his chest touched her back.
The Speaker seemed to be unaffected by Mulder's disregard.  "Many of us remain, disaffected and no longer able to carry on with our double lives on this planet where we had hoped to make a difference.  That face of ours you know; a face worn by a self-appointed healer you called Jeremiah Smith.  Many of those you see are artificially and poorly hybrid clones, however; caught in a difficult situation now that the human Consortium that created them has been relegated to the rubbish heap.  We have an uneasy alliance between us, for we share the same goals."  He looked down at them finally.  "You would not have come with us had I shown you the face that we normally use for dealings with your race.  You have come to consider it the face of the Colonising force, though truly even those of us who chose to take on bodies permanently to join the moral rebellion wore that face, unrecognizable because of the disfigurements necessary to avoid reintegration.  Such faces abound in your government facilities, walking alongside both humans and replacements with unseen impunity, their scars unnoticed as they cloud the weak minds around them and allow your associates to see only an average, unremarkable human face displaying all the emotional range of such a visage.  Your 'Rebels'."
The alien gazed dispassionately down upon them.  "Though it is a struggle to maintain a face not of the prototype while in the presence of those who know that we are not what we seem, I will not take on that face while you are here, and neither will any of the others.  For seeing it, your ingrained fear response might override your judgment and confuse your minds while you decide what you must do; and we must have you clearheaded in this time."
"Kind of makes it hard to tell the villains without a scorecard," Mulder murmured for Scully’s ear alone.  Despite the shocks of the day or perhaps because of them, Scully had to fight down an insane urge to break into hysterical laughter.  It did indeed; had been that way for years.  God, in those early days they had had no earthly idea how complicated this mess they had gotten into could become, had become while they tromped around the edges of it, searching out clues with armed with flashlights and bravado.  And look where that insatiable hunger for the Truth had harried them, finally; ever onward past the point of common sense and into a nest of vipers that might shelter them or turn on them in an instant, in a situation more intricate than even the aliens themselves thought possible.
Mulder was grinning up at the alien suddenly.  "So you guys are basically the ‘rebel Rebels’ in here, eh?  Where's our friend the Driver from Vancouver?  You mentioned him a while ago, but we've seen hide nor hair of the guy since we joined you here."
A faint hint of distaste seemed to fleet the alien’s emotionless features at the mention of the Driving Man.  "That one is Outside, gathering information.  He has taken a small party of clones to contact some former members of your 'Project', to see if they will join us and forsake their self-destructive service in the press-gang of the Colonists.  Now that your offspring is here we may see for ourselves if he may truly become the catalyst we need to get Bureaucrats’ attention.”  The alien’s face though unchanging managed to take on a thoughtful cast.
“We had thought at first that the boy Gibson Praise might be used to that effect, but he is not fully adapted, and can only use one side of his mind.  In our way he is well-versed, and can communicate with us without effort or dissembling, and so we kept him safe among us after he ran away from his custody arrangement in your 'safe house'.  But he is an anomaly where your son is a true and fluent combination of what we have been and what you may become."  As he regarded Mulder his face changed not a whit, but suddenly there seemed to be an air of irony about him.  "You, Mr. Mulder, had that latent ability to go beyond…but only to speak and to listen, and not to effect the movement of objects with your mind.  The adolescent, Gibson Praise, also has that latent ability, but it cannot be harnessed.”
The alien’s mien now took on a faintly puzzled air.  “In your son, though, the ability is not latent, but fully initialized.  His mental activity is constant and unlike that of other human offspring his brain was fully engaged and partially myelinized before he reached his first year, where most humans do not complete that process before they reach the twentieth.”  Its eyes returned to regard the agents once again.  “And so it is that he can do what neither you nor I can do.  He can stir matter as well as he can move minds, and with training he can be made to be fully in control of that ability to an extent undreamed of by the accidentals, the anomalies like Mr. Praise.  Before your son Mr. Praise had been the one to come the closest, an evolutionary milestone only one quarter of a step behind your son.  And so your offspring may reach a plateau unprecedented in both our races…simply because his evolution was accelerated by the activities of your rash and impulsive leaders.  It is a thing that we cannot do as it is a thing that an human or an artificial hybrid can only do imperfectly, and it is a side effect of a combination of genes that would not have happened but for the tampering of that blindly impetuous Consortium.  We need the child to show our own blind and immovable leaders that he is next step of our evolution as well as yours, that what is happening here on earth may be the only hope for the survival of our race."
Ahead on the doorstep the gaggle of clones, hybrids, and aliens began to break up, still moving as silently as statues where any other gathering of people would have been buzzing with quiet conversation.  More than likely it was…but with such a grouping there was no need for verbalization.  As the Speaker and the agents looked on equally silent, Gibson Praise raised his head from his silent communion with their child, and his gaze arrowed out to pierce them.  "We've had our talk, Mulder.  Now I need to talk to the two of you."
xxx
Mulder squeezed Scully's arm lightly.  "C'mon; that's our cue to see what's up."
Leaving the Speaker behind they stood and walked back over to the doorstep, the red dust of Alabama coating their shoes and the cuffs of their jeans.  They reached the porch and stood silent, waiting to be enlightened.  Gibson rose slowly to face them but did not free a hand to shake.  Holding William he simply nodded solemnly at Mulder then turned to regard Scully.
"It's good to see you again, Agent Scully.  The last time I saw you you were pregnant, though you didn’t want anyone to know it.  I thought I ought to have told you then that your child would be very important, that I could already sense something from him…but I didn't think you wanted to think about it right then.  You had a wall up around your feelings…and you were more interested in finding Mulder.  I could have told you he was close…but by the time you went looking it was too late."  Scully blanched and flicked her eyes toward Mulder.  Mulder shook his head and twitched his fingers on her arm again.  --Don't worry about it now.  It's over--  She returned her gaze to Gibson.
"How did you get away from the safe house?"
"I couldn’t stay there, Agent Scully.  They would find me; you know that.  Lucky for me, the local enclave thought they could use me, and pulled me out from under the Bounty Hunters’ noses.”  His lucent gray eyes were still those of a haunted child.  “They wanted me as much as they now want William…and in a way, his birth took the heat off of me somewhat.”  
Scully made a move as if to relieve Gibson of her son.  "Do you want me to take him?"
"No.  I think we should go inside.  We need to talk.  I need to tell you what you have to do to keep your son safe and sane."  He turned to disappear back inside the dim interior with its smudged and yellowed windows, and they followed slowly.  The cabin was simple, utilitarian--similar to the one in Washinton where they'd encountered the prehistoric insects--and cluttered with what looked like the proceeds of a salvage yard.  The first thing that seized their eyes as they entered the doorway was an unrecognizable jumble of what could only be spare parts piled up under and on top of a counter that ran the length of the right-hand wall.  The counter on the left side nearest the refrigerator and stove was taken up by a radio and some other unidentifiable gear, all of it with small six-fingered hand-prints molded into the surfaces facing upward.  
"Just like the wreckage from Roswell," Mulder murmured to her, his voice tense with meaning.  Scully didn’t acknowledge his comment, simply let her eyes rove around the room, taking it all in and recording the details clinically for future reference in case they might need to get out in a hurry or hold somebody at the door.  Every surface in the room that wasn’t taken up by gear was swept clean as if they were in the middle of a primitive surgery.  Other than the small kitchen area there was a rough wooden picnic table and a dark hall leading off the back, a sort of breezeway leading most likely to several bunking rooms, maybe a back exit.  No telling what might be housed in the other rooms now, for it seemed obvious that the Renegades used the entire building for supplies and gear and slept outside in their own rugged accommodations.  Quite a comedown from the technological splendour to which they were used.
Ahead of them, Gibson had taken a seat at the bare wooden table with the air of a man getting down to business.  "Sit down.  The Leader has gone out to bring in the last patrols for the evening.  I think you're both stuck here for the night."  He turned William around and sat the child on his lap.  The toddler put his hands on the edge of the table and looked over the top, grinning at his parents as they sat down across from him.
"Mulder, Agent Scully, you know what I am.  You were among the first human beings to understand that…and Mulder understands it even better now that he has had the chance to see what it's like, for a time.”  His slate-gray eyes hardened with urgency as they drilled into them both.  “William is more than I am, more than Mulder or I could ever be.  We must support him…” and here his pale eyes became cautious, “but it's hard to convince these desperate men and disenfranchised aliens of that truth."  
“So you’re staying with them to convince them basically to save themselves?”  Scully’s voice was even, but inside her that same swirling disoriented feeling that she had felt when she knew that they were at a turning point…it was back.
“And because they saved me back in Arizona, Agent Scully, hid me out on the Res with the Tribes till I could be brought here.  They will hide me, for their own reasons, till I’m out of danger.  I owe them.”
“You don’t owe them your life,” Mulder retorted angrily.
“No.  No, maybe I don’t.  I’ve paid them back in service for my rescue…but Mulder; if they don’t choose to save themselves then we’re all dead.  The Rebels that now control the governments don’t care about the human race.  Not at all.  We are simply a means to an end with them, just as we are to the Colonists.”  He grimaced and shoved back a strand of hair hanging in his face.  A scar showed briefly beneath the lock, and Scully knew suddenly that his longer hair was not simply a side-effect of living rough, but a deliberate affectation to hide those long puckered ridges of scar tissue.  She wondered briefly if that was why Mulder continued to put off cutting his own hair after he had been drummed out of the FBI and no longer had to follow a dress code.  The thought gave her a small insight into her lover’s changed behavior, and she resolved to ask him someday.
Gibson didn’t seem to notice her regard, rusty voice ringing with something like cold determination.  “In fact, to the Rebels we are a liability; our very existence clouds the issue.  What They don’t want is for the Colonists to get a hold of a planetary system and set up Their own little empire.  They’re not in this to save our butts; not at all.  They use us, with no more compassion than the Colonists have.”
He leaned forward, elbows braced on the table’s edge on either side of William’s tiny ears.  “They know no emotion, no high ideals such as freedom, peace…They have their own morality, and no compunction about thrusting it upon the entire galaxy.  Species rather than personal survival is the highest ideology for them.”  His voice became grim.  “And so They view us in purely Machiavellian terms; how can we use this ladder to get to the top?”
He looked at the two former agents solemnly.  “What do you think it really meant, Mulder?  You hold this information in your experience.  You know that They know no laughter, no emotional attachments and make no decisions stemming from such; that They tolerate only the necessary.  You have heard the stories; those who get too close to us, who become involved with the struggles of the people here are considered infidels, tainted, no longer pure…for they have chosen to feel.  It’s an evolution of sorts…but few of Them are capable of that; capable of seeing that such evolution must be embraced.  Genetically They have evolved as far as They may, and are at a dead end.  There is only one further path to take.  And by avoiding that They are destroying Themselves.  They need us, need what we can offer Them.”
Mulder nodded his understanding, eyes as intense as Gibson’s.   “And William is the bridge.”
“Yes, Agent Mulder.  The bridge, and the next step.  A bridge between the greed of the survivalist, the implacable intractability of the doomed moralist, and us; flawed, fearful…and compassionate.”  He turned his gaze to Scully, gray eyes soft and unwavering.  “What makes us human?  As a scientist you know that our body chemistry is little different from a cat or a snake.  But what we are capable of; integrity, decency, sympathy…these things are human, and our ability to feel them and to act upon them is what makes us what we are.  And the Colonists will not accept that therein lies the key to Their salvation; not a new planet to spread to, but the ability to feel simple human compassion--for it is anathema to Them, and They fear that to embrace it is to deny who They are as a species.”  He shook his head in flat disregard for that outlook.  “In the minds of most, either way They die.”
“So these Renegades, then, they could give a damn about us as well…all they want is to save their own asses?”  Scully flattened her lips angrily.  “It doesn’t sound like they’re taking their own lesson to heart.  They have as little compassion as the Colonists or the Rebels.”
Gibson nodded and leaned further forward against the scarred wood of the rough table.  “Yes, Agent Scully, but compassion or no, they realize that your son must be saved…to prove to their entire race that They must take this unwilling step or be destroyed by Their own inability to adapt.  The universe is change; as a scientist you know this implicitly.  And They have not evolved for millennia.  They must evolve now, or die out…and caught between such a hammer and anvil they will take the road of the hammer…for the anvil goes nowhere and can absorb no impact, while the hammer is moveable.  Most of Their species yet wait on the anvil, hoping to avoid the hammer’s strike.  They fear to choose, but that is Their only choice despite; hammer or anvil, and They can no longer put it off, if they would but see it.”  The teenager’s rough voice was vehement.  “It is something They do not want to see or admit…and so William must show it to Them, to save us all.  For only in that way will They see that the human race, as messed up as it is, has meaning to them and is worth saving…to save themselves.  And we will get our final chance to get it right.”  He looked at them both grimly and cleared his throat, obviously unused to speaking aloud for so long...but yet he forged ahead doggedly as if determined to make them see the gravity of the situation.  “Survival is the highest ideology.”
“I knew someone else who said that,” Mulder returned flatly.  “The English man in the Syndicate.  The one who was always so well dressed.  He said that that was the goal of the Project as well.  Survival for a chosen few.  And that alone makes me think that the aliens might be right.  The Syndicate proved that we’re just as willing as the aliens to screw each other over to save our own asses.  It kinda makes you wonder if the human race really worth saving.”  
“Yes, well, someone seems to think so.  The conspiracists were destroyed for that presumption.”
“By the Rebels.”  Mulder’s eyes were positively shining as he took in this long-awaited back-story.
“By the Rebels,” Gibson agreed, “in Their finest coup to this day.  The day They took over the governments of this world from the remains of the Consortium and held them like border forts against Colonists who, always hands-off in their approach and preferring to use their human counterparts to carry out the day-to-day processes of the Project, no longer had any hold, while They were still scrambling to recover the reins.”
Scully couldn’t help it any more.  Bursting out in the middle of this ridiculous little tete a tete, she slapped one hand down on the splintery surface of the table with a sharp crack.  “But William is just a baby!  He’s barely one year old!  How in the hell can you people expect him to convince anybody that he is what he is, or what he may become?  He might not even survive this awful tug-of-war, because everybody is treating him like some kind of grand prize!  No child should be forced to live like that!”  Her face was livid and her features strained as she saw, finally and fully, what kind of bargaining chip her precious child had become.  Gibson of all people should realize that.
Mulder and Gibson both turned to her as if just remembering that she was still there.  The room fell silent.  From Gibson’s lap William stared wide-eyed first from one of the adults that made up his entire world to another, took one look at his mother’s distraught face, and burst into tears.  Gibson slid his fingers into the baby fists and bent his head to the tiny ear.  He didn’t say anything out loud, but after a moment the crying eased and William stared at his mother, blotchy red face accusing.
“You must learn to shield your emotions around him,” Gibson said softly but very firmly.  “Both of you.  He will pick up on it all, and he will understand.  Maybe not all the complexities, but enough to be traumatized.  Such trauma could permanently damage him, scar his abilities, and he needs full access to those in order to survive.  Let your worries out only when he sleeps.”  He pushed aside the recalcitrant lock of hair again with a frustrated gesture and sighed.  “Whether we like it or not, Agent Scully, whether it is fair or no, William is the key to our survival and Theirs.  They must be forced to see that he is inarguably the next step in both our evolutionary processes…that he is both of Them and of us…and so his powers, his talents must be trained.  Not too quickly, or he will be burnt out…but quickly enough, for we don’t have much time.”  He looked up at Mulder briefly.  “What is it that you said once, Mulder?  That the Future is here, and all bets are off?  Did you really consider what it is you meant when you said that?  The Future is here now…but everything has changed since you said it.  It all changed in the day in question.  The Rebels had infiltrated all levels of government by the time you found me…and They announced themselves with a bang when they destroyed the Consortium and took the Wellspring; the fetus that was the one remaining piece of alien DNA left to us before the Colonists, fully aware of the extent of the Syndicate’s duplicity, could repossess it.  They were all strategically placed to take over in the power vacuum left behind by the burning of the Syndicate, and with all the Colonists’ test subjects destroyed and the DNA in their possession, the Rebels had the upper hand…on this planet if not in the wider political battle.”
“And that DNA was so important because…”  Scully’s voice rang with cold demand.  This had to have something to do with the way every faction was now fighting over Will as if he were that fetus, and she knew that she had to know that entire picture in order to protect her baby.  No one would stop her from saving William from this horrible fate to which he seemed born, and which they all seemed helpless to change.
Gibson nodded.  “They were going about it all wrong, trying to graft alien DNA onto ours, trying to create a chimera.  The mix was not working.  Turning on the alien DNA we already had was the key; but the Syndicate still believed that without that raw material we could do little to make ourselves immune, and the Rebels were aware that by sheer stubborn refusal to fail they might just succeed.  And the Rebels would rather kill us all than allow us to be hosts for the Colonist.  But the hybridization experiments weren’t working, and no one could figure out how I had come to be a carrier, nor how to pass on my evolutionary good luck to the rest of the planet, as the conspirators could not figure out how to use it for themselves.
“Then the Rebels found out about the chip.”  Scully gave a start, and Mulder glanced at her, face expressionless as it always was when he was suppressing his emotions.  Gibson noticed.  “Yes, Agent Scully; the same as the chip that you had been given to control the cancer your radiation-fertility treatments had given you, and the chip that the Smoking Man was so bent on recovering from DARPA before the Rebels could get a hold of it and use it to stem the colonisation.  In the wake of the demise of the Consortium he felt he was owed immunity.  He always worked on his own agenda.  But to stop the Rebels from getting it and destroying his life’s work--and maybe because he still thought that the Colonists would win no matter what--and because he wanted to have his bargaining chip to save his own skin; well, he would rather damn the whole human race to keep Them from getting it than throw in on the side that lived from hope rather than calculated risk.  And that chip was the ultimate bargaining tool, all that the vaccine had not been.  All the people that have that chip in their bodies are immune, for it basically avoids the need for a graft by activating the preexisting alien DNA in anyone who wasn’t born lucky enough to have it turned on automatically, like moi.”  For the first time in their acquaintance, Gibson Praise issued an bleak, unassuming grin.  “Making the average human being a carrier just as exposure to the Black Oil and the ship piece made Mulder a carrier; biologically immune to the diseases to which our imperfect human physiology is susceptible.  For while we are higher evolved spiritually than They, They are far superior to us genetically; virtually indestructible, as you have seen with the alien replacements that you have encountered.”
“No, wait.  Go back a bit,” Mulder interrupted.  “That doesn’t add up.  Scully had the chip when she was infected back in ’98, and it didn’t halt the progress of her illness at all.  I had to bring her the vaccine just to keep her with us.”
“Yes, well according to what I’ve managed to glean from our allies here, the original chip wasn’t fully successful, or They would have seen its possibilities earlier.  The Colonists apparently didn’t realize its importance either, or They would have jumped at the chance to breed their hybrids from organic carriers.  But They were all intently looking the other way, thinking They already had the answers, until I came along and shook them up.  I doubt They would have chosen to give you and your fellow sufferers full immunity even had They known; not only could they not risk the uncontrolled breeding of hybrids that would result, but They were efficient men who did nothing without at first seeing all the advantages.”
He grimaced at them.  “Apparently, however, our friend the Smoking Man had a bit more foresight than his colleagues.  He seems to have realized the potentialities fairly early on and kept them to himself, preferring to lead his own small faction in search of the ways in which this chip might dovetail with their new understanding of my facility...in effect taking control of the main bargaining tool to save his own hide.  The chip you have, Agent Scully, is still a prototype, made before the possibilities were realized, but with a little tinkering it will function as the immunity I outlined earlier.  Basically it only needs to be switched over from ‘idle’ to ‘awake mode’.  What’s amazing to me is that the Colonists never realized that human experimentation with the technology They so condescendingly handed over might garner different results than those They had had in Their own trials.  Very probably it is our saving grace that we think so differently from Them.”  The empath’s round face was creased with a mirthless grin, and his eyes said that this was a hollow comfort.     
Scully recovered from her shock.  It all made sense.  “Bastard.  God, I was a fool to help him.”  She avoided Mulder’s eyes.  “Okay, so if the alien replacements are virtually indestructible, why does iron have such a devastating effect on Them?  The one that chased Mulder last year flew apart like autumn leaves when he got near the magnetite in that quarry.”
Mulder looked over at Scully, a faintly pleased expression on is face.  God, she wished she could detach like he did.  He was able to completely divorce his emotions from a subject that involved them so closely--for what could come closer to home than the survival of their only child?--and concentrate on the larger puzzle.  He saw things so clearly…and she had tried to think the way he did and could not.  But if she needed him to see the wider concerns, he needed her to remind him of the importance of human life, and of these things that lay closer to home.  They needed each other.  No wonder they made such a team. 
On the other side of the table, Gibson was nodding.  He cleared his throat harshly once again.  “Iron, and especially magnetite, breaks down the chemical structure of Their fundamental essence; what you call the Black Oil.  When combined with our own DNA, that ‘black oil’ results in a sort of green ichoric blood, a chimera if you will, that collects in a deposit or nodule at the back of the neck to buffer the body and brain from chemical interference from the inhabiting substance, and to keep it in balance so that it does not take over the entire body."  Scully blanched, remembering the uncontrolled growth of the node that had finally killed her daughter Emily; a child whose experimental balance of iron and oil had not come out right.  Anemia.  Final irreversible breakdown of the chimera that was the unnatural balance of two essences.  Uncontrolled spread of the alien ichor.  Body functions consumed and constricted.  Death.
If Gibson had noticed her discomposure he gave no sign.  They had never heard him talk this much in their entire acquaintance with him...but now the words seemed to flood from his lips as if he were savouring the sheer exercise of vocalisation.  "This recombinant blood can withstand the iron in our own hemoglobin chemical make-up, though it is toxic when exposed to the free nitrogen in our air.  The hybrids are in a way both weaker and stronger than the originals, for they have not the physical indestructibility of the true aliens, but they can withstand the iron both in their own bodies and in this world at large without a systems-wide collapse.  Unlike the artificial hybrids, the replicants can pass themselves off as human because they are virtually alien inside reconstituted human bodies, bodies that continue to circulate red blood, and tolerate the alien presence within them by a thin balancing act of chemistry.  They do not have the internal protection of that chimera and therefore are unable to develop the facility that the artificial and organic hybrids have.  Proximity to magnetite makes Them fly apart like a compound whose polarities have been suddenly reversed.  The two essences, ours and theirs, repel each other in their mature forms, one destroying the other as we have seen when a person is broken down by exposure to Their basic genetic presence; the ‘Black Oil’, the virus, the Seed, whatever you want to call it.”
Scully suddenly remembered something Doggett had said once about the replicants. “If you mean, Agent Scully, that these supersoldiers are alien, that just doesn’t hold water.  I don’t care how many similarities they have to these ‘hybrids’ of yours; they bleed red blood, and that makes ‘em human.”  He hadn’t, of course, mentioned ‘Shannon McMahon’s testimony to the fact that William shared some of the replicants’ features; red blood, indestructibility...  She hadn’t wanted to hear it, or believe it.  She had worried about it to this day, however, and had caught herself checking her small son’s neck for that telltale series of bumps ever since.  She would rather have had her son be a natural hybrid than a ‘supersoldier’, replacement, whatever, but he had not had the signs of tinkering that she had seen in Emily, and there had been no sign of the green chimera in her son.  Gibson’s explanation eased, finally, that horrible fear that had lurked in the back of her mind since the day Doggett had introduced her to his murderous underwater assailant.  “So to be born with both structures present in equal measure and working in concert is the only way to be a fully evolved hybrid?”  If that’s what William was, no wonder They thought him an abomination.  Not oil and water but Oil and Iron…and they weren’t supposed to mix.  But in those that were evolutionarily superior as was their son, the marker of that superiority was that they had adapted a way to do just that; to mix.   To be as physically indestructible as the aliens and as emotionally facile as the humans…and with the psychic gifts of both branches of the family tree.  Mulder covered her hand with his own.
“Yes.”  Gibson’s face writhed as if he were engaged in some sort of internal struggle.  “I nearly made it, as did a few other children in his generation…but William is the only one that made it all the way.  For that reason alone he is indispensable.  There is no telling when his like might come along again, for the wave of evolution is moving toward him, but he made a leap, propelled by the self-serving intervention of these last remaining Syndicate operators, working feverishly to prove themselves worthy enough slaves of the Colonists to be saved.  Perhaps it was destined to happen that way.  Perhaps they were acting on the orders of a God without knowing it, even as we have been all our lives.”  He sighed.  “You have to understand what I've learned, being here with Them.  What’s at stake here; how big this thing is.  Only the power that we call God could keep it all straight, and maybe we’re all acting on divine puppet strings.  I don’t know.  All I do know is how we got here today, and what it means for us now.”
“Tell us.  Make us see it.”  Mulder leaned forward, hungry for the inside scoop, and Scully watched him and Gibson hashing over the entire thing as if in a cloud, hearing their voices carry to her as if floating across a distant body of water.  --William-she thought to herself.  --Oh, my baby; what have we done, making you?  I asked for you, and God gave you to me.  I might as well have asked to be slotted into the agenda--  ‘Be careful what you ask for, you just might get it.’  She had been told that her entire life, but she had never understood the full ramifications of the aphorism until now.  Be careful what you ask for.  You might get it…but you will not be able to decide how it will be used, and you cannot control its fate.  Everything has a reason to exist.  This was William’s.  She had asked for a child, and that Power had taken one look at the odds and said, “Okay, you want a child?  Well, you fit the bill for the one that needs to happen.  So here you go.  Thanks for volunteering.”  She wondered if Mulder was as afraid as she was.  She doubted it.  He was caught up in the Quest.  It would be up to her to make him see the human stake in it.  Maybe that’s why they had been given to each other.
Gibson was still laying out the entire last five years in measured tones, and Mulder was eating it up.  “You two were there, you uncovered the last fifty years and you know how it went.  The conspirators who originated the Project thought that the virus would merely control humanity, make them slaves…and it can if it simply takes control of a body for a time, residing in the nervous system and the brain like a sentient driver maneuvering a machine from the cockpit…as long as it is not exposed to the circulatory system.  Once the Rebels had taken on bodies in order to infiltrate our governments, they had to seal their orifices from recontamination--because if a Colonist's life force tried to take over the same body it would be able to in essence trap the Rebel's life force in a body who's controls had been wrested over to the new invader.  Rather like the virus in its most primitive life-form as you found it in Alaska it will fight against its own until one invader is destroyed and one is left in charge.  That form of course evolved and seeded this earth after that first meteor strike, adapting and learning to ‘be fruitful and multiply’ rather than to kill itself off."
His eyes were far away as if seeing some complicated and beautifully intricate puzzle unfold before them in the back of his mind.  "But if it is exposed instead to the circulatory system, to the flesh and to the blood of the host it acts as a virus rather than a controlling force.  And while the vaccine that the conspirators had secretly developed will flush out that virus within the first ninety-six hours as it had flushed out the invading parasite in the nervous system, once the body has been sufficiently broken down and the immune system destroyed the human being is to all intents and purposes unsalvageable; merely a feeding sac for the developing embryo.”
He nodded to himself.  “That was the secret that the Colonists were keeping from the Syndicate, and when they found it out they panicked, realizing that all their careful planning and lip-service had come to naught.  There was no way that a vaccine could stop the virus’s progress after that fatal turning point.  They had never waited that long to try out their injections, and the substance had always worked in the thirty-six hour trials.  They panicked, realizing finally that only in developing a successful hybrid would they find immunity, save themselves…and the minute they managed to develop that hybrid the Colonisation would begin, whether they had developed any immunity or not.  Rather terrifying place to be, I suspect.”  He bared his teeth in an almost ferocious manner, eyes turned inward as if relishing a most entertaining image in his mind’s eye.  “Clinging to the legs of the man on the trapeze, no way down, no way to control the jump or to decide when it would happen…and the net had just been taken away and shown to be the illusion that it was.”  His young voice was suddenly vibrant and had taken on an implacable air.  “They had been fooled.  The Colonists had known what the Syndicate was up to all along, and had not been the least bit threatened.”
Gibson was now lost in his recitation of a past to which he was only a very recent part...but then, it was his history he was reciting.  “The one thing neither party had counted on was the Rebels, who chose that precarious moment when the power struggle was uncertain to take control.”  His voice changed from implacable to admiring.  “Their coup was planned in exquisite detail.  It was over before it began, and the hybridization Project burnt out of existence along with every evidence of its ever having existed.  No green light to the Colonists.”  Gibson grinned humourlessly, sounding once again like the teenager that he was.  But then, he certainly had a right to feel a bit vindictive toward his tormentors.  “Major setback for them.  They were left scrabbling for a hold on a species and a planet that had suddenly become slippery as that goop they used to throw on people on Nickelodeon.”
He turned his frighteningly emotionless gaze on Mulder, looking almost alien himself in that moment.  “You didn’t know what you had started when you introduced the vaccine into the storage facility in Antarctica, did you Mulder?  When you went there and removed Agent Scully from the containment system, you set off the automatic alerts and sent a dormant and forgotten colony ship off on its autopilot cruise back to the Home System…and in doing so you sparked a socio-political meltdown in an interplanetary society that consists of more planets than we could even dream of.  All these hosts that the conspiracists didn’t even realize were hosts until it was too late…suddenly this shipful of hosts shows up on the doorstep back home and exposes all the carefully laid plans of the Colonists, and the Home System knows what the Colonists had been up to over here on Earth.  They hadn’t wanted to find out for too long, preferring to leave Them alone to their mischief as long as they weren’t fomenting discord in the Home System.  And suddenly the home front realizes that Their oldest and most sacred moral battle is in jeopardy, here…and Earth becomes the focus of the biggest political war in the history of the universe.  The political reactives who did not want to wait for a bill to be passed come rushing in, all rash action, and make a preemptive bid to stop the whole thing before it could get any uglier.”
His merciless grin had resurfaced as he took in the two pale faces before him.  “You, Agent Mulder; you were the one that summoned the Rebels and Renegades that destroyed the forces of your nemesis, and you didn’t even know it.  Stupid of the conspiracists to take Scully from you; they ought to have known you’d follow, that you’d find a way to save her.  You two had always managed it before, like you were taking turns.  In daring to put asunder what they had unwisely put together they brought about their own downfall.  One too many machinations.  It is fitting.”
The smile became reflective.  “The one you spoke of as the well-dressed English Man knew what he was doing when he gave you that vaccine.  He was signing the death warrant of everyone in the Project…but he knew that they were already dead; that the neutrals would be coming in to end it.  The vaccine wouldn’t stop the Colonization from taking place, and it had no worth as a bargaining chip to barter for their own safety.  He gave it to you, knowing it would spark an intergalactic rebellion and ignite a war, hoping against hope that after years of obstructing you, impeding your progress, that you would succeed in doing the one thing that they could never do.  Stop the war by supporting the rebellion that the Colonists had hoped would never break out…for they had hoped that Their activities here would go unnoticed by their Elders until it was too late to stop them.”
“That’s when the Colonists started to intervene directly, wasn’t it?”  Mulder was leaning forward, fascinated.  “With no Syndicate to run things down here for Them, they had to get Their own people back in charge in the government…or there would be no FEMA, no state of emergency, no bees; just a lot of Rebels.  And if the Rebels stayed in power They might find out a way to make people immune, chip or no chip.  So They started abducting people Themselves for the first time since the beginning, making replicants who could pass as people and sneak in like assassins…”
“To kill off the Rebel operatives hiding within your government offices, shape-shifting to avoid human detection.  Not so much changing Their own appearance but clouding our mental reaction to it.”
“And so the Rebels started making Their own replicants using the old supersoldier project from the Cold War...to protect themselves.”
“And we are at a stalemate again.  But despite all of the changes, the Englishman’s confidence in you and Agent Scully was not misplaced.  Together you managed to put a severe monkey wrench in that war, though in a way that English conspirator could never have foreseen.  As carriers, you and your partner had developed the genetic make-up just right for recombination…for integration into a new species.  You managed to outdo them all, and it wasn’t even by means that honoured either her commitment to human life or your Quest…it was a total accident.  Isn’t that the greatest irony of them all?  Your mission only managed to stall the War.  But in the process of following that path you two came together and a child was born unlooked for--and that, not dream or ideal, but a product of simple human comfort and love…that is what will strike the final blow in this War.”
“Rather poetic, isn’t it?”
Four heads snapped around to the doorway from which the voice had come…that horribly smooth, cynical voice that both Mulder and Scully recognized and reacted to instantaneously and without thought, for it was a voice they had never thought to hear again, a voice that they both hated.  There where the fading sunlight came streaming in obliquely under the lintel stood a shape they both knew and had never thought would darken any doorstep they might frequent again on this Earth.  The tension in the room sharpened as their shock bled out to replace the earlier worries that had filled it, worries which now seemed to pale to academia in the face of this immediate threat.  Mulder pushed himself up from his chair, one hand gripping the rickety back white-knuckled as he faced the silhouette in the blazing frame.  Face twisted with disbelief and hatred, one word escaped his lips like an explosion.
“Krycek!”
*   *   *

(Amor Fati, pt.47: “Once More Into The Breach”)

The room exploded into motion.  Scully was up beside and slightly behind Mulder with her gun out and trained on the figure in the doorway.  William was squalling in sudden confusion at the terror and fury filling the available atmosphere in the room.  Mulder had his own gun out too, and just as quickly, had it trained on the nightmare figure before them.  He wavered slightly and pressed one hand to his head as if to steady it, then dropped it to his gun again at Scully’s concerned glance.  His eyes never left Krycek.  How did you kill a man that should already be dead?
They had been told that they might encounter him.  Neither of them had believed it, though.  They had not wanted to.
Holding up his hands slightly, Krycek or whatever he was stepped through the doorway with an overconfident grin.  Two arms.  This wasn’t Krycek they had known, then.
“Don’t move, Krycek or whoever the hell you are!  Stay right there!”  Mulder’s voice cracked with tension as he gestured sharply with the muzzle of his small ankle pistol.  The familiar figure stopped between the door and the window, handsome sharp face looking as hungry as it ever had.  The eyes glittered with some sort of secret amusement and flickered to the door.  Without the need for discussion Scully trained her own gun on that empty doorway.  “If it’s a trap, Scully, you’ve got to take Will and find another way out,” Mulder gritted harshly.
“There’s no other way out, Mulder,” Gibson called from behind them where he still sat at the table.  His young voice was flat with warning.  “I wouldn’t start any violence; you promised to avoid that sort of thing.  They might not take it very well.  He’s one of them.  Been here longer than me.”
“I don’t give a damn if he founded the place,” Mulder gritted, “and they can take their safe-conduct rules and go to hell.”  His eyes flicked back to the clone.  “I said don’t move!”  Krycek's doppelganger turned back to face Mulder, a hint of a smile on his well-shaped lips.
“Oh, don’t worry, Mulder.”  He nodded at Mulder’s left hand, eyes flicking to Scully’s hands as well.  He smirked.  “Nice rings.”  His voice had taken on a subtle air of smug amusement.  Without thought or restraint Mulder crossed the floor in one bound as if he had no use for the intervening space and punched the sharp-faced man as hard as he could under the smirking jaw…then staggered as if he might pass out.  The Krycek-clone staggered too, but recovered quicker and put up his two good hands to catch any further blows, a dangerous look on his face.  “I wouldn’t do that again.  I’m well-liked around here by some.”
One eye on Mulder and Krycek and another on the door, Scully debated whether to pull Mulder away.  He had his gun up again, but he wasn’t very steady.  That knock on the head hadn’t done him any good, and she didn’t know how long he could keep this up.  She darted her eyes first at the door and then at her man and his enemy, trying to decide what to do…and stopped stock-still as a party of four raggedly dressed men and one women with hungry haunted eyes swung around the corner and stood before the doorway in silent threat.  None of them looked expressionless enough to be alien, and every one radiated silent menace.  “Mulder, we’ve got company.”
“How many?”
“Five.  They don’t look like aliens.”
“They’re clones.”  Gibson’s voice was still flat and calm over William’s shrieks of protest.  “Half the camp is comprised of clones.  They stick together and do most of the sentry work while the aliens keep an eye on the equipment and try to suss out what the Colonists are up to.  The one you call Krycek is not the man you knew.  He’s a Renegade like all the other clones here; cast out by the Rebels as abominations and with nowhere else to go.”
“If he’s a clone, then how does he know who I am?”  Mulder’s gun didn’t move an inch as his eyes blazed into the clone’s face like green coals.
“Everybody knows who you are, Mulder.  You’re a legend, remember?  The man with the crusade…”  The voice was Krycek’s; disdainful and provoking.  Mulder did not pause to bandy words.
“If you knew me you’d know you wear the face and use the voice of the man that killed my father and that’s enough to make me want to shoot you where you stand…so you’d better shut up before something bad happens to my self control,” he snapped off briskly, and leveled the gun in the clone's hated face as if blowing that visage apart would scour his mind clean of the memory of his father's blood on his hands.  Still trying to watch both the exit and the face-off, Scully stepped back from the door and leveled her gun at the clones outside, voice flat as she readied herself for trouble.
“Mulder, they’re coming in.”  The group had started to move, the nearest lifting one knee to step up onto the dusty canvas-covered porch.  “Don’t move.  I don’t want to have to shoot anybody here.”
Gibson broke the tableau, voice uncertain from his dim corner.  “Please don’t do that, Agent Scully.  Let them in, and tell Mulder to let the clone go before you jeopardize the entire movement.  You need these people on your side.  You can’t afford to alienate them, or you’ve lost the only faction that can help you keep your son alive.”  As if knowing his future was under discussion, William gave a strangely adult grimace and fell silent, staring at the approaching posse on the doorstep.  Scully backed up another step.
“Mulder.”
“I’m not taking my gun off of this bastard, Scully.  I don’t care how many of them come in.”
Scully opened her mouth to reply, and Krycek's clone seized the moment to grab Mulder’s gun and thrust the heel of his hand under the other man’s chin.  Mulder, balance already compromised by the blow he’d taken earlier, staggered and fell back against the table with an audible thump.  He grunted with pain and slid to the floor as the five clones in the doorway moved in.  Krycek leveled Mulder’s pistol on the downed man, face expressionless and eyes glittering feverishly.
“Keep him on the floor or I’ll shoot him.  We need him alive.  Him and the kid.”  The voice was still disdainful…and cold as ice.  Keeping her gun trained on the clones now standing grouped in the doorway, Scully dropped to one knee and pressed one hand to Mulder’s shoulder to keep him from rising, then slid questing fingers along his bruised side, allowing her hands to be her diagnostician while her eyes stayed fixed on the door.  Her sensitized fingertips came across an inflamed area near the short ribs, then bobbled and dipped over a loose section that wasn't supposed to be loose.  Mulder winced and drew in a sharp breath as her fingers prodded gently and professionally over the hot swollen flesh.
“I think you've got a broken rib.  Don’t move, Mulder.  Don’t do anything threatening.  They’ve got us outnumbered, and you're in no shape to help.”
“Don’t let them take Will,” Mulder wheezed from the floor, voice rioting with frustration.  Grimacing, he tried to adjust his position, lunged up from the floor with a hiss, got one arm under his centre of gravity and pushed himself into a sort of reclining seated stance.  Scully removed her hand and placed it back on the butt of her gun, sighting on the door grimly.
“We don’t want to take your baby.  When are you people going to get that into your heads?”  Krycek or whatever he was waved Mulder's gun, exasperated, and Scully looked up from her mate to pin the clone in her iciest glare.
“Why the hell should we trust you?” she retorted scathingly.  Near the edge, her voice had taken on the same tone as she had used when speaking to the Rebel that had been replicated from the DNA of Darius Michaud.  She rose to stand over Mulder and placed herself between the silent group of clones and the baby in Gibson’s arms, torn between protecting her man and her son.  
Krycek just grinned insolently at her over the leveled barrel.  “Because you need our help.”
“Oh, I doubt that,” she answered coolly, all outward control.  “We’ve been doing just fine without you.”
Krycek shook his head as if he were talking to a thickheaded child who wouldn’t take advice, and looked down, gun pointed at the floor.  He looked as if he were searching for patience, or gathering up the right words to make a point.
“You know, you two never cease to amaze me.  You killed off Alex just when he was ready to help you, you ignore all the overtures that are made to you…and now you’re ready to pass on our help like it’s even a choice situation.”  He looked up, eyes suddenly blazing, and waved the gun as if gesturing to the whole room.  The barrel swept by one of the ragged coterie in the doorway and the clone flinched away.  Krycek paid him no mind.  “You have to know…” and now he seemed to be amused at some irony.  “If it weren’t for us watching your back, running interference, you would never have made it this far.  The Leader here couldn’t figure out what you two were doing this far south…but I thought you’d show up.  Call it a hunch.  And now here you are…trying to destroy your last chance for survival.  You people are your own worst enemy.”
“Tell us why you care,” Mulder grunted from the floor.  “Why should you give a damn any more than Krycek did?  He always seemed to pick the side that wanted to kill us, and you’re playing on the side that wants to sit on their asses and watch us die.”
	“I don’t want you to repeat Alex’s mistake.  Alex played all sides and none, and it killed him in the end.”  The clone narrowed his eyes at Mulder.  “Pick a side to play and play it, Mulder.  Be a player.  You can’t be a maverick anymore…the stakes are too high.  You can’t keep dragging your partner and your child from one dangerous situation to the next, Brother, or you’ll never make it.  Now is the time to choose.”  He grinned humourlessly, eyes raised to Scully’s.  “There’s always a time too choose, isn’t there, Agent Scully?”
“You don’t know anything about me,” Scully replied coldly.  “Krycek didn’t know anything about me, and you know even less than he did.  Neither of us is going to buy your friendly helpful routine.”
“I know that Alex didn’t want you two to end up the same way he did; trapped between two sides he’d betrayed, two bridges burnt, with no way out.  I’m telling you now…”
“You’re not Krycek!” Mulder burst out in impatient accusation, eyes blazing with cold fire from where he leaned against the bench behind him.  “You’re a clone.  A pale copy of a man that was both an annoyance and a tragedy, and a disgrace to the human race.  Are you going to try to resurrect that rat-bastard, do his rat tricks one better?”  His voice took on a mocking air.  “Or are you trying to fix his mistakes?  Because I’m telling you; that can’t be done in ten lifetimes.”
The clone regarded the prone man for a moment, face guarded, thoughtful.  “No, you’re right Mulder; I'm not the Krycek you knew.  But he knew me.”  The heated eyes glittered.  “Alex Krycek only knew toward the end that he had been cloned, that I existed at all.  He found out after he tossed that cigarette smoking sonofabitch down a stairwell.”  At their looks of surprise his voice became hard again.  “In the wake of the old bastard's demise he realized something, something you could never could.”
“And what is that?  Something dire, I’m sure.”  Mulder's voice was full of calculated scorn, but the clone paid it no mind.
“Oh, it is,” the clone murmured in its oily voice.  “He realized that without the Consortium the human race had no way of succeeding, of surviving, and that without access to that group, he no longer had a second side to play.  He had trapped himself.  Then he found out about the clones.  I'm the only one left.”  The clone grinned mercilessly.  “The Consortium cloned all their most 'useful' operatives, the ones with the most 'talents' to be utilized again should the originals fail…anyone who had the proper genetic balance to succeed.  They also cloned themselves in the hopes that should a successful hybridization result, that hybrid DNA could be transferred to them, making themselves immune.  Last ditch effort.  Without them we would never have stumbled upon stem-cell theory.”  His cheerless grin was now turned on Scully, who tried to ignore the implications to modern medicine as she kept her own eyes trained on the door.
“The clones, of course, were expendable, disposable,” the doppelganger went on grimly, and the face of every clone in the room was suddenly flushed with anger, himself included.  He did not pause in his summary, however.  “The underlings never knew about this.  Those cloned were supposed to have no contact with their duplicates.  But Alex found out.  Somehow.  And he found me, and told me what he had done wrong, the choices he would have made differently, could he only do them again.  I think he knew that his days were numbered.  So I took on that mantle.  When things fell apart I came over to this side.  I've been here waiting for you two to find me ever since.  To spread the word, and to help you along the way Alex could not.”  His voice rang with a sort of admiring faith in the man whose genes he now bore, a man he obviously looked at as a martyr to a cause that no one else had the intelligence to recognize.  Mulder’s eyes narrowed angrily.  He struggled to a sitting position and leaned against Scully’s legs, face suddenly livid.
"Alex Krycek was a rat,” he ground out.  “A rat and a traitor, a kidnapper and a thief.  Don’t you DARE try to pass his shenanigans off to us as some kind of holy crusade…to me!  To me!  And to Scully, who suffered more at his hands than I ever did!”  
Scully dropped a hand to his shoulder.  “Mulder…” she murmured warningly.  The gaggle of clones were primed and angry, waiting for a signal to strike.  All except for the Krycek clone.  He was looking at William, who had flinched back from the conflicting emotions in the hybrid's face and mind.
“Calm yourself Agent Mulder,” the clone said darkly.  “For the sake of your son, calm yourself and remember that Alex saved your unborn child in the end, helped Agent Scully to escape.  Not because he was helping the side that wanted to take him…but because he knew that this baby would be the key…and that key must survive to claim his birthright and destiny.”
“Meanwhile, Krycek could once again come out smelling like a rose with the guys on top, rescuing the hybrid 'chosen child' and killing Mulder to show good faith.”  Scully's voice sparked with deadly suppressed fury.  The clone lifted his eyes from the child to return them to the couple at the fore.
“Alex tried to keep his options open,” he rebutted softly.  “He decided not to decide.  Surely you understand that, Agent Scully?”  He shook his head softly.  “It is easier to rest on such a lack of decision than to take responsibility for the choices that we make.  He decided not to decide, and in the end it killed him.  I made the decision that he could not…the decision to commit.”  He looked around at shabby accommodations and ragtag of rebels that stood with him in the dimming light.  “For all the good it does me,” he muttered bitterly.  “Here I am, holed up with these dreamers, waiting for a messiah, a sign.  But seldom are messiahs recognized in their own time, Brother; remember that.  They have dangerous lives.  Alex lost his arm to his cause, and then his life.  I still have the arm, but…maybe he got the best out of the bargain.”  His tone had turned reflective. 
Mulder pushed himself up on his elbow and leaned to the right to take the pressure off of his injured ribs, his voice filled with quiet menace as he sought to find a hole in his nemesis’ armour.  “If your ‘Alex’ was such a hero, whatever happened to Marita Covarrubias, ‘Brother’?  Do you know the answer to that?  She was infected and left for dead, resurrected and put back on the dole, and now she’s either gone to ground or been killed...and largely because your precious Alex refused to back her up.  Do you know what happened to all the people who got in the way of Krycek’s ‘options’?”
xxx
The clone snapped out of his trance to stare at them, eyes glittering with even more intensity than they had before.  “I don’t know where Marita is,” he muttered, his voice showing the first sign of cracks they had heard from him.  “I haven’t seen her since Alex got her out of the facility when the Rebels were taking over...but she made her own choices; you can’t put it all on Alex.  I know she chose to work with him one more time when he sent you to find the colony ship in Oregon, but...”  He shook his head.  “Look, I'm not trying to justify Alex's actions,” he told them grimly, almost as if he were pleading for understanding.  “That's all in the past.  What's important now is that we keep that baby of yours,” and here he waved the gun vaguely in Will's direction, “safe until the time that is at hand.  And for that we need you two to be aware…and to understand.  Understand the full magnitude of what your son must be, and do.  Of what he must become, to save us all.”  Behind them, Will made a sharp sound of protest from his nest in Gibson’s arms.  Gibson tightened those arms around the baby protectively and raised his serious gray eyes from the scarred tabletop, opening his mouth as if to say something.  Mulder beat him to the punch.
“Our son is not a tool!” he growled sharply.
“Ah, yes, but he is,” the clone commented as if discussing the weather of a summer day...but there was a thread of desperate intensity underlying his words.  “He's not a carrier like you or Gibson, Mulder; he's a full-on hybrid, and as such he has the potential to be the greatest weapon that either side has ever seen.  The two sides that want him alive see him as a tool while the one in power sees him as a liability, a roadblock.  Roadblocks have a way of being destroyed so the road can go through.  Tools are kept alive and in working order until they are found useful.  If I were you I’d rather have him be a tool than a roadblock.”
He grinned, features vulpine and teeth white in the fading light.  "Face it Mulder.  You were just a pawn, your son an instrument of fate.  In a way it's wonderfully fitting; you managed to blow the whole thing up Their asses, the entire Game, both accomplishing and destroying everything they had created in you with the one action they had not programmed you to do.  You've got to be happy about that; you can get some of your own back.  I mean, you know they were controlling you from the start.  They encouraged the hypnosis so that you would do their work for them, guiding if not predetermining your every step!  They made you believe that your sister was still alive so you would keep searching…”
"I know all this, Krycek; what's your point?"  His voice was short, clipped.  It was still a very sore spot for Mulder that he had been so easily used.
The clone was staring at him as if he was deliberately missing the point.  "Don’t you see?  They gave you Scully, hoping at first that she would make you give up because you were getting too close, then as They began to realize that They could use you, hoping that she would egg you on to further zealotry…with the fringe benefit that she had gotten close enough to you that by threatening to remove her from your side They could maneuver you wherever They wanted to, like the Mario Brothers with a joystick.  But They didn’t realize that in bringing you two together they were signing their own death warrants, that you would not only sound the knell that would bring the Reaper to the door of the Gentlemen's Club, but that you would further confound their web of lies by producing in one act of human passion the thing that they could not bring about in all their years of plotting and machinations…and too late!  The poetic justice of the whole thing is just lovely."  Face gaunt, he grinned like a death's head, and the expression seemed to encompass every cynical view at sweet revenge.  Scully's eyes hardened.
"I'm glad the movements of the chessboard entertain you, Krycek, but it's our lives that were manipulated, and I for one am heartily sick of being reminded that I and everybody that I love has spent a decade of our lives as a bunch of chess pieces."
The clone's face flashed from exultant to enraged in a single second.  If the original Krycek had had a short leash on his temper, his clone had a much shorter…and it was a deal more frayed.  Scully wondered suddenly if cloning produced less stable minds, more mercurial tempers.  There had to be some side effects to that kind of blind, paint-by-numbers tinkering.
"You should count your blessings you were simply moved around like pawns," Krycek’s double spat at them, face livid.  "At least you got to have your own lives on the down time until this thing came in and got you where you lived.  I, and the ones like me…we were made…MADE! to serve a purpose and then to be cast aside.  An entire class of people more enslaved than the first primitive peoples of this planet who gazed upon the aliens and saw godhead in their magic.  We're gonna be one hell of a disgruntled minority when this is all over.”  The doppelganger sneered, enraged.  “And look at the guy they used to make me!  If they had the technology to grow an entire person, they could have replaced his arm…but he was just an expendable tool himself; why bother?”
Just as suddenly calm as he had become incensed the clone subsided to a fretful calm.  "He blamed you for that, you know, Mulder.  He hated you for that among other things...and hated Them even more denying him a replacement.  He didn't give a damn that by that time he had betrayed Them and he wasn't useful anymore, was no longer a good little tool.  Even if he had had access to the technology, who would give it to him?  He had burned all his bridges.  Once he found out about our existence I think if he could have made it into the cloning facility when the Rebels showed up he would have ripped my own arm off and had some surgeon attach it for him.”  Disgust and anger filled the clone's voice as if he could not decide whether he hated his own life, the forces that gave him genesis, or the source of his genes the more.  A very unstable individual.  Scully shook her head.  
“They could use that technology in the medical industry to save countless hundreds of lives!”  Her voice was irate as she saw the wastage passing before her mind’s eye.  The clone stared at her as if she had gone mad.
“Look at me, Scully, Mulder.”  The clone spreads his hands wide.  “Do you think these aliens, on either side, care about those lives?"  His voice was cold as ice.  "If it doesn’t serve Their own ends, They don’t waste Their resources.”
Mulder’s face had gone cold as a sudden thought struck him.  “If clones are being…‘disposed of’ now that the Rebels are in charge, what happened to all the clones of my sister?”
The Krycek clone looked at his namesake’s nemesis with an expression that actually had a little bit of sympathy in it.  “I haven’t seen any of them in any of the enclaves,” he said softly, “and I’ve been in several before I came to this one.  If they didn’t get away during the Rebel coup then they're dead.  The Rebels...‘cleansed’ every facility of ‘abominations’ when they took control.”  His voice was angry once again.  “Including my own brothers.  I’m the only one that made it.”
Scully dropped her free hand to Mulder’s arm.  Every muscle in his body had gone as hard as a block of ice.  Then there were not even pieces of his sister left in this world.  Samantha was truly gone, and he would never see her again in this life.
The clone’s eyes took in Scully’s movement, and he broke out of his reverie.  “They destroyed every threat, every evidence of the Project,” he said, eyes on the female agent now, “including the on-going clandestine experiments being performed by the surviving pockets of Project scientists...” his mouth tightened and his eyes bored into hers, “like your fertility specialist, Dr. Parenti, and his partner, Lev.  Good thing too...their continued interference was possibly damaging your son, and every sample they took they sent along to the Colonists, alarmed at the results of an experiment they never thought would work.  Regular progress reports that were intercepted on their way to the Colonists.  Once the Rebels realized what had happened they went into overdrive trying to get to you.  Only reason you carried your son to term was cause the Colonists were running interference for you.  A lucky concentation of circumstances.  They couldn’t save all the infants who resembled your son.  The Rebels were harvesting William’s counterparts like reapers…like the daughter of the woman you met in the Internet café.”
This time it was Mulder’s turn to cover her hand with his.  She let out a long breath and squeezed.  She was okay; they had surmised as much.  God…William had come so close so many times…and in the end it was the Colonists that had saved him.  The Colonists!  
Mulder had turned his gaze up to the clone.  "Okay, so putting aside the question of this whole clean-up operation for a minute, explain this to me.  Why did the Project bother to keep cloning Krycek after he was no longer a ‘useful tool'?  Did he have some kind of deal with the scientists after he found out what was up, something he never got to come back and capitalize on, or what?"
The clone shook his head.  "No, no; nothing like that.  The whole thing came as a total surprise to him.  But maybe I should answer a question with a question.  Why do you think I call you a brother, Mulder?  Why do you think Alex did?"  At Mulder's blank look he grimaced as if staring at a dull, dull pupil.  "You and Alex both had certain…aptitudes.
“You aren't human anymore, Mulder," the clone said harshly, "and its time you faced that.  You, just like Gibson Praise, are a carrier, and only a little less alien than your son.  The only reason your mind remains your own is because you've lived a long life as a human being before your junk DNA was turned on.  Your brain developed the human way, is still wired the human way--you still think like a human being, and that alone is what keeps you on our side of the scale.  You feel, and you act on those feelings.  Because of that you're far too flawed for them to accept you as one of your son's ilk, or even one of Gibson's, for his brain evolved with the DNA turned on from the start, and that meant it evolved along different paths from your own or anyone else's.”
The clone grimaced.  “Alex had a…genetic aptitude as well, the same aptitude that Jeffrey Spender didn’t have, a fact that royally pissed off his father, who in the end decided that his one legitimate son was not worth saving.  You, like myself, like your son, like Gibson Praise, are biologically alien to some degree, immune to the viral apocalypse...even though that operation that the Smoking Man subjected you to threw off that delicate balance, made you ill.  He wanted that immunity for himself, having lost his chance for immortality when the Syndicate went up in smoke.  He was already playing his own side, had his own back-up plan…and running the show down in Antarctica I don't doubt he might have already known that things were going to go to hell when the colonisation finally took place.  He laid his own escape routes…and one of them led to you.  But his DNA wasn't anymore prepared for integration than was Spender's, isn't that the kicker?  He found himself to be unworthy, just like his darling son.”  The clone was grinning like a skull again ...but there seemed to be some old pain hidden behind its eyes.  “His own greed killed the sonofabitch…while you, the only son that he could never claim and would never follow him, managed the transition that even he could not."  
At Mulder's look of disbelief the grin became heartless.  "Oh, I know you got a little sick Mulder, but in trying to take advantage of your already progressive state of deterioration by using you for replication the aliens stabilized your genetic processes…and here you are.  Forced halfway along into that next step in evolution, and bearing the mark of the devil on your spine, though half-formed, just as Scully bears it on her neck in the same place--the Chinese called it the Gate, remember that, Mulder?  Modern neuroscience recognizes that it is just that; the gate between mind and body, the most vulnerable part of our flawed physique…a vulnerability that transferred itself to both the hybrid attempts," he raised two fingers to the back of his neck, "and to the aliens who had taken human bodies.  One stab in the neck by a magnetite-bearing weapon, in just the right spot, combined with a certain electronic pulse set at a precise frequency…
"The Rebels aren't trying to save anybody by making their own replicants, we all know that.  Those replacements aren’t human anymore.  So the only ones that are immune are artificial half-hybrids like myself, clones that will catch the disease but will be able to fight it off--we won't be much use to you in the War, most likely, we'll all be sick as dogs fighting off Their hell'n damned Black Oil--the organic hybrids like William and maybe the partials and the carriers like you and Gibson, who'll probably never catch it at all…and a few lucky souls that had the presence of mind to leave their chips where they belong."  Mulder and Scully exchanged glances and the clone grinned, finally fully engaged in the humour he saw in the possibility.  "The fact of the matter is, Scully’ll probably outlive you by decades because of that little addition, because that graft means she isn’t going to die easily.  By turning a normal human into a genetic carrier it basically stops all human ailments, including degeneration.  Radiation from the tests caused your cancer, Scully, but the chip was able to suppress it the moment the old man decided to do you a favour and turn it on.  Remember Dr. Secare?  Cancer patient, voluteered for the hybridization project when he became terminal, went into remission once they’d stimulated his ‘junk’ DNA.  You don’t even have to deal with the green blood to get the fringe benefits.”
“Are you saying I won’t age as long as I have this thing in my neck?” Scully asked incredulously.  She had known that the Smoking Man’s test subjects had been remarkably healthy and long-lived, but she hadn’t realized...
“Not a whole hell of a lot.  Alien DNA.  Great stuff to have on you at this point in proceedings.”  The clone was positively gleeful in his own morose way.  “Good thing you have it, though you’d better get it turned on as soon as you get back to civilization.  I'd hate to see what state of mind Mulder’d be in, if after fighting this thing his entire life he had to watch you die right in front of him, nourishing an alien Colonist in some kind of hideous parody of birth.  I doubt there'd be much fight left in our glorious martyr if that happened, William or no.”  He shook his head.  “Maybe that's why that Smoking bastard let you live in the end…because somehow deep in his own heart he hoped that you two, having taken the road that he was too cowardly to take himself, would somehow succeed, and at least one of his creations would survive the apocalypse."  The grinning gaze fell full on Mulder.  No one doubted which creation he spoke of.  Mulder, and Scully as well, had been molded by the Cigarette Smoking Man as surly as the Project had.  But no one said they had to follow in his footsteps.
"You’re awfully talky for a clone; even Krycek never wasted this much breath gloating.  Why the hell are you telling us all this?  You felt the need to chat over old times?"  Mulder's voice was harsh with fatigue and anger, and the strain of too many revelations at once.  Scully felt much the same.
"Maybe I'm confessing.  Agent Scully might be able to back me up on this; everyone feels the need to confess at least once in their lives."  Scully's eyes didn't change as she stared at the clone.  His eyes slid away.  "Or maybe I'm trying to convince you that I'm sincere."  He looked at them both strangely, as if waiting to see what they would do next.  "I’d like to support you, Brother, I really would.  Alex believed in the Game, but he would have thrown in with the Rebels, anyone who offered him the sweetest deal."
"Yeah, we all know Krycek's M.O.," Mulder hissed as he straightened once again to relieve the pressure of his broken rib.  "Always go wherever the grass is greenest."
"Will you listen? The clone said impatiently.  His voice cracked with the strain of a person who had little time left to convince someone of a desperate ploy.  "Listen to me.  Alex found out that the war had started before the Syndicate did, but he couldn’t buy himself off to the Rebels.  He tried.  And then he tried to shoot  you, Mulder, because his only safe bet left was with the Colonists…and he was with the Colonists because he knew that the baby that Scully was carrying would have to survive if any of us were to.  It was too late for him to join the Renegades."  He shook his head, looking down at the dirt-encrusted floor of the cabin.  "I think if your father was alive he would have thrown in with the Rebels, Mulder.  He was too much of a realist to believe that these Renegades could succeed, but he was always in the Project half against his will.  The Smoking Man thought that meant your father didn't have the balls to see it through, to see the big picture; but I think he was still a man who hoped for a miracle.  Alex didn’t trust Bill Mulder’s ideas any more than his patron did, thought they were too ambivalent…but stalling for time was your father’s idea, and it bought us enough years for you to end up where you are now, and for William to exist.  
“Alex realized that a little too late.  He was in it for himself, yeah; but I don't have to make that mistake.  I’ve decided where I stand now, and that’s with the Renegades, God help me.”  He stared at them as if hungry for understanding, desperate for belief.  “Look at me, both of you.  If I was still with the Colonists I would have shot you by now, Mulder, and you know it.  If I was with the Rebels I would have neutralized William the minute I walked in here, and probably Scully too just for spite."  The clone's face seemed to sag.  "Look.  I'm trying to show good faith here.  I don't want to get killed for picking the wrong side any more than Alex did, any more than you two do, and I understand choosing none of them, I get that dance.  You know I do.  It’s in my blood.  But you've got to be convinced to join a group or you'll be destroyed, and this is the only option open to you, the only one that lets you all stay alive.  Whether we have any hope of succeeding you have to choose us.  There's no other way, and you've got to commit.  It's gotten too late to play the field anymore."
xxx
Whatever reply they might have made was forgotten as a new voice echoed in the room.  The truculent mass of clones behind Krycek turned their heads.  A shadow filled the doorway as the late slanting sunlight slowly disappeared behind the trees, and the Driving Man, last encountered in Vancouver, stepped in to join the tense powwow.
"He is right, you know.  The Leader would never have risked bringing you here unless the dividends might outweigh the possible losses.  You must be brought to our side now, or we all fail, and your family will be destroyed without a trace to show that your mission ever existed.  What do you say?"  The gray hair framed a face suddenly creased with cynical amusement.  "Toss the dice?"
"Why should we commit ourselves to you?" Scully demanded over Mulder's bent back.  "You people offer us nothing in return but more danger.  You won't take a risk yourselves to keep our son safe, but you’ll ask us to throw our own caution to the wind and sign up on your draft."
"We have little to offer you but a slim hope,” the Driver countered.  “You hold all the cards.  Or rather, the dice, for you only get one throw.  No second discard."  He grinned suddenly at Mulder.  "Are you a gambling man, Mr. Mulder?  Or was Mr. Krycek here correct last week when he said that you didn't have the balls to make your move when it was time?  It's the bottom of the ninth, the score is tied; it's time for the desperation play.  Or if you’d rather, a Hail Mary.  It all comes down to faith."  The mocking tone was back, but now it seemed mostly bravado.  Behind it they could both hear a thread of some sort of devastating hope slowly fraying in the alien’s voice.  Mulder straightened himself up against his prop.
"Slim hope."  He looked at Scully, his eyes questing for her take on this whole thing.  "The slim hope that your Bureaucrats will decide come running over here and stop the Colonisation at the last minute before their detractors can spread out consolidate Their power here, gain control of this quadrant, multiply, and come to take over Their own Home System.  Am I getting this right?  The slim hope that somehow what we do here using William as a tool will gain you people backing in Their senate or whatever, and this whole thing will just resolve itself in one sharp bang after sixty years of rolling along like a boulder on a switchback cliff.  And all we have to do is offer our son up as sacrifice, hoping that he won't be destroyed or taken in the process, hoping that all these unseen movements light years away will all shuffle themselves into order whether we can affect them or not, and that everything will come out okay.  Trust to blind luck, that's what you're saying, is that right?"  His voice had risen as he went along, until at the end it punched into the air with a sudden thrust like a fist striking a gong.  It sounded ridiculous.  Horrifying odds, idiocy to play along…and what else could they do?
"Blind luck, or maybe fate, maybe God took a hand in making your son exist, Mr. Mulder.  Mr. Krycek here might want to blame the circumstance on the maneuverings of your biological father, but it seems that precise maneuvering and cynicism got the senior Mr. Spender nowhere, while trusting to luck has taken the both of you far past what anybody could have foreseen.  What else but luck or God could bring you two together at exactly the right place and exactly the right time to make this happen?"  His grin became mocking again as he turned his eyes to Scully.  "As you can imagine it is seldom that two perfect carriers happen to decide to have a child, two sets of regressive genes combining perfectly…its very Mendelian, Ms. Scully.  So, be it motivated by fate or God, maybe the product of that union is now the bearer of that luck, and his existence, his ah…welcome presence may change the course of events should he be made to be in the right place at the right time...and with the right information as I once said.  We can only hope there is such reason behind the climactic events of your lives, Mr. Mulder, Dr. Scully.  Otherwise, what is left to Believe in?  There is no faith in hopelessness."  His voice was clipped and almost laconic, his phrasing terse to the point of being curt and his wording concise...but his eyes glittered with some unrevealed emotion if such was possible within one of his species.
Scully finally lowered her gun.  "Look.  I want to believe as much as anybody that faith and God can carry the day, but despite the miracles in our own lives, its awfully hard to put all your weight on such a slim cord, to trust blindly.  Serendipity is one thing.  Planning around hope is entirely another.  Statistically, the rope usually breaks from the strain."
The gray-haired alien nodded assessingly.  "Well then trust in facts, Dr. Scully,” he said pragmatically.  “You can no longer support the Rebels in your own government; they would destroy your son.  You cannot work for the Colonists, and you cannot survive for much longer on your own.  It seems the only choice left to you is to put your weight in on that rope and jump off the cliff.  Isn't that what all the Faithful do?  So do ordinary men reach sainthood."  He sounded so much like the Smoking Man for a moment that she stared.  Beside her, Mulder stirred, but Scully beat him to it.
"I don’t care about being a saint, and neither does Mulder.  We care about making it through this alive, with our son relatively intact."  Her voice was harsh with angry determination at the sting of his insinuation.
"Then don't do it to save the world; God knows that's gotten you two nowhere this past ten years," Krycek broke in urgently.  "Do it to save yourselves, and that baby over there."  As if that was a cue, William gave a loud defiant squall.  Scully turned her head to glance back at her precious, precious child, sitting red-faced and confused in Gibson Praise's arms.  She would do anything, including sell her soul to the devil or the Smoking Man, whichever offered her a better deal, to save him.  If it would do any good she'd sacrifice her own life, and Mulder's too…but none of that would do them any good.  There was really nothing else they could do.
Her eyes met Mulder's, and she saw her own face reflected in his eyes; pale and strained where she crouched over him.  She saw the fight bleed out of him.  --Do what you need to do-- they said.  --I'll follow-
It was her choice.  She had chosen to bear this child, she would have to choose how best to keep him alive, and Mulder would be there to support her--he had made that choice long ago, had done everything she asked up to this point, including leaving them behind when she asked it.  It was her choice as it had been before…and all they had to lose they would lose either way.  It hurt the pride and stung the hackles, but it was the only way; and if the gamble worked…but no.  She would not allow herself to think of that.  Now was all that was important, and tomorrow and the day after that.  If she looked any further ahead she would go insane.
She looked up from her lover's face.  "What do you want us to do?"
The Driving Man seemed to deflate with sudden relief, the first display of honest emotion they had seen from him. The tension bled out of the room like air from a punctured balloon.  "Hide where we tell you.  Wait for us.  Don't go back to your home city.  We'll let you know when things are ready.  That's all you have to do; just curtail your movements, stick to the places we set up for you, and trust the information we send you.  I know that's a lot to ask, but we can risk sneaking you into a few of our safe-houses on the sly…that's as close as we can come to protecting you without committing at this time."
"Sounds to me like you're already pretty committed," Mulder grunted, shifting position again.  "I doubt They'll take you back should things go other than the way you've all planned it."
The Driving Man smiled, a merciless smile.  "It is not the factions on this planet that we fear.  We have thrown our lot in.  We are already dead to our race whether we win or fail; even some of our own faction despise us.  Some of us have become more human than alien; only in this way have we been able to see the necessity that has driven us to this pass.  We can feel regret, and hope, and we can choose the worst odds hoping for the impossible gain.  What we fear, my friend, is the result for us all, your species and ours, should we fail.  We have feared it since our civilisation began, and we shall probably fear it until we cease to exist.  And so we make a play for the impossible."
xxx
“Leader’s back,” a female clone muttered to the rest, breaking the tension, and without a word the five clones in Krycek’s party trooped out the door, never looking back once.  The Driving Man and Krycek's counterpart watched them leave for a moment, faces identical in their abstraction.  They exchanged glances and without a word stepped outside the door to stand on the stoop and look out.  They saw the Driving Man nod once at the doppelganger and disappear from their view, more than likely to report their decision to the Leader and seek further orders.  The Krycek clone remained in the doorway, looking out.  Scully took advantage of the lull to whisper down at Mulder.
"Can you get up?"
He made a face.  "If you and Gibson give me a hand."  They both glanced at the sixteen-year-old empath, and he rose from the bench where he'd remained with their son for the entire trigger-edge fiasco.  As he approached Mulder's uninjured side he winced.
"Try to shield your thoughts, okay?  You two are buzzing like flies."  He put out his free arm, locked his elbow, and waited stoically for Mulder to reach up and place his weight on him.  From the other arm, William looked on with interest.  Mulder ignored his son's perusal and placed one arm on Gibson's.  The kid had been working out; the young arm was banded with muscle and burly under the ever-present dust of the compound in which he now resided.  Mulder’s eyes met Scully's.  She folded her fingers around his left elbow, resting the gun against the side of his arm, and shifted her feet apart.
"One, two…three."  The last count was a grunt of effort as Mulder hauled himself to his feet, Scully rising from her squatting positions beside him.  Gasping but finally upright, he paled a little and leaned against the splintered table.  "I'm pretty sure it's more than one rib, Scully," he muttered cheerfully, and tried to throw her a grin.  She gave him a level look.
"We'll have to wrap it before you go anywhere."
"With what?"
"Masking tape, an old shirt, anything to keep you slightly immobilized until we can get you back to town.  Maybe they have something around here."
"The shirt, maybe. I doubt there's anything else in camp," Gibson murmured.  He had broken contact and stepped back immediately after the lift was done and Mulder was steady, and now he bent his head, reabsorbed in William.  "We could have had one of the healers look at you.  You call the type 'Jeremiah Smiths'."  He smiled slightly.  "That is, if you would trust the source...but they’re all Outside."
Mulder opened his mouth to reply but he never got there.  Krycek's clone had reentered the cabin while they weren't looking.  When he spoke it was with a candid air of terrifying surety.
“Look; you made the right choice.  You gotta keep the kid safe; you can’t go back yet.  You can’t return to the middle of everything until the last possible moment.  You have to keep him safe; that’s the only priority here.  You’ve got to…” he paused, looking at a loss.  “You need to stop moving around, making like a target in the brush.  Hide out, wait.  It’s the only thing you can do for now.  You made the right choice.”  He seemed to be babbling, either in relief or from some other stimulus, and his habitually arrogant expression had become worried.  Mulder and Scully looked at each other warily, wondering what had caused the cool-edged clone to act so fidgety.  If the situation was unsettled outside the cabin they would not find out until it was too late.  
“Sounds perfect,” Mulder replied sarcastically from where he leaned heavily against the table, “but I have a couple of problems with our little arrangement; especially the part where we rely on you guys for every piece of information we receive.  Putting aside the question of whether or not we can trust what you deign to pass along, how are we going to do keep him in one piece, safe-houses or no, when we don’t know what the hell is going on?  Or train him to be ready for this indeterminate deadline when we don’t even know what he needs to do when it comes on us?  And how are we supposed to know when his time comes before the rest of the world finds out the hard way?”  His last sentence punched his point home like a battering ram.  “How will we know when we should re-emerge to fight your War if we have no access?”
“Good point,” the clone muttered, and leaned out the door again to speak to an as-yet-unseen figure.  “Look, Boss, we gotta give these people something; some kind of concession.  What we're asking them to do is to wait on our pleasure.   They won’t survive long that way, and then we lose the kid.”
The Speaker moved from nowhere to stand in the twilit doorway, regarding the clone as one would stare at an insect that suddenly stood up and spoke.  After a moment, it nodded once, sharply, and turned its gaze on William’s parents.  “We cannot takes sides yet,” it said flatly, “but you are right.  The child will not be made ready or safe in this way.”  Despite the lack of emotion on his face he seemed to come to a visible decision.  “To protect our investment we can do this much.  We will be watching.  You will be kept safe, and we will allow this one, this partial,” and here he nodded to Gibson, “to come to you occasionally, to aid the young one in training his mind.”  His expressionless face took on a grim cast somehow.  “We cannot declare a side by fighting for you yet, so you must wait.  But we will be near.  You will never see us unless there is danger; but if it comes to that we will stall, and then you must run.  We will be able to divert danger from you for a time, to buy the child time to grow into his gifts.”
Gibson was staring at the Speaker in surprise.  “I thought you said I had to stay here,” he said in a questioning tone.  “I thought you were keeping me back for a special mission.”
“That time has now come,” the Speaker answered grimly.  “We held you here until you could be brought to them.  Instead they have brought the child to us.  This is fortunate.  You will escort them out of the woods and then you will return and join the detail that will shadow them Outside.”
“I’m not used to being Outside anymore,” Gibson said a little uncertainly.  He sounded very nervous.  “I’m not used to so many human thoughts.  I don’t remember how to shield.”  He suddenly sounded very young.  Popping up unbidden in her mind, Scully remembered the way Gibson had greeted them when they had reached the camp; arm up as if to hold them back, denying any tactile contact with anyone but William.  He was no longer used to human company, to talking out loud, to sorting out thoughts.  It would be difficult for him to be out there.
“You must recall that skill as we have taught it to you,” the alien said firmly.  “You will need to teach it to the child.”
Gibson's face was a study in conflicting emotions, but after a moment he nodded, and his face went wooden again as he schooled his expression and visibly cleared his mind of all other concerns.  "Okay.  But we can't move Mulder now.  He's got a couple of broken ribs."
"I'm not sleeping here tonight," Mulder muttered darkly.  "Maybe they're all of one mind here, but it sure seems like they've got a lot of little cliques.  I’m not about to take the risk that one of these groups is not so in with the crowd.  They might stiletto us both in the night, take the baby…”  His gaze locked onto his partners.  “If you want me to rest, Scully, I'm not going to do it here."
"I don't think you should be walking, Mulder," Scully told him softly.  "Between your head and your ribs you can barely stand.  The last thing you should be doing is traipsing around a forest in the dark, stumbling over everything and possibly damaging yourself worse."
"Then we camp.  I mean it Scully.  We're not staying here."
She sighed in exasperation, but she could not fault his logic.  "Then stand still while I look for something to hold you together."  She looked around at their audience.  "Unless one of you wants to volunteer some of your psychic healing?" 
The renegade alien they thought of as the Driver made a face.  "Few of us have that talent.  Few of us care enough or will allow ourselves to care enough to make the necessary adjustments.  The Bounty Hunters could generally do it because They were required to take live prisoners to make their bounty.  They cared that that bounty remained in fairly decent condition.  Unfortunately, as you seem to already know, all the ‘infidels’ that actually specialize in that sort of thing are Outside right now."
"Well then we'll have to do the best we can with primitive human first aid."  Scully went over to William's backpack and pulled out a baby blanket.  It was just big enough.
Mulder winced and whined like a teething infant as she tied the thing around him, but where she would normally find his pouting endearing, she did not have the patience to deal with it today.  "Quit it, Mulder.  Straighten up and tell me if that's any better."
"I can move."  His stony face was all business again.  She nodded and looked at Gibson.
"Whenever you're ready."
Gibson nodded and walked through the door, still carrying William.  The Speaker, the Driving Man, and Krycek's clone parted like the Red Sea as they followed Gibson wordlessly and stopped beside him in the dooryard.  "Here," the Krycek clone muttered as they passed, and thrust Mulder's ankle gun out toward him like a peace offering, voice and eyes cold.  "Try to keep it off of your allies next time."  Mulder didn't bother to reply.
All around the tiny clearing the voiceless ragged company of Renegades, clones standing apart from aliens and with the obligatory tiny grouping of rescued abductees huddled to one side, stood like ghosts surveying the passage of a legend they might never see again.  It was a haunting thought, and Mulder and Scully automatically fell into the step they had been taught in the Academy, one slightly behind the other, each covering a hemisphere of the territory while remaining outside of one another's firing range.  Mulder leaned a little on her shoulder, the backpack with its built-in diaper bag drooping forlornly from the other.  Their senses augmented with the preternatural stillness that comes with heightened awareness, they followed Gibson through the silent gauntlet and out of the camp, moving like the soundless passing of ghosts themselves while William looked around him, eyeing the two mute lines of Renegades like a commander surveying a detachment of personal forces that he would soon return to recover.
xxx
Back out in the woods they circled around the camp until they were traveling at a right angle to the path they had taken to reach the rock, then swung hard left and penetrated deeper into the woods, moving in the opposite direction from that which the Renegades would assume they would take.  "Where are we headed?" Mulder asked breathlessly after a long quiet march through the lengthening shadows.
Gibson shook his head.  "I have a few places I go to out here that nobody else knows about.  We'll stay out here tonight, head back in the morning.  I'll have you in the town by nine am."  He seemed to withdraw into himself at the thought.
"You're the boss."
After another agonizing half-mile in which Mulder’s breathing became more and more laboured, Gibson turned to them.  “Get him in here before he punctures a lung or something.”
Scully raised concerned eyes from her sagging partner to behold a looming thicket of cane choked with deadfall, dark against the late evening gloom.  “That thing looks almost as solid as that cabin back there.”
“Pretty close.  There’s a flat spot up against the slash pile at the back.  I think some loggers left it here years ago.  Probably the same ones who built the cabin and made the clearing.”
Scully glanced at Mulder.   “You gonna make it?”
“Bring it on,” he muttered breathlessly, and winced as she pulled him up a little and helped to get him moving again.  They stumbled around the edge of the pile and followed Gibson as he disappeared into the beaten-down space in the canes.  Inside the canebrake the illusion of solid construction was enhanced as, in an accident of nature, five trees seemed to lean over the top of the brake and shelter the space within with hanging curtains of bearded Spanish moss.  “Very homey,” Mulder grunted as Scully set down the baby paraphernalia and settled him gently down against the wall of deadfall and debris.  He winced again and leaned his head back on the arm of a broken limb, closing his eyes.  “I could live here.”
“Don’t get too comfortable, Mulder; we’re going to make you walk again tomorrow.”
“Why don’t you just leave me here,” he suggested wearily.  His eyes were still closed, and his features were tinged with exhaustion as the shadows deepened about his face.
“I’ll think about it.”  Not a twitch.  He wasn’t going anywhere.  Relieved that her mate wasn’t about to go haring off to spy on anyone or do anything else that she would consider ill advised, she turned her back to the injured man and faced Gibson Praise.  He had let go of William, and their son had begun a determined exploration of the confines of the tiny space, acting as if nothing of note had happened in this unusual day as he crawled to each corner of the canebrake and pulled himself up against the dried stalks like a sentry taking a post.   Watching him out of the corner of her eye Scully curled a hand around her neck, trying by sheer force of will to dissolve the tension that had taken up residence there, and stretched to ease her shoulder.  Mulder wasn’t light; her deltoids and her trapezius felt bruised.  “Do you think anyone would see it if we got a fire going in here?  It’s the middle of June, I know, but his body temperature has dropped a little.  Shock.  I wouldn’t be surprised if mine has too.”
Gibson grinned suddenly at her, white teeth flashing in the gloom.  She found the grin unnerving.  Before this day she wouldn’t have been able to picture him doing so.  “You’re remembering the last time you got caught in the woods without a fire,” he murmured.  His voice was nonjudgmental and confiding as if he was reliving his old game, stunning people with his ability to pick up thoughts from their minds like leaves off the surface of a pond.  Scully gave a start and glanced back at Mulder.  She couldn’t be sure, but she thought she saw a grin fleet across his face.  Damn.  Lesson learned.  She needed to learn to shield her thoughts.
“It’s not necessary, but it’s certainly comforting,” the former chess prodigy agreed after a moment, riding over her discomfiture.  “I have some wood over there,” he pointed with his chin at the edge of the slump of deadfall, “but I don’t have any matches.”  At her defeated look he smiled again.  “Bring me William.”
Catching her son proved to be a more difficult task than she had thought; he had finally gotten some freedom to move around and was not exactly willing to be confined again.  She really needed to find a way to let him exercise his independence between jaunts in the baby carrier, or he would never learn to walk.  She brought the wriggling mass of arms and legs over to Gibson and cleared a small spot in the center of the space.  They got Will involved in putting together a tipi of sticks from the pile, and shoved a few handfuls of moss in the center of the cone.  “Great job, Scully,” Mulder called from the far side of the darkened clearing.  “Were you ever a Boy Scout?”  His tired voice was suddenly thick with amusement.  “An Indian Guide?”
“No, my brothers were,” she said dryly, refusing to rise to the bait.  Now that he knew that she treasured the memory of their last overnight sojourn in the woods as much as he did he would be smug about it.  “The former, not the latter.”  Dismissing Mulder’s grinning eyes at her back she looked up from the pile to regard Gibson.  “Now what?”
Gibson didn’t answer right away.  Taking William’s small hands, he pulled the little person away from the proto-fire where he stood swaying on his two feet without support.  Will sort of collapsed onto Gibson’s knee and looked up into the pumpkin-like face adoringly, as if asking what his big friend had up his sleeve for them to do next.
Gibson gazed into their son’s eyes for a long moment.  The silence in the clearing suddenly took on an air of expectation.  Scully heard a small rustle from the other side of the space as Mulder lifted his head from the limb to squint across the gloom at them.  Gibson nodded and murmured once to William, who giggled lightly.  Then the sixteen-year-old turned the baby on his knee and stood him up before the tipi of sticks.  William stared at the small structure, eyes focused as if concentrating very hard.  Scully found herself holding her breath as she realized suddenly what Gibson was trying to get her son to do.  Perversely hoping that he would fail, she shook her head.  Rational or no, she didn’t want her baby to be able to perform miracles.  She could feel Mulder holding his breath as well.  The silence lengthened, the baby’s attention span seeming to attenuate...and then he giggled again.
“If you don’t have any way of making fire in the woods,” Gibson murmured softly, “you find another way.  Like so.”  Before Scully’s horrified eyes, a thick wisp of blue smoke rose up from the moss to wreath and twine around the kindling like gray snakes.  A tiny orange tongue of flame appeared in the mass, flickered amongst the sticks.  “Voila.  Wonderful job, William!  Wonderful!”  Gibson picked up the one-year-old and tossed him once in the air.  William began to chuckle, enormously pleased with himself and with the reception his little trick had received.  “Better blow on that before it goes out,” he directed in an aside to the boy’s mother.  Still staring at the empath, Scully shook herself into action and squatted to build up the precious blaze like an automaton, eyes never leaving her son and his tutor as they wrestled around in the dirt like siblings.  William’s train-engineer overalls and tiny white t-shirt were red with dust.  That useless detail seemed to stick in Scully’s mind like soft clay.  My God...what would their child be capable of in the future?  If he could already do this with only a little bit of prompting?  And now he had somebody to show him the way.
“They better not call him Spooky Junior, that’s all I have to say about it,” Mulder murmured to her from the far side of the fire.  She looked up to see Mulder leaning half-forward, one hand propping himself up to keep his weight off of his blanket-bound ribs, the other slung carelessly over the knee of his dirty jeans.  The orange light of the fire flickered over his face, revealing a soft, distant expression.  He was thinking, probably, about every possible angle of this thing, following all the implications...but she knew that he was as shocked as she.  It was one thing to be told that one’s child was or would be capable of inhuman feats, quite another to see one take place right before one’s eyes.  Mulder had turned his glance to Gibson.
“In ancient texts it was said that making fire from nothing was considered to be the sign of the witch or the being of power.  First thing such a being learned, and the last thing he would forget.  I’m sure the early peoples got that idea from somewhere.”  His eyes suddenly focused on the empath.  “You didn’t do that, did you?  Trying to prove something to us, or to show him how?”
Gibson sat up and drew his eyebrows in, releasing his tiny protégé.  William, delirious with joy at being free, took one giant step and fell flat on his face before scrambling to his knees and crawling around the small space again as if possessed with a sudden irrational burst of energy.  Gibson watched him for a moment before replying.
 “No.  I can’t do that; I’m not able to do some of the things that he can.  I’m a telepath, not a telekinetic; I can’t affect objects at all, though I understand the mechanics well enough to remind him how to do what he already knows he can.  Though I could probably learn to do it, he does it instinctively…and all he needs someone to explain to him once what they want, show him how to tap into that power.  After that there's no stopping him.  He doesn’t even need to touch an object to affect it as the aliens do when They fly their ships by telekinesis.  His is an entirely new kind of power.”  His deep-set serious eyes took them both in as if trying to drive a valuable lesson home.  There could be no complacency with a child like William.  Ever.
Wanting suddenly to hold onto the one thing that would always remain constant in her life, Scully abandoned the cheerily burning blaze to return to Mulder’s side.  Taking a seat with her back against the deadfall on his left, she reached up and pulled his head down into her lap, felt him sag as his abused muscles on his right refused to hold him up.  After a token resistance he fell with the ponderous grace of a tree falling and shifted slightly to press his cheek against her jean-clad thigh, lacing his fingers in hers; giving and receiving comfort.  She kept the other hand in the disorderly thicket of his hair, fingers combing absently through the unruly mass while the fire danced over both their faces and against the wall of dead wood behind them, processing the overload of information and the shocks of the day while Will scrabbled happily from one end of the small clearing to the other.  After a moment in which no one spoke, Scully turned her head to follow her tiny son’s progress.
“Look at him,” she said to no on in particular.  “He doesn’t even seem to be upset by all that’s happened today.  You’d think,” and now she looked up to meet Gibson’s questioning eyes, “if he’s supposed to be able to absorb the emotions in a room as well as you, he’d be crying, stressed out by all the anger back there.”  She ended on a querying note, and Gibson answered with a nod.
“I couldn’t stop you all from exploding at each other, so I was buffering him.  I didn’t have much to add to the conversation at that point anyway, and the last thing he needs is to internalize emotions like that and make them his.  He’s still fairly untouched by the stresses of his life, despite the strain and the fear you’ve obviously always felt around him in the short time that he’s existed.  But until he learns to buffer himself, you need to guard your own emotional reactions in his presence.”  The empath regarded them both candidly.  “Look; the only reason I could shield him earlier was because I was the one directly touching him.  He won’t want people touching him too much unless he invites it, because tactile contact augments the already intense feelings a person broadcasts...they follow people around like little clouds of emotion, and he gets all that.  Thoughts, worries...  Touching brings it all into sharper focus, and it’s already hard enough to get that from all sides as it is.  Coming into direct contact with a person’s mind...the intensity of that is overwhelming, maddening; you can’t shut it off.  And if he’s already upset for some other reason, the stimulus of other people around him broadcasting their own worries will make his temper go off like a volcano.  Stress.”
The empath took them both in, gray eyes serious, and pushed aside the hair again.  He looked odd in the firelight with his characteristic buzz-cut gone the way of the dodo.  “His body is able to support the constant action of his mind the way Mulder’s couldn’t when he was...'switched on’.  In a way he’s the perfect combination of both our species, but that over-sensitivity is the trade-off.  He’ll probably go off alone a lot as soon as he can walk, just to get away so he can sort out which emotions are his and which are coming in from other people.  It’s really hard to tell the difference, especially in early childhood...” he grimaced, “and adolescence.”  He spoke like a person desperately trying to impart a lifetime’s worth of lessons in an hour, as he probably was.  “He likely won’t talk much unless you ask him to, and he’ll be frustrated by lies, though he’ll probably learn to accept kind half-truths.  You’ll have to just learn your way around him, give him the space to figure it all out himself.  No one else can do it for him.  All I can do is help him a little.  I can teach him to shield somewhat.  I was starting to each myself when I was in Arizona, and then the enclave in New Mexico where I first hid out, they taught me some tricks, but...they only work so well.  Mostly you make your own accommodations with your situation and your personal style.”  His eyes glimmered grimly in the firelight.  “In a lot of ways, he’s totally on his own.  Watching cartoons only works till you learn to deal.”
Scully could feel Mulder looking up at her out of the corner of his eye as if waiting to see how she would take all this.  Her stomach was hollow and her heart constricted terribly with borrowed pain.  Her child, her poor little boy...he would find such joy in his gifts; tossing objects around, amusing himself, and later reveling in the sheer power of his abilities and learning the exquisite control necessary to pull it off--she could see it all now--and yet he would be entirely, completely alone, more alone than anyone else on this entire planet.  What kind of life had they forced on him...what kind of life could they give him even if they were a ‘normal family’?  And if they were free even to try, would he sense the lie inherent in their situation and rebel even more thoroughly?  --Oh, God--
As the fire burnt down Gibson lay down on his side as if quite content to sleep rough, and promptly fell asleep, lights out.  From her lap Mulder grunted and moved as if to turn onto his back.  He had never able to get comfortable on his side unless she was in his arms; he had spent too many years sleeping alone on that ridiculous futon in his apartment.  Unfortunately the movement twisted his broken ribs and he wheezed and gave it up, visibly consigning himself to a sleepless night.  Scully steadied him with a hand on his head and watched her lonely but contended son.  William had given up on his explorations, and to her surprise he now eschewed his big playmate to crawl over to the sanctuary of his parents’ embrace.  Pulling himself up on his mother’s right arm, he stood before her and stared into her eyes, blinking sleepily.  Scully shook her head.
“Talk to me out loud, William,” she admonished.  It was time he started to do that more.  She didn’t want to stand between him and his gifts, but he needed to acknowledge his human side as well…and for that he would need them.  They would need to be able to communicate with him as well.  
Will gave her a tolerant look a lot like one of his father’s, and opened his mouth obligingly.  “Ma!  Hung’y,” he demanded, as if amazed that she couldn’t figure out from his face what he wanted from her.
Without opening his eyes Mulder released her hand to scrabble behind his knees for the backpack, wincing as the movement pulled his abused muscles again, and tugged the thing over to Scully.  She rummaged a little and handed the incipient toddler a bottle.  “Thank you, William.  That was very good.  Here you go, sweetie.”  Luckily they had brought juice.  Formula would have gone bad by now in the heat of the evening.  William collapsed contentedly in the free portion of his mother’s lap and nursed the bottle like it was his new best friend.  Shuffling him out of the dust absently, she changed his diaper one-handed and offered him a medium jar of baby stew, glad he could now hold his own food receptacles.  The stew was consumed as quickly as it was offered.
“I don’t suppose I could have some of that?” Mulder queried without opening his eyes.
“That was the last one, Mulder, or we’d all share them.  We’ll survive till tomorrow.”  Mulder grunted but did not pursue the issue.  As if finally giving in to the events of the day, Will curled up around the remains of his bottle like a snail and made a small whining sound.
“He wants you to sing to us, Scully,” Mulder murmured into her knee.  She smiled, able to forget the fears and the worries of the future in this one moment of content.  Far from mocking, Mulder was now settling into the warmth of shared memory just as she was…but that didn’t stop him from issuing her a small challenge.  What he did not know is she had gotten used to singing in the time that they had been apart.
“You want to guess what his favourite lullaby is Mulder?”  She felt his cheek crease momentarily as he grinned with weary satisfaction against her thigh.
“Take it away.”
The darkness held at bay by the tiny crackling fire, Scully sang both her men to sleep with the full, improved three-verse version of ‘Joy to the World’.  Her tune hadn’t gotten any better with practice.  Mulder sighed with content and slid into a slumber only slightly less restful than the boneless torpor of his small offspring curled up like a limpet on her other leg.
As the light of the fire faded into coals, Scully watched the glow drain from two beloved faces, one smiling beatifically and one reminiscently.  And once the baby was asleep and would not be disturbed by her thoughts, she ran a hand over the silky head and made a promise to her son.  He hadn't asked to be brought into this terrifyingly lonely life that he now had to lead.  She had chosen that for him, and she would do everything in her power to make sure that that his life was worth the sacrifices that he would make to live it.  The human side of him would survive this, and she would see that in the end it would win out.  That was a promise.
X   X   X

(Amor Fati, pt. 48: “The Final Days”)

Friesen’s Stay-Awhile
Chapmanville, WV
June 08-September 26, 2002

At the edge of the woods Gibson had turned back, holding up one hand in a silent farewell.  There had been little conversation as they had limped sorely out of the shelter of the trees.  They would see the psychic teen again in a few weeks once they settled into the location to which they would be sent to wait it out.
They had emerged from the musty moss-curtained latter-day Eden disheveled, cold, stiff, and hungry, and stumbled up the cindery gradient to the outskirts of Dixie to search out a hospital or a clinic.  The locals had been surprised to see them as no one knew them or knew they had been missing and only one or two people had seen them enter the forest.  No one would have searched for them certainly, had they not returned, so the local shock as they emerged had been heartening.  Apparently people who didn’t know their way around generally didn’t come back out of Conecuh forest if they’d been hurt.
While patching up Mulder’s ribs expertly, the PA had taken in their weary stances, ‘Bill Reilly’s’ drawn, stubbled face and ‘Jen Reilly’s’ mussed hair and commented that they must have had a rough time of it and they ought to stay in town and rest up for a while.  They had smiled grimly and told him they’d think about it.  They paid in cash and got a motel room long enough to wash up, eat, and grab a couple hours sleep, and then they had taken the next bus out of town.  It was a small, local bus, and William hadn’t taken well either to the pervasive stench of ammonia or the residue of human traffic that seemed to have seeped into the walls of the vehicle.  He had been very fussy by the time they had reached the next town and rejoined the world of Greyhound.  There had been a forgettable-looking messenger waiting for them at the Alabama border...forgettable only if they hadn't recognised him as the pock-marked visitor from the hotel in Salianiqua at the beginning of this adventure.  That, finally, explained where the man had come from; he had been a Renegade clone, keeping an eye on them before they  had known there were such things as Renegades.  Pock-Mark had eyed them furtively and given them directions to a particular location in West Virginia.
Now in their fourth month in the motel that the Renegades had designated a ‘safe-house’, they had begun to get positively antsy.  The settled feeling that came with their new alliance was beginning to drive them both insane; they were used to constant activity with very short breathers in between.  This ‘just hanging out, waiting for word’ thing was not in their usual modus operandi.  Meanwhile, away from the stress of conston motion, Will was thriving.  Finally having the chance to get on his feet and give this walking thing a go, he was rip-roaring around the tiny suite like a mobile terror-train, inflicting damage on his miniaturized world with clock-like regularity.  Scully, though, treasured each moment of her son’s development that she could share with Mulder; it was the one thing that made this interminable wait bearable.
Will had taken his first full-fledged, walking steps with them both in attendance.  A mere two weeks after they had settled in to Friesen’s Stay-Awhile Mulder had been outside in the rec area of the motel grounds shooting hoops in his sleeveless Hoyas shirt, trying blow off some excess energy the way he always did when he was wired from inactivity.  He’d had William sitting on the small strip of grass between the court and the fence that separated them from the motel’s lilliputian swimming pool, no doubt giving him pointers on how to play the game.  Scully had put him up to babysitting while she went out to pick up some food and information after a silent agreement with Mulder.  Despite the risks inherent in going out alone they had needed to get away from each other for a while after being cooped up in that minuscule environment.  She had just returned and was approaching them from the back side of the court, watching as Mulder ignored his healing ribs to shoot free-throws again and again as if demented while the sweat poured out of him and turned the Hoyas shirt dark gray.  William had crawled away from the sidelines to the fence, and while she watched from across the parking lot he pulled himself up against the chain-links and staggered around to face his father.
“Dada!”
His sharp little voice rang out across the concrete slab.  Mulder turned in mid-shot to see his miniature son frown with concentration and take one uncertain step toward his father...and then another.  Mulder had ignored the white-seamed and aging basketball as it bounced away to come to rest against the fence, eyes pinned on his son.  Scully felt the tears come to her eyes as she saw her man move to the edge of the concrete as if in a dream and squat to receive their child as he took his third full step and careened into his father’s arms.  He had been there.  Will had waited another milestone on his father.  She had not approached right away, allowing them to share this moment.  She could hear his voice praising the baby from across the court.
“Hey, good deal, buddy!  All right!  Hey, you wanna do it again?”  He’d stood the toddler back on his sandaled feet and stood back another yard or so, allowing the baby to cross the concrete to him.  Will, thinking this a great game and very pleased with himself--and probably sensing his father’s wonder and approval to boot--had crowed with glee and staggered to Mulder again.  They had worked their tandem way out onto the key where Mulder had knelt to catch the child a final time, then raised glowing eyes to Scully where she stood watching them through the fence.  Every line in his body had radiated a simple joy, and observing him, the tears had come out.  She hadn’t bothered to wipe them away, simply smiled at her partner and watched as he picked Will up and collected the basketball, shooting the next few hoops one-handed with Will clinging like a limpet to his left shoulder.
That moment had initiated a subtle change in the way Mulder had dealt with his small progeny.  Rather than treating him like an inanimate object or a puzzle to be solved, a prize to be protected or a responsibility to be dealt with, the former bachelor had suddenly come to see their son as a little person to be nurtured and trained.  He no longer treated feedings as fuelings and diaper changes as a mechanical maintenance process, and he spent a lot more time just ‘chillin’ with his son in the small basketball court or teaching him how to play catch.  Or rather, trying to teach him how to play catch, as Will’s equilibrium wasn’t quite up to par for that sort of activity yet.
Will was quick, though.  The boy had viewed the whole phenomenon of games-playing with a kind of confused absorption, as if unable to fathom what the point of it all was but aware that it was somehow very important to his father that he understand.  After a few weeks he had apparently decided that if you can’t beat them, you should join 'em...and his unorthodox solution to his size and balance handicaps had both worried and awed his parents.
Mulder had been tossing the ball up and down in his ratty, beloved old glove, trying to engage the toddler in the game.  Will had watched his father quizzically for a moment, the tiny glove from the plastic set that Mulder had insisted on picking up for him very large on his undersized hand.  Mulder had crouched on the motel’s one rug then and looked into his son’s eyes.  “It’s a game, William.  You throw the ball to your old man and he throws it back.  You got a good arm on you; I saw that when you started tossing silverware around.  C’mon; throw your little ball at your old man.”  He looked so comical crouching there earnestly trying to force a baby to play catch that Scully had snorted.
“Mulder; you’re just making a fool out of yourself.  Give him a year or so to grow into his body before you start indoctrinating him.”
“It’s a necessary rite of passage, Scully,” Mulder had returned without looking at her.  “The ball is small enough for him.”  He leaned over to hand the white plastic baseball to his son, who looked at it quizzically and then raised his arm and waited for a sign of approval.  “That’s right, Champ; now throw it at me.  It’s my job to catch it; if you peg me in the face, it’s my fault.”
An enormous grin broke out on the tiny round face, and he went red with excitement to his elfin, Captain Scully-like ears.  Scully could almost see the dawning realization in her son’s features; this was something his Dada wanted him to throw.  He giggled, still holding the ball up, little fist drawn back like the arm of a catapult awaiting the pull of a lever.  He tilted his head to one side as if waiting to see if this was what his Dada wanted.  “Ball!”
“Yeah, that’s right, Champ; toss it at me.”
The grin spread across the toddler’s face like mumps as the tiny arm shot forward like the proverbial catapult.  The light plastic ball sailed across the meter and a half of space and plunked into Mulder’s proboscis.  Crossing his eyes, he gave an exaggerated groan and dropped back on his rear.  Will giggled.
“Man, you got an arm on you.  Wanna try it again?  I’ll keep my glove up this time.  Here;  you catch it.”
She watched as Will repeatedly threw the little ball at his father.  Mulder, mitt held protectively in front of his face, caught every throw after the first, but though he thoroughly enjoyed the throwing, Will didn’t seem to understand the catching part of his role, and his glove remained unused.  After a while Mulder began to toss his own much heavier baseball up and down in his glove as if showing the toddler what to do.  Will watched him quizzically for a moment, head craned back to watch his father tossing and catching, and he lost his balance and crashed to his padded rear.  He never gave up watching, though, instead continuing to stare at his father completing this strange ritual as if trying desperately to understand what was required of him.  He could obviously sense how important this thing was to his dad and he wanted to please him...he just wasn’t sure what he was supposed to do.
Mulder sighed, ready to give up, and leaned forward to tug the little body back into a sitting position.  “It’s okay, Champ.  We can’t do it all in one day.  Maybe later.”  Scully was struck by the sudden fear that this new interest that Mulder was taking in their son would fade if he became discouraged.
“Give him time, Mulder,” she murmured softly.
Mulder nodded.  “I get it; he’s still a baby.  Don’t worry,” and here his face had hardened in determination, “I’m not giving up on my Willie Mays.”
At that moment Will had shocked them both freshly for the first time since he had started the fire in Alabama nearly a month before.  Staring fixedly at his old man, he then turned his hazel-eyed gaze to the worn ball-bearing glove held laxly on his father’s hand.  Mulder started and stared as the ball slowly rose out of the glove in a tightly controlled arc and crossed the space between them to settle into the tiny plastic glove on William’s little paw with a vinyl squeak.  Perfect accuracy, perfect control.  The glove was far too small for the ball and the arm far too small for the weight; the ball rolled out of the mitt and plopped out of his baby lap to settle to rest on the floor between them.  Will looked up at his dad quizzically as if to say, “That what you wanted?”
Scully dropped her hand to Mulder’s shoulder.  Mulder nodded reflectively and drew in a thoughtful breath.  “Well, as long as you don’t do that in any real games, I guess we’re okay.  C’mere buddy.  That’s my boy.”  He enfolded William in a hug and rubbed the downy little head, murmuring encouragingly to him.  “That’s what I wanted, buddy.  Good job.”  William cuddled into the embrace, eating up the attention.  He loved to please this fascinating, entertaining man that had so suddenly walked into his little life and made his Mama feel safe and loved.  Everything had gotten better in his emotional environment after they had rejoined Mulder, and William had learned to link that improvement and security to the presence of this man to whom he felt so connected and who seemed to want so desperately to become close to him.
Scully had crouched behind Mulder, hand still on his shoulder, and watched them both, terribly glad that she wasn’t doing this alone and that she had her unusual little family in one piece.
xxx
It hadn’t always been so clear-cut.  She remembered the first day of that remarkable roller-coaster 48 hours between William’s birth and Mulder’s ‘disappearance’, with bittersweet joy now that the ordeal was over.  At the hospital, William had just been ‘the Scully baby.’  With everything that had happened between them during the last months of her pregnancy, she hadn’t had the chance to ask Mulder how he wanted to play this, how involved he had wanted to be.  He hadn’t had the chance to hold his son until they had gotten him home; the doctors had swept the newborn up for monitoring to make sure that he was okay the minute they had gotten to a hospital, and Mulder had done what he had known she would have wanted and went to contact her mother.  But the day after Mulder had finally held their child and accepted his part in that small human life, he had been holding the infant again while she sat at the table and worked out the birth certificate application.  The state of Maryland gave you thirty-six hours to come up with a name and to make any custody arrangements before the certificate had to be turned in to a city hall records department.  Mulder had been joggling Will gently as Scully wrote the first name down and glanced up.
“This is your grandpa we’re talking about, William; the elder William Mulder.”  He’d looked up to meet Scully’s abstracted gaze and grinned, but after the baby had been put down for a nap Mulder had returned to lean over the table where Scully was working on the certificate, she had called the meeting to order.  
“That’s something we need discuss, Mulder,” she’d murmured, and looked up to meet his eyes over her shoulder.  “We’ve got less than twenty-four more hours before it has to be decided.  What’s his name?  The rest of it?”
He had looked at her in mock alarm and cracked a joke as usual when he’d been deflecting a sensitive moment.  “What are you trying to tell me Scully?  That he’s not mine after all?  Surely you’re not about to embroil us in a Jerry Springer episode now after all this time.”  Scully had ignored the ill-timed levity.
“What’s his last name, Mulder?  Is he going to keep mine, or are you going to give him yours?”  There had been no challenge in her voice, only quiet question.  Mulder had sobered immediately, and he took a seat on the edge closest to her so that only the corner of the heavy oak table lay between them.
“Well, that all depends.  Do you think everyone will just assume that he’s named after your Dad?  Because if you leave it that way, that’s how it’ll look.”  His eyes had been candid on hers.  They both knew the dangers if they chose to openly acknowledge William's true parentage.
“I don’t know what people will assume, Mulder, but it doesn’t matter anymore whether They know; we aren’t working together anymore.  They can't use him against you.”
“Yeah, that thing with the oil rig was all the excuse They needed.”  They had both known that the phone was likely tapped and that her apartment was under surveillance, though they had had no idea how thoroughly, hence their running in-joke about the pizza guy.  They had still worked together, and Mulder had been on shaky ground with the FBI while waiting for reinstatement.  But now all that had changed, and there was, they had thought, nothing left to lose.
Mulder had broken the silence finally, his expression tender with understanding as he met her steady gaze.  “I didn’t want to say anything.  This was your show, and I didn’t know if I had the right to decide this for you.”  She just stared into his eyes, and he had finally shrugged a little uncomfortably.  “Okay, Scully, tell me this first; what is his middle name?  Have you decided that yet?”
“Names, Mulder.  I thought it should be William Fox Scully Mulder if he was going to be named after your father rather than mine, but he could just as easily be William Fox Mulder Scully.  It all depends on you.  Either way, he’ll still belong to both of us.”  Her eyes had been patient on his own, and she had seen the flinch immediately.
“Oh God, Scully, do you have to do that?  Fox?  You know how I feel about that name.”
“Yes, Mulder, I do.  But it’s a part of who you are, and there’s not a single part of you that I would deny.  But especially if he has my name instead of yours I want there to be something of you in his identity.”
There had been a moment passed in silence as he considered the question seriously.  There was more being decided here than a name.
“Mulder.”  He’d said finally, and raised his eyes to meet hers so that she could see the emotion there, emotion that he had tried to keep dampered.  She had not known at the time about the warning from Kersh...but he had.  “William Fox Scully Mulder….if I can't get you to reconsider the Fox.  If you want him to have it it’s his.  I don’t regret him.  I never will, and I’d be proud to have him carry my name...if you want him to.  It’s up to you.”  She had reached out one hand to squeeze his on the tabletop for a moment, calm decision in her eyes, and then she’d leaned over the official document and wrote Mulder in the section labeled ‘surname’.  Mulder had had to leave them only sixteen hours after she had handed the paper over to her mother to be dropped off at City Hall.
The funny thing was, she mused, nearly everyone had assumed that her son was named after William Scully.  Everyone but her mother, who had looked at the document with tears in her eyes and hugged her daughter...who had tried not to burst into tears of her own because at that very moment Mulder had been at his own apartment packing for a journey that she would send him on alone, a journey from which he might never return.  The happiness that Maggie had hoped for her daughter would not become a reality for nearly a full year.
Watching Mulder with their son now, Scully could not help but feel an occasional wave of content roll through her despite the worries and the fears.  Mulder was healing, slowly but surely; both with her and with Will.  The brooding pain she had so often seen in his eyes during the decade of their association slowly faded as the days went by, and he was finding it much easier to show his emotions.  William was having that effect on them both, for they both instinctively lavished affection on him while he still allowed it, knowing that someday very soon he might pull away to save his own sanity.  Mulder was becoming much less closed off, more open and demonstrative of his affection--and that encouraged her to be more open with him…and with herself.  William had helped her to recognize the need for demonstrating affection in the last year, and that lesson was serving her well now as she learned to maintain a deeper symbiosis than she had allowed herself to have in any other relationship.  Remembering her own desperation as the months had gone by after William’s escapade with the ship piece and the cult in Alberta, her terror that she might not be able to keep him safe and that Mulder might very likely never come back to her, she had considered...other options.  She had thought at the time that, removed from the stresses of her x-filean life, her son might cease developing his otherworldly skills.  If he had had a normal life...
Watching Mulder and the toddler now, she decided not to tell her mate that she had considered giving Will up for adoption.  Yes, his life was not safe, and yes he would never have a normal one...but she doubted now that he ever would have, normal family or no.  One never knew what God, Fate, whatever it was, had in store for one’s life.  She had despaired of ever having both Mulder and her son in her life, fearing that she was being forced to choose between her man and her child.  Seeing them now, she knew that she would be willing to go through any travail to have this, to be sure that William would continue to have it, even as she stored up the memories in preparation for a time when she may once again have to live without.  If she had done the ostensible ‘right thing’ and given him up it would have been the height of selfish irresponsibility on her part, a ploy to evade her duty, both to her son and to the world.  Not only would William have never known his father--and vice versa--but he would have grown up fearful and alone, hiding his strange knee-jerk gifts from his adopted kin and worrying about what kind of freak he was becoming...if he made it that far at all.  More than likely the Colonists or the Rebels would have found him.  No one could remain hidden from Them for long...and then he would have been killed...or taken.  No.  This was the way it should be.  At least here he was understood as much as he could be, and accepted.  And God help her, she was gloriously, selfishly glad that she had them both.  She would not give that up.
She had made a promise.
xxx
Outside, the world ticked along at its accustomed pace, neither slowing nor speeding up in the face of impending doom, and with the exception of Will’s growth and progress their tiny world seemed to have stopped in its tracks.  Will, though still stingy on words despite her best efforts, communicated very nicely with a combination of fluid body language and those eerie, adult looks he would give them, head tilted and eyes twinkling with an unnervingly mature understanding.  Gibson came to visit once each month, the first time appearing out of the juniper bushes that lined the ugly pale pink bricks of the motel building and approaching the basketball court where Will and Mulder had been shooting hoops.  Will had looked up with a joyful shriek and scrambled to his feet on the concrete to run to the little gate, arms up.  Mulder had turned to regard the approaching teenager for a moment, then walked over to open the sally-port, releasing the toddler to dash headlong to his waiting mentor.  Gibson had picked the baby up and nodded once at Mulder, and then turned and walked away across the parking lot to their room where he could train the child without the world to see.
The thing was, they had no real idea what Gibson was teaching Will to do, and would have no real idea until the world came out to meet them again and showed them just how rapidly their child’s talents were developing.  Three months into their stay in Chapmanville, a messenger had come from the invisible cordon that existed around them.  The waiting period was over.  There was something they needed to do.    
X   X   X

(Amor Fati, pt.49: “Scully”) 

Parkersburg Community Clinic
1500 W. 11th St.
Parkersburg, WV
September 26, 2002
3:09am
 
They certainly had not expected to run into any weird murders on their leisurely zigzag back north and east, but fate had apparently decided not to give them a day off.  Their instructions had been succinct and lacking in concrete detail…but they had gone much further on much less for worse reasons before.  This assignment in comparison was a literal piece of cake.  The only thing that had changed was the originator of the assignment…and its very much more personal nature.  Not that Mulder had ever not taken any of their assignments personally.
They just had to be themselves.  That shouldn’t be too hard, considering.  This poaching wasn’t even very funky.
When Scully entered the morgue in Parkersburg in her borrowed green scrubs and her freshly dyed brunette hair, she looked every inch the imperious and no nonsense, sleep-deprived doctor.  She put on an irritated tone as she groused lightly that she had been called in late to have a look at a case that really had little to do with her.  She looked like she'd rather be at home in bed.  The avid and watchful glitter in her eye as she surveyed the disinfected stainless steel countertops was the only thing that showed both her intense fear and her intense and quiet joy at being back where she belonged, able to concentrate all her faculties on the job ahead without having to worry for William.  He was safe with Gibson, and she was free to concentrate fully on the sights and sounds and smells of the job.  She had missed this!  Not that she would ever let Mulder know that.
Speak of the devil, he popped up behind her without warning a moment later.  "What do we got, Doc?" he murmured in a low voice.  Despite being terrifically keyed up she managed not to jump, and turned to him with a calm controlled expression.
"I haven't even gotten started."  Her wry murmur was just as low.
"Well, c'mon; we're burning daylight."  The amusement in his voice almost completely masked the undercurrent of taut energy riding there.  He was enjoying this too.  Apparently inactivity made them both impetuous.  Restlessness was a dangerous drug…but a sudden release of adrenaline was even more so.
"It's nighttime, Mulder," she qualified.
"Whatever."  Mulder was in no mood for niceties…he was annoyed at the Renegades' casual use of them whenever it suited.  He had a problem with any kind of authority, but he hated to be maneuvered into a trap.  They had been used as tools a few times in the past, and it had grated; to be so used again was anathema.  "We have about twenty minutes to figure out why They sent us to do their dirty work before the kid at the desk figures out that we're not supposed to be here.  Besides," he joked, "I think this shade of green makes me look bad."
Diverted, Scully surveyed her partner's appearance for a moment.  He was right; the green scrubs he had been supplied were older, and had faded to more of a lime shade that made him look pale and sallow even in the dim light.  They set off the green in his eyes, though.  "You look fine, Mulder.  If you keep your mouth shut you might even pass for a PA.  Now give me a hand with the body and keep an eye on the door."
"Yes ma'am."  She raised her eyes to scan his face, searching for that mocking light that would have been there once upon a time…but there was not a vestige of that old sarcasm there.  Mulder's visage betrayed only quiet respect and a readiness to do whatever she wanted, as if he was deferring to her more extensive knowledge as the leader of this particular sortie.  It was kind of nice to see that change.  She nodded once briefly and went over to the covered gurney to check the toe tag, her training taking over from the moment she flipped the sheet away.  She didn't really need to narrate this particular case...but it was habit; the way she thought out loud.  She doubted she could even do an exam properly without the narration.
"Subject is an Asian-American male, age thirty-two, cerebral hemorrhage, contusions on chest due to blunt-force trauma, compression of diaphragm concurrent with hemorrhage in chest cavity.  According to this the M.E. did a full autopsy when they got him, and he's supposed to come in and do a follow-up later today.  I don’t know why he would have waited, unless it was on orders from higher up."  She looked up.  "From the sound of it, our victim here got caught in a vise."
"Or got trampled.  I can't believe our contact sent us in here without even knowing what we're looking for.  He might have just come out on the wrong side of a fight with one of Doggett's 'supersoldiers'."
She pulled the examiner's report off of its hook on the edge of the stainless steel gurney.  "Police report says he was repeatedly smashed into a concrete wall.  Sounds about right."  Their informant had appeared suddenly around twenty after eleven to round them up and invite them on a nice drive in his dark car.  "Your identifications and paperwork have been arranged,” he’d told them.  “You will perform a more thorough autopsy on the subject in question and then we will transport you back to the next safe-house.  You will report your findings to us."  That was it.
"You're still going to have a look, aren't you?"  Mulder's tone was challenging.  "I don't trust the M.E., you know; for one reason or another these guys always fudge the results.  From the look of it there hasn't even been an autopsy."
She threw him a brief annoyed look, wondering what in the hell they were doing here at three in the morning.  "I think you just like watching me get dirty."
"No, not actually."  At her candid look he grinned again.  "Well, only a little."  His face sobered, and his eyes bored into hers.  "None of these yokels are as good as you, Scully,” he muttered vehemently.  “I'm not going to accept anyone else's results before I run them by you.  I know you're with me."
He delivered his backhanded compliment with his usual lazy aplomb and underhanded charm, but she could sense the admiration behind it, the faith he had in her skills.  He relied on her.  Always there had been that trust, forged over that first year of suspicion and growing loyalty.  Whatever had brought them here this night, he would stand for no one else doing the science for him.  Only her, because whether her science agreed with him or not, she always respected the journey, went along for the ride; listening to his arguments and giving him a reason to keep working for her belief and for his own.  She didn't let him get away with anything, and he admired that in her.  He admired both her fidelity to her science and her fidelity to him despite the fact that the two were often at odds.  She was the most frustratingly logical person he had ever met, and yet despite that she was more imaginative and more able to suspend disbelief than any person who had ever dared to believe in him before...and the hardiest, for she had survived where so many others had fallen on the path, their flames too weak to stand up in the wind of his headlong drive.  His respect for her had no bounds.  And that science, that dissenting view he would take it from no one else, would respect it coming from no one else, would take nothing seriously unless he ran it by her, because as a source he trusted her intimately. It was different with her than with others.  She didn’t insult his entire existence when she shot down his theories as so many others had done.  She respected him even when she thought his ideas were insane, and that alone made his heart clench with sudden rush of fulfillment.
Scully's brisk voice cut through his ruminations like a knife.  Back in her element, she was all business.  "Well if you want my results, Mulder, you'd better stand back and let me get set up."
They had been right; Scully had to open the guy up herself.  No Y-incision here.  Yet.  Fresh juicy corpse all her own to defile...and read like an open book.
Feeling somehow very at peace with this moment, Mulder watched his partner in life and felt the familiar rush as he observed her capable hands at work.  As she sliced and diced she made careful and precise commentary on the proceedings, verbalizing and delineating her observations; weight, length in extremis, possible causes of death...by thorough habit despite the fact that no recording instrument hovered above her and record of this autopsy would never make it far enough to be used as forensic evidence in any court.  To not do so would be anathema to her.
As always she worked in competent silence when she was not annotating her findings, occasionally requesting a tool from him; bone saw, calipers, scalpel, performing her grisly and delicate dance beneath the defunct microphones above them.  Remembering the feel of her slight body against his as he had held her while she slept the night before, his gaze followed her now with a reawakening of that old awe.  It constantly surprised him, even after all these years, how technically small she really was…because he generally never noticed until he held her.  She had always seemed so big to him; somehow larger than life.  As the years had gone by, she had become the whole world.  The first time he had ever held her, after her abduction by Donnie Pfaster, he had been stunned by the tiny, bird-like feel of her against his chest, her heart beating like a sparrow’s in reaction.  Tiny in his arms…and yet so immediate; somehow so much more than the average dull humans that populated his existence.  Vibrant as the colour of her hair, she had seemed to stand out from any room, apart from any crowd.  In that moment when he had first recognized the unique dichotomy of his partner he had been too startled for a moment to respond, but then he had simply held her to him, allowing himself to enfold her and to be that source of comfort and strength that she needed from him in that moment.  And all the while he had been amazed that she had felt that he would somehow think less of her for needing that comfort.  It would never occur to him to consider it.
That moment had been an epiphany for him, realizing suddenly just how precious she had already become to him, how imperative to his life this petite, powerful, prepossessing woman was.  She was an enigma.  Watching her now, he was entranced as he had always been while watching her absorbed in her work, though he had once covered his enthrallment with amusing quips.  Standing slightly behind and to one side of her, he mused on the paradox of hands that could crack open a cadaver with one quick jerk and yet hold a baby...or a man…with such tenderness.  Together and yet not, cool and yet emotional, rational and yet open to faith in all its forms...she was a conundrum, his quicksilver Scully, his enigma; the greatest mystery ever to drop into his life.  Sometimes the old clichés were true.  Dynamite came in small packages.  He knew that if something were to happen now, if they were to come to any danger she would not need reassurance or strength from him; she was far too capable for that, could act with unerring and instant decision if the situation called for it.  Therefore it undid him twice as quickly when she chose to come to him for comfort as she had then.  Remembering once again how she had trembled in his arms when he had he placed his fingers under her chin and lifted her face to his--so long ago, but an instant in the memory of the soul--it came to him as if he held her in his arms right now.  The feel of her heartbeat slowing in response to the surety in his eyes and the knowing comfort of his embrace, the surety that said that she would be all right.  That day for a brief moment She had lost faith in her own strength, but seeing reflected in his gaze the absolute faith he had in her strength she had quickly regained her composure.
--Find my faith in you when you cannot find your own; for it never leaves my eyes--  It was a favour he did her willingly; for how many times had he feared the loss of his soul, only to see reflected in her gaze the sheer belief that she had in him?  She had never given up on him, and all he had ever had to do was look into her eyes to know that to someone on this earth it mattered that he existed.  That his life, his Fight, had meaning.
He didn’t fool himself believing that he was the stronger of the two.  It took more courage to accept comfort than to offer it, and he would be dead long since, he knew, but for her fidelity, her courage and her uncompromising strength.  If They hadn't given her to him, or worse, if she had died after her abduction or from her cancer…if he had lost another person that he loved to the all-consuming black hole of his obsession it would have destroyed him.  To have one more person taken from him in an abduction was one thing, another to have lost her because he refused to end his blind, kamikaze wrecking-ball course through the lives of the people nearest him...but worse even than that had been the realization during her cancer that he had somehow, unbelievably, begun to take her presence and her sacrifices, her loyalty and her faith for granted.  She had become an extension of his being to him, and it took nearly losing her a second time to make him truly see her again.  To see what she meant to him, and to end that idiocy forever.  He needed her to keep him sane, to keep him human, and knowing that she was alive out there in the world would have been worth losing her balancing presence.  He had been ready to push her away to keep her safe even when his very being had screamed at him to keep her close as an essential part of his soul; for it was the height of selfishness to endanger her to save himself, and that harrowing worry for her safety was an insistent guilty pang.  She didn't need him…but for some reason, despite everything she had suffered in his wake and despite the danger, she chose to remain at his side.  He wondered how he had gotten off so lucky.
"Okay, this is strange."
"Hmmm?"  He snapped out of his reverie to regard his lover, up to her gloved elbows in gore and rubber gloves stained with old blood, peering into the cadaver with clinical fascination.  There was a slight air of puzzlement around her.  "What did you find?"
She looked up at him, her face betraying an unnerving lack of confidence.  "A fetus."
"What?"
Her voice remained outwardly calm, a physician reporting her findings with clinical flatness, but he could hear the faint note of uncertainty underlying her controlled delivery.  "He doesn't show any outward signs of systemic infection, Mulder…but there's a fetus developing in his upper abdomen.  The cellular breakdown is localized in the immediate vicinity of the alien…its growth is impacting on the diaphragm; that's what caused the hemorrhage in the chest cavity…but his body elsewhere only shows minimal signs of the virus’ progression."
"No."  His voice betrayed his disbelief as he snapped all his not inconsequential mental faculties back into work mode.  "How can that be?  According to our friends in Alabama, there's only one way that this thing works."
"I know, Mulder.  Maybe the virus is evolving.  Maybe this is a new strain, one in which the fetus develops much quicker, before the breakdown could progress to the appropriate levels."
"Maybe that's why it died.  It couldn't feed on the body if it hadn't been properly transformed into the human equivalent of a yolk."
"Well, then, maybe it's an aberration.  The fetus seems to have died in very early stages…maybe it developed too early and starved to death.”  Her puzzlement had surfaced fully, and her eyes were distant as she pursed her full lips in thought.  “But that still doesn’t explain why the virus didn’t continue to break this man down.  He should be totally etumaceous by now.  He was brought in nearly twelve hours ago, and it’s not exactly cold in here."
"No signs of exposure to extreme heat?  No way it should have been killed?  No signs of the vaccine in his system?"
"Well, I can't exactly run a tox screen on him right here in the middle of the night, Mulder…but hang on a minute.  Let me get it on a slide.  Warm up that electron microscope for me."
Mulder paced across the room to the rudimentary diagnostic section of the morgue and turned on the closest scope, listening to its quiet hum while he waited for Scully to take her sample.  She approached him with a syringe after a moment and gently elbowed him aside.  He gave way without demur and watched, again absorbed in the beautiful elegant surety in her hands as she briskly deposited the sample on the slide and bent over the microscope.  The only jarring detail was the difference in her hair colour…but he had so gotten used to the change that he barely noticed anymore unless he looked closely…and then, as always, he mourned her titan Irish locks.  He held his breath in the chilly room and watched the curve of her back, tense with possibilities.  Her muscles seemed to unlock as if to deny what she was seeing, and she reached to turn the magnification up, then straightened slowly and shook her head, lips pressed flat together.  The lines of her body shouted expectations gone unmet.  She opened her mouth reluctantly, then shook her head again as if trying to find another option.
"No sign of any foreign bodies in the blood," she finally muttered.  "Not even the virus, which is weird.  We still don’t know how it works in relation to the kind of...possession we’ve seen with the Black Oil--.whether a bee-sting deposits enough of the ‘Purity’ substance in the blood to amass and multiply in the brain, or...  But there is a small deposit of the Oil localized in the subject’s pineal gland.  We’ve seen something like that before, if by a different vector...but the bloodstream does carry something that we’ve definitely seen before."  She met his eyes.  "I couldn't explain that, Mulder, if I hadn’t recognised it; it would be like those Indians you found on the rig.  It’s a small deposit, but...  All the Black Oil is dead."
Mulder reined in his thoughts and managed a quip by reflex.  "I don't suppose this guy could be one of them?" he joked weakly.  Scully didn’t react.  She was looking abstractedly off into the dim corner of the room.
"No, Mulder, I don't think he's from an isolated population.  I think there's something else going on here--I just can't pinpoint it why it would be.  Because the blood I’m seeing here shows signs of inculcation by the hybrid chimeras.  They’re no longer functioning and they’re limited to the pathways nearest the nervous system where they should be, but they’re there."  Before he could voice his own disbelief her eyes refocused suddenly.  "You don't think this might be one of the Renegade clones with half an immunity like Krycek was telling us?  If the integrated system were to resist infection, the body would not decay as it was supposed to when the virus was introduced and the fetus would be attacked by the immune system as any foreign body would, starving to death if the body didn't flush it out first.  The two constituent parts in his altered blood and neural pathways might even tear themselves apart with the exposure to the virus; we have no way of knowing yet what the reaction would be, how it might tip that delicate balance.  The struggle might have been too much for his body even if he hadn't been killed."
He thought about it.  "Say he is a clone.  That might explain why the Rebels would want to kill him.  We could be seeing a whole new stage in the war.  He might even have been killed by his own people before the Colonists could see how ineffective the virus is against artificial hybrids and humans who have been…interfered with, or…  Of course that doesn’t explain how he could be killed when we both know clones don’t die that easily."  He caught her eye.  "You think they have any more goggles in here, or any masks?  In case he hasn’t already been stuck?"
She nodded her understanding, and they returned to the pillaged corpse and flipped it over on its side.  She gave the neck a cursory glance.  "We’ve got a winner.  His altered immune system must have been compromised enough that simple trauma could kill him; there’s no evidence of...damage to the node."
He glanced down, beholding a small green cyst on the back of the corpse’s neck, one that showed no signs of being punctured by an alien stiletto.  "We have to be sure.  It could be a green mole."  He picked up a scalpel from the table and held out two masks.  "Doesn't hurt to check, does it?"  She looked at him flatly for a moment, then took up the proffered equipment.  "Put your own on, Mulder, and grab a pair of goggles."
Masked and goggled, he leaned over slightly and watched as his mate took a deep breath and held it.  He took the cue and held his own as she sliced…a tiny incision along one side of the bulge at the back of the neck.  There was nothing for a moment…and then a faint drift of green gas oozed slowly out and settled heavily on the stainless steel surface like propane rolling along a floor.  Scully released her held breath with a small whoosh and spoke, voice muffled through the filtering cloth of the surgical mask.
"Like a can of soda that’s lost all its carbonation.  Apparently it isn't as lethal after death."
Mulder realized that he was still holding his own breath and let it out slowly.  "That, or the reaction you talked about after its exposure to the virus removed its punch.  Either way, I guess this rules out the new strain theory.  One less thing to worry about."
"Good.  I doubt They need any new strains.  One is bad enough."  She shook her head and reached up to remove her mask.  The gas had dispersed along the floor and was being sucked up by the ventilation system, but the corpse showed no signs of dissolving as it normally would have.  Whatever the black oil had done to the clone, it had obviously reversed some normal hybrid traits.  With her mask hanging from her neck, she raised one shoulder and let it drop tensely.  "We have enough information to report this to our…contacts.  This guy could have been a part of the same test as we saw in Natchez, Mulder, and lived through it because of his partial immunity.  If that's true and he survived for three and a  half months, I doubt we can figure out why he was killed without more information.  The Colonists could actually be trying to release the virus, unsuccessfully because the Rebels keep holding them off.   We can't know from what we have here."
He nodded and untied his own mask.  "How much longer before the M.E. comes back?"
She tugged the chart back off its stainless steel hook and glanced at it again.  "He's scheduled to come in at six."
Mulder glanced up at the brown plastic-edged clock high up on the wall.  Pretty soon there would be no more analog clocks in existence anywhere.  It gave him a pang of regret for some reason.  "Its half past five now.  We should make ourselves scarce while we still can."
She nodded and the eased the professionally mutilated body back over into its former recumbent position.  Mulder covered it with the sheet and grinned.  "Ready to run the gauntlet?"
Her eyes met his with cool challenge.  "Whenever you are."
xxx
On the way out she stripped her gloves and dropped them in the biohazard container by the sink.  They both scrubbed up as quickly as possible and headed down the echoing hallway to the front of the fairly decent-sized clinic that housed the Parkersburg morgue.  Before opening the door for her, Mulder nodded once and met her eyes.  She returned the look and nodded back.  They were visibly bracing themselves.  "Okay."
He pushed the door open and resisted the urge to drop his hand to the small of her back to steady himself.  Being strong for her whether she needed it or not it usually boosted his own flagging courage…but it definitely wouldn’t look right in their present roles as on-call doctor and physician's assistant.
They approached the front desk, picking up their feet wearily as they played the role of an overworked team called in for a consult.  The young security guard behind the desk looked up from his monitor.  "Hey, that took awhile.  You all done in there?"
Mulder gave a fair approximation of a tired groan despite the nervous energy radiating from his frame, and leaned over with his hands on the small of his back.  "God yes.  Unbelievable, this crap.  Like this guy couldn’t wait till morning."  Scully hid her small smile by faking a tired scrubbing of her forehead with the back of her left hand.
"Yeah, I was wondering about that myself," the kid nodded self importantly, "but you had the credentials and the work order checked out, so…  Hey, should I tell Dr. Mortmain that you two were here when he gets in today, or does he already know about the order?  I guess he ought to, what with you guys coming all the way down from Charleston to look at this Joe."
"No, that's ok.  You're right; he already knows.  Just don't let anybody else in there until Mortmain comes in."  Mulder threw the kid a wearily easygoing smile.  "You have a good night, get some sleep.  This is a rotten shift to work in a morgue."
"Tell me about it.  I only got it ‘cause Bob, the day guy, has seniority.  But it works out okay.  I'm taking correspondence courses from WVU and it gives me time to study up."  He grinned at them both cheerfully.  "I'd like to go into forensics myself someday, once I get my Bachelor’s.  They say it’s a great field.  What do ya think?"
"Bad hours, good credentials, decent benefits," Scully ran it down for him.
"And some very strange smells," Mulder finished with a slightly teasing grin.  Scully ignored him.
"Good luck, ah…Templeton.  We'll see you if we get called back in here someday."
"Yeah, maybe you'll be the next M.E. for this county," Mulder quipped.
"We'll see.  Hey, you two take care."  Templeton stood and offered his hand.  "Dr. Marsh, Dr. George.  Come back and see us again soon."
They shook with the kid and made their escape.  Immediately upon reaching the end of the parking lot, Mulder pulled out the cell their contact had given them for that purpose and speed-dialed number one.  An emotionless voice answered them from the other end.
"Is it done?"
"Yeah, we got everything we're going to from this place."
"Good.  Go to the end of the street.  There'll be a car waiting for you."  The line went dead immediately, and Mulder exchanged looks with his partner as he closed the phone.
"There's a car waiting at the end of the street."  His voice was tight.  He hated being an alien flunky, survival or no.
She nodded and started walking, feeling the sultry air of late summer eddy around her scrubs.  The smock drifted against her arms, calling up a chill of familiarity.  She had left this piece of her life behind for the most part, though it would always be a part of her.  But a few things had changed.  For one thing, her reaction to Mulder's theory-making was a great deal less amused…though she could still be distinctly flummoxed by the strange circumstances of her work.  God knows it would be a nice to get a straightforward, normal autopsy…just once.  But she did enjoy and even miss the milieu that belonged to her and Mulder alone--trying to decide whether to be amused or appalled at his outlandish theories, and usually settling on amused because it warmed her heart to know that he felt comfortable expounding all the possibilities his mind could come up with to her without fear of ridicule or disdain…because whether she bought the theories or not, she had always respected the journey.  That bond had brought them together over more cases than she cared to count, and held them together now that everything else had changed.  She kept him going because she needed his faith and passion.  He kept her going because he could not live without her support and her faith in him and them above all else.  They each respected the journey that they had embarked upon together, and that had brought them to the here and now.  A now in which she could feel at peace despite their fears.
They reached the end of the street and approached the silent darkened car that waited there.  Stopping before the lightless vehicle, they linked hands absently and waited to be approached.  After a moment the near door opened and an emotionless face leaned out.  "Get in.  We'll take you to the next safe-house."
Scully narrowed her eyes at the Renegade.  "What about our son?"
"He is already there, with Mr. Praise.  Get in, before that security guard notices that you didn’t drive out of the parking lot and becomes suspicious."
"Hopefully he won't notice," Mulder muttered as he followed Scully into the back of the car.
They passed the ride in silence, watching out of the tinted windows as the sleeping burgh slipped by, strange streets and lights clicking along in their cycles with or without traffic.  Everything seemed to be holding its breath in wait for morning.  Scully had always loved this quiet predawn hush before the world woke up when she could be alone with her thoughts.  She let her mind drift without dwelling on anything in particular until they turned into the driveway of a small motel on the outskirts of town.  It didn’t do any good to worry.  They had already put themselves into the hands of these people; there was nothing they could do now but trust them.
They approached their new temporary abode just as the sky outside began to go a dark pearly gray.  The dark car drove off immediately as they stepped out, leaving them alone in this new site.  With a shrug Mulder cracked the door, eyes scanning the unremarkable interior.  Ugly gold upholstery from the seventies.  Rotten watercolour on the wall.  Good to be home.  He stepped in and nodded once at Gibson where he sat on the edge of the nearest bed.  Behind him Scully plucked her purloined Mercy of Charleston ID tag from the green pocket of her borrowed scrubs and tossed it down on the end table wearily.  "God, I'm not used to that anymore, working against the clock where anyone can just walk in on us.  I feel like my back is one big cramp."
"Oh, c'mon, Shelly-honey; it was invigorating."  Mulder tried out his irrepressible grin once again.  She threw him a withering look and returned her gaze to Gibson.
"How did he do?"
Gibson glanced over at the other bed where the toddler lay sprawled out in sleep.  "He was okay.  We’ve been here for about three hours.  He woke up once when we got in, but I reassured him and he was out again.  He sleeps very deeply in the late part of the night.  I did too, when I was younger.  It's easier to sleep when there're fewer minds awake to distract you."
"I bet."  Mulder walked over to the bathroom, pulling his own smock over his head.  "You have exactly five seconds to beat me to the shower, Scully."
She gave him a weary look.  “Why bother to race you if you're already halfway there?”  At her flat tone he shrugged, and for a wonder decided to be gallant.
"Okay, you did all the slicing and dicing.  But I get it next."
She didn’t need to be told twice.  Rising from the chair, she brushed past him to the bathroom.  "I'll be awhile."
"Wonderful.”  She could almost hear him regretting his gesture.  “Don't use up all the hot water."
She could hear him quizzing Gibson through the thin walls as she shut the door to the tiny commode.  The conversation was barely muffled.  "So, they didn't ask us any questions on the ride back.  When are they going to come over and debrief us, you think?"
"Probably later this afternoon.  They've learned that humans function better on a little sleep."
With a snort, Scully shed her smock and shirt and plucked at the drawstring of her trousers.  She really had forgotten how draining that kind of espionage was, even if all the details had been taken care of beforehand by the unseen operatives that swarmed around the unseen verge of their existence.  She thrust down her underwear and stepped out of the remains of her clothes with a sigh.  Fresh towels.  Hot water.  Paradise.  She cranked the faucet on and stood contemplatively until the tub had collected enough steam to indicate that the water was ready, then flicked on the shower and stepped in with a groan.
She let her mind wander as she stood in the hot stream and let it flush the tension from her shoulders.  They had no earthly clue what was going to happen next.  Her heart still felt tight from all the fast beating it had done earlier…but she tingled all over despite the stress.  She couldn’t believe that episode had invigorated her, but it had.  Exasperated with herself, she dragged one damp hand through her hair and pulled out the one pin that held it in the careless knot.  God, her hair was long.  She wondered if it was safe to go ahead and cut it again; it was getting to be too much for convenience.
She jumped at a knock on the door.  "Hey, Scully; it's just me."  She glanced around the cheap plastic curtain as Mulder poked his head in.
"Mmmmm?"
He thrust one arm into the bathroom.  Dangling from his hand were her purple satin pajamas.  "Not that I'd mind seeing you parade around in a towel, but I don't thing Gibson is ready for it."
"Thanks."  She ignored his teasing grin until he laid his offerings on the counter and popped his head back out again.
A few minutes later, feeling wonderfully refreshed in body and as if her head was pleasantly wrapped in cotton, Scully stepped out of the steamy little water closet in her purple pajamas and zeroed in on Mulder where he stood shirtless and with the faded green trousers of his scrubs hanging dangerously low on his hips, staring down on their son, passed out on the far edge of the turned down sheets.
"Your turn."  He nodded, eyes remote, and passed her on the way to his own shower as she took up his sentinel position over their son.  Gibson was already dead asleep on the other bed, curled into a fetal position as he had done in the woods three months ago.  With a sigh, Scully sat down on the nearer edge of the creaking mattress and rubbed her hand absently over her sleeping son's back.  He made a mewling sound and stretched out…then snapped back into place like a rubber band, collapsing into a deeper sleep as if finally relaxing now that his mother was there with him.  With a distant expression, Dana Scully lay down on the crisp cool cotton of the sheets behind her son and waited for Mulder to finish.  He would want to discuss their findings before sleep could come.
Mulder exited the bathroom about ten minutes later.  She felt him watching her and the baby for a moment while he rubbed his towel over his head, then tossed it aside over the back of an overstuffed chair.  Normally she would have scolded him for that, but it really didn’t seem to matter at the moment.  He approached the bed in his boxers and nudged her aside a little, then settled on one knee on the edge of the mattress and slid his strong fingers down on either side of her neck, rubbing the tension away from her shoulders the way the hot water could not do.  His finger brushed gently over the tiny scar at the back of her neck, but he waited to speak until she had relaxed a little.
"What do you think?"  His voice was calmer, tired…but still tense.  He wouldn’t be able to sleep until they talked this out a little.  Dragging herself up from the pit she had begun to sink into, Scully marshaled her ability to speak, mustered a few words.
"I don't think we can know until they come to quiz us."  Even to herself her voice sounded dozy.
Mulder was silent for a moment before he essayed another comment.  "I'm pretty sure they sent us to keep their own hands clean so they can keep out of sight.  They probably already knew what we would find."
She doubted it for some reason.  "Maybe.  Maybe they already had an idea, him being one of their own, but they need us to tell them how well the partial immunity works.  If they couldn’t check themselves, they would certainly use us to get that information."
"Yeah, well, we didn’t sign on to be their errand boys.  It really ticks me off that they tell us they want nothing more than to keep Will out of sight, and then they throw us in the mixer to do their dirty work."
She managed to rouse herself a little, turned her head into the pillow so he could get a better angle on the knot behind her right shoulder.  Her voice floated reluctantly up from the padding as he kneaded at the column of her neck and the tight strands of her deltoids.  "We wanted access.  Like it or not, they’re our access now.”
“Yeah, but I didn’t know it would come at such a price.”
She sighed as his thumb dug into her neck.  “I don't like being used any more than you do, Mulder, but to keep William safe I'll do whatever they want us to."
She felt his hands spread out over her upper back for a moment, warm through the satin as he took control of his annoyance and thrust it away.  There was a scale of importance to recognize now.  After a moment, his thumbs began to move again.  "I know."  He resumed the massage as gently as before, but she could almost feel him locking the frustration away.  "I know."
xxx
They woke to late afternoon light streaming through the canvas blinds.  It gilded a dark figure standing just inside the door looking down on them all.  Their contact from the Renegades.  Gibson was a sentinel once again beside the bed, a wide-awake William in his arms.  He looked both warily trusting and ready to fight.  He might have lived with the Renegades for years…but that didn’t mean he underestimated any of them, alien or no.
Scully half-rose from the warm circle of Mulder's arms and blinked.  "Give us a minute."
"Certainly.  Your minds are encumbered with sleep and I cannot hear your thoughts clearly.  Notify me when you are ready, and we will discuss your actions and your findings from last evening."
Behind her Mulder grunted.  "I'm not used to this all-nighter thing anymore."
They went through their morning routines, now slightly altered to reflect their recent accommodations to each other.  The alien waited emotionlessly from his post by the door as traded off the tiny sink.  Scully had the odd feeling that it knew that humans needed these gross motor rituals to jumpstart their brains and give them time to reboot; she could feel disdain coming from its direction, covered over by a thin skim of polite disinterest.  Apparently, like Mulder's had done when he had been exposed to the craft, the alien mind never shut off, never needed to restart; and their genetically superior bodies were built to handle this kind of overcharge.  It was the human body that could not live under the tyrrany of a constant wakeful state.  If it could  not be shut down to sleep, it would fail, no matter how powerful was the mind that ran it.  
Scully was glad that her chip and subsequent genetic alterations did not affect her on a mental level.  She thought that such constant activity in the brain would drive her insane.  She hoped that that was not how her son would have to live.  He seemed human enough to sleep, anyway, for which she was profoundly grateful, both for her own sake and for his.  She only hoped that their new habit of keeping their emotions and their worries in check until their son slept did not affect his REM and Delta rhythms.  If their emotional excess bled into his sleep he could very likely become as prone to nightmares as his father...and she knew neither of them wanted that for William.
Sufficiently awake and nursing a couple of complimentary instant coffees, Mulder and Scully sat on the edge of the other bed beside Gibson.  The teenager handed the baby to his mother absently, eyes still on their visitor.  "He's been fed," he muttered.  William, face spotted with some former food-like substance, grinned sloppily at his mentor and then turned his unnerving gaze on the Renegade before him, studying the alien features with a knowing calm.
"Talk?" he asked, and tilted his small head to one side.  The alien's lips flattened to a thin line as it ignored the child to begin the debriefing.
"Your findings?" It asked briskly.
Mulder glanced over at Scully.  She nodded, feeling his eyes on her.  This one was hers.  "We found a fetus in the first stages of development, as you probably suspected, but the body's altered immune system had contained the viral infection to the immediate vicinity of the parasite.  The host died of acute trauma to the head combined with damage to the diaphragm caused by the developing organism.  My guess is by that point he wasn't getting enough oxygen in his bloodstream to keep going after whatever it was had smashed him around.  He didn't die from the impregnation."  She studied the alien's features for any reaction, saw none.
"Your assumption is correct," the renegade told them in its flat monotone.  "That one was one of our operatives, an…artificial hybrid.  We need to know, based on your analysis of the progression of the virus, how well the immunity works on such partials."
Mulder broke in.  "That all depends, doesn't it?  How long had it been since he'd been infected?"
The alien regarded them for a moment before answering.  "A salient point, Mr. Mulder.  I suppose it would not harm our case to divulge that information.  That one was infected in the same test as that which produced the two human victims you stumbled across in Natchez."
Scully nodded slowly as the Renegade confirmed their suspicions.  "Then his reinforced immune system managed to slow the fetal development significantly, but due to its placement in the chest cavity, it would be difficult for any infected hybrid to breathe properly or to maintain body function for very long.  At some point the organs will wear down and begin to function erratically due to lack of oxygen and even an altered immune system would likely collapse."
Mulder took up the narrative.  "It doesn't help that the infected hybrid would be sick as a dog because half the surrounding tissue in the chest cavity would begin to break down as the immune system failed.” He glanced at Scully as if checking to see if she minded his interruption.  She nodded briefly and resumed her summary.
“Which it would do fairly quickly, though the rate of such a breakdown would likely depend on the success of the hybridization; the more complete, the longer the victim would hold out.  At best, unless the immunity works better in the more adapted hybrids, that kind of artificial tinkering only buys time.  If," and here his partner paused significantly, "the subject manages to survive the forceful breaking of the chimerical bonds, and of course if the degradation doesn't spread to necessary organs like the heart and lungs.”
Mulder was looking at the alien with a sardonic glint in his eye.  “And there aren't a lot of unnecessary organs in there.  As it is I doubt the poor guy was eating very well."  His voice took on a faintly accusing ring.  "Why did you people let him suffer that long?  He must have been sick for at least two months."
The alien did not acknowledge the accusation.  "The subject volunteered to remain in that condition in order that we might monitor the effects of infection on a partial hybrid.  And you are correct in assuming that the more facile the hybrid, the better its chances of fighting off the…ah, invading organism as you put it.  Certainly until a more efficacious vaccine is produced or some other form of immune booster be initiated."  It nodded briskly then.  "We thank you.  You have performed admirably despite the limited information at your disposal."
"That's it?"  Mulder’s voice had gone from accusing to outraged.
"Should there be more, Mr. Mulder?  You have the same information that we do.  I should think that would be enough to satisfy you."
"Not exactly."  This time it was Scully that broke in.  "We want to know how he came by the trauma that killed him.  He was definitely going to die at some point…but it was blunt trauma that killed the victim in this case, not the invading organism."
The alien regarded them both for a moment.  "He was discovered by the faction that now controls your government.  He did not survive the encounter.  A…replacement was assigned to terminate his life so that the developing organism would not be harvested by the Colonists."  It stopped with one hand on the door and looked at the former agents and the two young hybrids beside them.  "Neither they nor we can afford to allow Them that information, for then They would know that the virus remains somewhat effective even among those who should be immune.  If the Rebels had not destroyed him, we would have done so.  The subject knew this.  He cooperated for the good of the New Project."  It looked up to run its eyes around the dingy room.  "There will surely be other tests, and having informants in the governments, we will be in place to receive the full benefit of happenstance.  You will likely encounter evidence of such tests as you travel north, but in the event that you do not, we will contact you.  You will be guided to new accommodations, and you will be notified if we have any further information or require further assistance."
Leaving them staring, the Renegade closed the door behind him.
Scully let out a breath, but Mulder beat her to the punch.  "Nice people you hang out with, Gibson."
The teen nodded.  "I told you once before.  They don’t care about the lives.  They care about the results, just like their enemies.  And the clone volunteered.  He knew what he was getting into."
"Do you know if he chose to be in the area when the test took place?"
The empath turned from his perusal of the door.  His round face remained blank as he regarded is protégé's parents.  "It doesn't matter.  He was infected.  Once he felt the presence of the fetus he knew they could excise it and save him further agony, but he chose another alternative.  Perhaps with the organism removed he might have been able to successfully fight off the virus.  Maybe that will be their next step.  Remove the fetus and see how the hybrid does with the actual disease.  Hopefully the host won't just develop yet another fetus."  He shrugged.  "Experiments upon experiments are the only way to solve this.  The clones are used to being guinea pigs."  His gray eyes grew hard.  "At least this way, they get to choose who will get the results, who their sacrifices will serve.  And whether to give them.  Self-determination is a strong motivator…and the chance to strike a blow against a force that caused your existence to be doomed from the start.  Must feel good to be able to contribute."
In his arms, William squalled a protest.  Scully blanched and leaned forward.  "Is that how you feel too, Gibson?  Are you willing to sacrifice your own life for this?"
The teenager regarded his former bodyguard for a moment as if considering several replies.  When he finally spoke it was with surety.  "They treated me like a white mouse in an electrified maze, Agent Scully.  ‘Find us the alien and we'll give you a cracker.  While we're at it we'll try to extract the alien DNA from your brain.’  To get some of my own back, yes, I'll sacrifice myself."  He nodded once at Mulder.  "This is bigger than any of us.  Bigger than revenge.  Bigger than ego."  He grinned suddenly, ruthlessly, an expression they had never seen from this placid youth.  "But sometimes a little revenge helps, right Mulder?"
"Sometimes, Gibson, if you can keep your head clear."  Mulder's voice was soft with understanding.
"Oh, don't worry.”  His voice was frighteningly hard.  “My head is clear.  My head is always clear.  Of everything but the voices…but I can tell which ones are mine now, and which ones are worth fighting for."
xxx
The Soda Jerk
4615 Charles St.
Wheeling, WV
September 29, 2002
9:15am

They passed through Cambridge Ohio and then back into West Virginia on the way up to their next stop.  They were edging into Pennsylvania now, getting closer and closer to home, and the Agents' tension level had jumped accordingly.  Something must be in the works, or the Renegades would not be allowing them to get so close to the centre of things.
The coffee shop they stopped in that morning in the tri-state border town of Wheeling was quaint, made up to look like a fifties juke box joint, and the counter had, of course, red vinyl on the seats and stainless steel railing around the front.  The waitresses wore skates as they moved with a kind of doggedly cheerful weariness through the small eatery.  At that particular moment, Fox William Mulder, former Special Agent with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, was watching one of the ponytailed teenagers flash by with a fascinated look.
"Earth to Will Neumann." Scully's voice was amused as she prodded at her second cup of coffee with a semi-interested look.  Beside her William giggled around his bottle, eyes on the rolling dervishes dashing in and out of his field of view.
"Huh?"  Mulder tore his gaze away from the latest terror on wheels and met 'Sheryl Neumann's' gaze.  "Crazy what people will do for nostalgia, isn't it?"
"Crazy," Scully agreed with a quiet smile.  "For nostalgia we sneak into morgues in the middle of the night."
That got his attention.  His green eyes finally focused on her, tuning out the zooming miniskirted figures.  "You wanna find one here, give it another go?"
"I'm sure you could satisfy your need for nostalgia by asking a few pointed questions," she retorted.  "No matter where we end up, you never fail to find a mystery."  Might as well give him permission to feed the need.
"Good point.  I have a rep to keep up."  He leaned over and waved his spoon at the harried waitress behind the counter.  "Miss, when you get a chance could we have a little more coffee over here?"  The waitress looked up briefly, grunted, and swung away to check the progress of the two pots boiling away on the warmer.  Mulder turned back to his mate.  “I'm going to go get a copy of the local paper.  Try to get that waitress to bring us more coffee.  I need it even if you don’t.”  He stood abruptly and disappeared into the incoming crowd to the door.  Scully shook her head fondly.  He just couldn't resist a quick delve through the hot sheets, whether he could pursue what he found or not…and the real kicker was, he almost invariably did find something.  Two days ago in a Cambridge suburb he had been thumbing through the local gazette to pass the time and had found the headline, ‘Skunk Ape Attack; First In Fifty Years’.  It had taken all his self-control to fold the paper back up, comment cheerfully about how few of his files on the Southeast’s shy version of Bigfoot had ever actually panned out under investigation, and follow her out of town.  Now sitting back on her own stool, she smiled with fond understanding as she watched him dodge single-mindedly past the brunch crowd and the early coffee-breakers to the newspaper dispenser on the sidewalk.  It was a habit, and he had a gift; or maybe it was sheer need that attracted the stories to him.  What others would never notice, Mulder seized upon like a modern-day Sherlock Holmes, stringing together seemingly unrelated clues and seeing overall patterns that were half wishful thinking and half abstract brilliance.  Sometimes his mind stunned her even as it exasperated her.   Familiarity did nothing to change that.
While she waited she glanced down at her hands.  As if that was a cue, a ray of mid-morning sun glanced in through the plate glass and lit the ruby on her ‘wedding ring’ with a deep fire.  She looked at it as if she’d never seen it before.  --My God-- she thought suddenly, --I’ve gotten so used to this thing I don’t even see it anymore--  On the heels of that revelation came another.   --Damn--  The other night at the morgue they had forgotten to take the rings off.  Now in retrospect, the realization that such a mistake could have very easily blown their cover made her belly grow cold.  They had gotten so used to wearing the things as part of their personas, to keep safe and to blend, they had forgotten not to wear them when the situation did not warrant it.  The thought gave her a shudder.  If that young security guard had noticed that they had been wearing matching rings…
Then the logical part of her mind kicked in.  --We could have just told him we worked together in the hospital and got engaged.  No big deal--  But she knew that wasn’t the point.  They could not afford to miss details like that.  She raised her eyes as Mulder wove through the crowd to resume his seat beside her, wriggled her left hand a little.  “We have to watch out we don’t become too comfortable with these.  We forgot to take them off the other night in Parkersburg.”  The thing was, they had become comfortable with them…and that said a lot.  A lot that she didn’t want to try to think about right at the moment.  To divert herself, she watched for Mulder’s reaction.  His face had gone blank with surprise, his eyes flickering down to his own left hand where it gripped the newspaper carelessly.
“Damn.”
	“Yes.”
	He let out a breath.  “Good point.  Okay.  Duly noted; we can’t afford to become complacent.”
	“Alright.  On that note, I don't suppose you and your hunches have found anything interesting in there yet?  Something to keep your 'rep' up?"  She pointed at the paper with her chin as she stirred her cooling coffee, no longer trying to pretend disinterest.  Her change of subject stumped him for a moment.  He glanced at the paper and back up at his partner.
“I haven’t read it yet."  He met her eyes candidly.  "Are you saying you want me to find something?  We could jeopardize our standing with our 'benefactors' if we try to strike out on our own."
Scully nodded.  “Yes, we could, but I don’t like it any more than you do that they’re keeping us blindfolded.  If we can balance our inquiries, we won’t be breaking any promises.  We don’t really owe them our allegiance; just our cooperation.  We’ve cooperated.  I don’t like getting all our information from only one source.  That kind of information tends to be biased, and William’s continued good health could depend on our level of involvement.  We can’t afford to be kept in the dark.”
Mulder’s gaze had grown intense.  “So you think we should play this close to the vest, try to pick up some of our own information on the side?”  At her faint nod he turned his gaze back down on the paper.  "Okay, I’ll admit it.  I wasn’t expecting this.  But go ahead, argue my usual side.  You never fail to surprise me.”  He lifted his newly refilled coffee cup, got a whiff of its unadulterated aroma and set it back down with a grimace to reach for the sugar.  “So let’s talk about this.  What if they get mad at us for colouring outside the lines and dump us, or at the worse, turn on us?  I hate to admit it, but we need them, and their decision to back us isn’t exactly rock solid.  We’re kind of in a precarious position with these guys.”
It was definitely useful for them to switch sides once in a while.  Having him argue her own usual side back to her helped her to see its flaws.  But there had been times when he was the cautious one, if only for her sake, and she had overridden him for the sake of answers she needed.  ‘I need you to find out for me, Mulder.’  She had said that to him once, needing to know what They had done to her.  This was such a time, and now it was doubly important, for now it was their son at stake. “We may need them, ‘Honey’…but they need us too.  I doubt they’d sacrifice their trump card just because we’ve managed to annoy them.”
“That’s a pretty big gamble to make, ‘Sweetheart’.  You sure you want to go there?  I mean, usually its me trying to tempt you over to the dark side.”  Apparently he found the same benefit in hearing her argue his usual point.  She smiled at him, got up, walked around his stool, and stood on the other side of where he sat.  Her eyes bored into his challengingly.
“Maybe I’m just restless enough to play devil’s advocate, but I don’t want to depend too much on them.”  He looked up at her with a faint grin, remembering the time he had done the exact same move, in Padgett's milagro case.  This time, however, his eyes glowed with respect at her sudden turnaround, and her heart contracted at the admiration she saw there.
“Every time I start wondering, you manage to remind me why I married you.”  She made a face at him and his grin widened.  “Okay…how do you want to play this?”
“By ear.  The way we always do.  But instead of letting things fall into our laps, we need to actively pursue them a little when we hear something tantalizing.  And I've learned from experience that wherever we are, you always manage to find something worth looking into.”
He straightened with mock pride.  "Ah, it's all a matter of keeping your ear to the ground."  He grinned at her then, delighted at her sudden willingness to play fast and loose.  "Tell you what.  You take the front page, I’ll take the sports section.  Football season’s on a roll.”
	She was not going to let him get away with teasing her just because she’d decided to stretch the rules.  “Tell you what.  We look through the front page and you can take the sports section back to the motel with you when we go.”
	“Aaaaaww, Sheryl, you never cut me any slack.”
	“It’s the only way to keep discipline.  My father taught me to be squared away.  Open it up, let’s have a look.”
	“Yes Dear.”  He was already skimming the contents.
	In total concert they plowed through the paper like bloodhounds while William plowed through his grape juice with equal attention.  He had a thing for grapes…just like his Mama.  She wondered briefly whether he would be a wine drinker when he was of age.  Somehow she doubted it.  He would want to keep his mind focused and clear, the way Gibson had taught him.  Besides; neither of his parents liked to give up their self-control to drink.  It had taken them seven years as partners before they had gotten around to sharing a glass of wine or a bottle of beer together after work for anything other than a special occasion.  She doubted their son would be any less vigilant.
	“Obits,” Mulder was commenting in a disgusted tone, “never give enough information.  Luckily some deaths make news.”  He pointed.  “The more mysterious ones, anyway.”
Scully followed his gaze to the page indicated, skimmed the two short columns.  “Embolisms.  Three.  ‘Watch Out For Late Bee Attacks’.  You think its another test?”
	“If it is our friends from Alabama will be all over it.”
	She met his eyes with a slight smile.  “Then let’s get there first.”
	“Yes, let’s…but first I need to ask this dear lady a few questions.”  He nodded genially at the waitress who had finally come to refill their coffee.  Scully sat back patiently and let him do the usual, but she watched the interrogation with less skepticism than she used to.  She might still scoff gently, but she never derided his theories so harshly anymore.  Despite their continued banter for form’s sake, she was wholly with him, had to be…and she knew that that fact alone warmed his heart to a low, steady glow, just as his faith in her competence and her scientific opinion warmed her own.  They had come a long way.
It had taken her a while to realize that he was not putting her down when he teased her.  He was constantly challenging her to join him on the journey, even as she constantly challenged him to work harder for his daily bread, but she had come to realize that in a way she was much better than he at suspending her disbelief in order to follow the journey with him.  What held them back all those years had been their preconceived notions; not just hers but his as well.  She had told Doggett once that Mulder came at things without judgment, without prejudice, and with an open mind that she had thought she was not capable of.  But she had since realized that Mulder was prejudiced in his own way.  He would now admit that he expected to see the things that he saw, and therefore ran the risk of going too far, of seeing what might not be there because he wanted so badly to see it.  In the moment it was easy to forget how well she balanced him, as he balanced her, how much she contributed to keeping him sane and whole, and vice versa.
Circling the problem from two sides like boxers, linked by cell phones, they had charged through the morass of lies and crossed the vast gulf that lay between science and faith and even between one kind of faith and another, and in the end they had met in the middle of their two extremes to see the full Truth.  Their two wholly different approaches had contributed to a fuller understanding of the whole, and both she and Mulder could finally feel secure in that reality.
The waitress’ high-pitched reply broke through her ruminations.  The teenager seemed to swell self-importantly as she imparted the latest scoop.  “Bee attacks?  Oh, you mean like those three people over on the south side.  Yeah, I heard about it.  I don’t watch the news, but people’re talkin’ about it.  I guess you expect bees to stop bothering people after August.”  The waitress snapped a well-worked piece of gum between her teeth and ruminated.  “I hope I don’t get stung in this whole Indian summer bee thing.  I’m allergic and I know it.  Funny how many people never do till its too late.  I mean, you get people like those ones who get stung once and, boom.  Down for the count.  Then there’s the ones that walk into a hornet nest in a field and have ten thousand stings and come out of it fine after a week in the hospital.  Hinky.”  Just then a voice from the far side of the counter called for more coffee.  “Whoops, gotta go.”  The waitress wheeled away on her skates and went back to looking harried.
“Well, I suppose it’s plausible that they really were just allergic reactions…”  Scully met Mulder’s eyes.  He just looked at her.  After a moment she tilted her head.  “This is weird, Mulder,” she admitted.
“Very weird,” he agreed casually, allowing her to drop the act.  She'd performed all the required moves in their customary 'perfunctory dance'.  Time to go to work.
“I know he said we might see evidence of further tests, but this thing seems to be following us.  We can’t be this lucky on sheer coincidence.  It’s almost…staged.  Maybe our new friends have a little more control over matters than they led us to believe.”
“Only one way to find out.  I say we go crash the funeral; how about you?”
Scully didn’t even bother to conjure up a long-suffering eye-roll for form’s sake as she gathered up the baby things.  Mulder was already halfway out the door.  The effect would have been wasted.
xxx
Wheeling City Cemetery
11:21am

"Weren't we just here a few months ago?"
"Sure seems that way."
They stood unobtrusively at the edge of the most recent funeral, trying to go unnoticed.  They'd tried to sneak in to have a look at things close up before the party got started, but mourners had begun to arrive and they had had to drift back into the trees.  Now they looked across the green lawn as the late September humidity boiled down on them, watching a ceremony for a person they did not know.  There were quite a few people there; this James Reveille was well known.
“I wish I could have visited my Mom’s grave while we were down by North Carolina,” he murmured absently.  She looked up at him, scanning his features, then dropped her hand into his.  He squeezed back appreciatively.
Ahead of them amidst the large scattering of family plots and vaults the funeral dragged on.  While they waited, she doggedly extracted William’s chubby hand from her brunette locks.  She hated it when William tugged on her hair as if she were a pony to be ridden.  Mulder seemed to have a scalp of iron whenever it was his turn to wear the backpack.  But it was her turn now, and she would have to deal.  Sometimes, she thought as she adjusted the navy blue padded nylon straps on her shoulders and fanned her perspiring face, she wished her son hadn't outgrown the Snugli.  Humidity or no, Will had done less damage from the front.
Ahead on the green, the party had begun to break up as mourners drifted toward their cars, readying themselves for the solemn celebration that was a wake.  Closer family converged on the pastor, shaking his hand or being offered condolences.  Perhaps they could sneak in after everyone had gone.
"I feel like an ass," Mulder commented grimly.  Scully murmured agreement.  She felt like an intrusive and mannerless voyeur herself.  She hoped no one had seen them hanging around the verge of the funeral like vultures.
No such luck.
	The last stragglers were leaving the burial site, and the former Agents were preparing to walk around the trees as if on a pleasant stroll when two teenage boys started purposefully in their direction.  "Dammit.  Incoming," Mulder muttered.  Scully looked up in time to see the two boys, one nearly six feet tall with a shaggy head of brown hair and a worried expression trying to hold back the smaller blond boy in black, anger flooding his face.  They looked to be around fifteen and sixteen.
	"Aw, look at the nice sweet couple come to sightsee at the burial!" the blond boy sneered as he stalked up like a dog bristling for a fight.  "It's not enough that the damn newspeople have to hang around and watch other people's funerals, now we got tourists coming to gawk!"
"We didn't come to gawk," Scully tried to placate the grieving teen.  "We were just passing through and we didn’t want to disturb the ceremony.  There's a grave right on the other side of you that we wanted to have a look at.  We're doing some research into our son's genealogy."  As if protesting the anger in the air, William squawked bitterly.  Scully fiddled with his protruding foot to comfort him while before her the angry youth bared his teeth.
"Yeah, well you coulda headed out and waited for it to be over.  It ever occur to you that funerals are family only?  Yeah, that's right; I saw you folks hanging around like a half-hour ago!  Only reason I didn’t come busting over here to run you off is it woulda hurt my mother.  She's had enough grief."  His voice became a sudden snarl as he lunged suddenly in their direction, flinging his arm up in an irate shooing gesture.  "We've had enough of strangers hanging around.  Now get the hell outta here!"
Catching the outflung limb from behind, the mourner’s his taller friend glanced briefly at the Agents in embarrassment before returning his attention to his compatriot.  "Steve, Steve, man; they're just tourists.  Leave 'em alone; c'mon, let's go.  Your mom's waiting by the car."
"I don't give a damn.  They should get the hell out."  Tears had begun to roll down the angry boy’s face.  "Not only do I lose my Dad but then they hafto run the whole thing in the papers, and those bastards in the suits…"  He turned away, shoulders tense and obviously trying to avoid a breakdown.  Mulder glanced at the sixteen-year-old, who was standing to one side staring after his friend helplessly.
"Hey, man," the taller boy muttered.  "Steve's really torn up.  His mom's been in a hundred pieces since she heard that somebody broke into the morgue and messed with his dad's body.  And then these guys in suits…"  He looked a little pale around the gills.  "Sorry you got it in the ass from him.  I'm just gonna try to get him home."
"Somebody's been threatening the family?  They tell you why?"  Mulder's voice was gentle, but at the question the boy straightened and began to look worried.
"Uh, it was stupid.  They just kept saying it was to 'isolate risk of possible contagion’, and that it was a false alarm and we weren't supposed to talk about it and spread panic…but I mean, c'mon.  Uncle Jimmy died of a bee sting.  He was allergic.  How can an allergy be contagious?"
"I don't know," Mulder said in commiseration.  "A lot of bugs carry diseases."
The brown-haired boy threw him a disbelieving glance.  "They weren't mosquitoes, they were bees.  Who ever heard of bees carrying the plague?"  He seemed to deflate, looking after his distraught relative a little forlornly.  "Look, I don't know why a nice couple like yourselves would even want to hear about all this, but it’s a family matter.  I gotta get my cousin home.  Go do your genealogy stuff.  Family's important."  He started off, slinging an arm around his friend and murmuring something reassuring as he guided the weeping boy toward the cars on the far side of the acre.
"Yeah, well, we’re not your average couple," Mulder muttered dryly.
"That's for sure," Scully agreed under her breath.  She let it out in a rush.  "That was not pleasant."
"Yeah.  I think we shouldn’t bother to go over there.  We have what we need."
"You do indeed."
Scully jumped at the voice behind her, and she and Mulder turned as one, hands diving to their hips in perfect synch as the old habit took control of their reactions.  Behind them in the backpack William made a petulant sound of recognition as if protesting the sudden upsurge of stress, and the two former Agents relaxed slightly as they recognised their contact from the Renegades.
Stepping silently out from under the trees as the Well-Manicured Man had once been wont to do, the alien looked down on them knowingly.  "So you have found this one as well.  We were going to mention it to you at our next meeting, but you have beaten us to the punch, as it is said."  They exchanged looks.  The alien nodded an affirmative, picking up their thoughts.  "Yes, this was a test as was the incident in Natchez, but the bodies have been cleared and the area is secure.  We did not even have to risk exposure this time; an anonymous tip to our brethren among the Rebels has them now on the lookout.  They removed the fetuses before they could progress too far, and vaccinated the hosts to slow the progression of the virus until after the bodies could be interred.  No one will ever see the condition in which those bodies will end.  They will be safely buried.  It was very neatly done."
It did not change expression, but there was a sudden air of hope about It, as if the austerity of Its outlook had lightened a little.  "But we did manage to get two of our partials in place before the incident.  As Mr. Praise has no doubt informed you, we will attempt to remove the fetuses surgically this time in hopes that this might stop the progression of the virus in the hybrids.  If so, we have a hope."
Raising Its eyes to survey the funerary site, the alien shook its head a little grimly, Its voice thoughtful.  "Now it is a race, my friends.  A race to ready the planet…and to ready your son who is our only weapon.  You must no longer take such risks.  You must keep safe, trust in our judgment."  It returned Its gaze to them then.  "We will keep you abreast of any changes, but you must definitely be removed from this area.  You draw attention.  You will go next to a place we have prepared for you near your old home.  There you will wait for us to contact you.  You will not draw attention to yourselves.  This is for your own safety.  You will be too close, and you will be privy again to the movements of the enemy, for you will be close to the locus of activity, and such movements are easy to spot when one knows what to look for.  Things are happening very quickly now."
Mulder opened his mouth to clarify or to protest, but the alien ran roughshod over him, voice steely.  "It is imperative that you remain where you are safe and do not take a hand unless it is to remove a threat to your anonymity.  Please," and here It looked down on them as if worried that they would not agree, "do not try to contact your families or your friends.  Their safety is being seen to even as yours, for they too are…useful."  It met their eyes, and Its expression was steely.  "You will stay at these places in Pennsylvania," and It shoved a paper into Scully's hand, "and you will be contacted in Philadelphia when it is time."  Without another word, the Renegade turned on Its heel and strode away as if It doubted for a moment that they would do what they were told.
Despite the sudden rush of adrenaline at the upping of the stakes, Scully felt a surge of something akin to relief.  A giant weight that she did not know had been there seemed to lift off of her heart.  Home.  They were going home.  She tried to quiet that voice inside of her, but it was suddenly jubilant.  They would be returning to the familiar air of the coast, the feel of the New England…the only place that would be home to her now.  It wasn’t DC that was home…it was the feel of the area, the taste, the flavour of the northeast.  She raised her eyes to Mulder's.  He nodded, his own eyes simultaneously soft and thoughtful.  It was home to him too…but to him it also meant access.
Mulder dropped his hand to hers as behind them William made an interrogatory noise.  Ahead, the alien had disappeared into the distance.  "It's almost worse," he warned her.  "The closer you are to home when you can't be there, when you can't see the people you love or help them if they need you.  To know they're only a few miles away, missing you.  Believe me."  Her heart contracted, realizing suddenly that for him it had been almost a year and a half since he had been home…and that he had had to watch his loved ones from afar without being able to change a thing, to contact them, to help.  She squeezed his hand.
"Hey.  At least we'll know."
Mulder nodded and tilted his head back to catch his small son's attention.  "Hey, Champ; we're going home.  Hope you remember the place."  Scully could almost feel the rising excitement in William's demeanor as their offspring began to charge up on their elation.  He could probably feel the importance of that word in their minds.  Before she could prepare herself, however, the baby crowed out one word, loud and ringing in the park like setting of the cemetery.
"Home!"  
X   X   X

(Amor Fati, pt.50: “From The Mouths Of Babes”)

Henrietta's House Motel and Inn
1300 N. Lindbergh Blvd.
West Philadelphia, PA
October 23, 2002
11:21am

Well, nearly there, anyway.  An hour's drive or more…but it might as well have been California for all the good it did them at this point.  Jim and Shelly Laughlin and their sixteen month-old son were holed up in another motel in Philadelphia, killing time like thieves.  They had gone from Wheeling to Pittsburgh, then through Altoona, stopping along the way at the safe-houses they'd been assigned.  Just past Harrisburg Mulder had insisted they stop in Hershey Park to have a look at the stadium where he had watched his first charity baseball game at about three years old.  "Might as well see the sights while we're moving, ‘Sweetheart’."  The entire time, however, they had felt as if unseen eyes were watching them.  It was terribly wearing to feel always so constantly exposed, and they had quickly moved on to the suburb of Elisabethtown and the safe-house that awaited them there, and from there they had passed through Reading to Philadelphia.  Philly would be their last stop for a while; hovering over DC like trained hawks, waiting for their signal to dive back into the thick of things.  It was maddening, and the pressure was beginning to tell on them both.
Their contact had been correct that being nearer to the 'locus of activity' would make the movements of the various factions easy to spot; Scully had been convinced that they were being followed by Rebel informants after she saw a group of Blue Berets detach themselves from a Reading Day parade and march toward them during their stop in that town.  It looked to be the same unit that had come after them down at the Arecibo Facility back in '94, and seeing them had given her the willies.  Not one to take chances, Mulder had pulled their entire party off of the public circuit till they reached Philly, despite the fact that the movement could just as easily have been some planned maneuver that belonged to the parade.  They might be protected by their invisible cordon of Renegades…but that didn’t mean they had to trust blindly that everything would be okay.
Once in Henrietta's Inn, they had laid low for a week and a half before venturing out to act normal again.  They had seen the sights, wandered the banks of the Delaware, checked out the parks, looked at the Liberty Bell and Independence Hall…and by the end of a month's time they were going completely insane as they had not done in Chapmanville.  Stir-crazy, cabin fever, call it what you will; after a decade of living on the edge neither Mulder nor Scully was used to inactivity, and this was nothing that even their habitual morning jogs could help.  That fact annoyed Scully far more than it did Mulder, both because he had gotten used to sitting around being frustrated in the last year, and because she had not realized that despite her yearning to settle down and have a 'normal life', she knew now that she would never be content with such.  Her years with Mulder had changed her at some deep level…and she could never regain that blithe assurance and blissful ignorance with which she had once walked through existence, hoping for home and family.  Her years on the x-files had gotten her used to solitude, and her reactions to their enforced proximity frustrated her all the more.  --You would think-- she thought to herself on more than one occasion in that month, --that both of us would have had enough of solitude in the last year or two to last us a few years--  She felt that she would be spitting in the face of the pain she had endured without him to admit out loud that she  needed some time alone. 
The thing was, no matter how deeply in love you were, no matter how devoted or attached at the hip, no human being was designed to be in constant proximity to another for six months without a break.  A few short walks didn’t help much, shadowed as they were by the constant fear that one of them might one day fail to return if they took the risk of going out alone...and there was only so much jogging one could do to burn off tension, only so much reading, and they couldn’t easily get library cards to go do the kind of research they were both used to doing to avoid the cooped-up feeling of prisoners kept under lock and key.  They had already seen nearly every city and town on the Eastern Seaboard over the years; and even Mulder couldn’t watch that much television.  And of course, William’s presence restricted their activities even more.  For people who were used to getting a great deal of physical exercise and a daily dose of urgent paperwork or some other, often harrowing assignment to occupy their time, this enforced inactivity of body and mind was stultifying.  They remained keyed up as they had been for a decade...but with nowhere to expend the unused energy or work off the useless quarts of adrenaline.
Annoyingly enough, today Mulder was apparently unaffected by the proximity effect or at least able to subsume his frustration through television at this particular time.  He lazed on the easy chair in front of the tube, by all appearances caring for nothing as long as he had his iced tea in one hand and the remote in the other.  "Hey, look Sweetheart!  'Sightings' is on!"  He turned his head to glance at her where she sat on the bed with William, voice half-serious.  "If we ever run out of money from my Dad's estate we could work on this show, be one of their paranormal investigative teams.  That's where the big bucks are; and we could get the word out.  Sounds almost too good, doesn't it?"  At her staid look he shook his head sadly.  "She's not going for it, Slugger," he muttered across the gulf to his son.
"I doubt They'd leave us alive for long were we to expose ourselves like that, Mulder.  In case you've forgotten, They don’t want the Truth to get out."  Even to herself she sounded waspish.
"Well, They didn’t seem to mind using us to spread propaganda," he muttered sullenly, and took another sip of his iced tea.
--Looks like I'm not the only one in a rotten mood-- she thought to herself.  --He just hides it better--  Rather than being glad that she wasn't the only one feeling frustrated by recent events, her annoyance mounted.  The last thing she and Mulder needed was to hide their feelings from one other anymore…but she couldn't expect him to talk if she didn’t, and though she knew she was on a one-way-track to explosion she couldn't seem to bring her own communication apparatus out of mothballs.  They were still not used to communicating emotions.  Business; they did great at that.  This relationship thing took more maintenance, though.
With sponge-like empathy, William looked up at her from where he sat on the edge of the bed playing quietly with a pair of Mulder's socks.  For some reason the toddler loved socks.  He would play with the things for hours.  She had never exactly gotten used to seeing him levitate the things around the room as Gibson had taught him, nor to watching them fold and unfold in empty space like a couple of exfoliating earthworms, but the close proximity of the last few weeks had taught her to tune out the unsettling phenomena that occasionally manifested itself in her only surviving child.  He needed to practice, and this was at least a quiet way of doing so.  Will was a quiet child, easily absorbed in his mental jujitsu and therefore less given to loud, raucous, physical play like most children his age.  Especially now that he knew his minimal surroundings by heart, he found Gibson’s exercises far more engaging…which was both easier and harder on the nerves than a lot of loud raucous physical play would be.
He wasn't playing with them or levitating them now, however.  He had given them up to regard his mother with a slight frown, little brow knitting in consternation.  "Mama?" he asked, and pushed himself up to stand shakily on the aging mattress.  He stepped determinedly up to his mother and raised one hand to her temple.  He wanted intuitively to help, but knowing that he would feel all her roiling frustration and annoyance uncensored if he made tactile contact, Scully caught the tiny wrist before the hand could ascend.  Firmly reining in her exasperation at Mulder, the situation, and even William's own intractable insistence on evading verbal speech in deference to his empathy, she looked into her son's eyes and said her new favourite phrase.
"Talk to me out loud, William."  She needed to try not to sound too forbidding, but she had been attempting to teach him to verbalize the things he wanted to express to them in the past month.  God knew she didn't want to shut down his natural gifts…but he needed to learn to communicate with the people in his small world or he would end up completely cut off.
Like she should talk.  She wasn't exactly being an all-star at communication right now, herself.  "Mommy's okay, Sweetie.  You go sit with your Dadda for a while, alright?"  She needed to keep him away if she didn't want him to be affected by her inner turbulence.
The baby gave her a doubtful glance as if questioning her judgment, but before she could try to convince him, Mulder chimed in from his semi-permanent nest in the chair.
"It's just easier to do it that way.  I tried and tried to get people to respond to me while I was in the hospital, but no one heard my thoughts.  I heard all of theirs.  It was frustrating as hell."
As if on a gerbil wheel, Scully's mind took another angry turn as she wondered enviously if Mulder understood and communicated better with their child just because of an accident of the genes.
	--I’m the one who carried him, dammit, and raised him for his whole first year!--  Shocked by the sudden surge of jealousy, Scully forced herself to take a step back and turn over the reaction, examining her feelings analytically as she had learned to do over the years--a habit that had earned her an ice queen award at Headquarters.  She was glad that Will and Mulder had bonded so swiftly.  It had made her very happy to watch it happen, but...  --It's not like you're in a custody battle, Dana; settle down--
As if hearing her thoughts, Mulder twisted to look over the arm of the chair.  When he spoke, it was with the air of a man willfully facing the lion in its den after it had been stirred with a stick.  "Hey, Scully, you okay?"
"I'm fine, Mulder," she replied shortly, in what had become a signature sign that she was most definitely not fine.  Mulder looked a little taken aback at the curt tone of her reply, and Scully flinched.  Her guilt didn’t last long, however.  Resettling into his chair as if retreating from the field of conflict, he went back to their former conversation as if nothing had occurred.
"You know what I’d like to investigate, Scully?  The Blair Witch.  We could go film our own independent movie.  Run around in the woods, play like we were thirty again…"
--He's just as bored as I am-- she told herself grimly, biting back the angry retort, but she was suddenly irate again. --How could he avoid the subject like that?--
--He's just following your example, Dana-- the other side of her brain responded calmly.  --You all but told him you didn't want to discuss it--  Before she could say something to keep the peace, however, another annoyed retort slid out of her mouth.
"We don't need the Blair Witch, Mulder, even if it were real.  We’ve had weirder cases over the years."  Her usual, slightly impatient, slightly weary tone was not so remote, and she could feel the tension in the room slide up a notch.  In the midst of slithering off the side of the bed, William looked at her worriedly, and she stood up with a muttered oath and went over to the clock radio.  Maybe some Classical would settle her.
Mulder didn’t do anything but glance briefly over at her as she settled on Brahms Concerto, but she read a thousand small messages in the glance, not all of them imagined.  Distaste at the choice of music, a reticence about commenting on it where he would usually tease her about her lack of respect for the glorious tradition of rock and roll…as if he was confirming to her that her mood was too dangerous to deal with.  She wasn't doing anybody any good right now.  She had better remove herself before she said something she might regret.
Fiercely reining in her Irish temper, Scully straightened abruptly to wander restlessly to the bathroom, leaving William to slide off of the bed and waddle over to hang off of the arm of his father's chair.  Out of the corner of her eye she saw Mulder absently lift their son into his lap and point at the screen.  "Watch this, Will; the Phoenix UFO burst…  Hey, Scully; how come we never got to Phoenix?"
"You want to go there now, be my guest," she called shortly, and sailed into the tiny restroom…where she began to fume anew, and not just at her own intransigence.  Small things that she had once found endearing or amusing about their time together had suddenly become, in her overloaded emotional state, personal affronts.  The toilet seat was up…again, the toothpaste tube was crushed in from the top…and the thing was, she couldn't even be sure if it was a case of absentmindedness or a deliberate ploy to annoy her because he enjoyed watching her go icy over minor things.
--Okay, they are minor things.  Nothing to blow up about--  With a barely contained outburst of breath Scully slapped the toilet seat down.  Through the open door she saw Mulder look up and blink at the crash.  Not wanting to explode at him, she thought it the wiser not to see him at the moment or have him ask her what was wrong, so she nudged the bathroom door shut…a little harder than was strictly necessary.  There was a profound silence outside, and she felt her heart sink.  She knew she was being petty, and that the adult thing to do was to go talk about it or get the hell out and go for a walk if she couldn't do that, but here she was in here being manipulative and hoping he'd give her an excuse to explode.
Scully had learned to keep a tight lid on her temper since she'd nearly decapitated a school friend with her tongue when she was ten.  The Scully children had all had terrible tempers, and all had learned to hold them in, divert them…and as a result each and every one of them was a master of implosion.  Anger could only remain tamped down for so long, but like contents under pressure, when the explosion finally came it was terrifying, swift, and left some pretty heinous scars.  She knew that the rising pressure inside her was making her son uneasy, but she feared that an explosion would do worse than simple inner turmoil, and so she held it in.
--This isn't healthy-- she told herself as she flushed the john.  --You need to get out of here, Dana--
She had learned to listen to that inner voice in the last twenty years.  She knew it was time to listen to it again.  She just hoped she could get out before Mulder said anything to her, or she knew she'd go off like a brick of C-4.
"I'm going for a walk," she said brusquely, and swept by the chair containing her lover and her son, her only goal to make it to the door before he said something conciliating.  The two faces looked up at her from the cushions with twin expressions of surprise…but she read a bit of relief in Mulder's face.  She barely made it out of the door before her temper exploded.
She spent the next couple of hours walking hard and fast.
xxx
Meanwhile, back in the motel room, Mulder and William watched her go, relieved and worried in one.  Mulder was just as frustrated, but more because he felt Scully pulling away and he didn’t know what to do to fix it.  He knew they needed time alone, but there wasn’t much that they could do about it at this point in proceedings.  The thing was, they needed communication even more than they needed solitude, but neither of them knew how to begin.  They had never had the need to challenge their old patterns before, and now when they needed to forge new paths they hadn’t the skill to see beyond their own struggles to the common ground that was their shared existence.
It had been different in the early stages of their flight when the reunion of their bodies and souls had still been new.  Far easier indeed to simply bask in the return of that easy balming Oneness.  But now after so much time on end spent in constant company, no amount of love or of joy at reunion could keep two people who had become so used to solitude for so long from getting on each other’s nerves, especially in this agonizing waiting period.  It was nerve-wracking; waiting for word, watching William slowly grow into his gifts--and fearing that everything that they and he did would fall short of the tremendous pressure that Fate had thrust upon them.  It would have been a miracle if, in the midst of all that, being constantly in each other’s company had not made them edgy.
The thing was, he had thought that they had worked out all the rough edges of their relationship in the years of their working partnership.   They had spent most of their time together then…but, he acknowledged, they had always had some time alone, some separate sanctum to which they could retreat like boxers retiring to their separate quarters.  Scully’s usually involved a candlelight bubble bath; not possible in the tiny unromantic tubs that graced most motel rooms.  Mulder’s often involved either TV, of which he had despite outward appearances had quite enough lately, a run around the track or some other kind of workout at the FBI training facilities, or a nice tension-busting game of b-ball.  Unfortunately, neither of them were made to spend all their time in leisure.  They were active people with the long-ingrained habit of daily PT and mental exercise; and after a couple of months of idyll, leisure had begun to pall.
That, and they were still not entirely used to sharing their space, not used to carrying that extension of being beyond work time.  Now, negotiating the corners and navigating the bumps with the ease of long practice, they were aware how felicitous it was that they had mapped out most of those bumps and sanded off most of the sharper edges in the more abrasive early days of their enforced enterprise so that their friendship could flourish.  Working with wholly different approaches, wholly different outlooks on life, on the universe, on faith, they had smoothed off the rough bits, though new aspects and old still grated occasionally.
After all these years, the two former agents fit together like a couple of cogs turning smoothly in a well-oiled machine, and as such it had become easy to continue to slide blithely along as they had done for so many years, moving in an emotional ballet of bare acknowledgment while avoiding deeper investigation and the search for any new rough patches.  So clock-like and automatic were the workings of their relationship that Mulder had been shocked when he had tried to make love with Scully a few days ago and had felt the hollowness that said that she wasn’t wholly with him.  Realizing that she needed space, he had tried not to feel rebuffed, but he hadn’t tried to touch her since.  The feeling was so alien that he had no idea what to do, and the old protective silence had settled about them like a smothering blanket of the unsaid…and it was suddenly like they were in the Basement Office again during the year before her cancer had reared up its ugly head to remind them of what they meant to each other.  Then as now, the weight of the unsaid had threatened to drown them both, but neither of them had had any idea what to do about it.
The crux of the matter, then, was this.  Because they had had the luxury of becoming the closest of friends before they had become lovers, their communication had evolved in unique ways.  Always before the potential of their attraction had been there, lying dormant, subverted to intellectual energy as the less dangerous format for the give and take of their slowly burgeoning partnership.  An epistemological relationship rather than a sexual one, but with all the earmarks of true fidelity.  The simple physical attraction in the beginning had faded to an unnoticed buzz as their relationship had become first entirely professional respect, and through that, deep and abiding friendship, and that circumstance had allowed that friendship, the interdependence and the deep regard time to develop without the added entanglements of sex.  In the last few years, though, they had been forced to reevaluate that regard and to reassess the importance they had held in one another’s lives, and they had both wearied very quickly of the elaborate game they played.  But the pattern of subverting the personal for the intellectual remained to plague them to this day, when they found it far easier to discuss work than to discuss what went on between them.  The unsaid had been the unsaid for far too long, and the saying of it was a rusty hinge with no oil, unused for the length of their partnership.  For even when they had become lovers it had been the unspoken language of their bodies that had taken over for the things that remained unsaid.
Basically, the banter of that game had become such a daily habit that despite their changing outlooks they had continued to fall into that comfortable beat and rhythm until neither knew how to stop, to shift gears to a new dynamic.  Their old relationship had become the wall they had hidden behind, and their tired banter had become so much second nature that the road back had been lost.  They had had to forge new paths through the undiscovered country of emotions that they had both ceased acknowledging, much less expressing for years, perhaps decades, and learn to communicate all over again in a new way…and unfortunately this was a skill they were still working on.  Normally their lovemaking was a communion for them; if they couldn’t talk about something, they could communicate it with the powerful language of their bodies, for their physical link had become nearly as strong as the soul connection that bound them together.  The expression of it that connection, the power of it, could not be denied, no matter the disagreement, despite any misunderstanding.  That road was always clear and uncluttered, for while their tongues could lie, their bodies could not.  When that communion had been shut off as just one more unbearable closeness in a nest of claustrophobia, it had brought home to him how much folly it was to allow that physical language to act as a substitute for communication of a verbal sort...but they had still been learning the way to that other communication.  The lack of a decade had come up now to bite them on the ass when they least expected it.
He was just as guilty as she.  After so many years of following her lead, of avoiding any discussion of their relationship until she gave him permission to talk about it, he had fallen back on his old patterns.  Always he had been able to avoid thinking of anything; Scully, his Quest, his guilt over Samantha and the unanswered questions of his existence, the sheer injustice of their Fight.  If he could not bury himself in his work he could just turn on a crappy B movie or a late night porno for background noise and let his thoughts drift.  It had been the only way he had been able to turn off his mind after a long day of manic, hyperactive thought, the constant action and association of his brain…but it was not very conducive to communication.
Mulder decided that it was about time he faced up squarely to the core of the problem; he was a selfish person.  In the beginning he had pushed Scully away because he was not used to any loyalty, not used to trust--either extending it or receiving it--didn’t think he deserved it or was the kind of person to whom it came...and he had been too self-absorbed to believe that there were any other worthwhile points of view in that discussion as in any other.  It had therefore stunned him and thrown him for a loop when she had trusted him and given her loyalty to him so unreservedly despite his shallow misgivings.  But he had become used to it, come to depend upon it so strongly that he had finally begun to take it for granted...until for a couple of years in there he had even tuned out Scully’s existence, the most important person in his life, as a distraction that lay between him and his headlong drive to his goal.  He had been able to sit at that desk in the Basement and plow through papers as if unaware of her presence…and part of that had been fear.  Fear that dedicating any of his attention or time to her, to them, would detract from the most important thing in his life; his Fight, his Mission.  Fear that letting her get any closer would be to turn his back on the one thing that gave his life meaning.
Consequently, having suddenly lost that light at the end of the tunnel as he had finally found out, after all those years, that Samantha was not to be found or saved, he had had to learn to live again.  He had had to find something new to live for, had had to choose life without the personal quest.  A new reason to Fight.  
He had thought he would not find it.  The Syndicate had been gone, the Smoking Man was missing in action and would give him nothing to shoot at.  He had been going through the motions with the x-files, investigating this phenomenon and that unexplained beastie with Scully at his side, looking vainly around, he realized now, for a new focus.  For the first time in his life, he had needed to take action rather than living in reaction, and he had had no idea where to begin.  The emptiness had caused him to reassess his life and to re-evaluate his place in the grander scheme of things, and for the first time in years he had raised his head out of the file cabinet and surveyed the damage, realising all the costs that had come of his single-minded drive to find the answers to the exclusion of all else.  The wreckage had been astounding…but it would have been all right if it was only his life that had been wrecked.  He had never had much of one outside work anyway, and it had been his to waste.  It had took only a second to realise the toll that his singlemindedness had taken on the life of the one person that had kept him sane throughout it all.
Facing another person’s needs took a lot of courage once one realized that that other person had learned to be content with living and working with half a human being, with talking to someone who only had half a mind on the discussion at any given time--a partner who had learned to treasure only the sparest moments of full attention in the midst of a haze of emotionless tunnel-vision.  The way she had looked at him, full of knowing, weary fondness, concern and warm regard and even tenderness despite his years of cavalier treatment had humbled him, had made him realize how precious she was to him…and it had burst out upon him then that he did have a reason to keep fighting.  For Scully he could go on.  For her, he could find new focus, a reason to continue when everything that had defined his existence till now had been pulled from under him like the proverbial rug.  For Dana Scully, because his Scully loved the world; and even though he often despised it, through her eyes he saw something that was still worth fighting for.  She believed in the Fight, now, kept fighting it for her own reasons…but from that moment onward he had been fighting it for her.  She had become his conscience, the very reason for his existence; the centre of his being.
He knew that he loved her then, with more conviction than he had ever known anything, even more than the loudly protested surety he had felt in his sister’s abduction.  That had been the surety of wounded suspicion, of betrayed trust, and through it he had been used, propelled, manipulated…and from the first day to the last he had never been able to trust which explanation was the Truth.  This…this Truth that he felt in Scully was the quiet conviction of a person who had never been betrayed and never would be.  He knew that he didn’t deserve to have her still by his side…but for some reason she had stuck with him, and for that reason, for her loyalty and her unconquered spirit he had sublimated his anger and his sarcasm at the world that had stolen away so much of his life; and had given himself over to saving it…for her.  He had had no reason to save it for himself anymore.  He had found out that he was dying.
	She had been his doctor, his closest confidante, and his friend.  He had wanted to tell her the truth, but...  At first he hadn't told her because she had been busy concentrating on the hopeful business of the IVF...and then he hadn't had the heart to break it to her...not after she had lost her chance for a child as well.  He had been told that there was nothing that anyone could do...nothing she could do to save him, and she had wanted him to do the same with her cancer.  Not spend all their remaining time racing around wasting time they had left looking for a cure, or for revenge; but just to be together, and enjoy the time they had had left.  And so he had taken that road...and tried in the interim to prepare her despite his own misgivings; training her to take his place, the Doctor Watson to his Sherlock Holmes.  
	 There had been another reason, there at the end.  He had known that if he had told her, she would have stayed with him.  If his abuse of her friendship over the last seven years hadn’t been enough to chase her away, to make her give up on him in disgust, he knew he would never have been able to push her away with illness or approaching death.  She would have stood by him through his brain disease even as he had stood by her through her cancer, and would have continued to fight this Fight without him had she lost him--for his fight had become hers, and for her own reasons.  But despite the guilt that it still caused him, she would never know how much it had meant to him that she had stayed with him.  At that vital turning point so many years ago now, she had remained.  He had no doubt she would hang on still, should she lose him now; for he had long since given up the possibility that anything he did might actually chase her away.
Ah, the day she had chosen to remain with him.  Still recovering from her exposure to the virus and the Antarctic ice, she had turned to him and told him that her work was here with him, that it was now her Fight as well as his.  That had turned it around.  But before, when he had thought she was leaving him...the thought of losing her in that moment in the hall had nearly destroyed him.  He never drank, but that night he had done just that, had gotten as drunk as he had ever done or knew how to do.  Even then before he had been willing to admit it, he had known that Scully was that with which he could not live without.  Even more than his uncompromising drive to learn the Truth, he needed her in his life, and he had admitted it that night when she had told him she was leaving.  “I don’t know if I want to do this alone.  I don’t even know if I can.”  He might have been able to do it alone if he didn’t destroy himself first, but he would have fallen apart without her and he knew it, never wanted to feel that un-whole again now that he had finally learned what it was like to be complete.
But she had stayed with him.  She would never know what it had meant to him to hear her return his words like a gift so long ago, with such warm and earnest fidelity and quiet determination.  “If I quit now, They win.”
That had been the beginning of this change, of his ceasing to cling to her for his own selfish reasons.  And so he had meant to lock her out of his heart, hold her at arm’s length and begin weaning her away from the x-files and the dregs of his bitter cup…to encourage her finally to have a life outside of his.  Tried to send her away to keep her safe so that she would not be in danger when he was gone, and so that she could go on live what life was left to her before they all died--for he could see nothing left for them to do to stop the inevitable from overwhelming them.  Still he had kept trying to stop it because that was all he had known how to do; no longer because of his inherent underdog mentality, but because he loved her…and the way she looked at the world, not with naïve optimism but still with hope, that was what kept him sane.  Her faith had become his salvation, a surety he had needed as he had faced his own mortality.  He had felt that as long as she was out there somewhere, alive and saving lives, his life would have been worth something...and someone out there would care about his work and remember him with love.  As Scully herself had said once, faced with Death one often began the struggle to give meaning to it...like Life.
But he had not been able to flush her from his side, and instead she had clung tighter, not only to him but rededicated to the Fight, to the choice she had made to see it through for her own reasons.  The healer in her would have wanted to stay with him, to be a doctor with him and for him, continuing his Fight for the world she Believed in…and for the partner she Believed in.  And in the calm between that last battle and this he had found himself not a distant friend but finally, too terribly late, a lover closer than a twin to the soul.  She had chosen him…and had given him a reason to keep living; to make up to her in the time he had left those endless years that she had followed doggedly in his paths with a few months of unquestioning and ungrudgingly given love; and the kind of quiet devotion that she alone had taught him to give.  And so, finally and far too late he had tried to find a way to stay alive, to stay with her…all in vain.  For her and for them he had continued to fight up to the bitter end, driven on by her faith in him and fearing desperately that he would bring her bright light down with him when he died, so intertwined had their existences become.  To find the Truth then had become not only his own salvation but the salvation of the one human being on the planet who had become the very essence of his soul.
That had been the thing that had tortured him the most on the ship.  Far worse than any physical pain or helplessness had been the knowledge that she was out there searching for him, breaking her heart to find him, and that he had never managed to convey to her all that she had meant to him.  That he had noticed, and that he was grateful.  He had not known about the baby, and had feared that she would get herself killed recklessly searching him out…but he had returned to find that circumstances had changed, and that she had had to find another reason to remain alive whether she had wanted to or not, without him.  Half a person…but alive, for their unborn child, and the world in which he would live.  Come back and armed with a second chance, instead of being the centre he had had to readjust his priorities yet again, and to find a new role for himself and in his world, a role that would allow him to contribute to a Quest as personal as the last and as earth shattering as the first had become.  It had taken him a few months to realize that nothing had changed.  Anything that Dana Scully thought was worth fighting for…that was his Fight.  Their son had become the both the Quest and the drive, and in the process he had brought his parents back together; with one wave of his chubby baby fist he had healed the breach in their strained and cracking bond, and had begun the healing of their hearts.
The problem was that he could not tell Scully all that he felt.  Even in that last year when they had finally become lovers they had not learned to talk about their feelings out loud, to say the words that needed to be said.  They had simply substituted body language for banter.  For him it was not the same problem that he had had with other women; the problem of intimacy.  Scully had got in under his barricades almost from the beginning.  He may not feel a lot of confidence around most women or really know what to do with women in general, but Scully defied such definitions.  She was a part of him, become a necessary part of his being due to the exigencies of a bond forged in shared fear and longing, pain and loss and unswerving loyalty.  The lived in each other’s pockets, and communicated without speech.  When she was upset, he usually knew what to do--but seldom since her cancer days had she pushed him away or avoided their own pattern by treating him as cavalierly as he had once done with her.
He deserved it.  The truth hurt.  And the only way he knew to make it better was to bite the bullet and try to do the one thing that scared him shitless.  To move outside the comfortable warmth of their established relations.  To spread his thoughts and feelings out in front of her in the light of day and let her see that no matter what stood between them, he was willing to fight for what they had become...for the alternative was something he did not want to contemplate.  Having come to this completion by such torturous routes, they were now indisputably each other's other half; two parts of the same whole, complements needed for balance.  Without each other they had been lost, in pain, hurt and alone…and in his case staring over the edge of all things into an abyss of silence and death.  But the worst part of this whole package was that it was not only their own happiness and their son’s that depended upon the smooth working of their partnership, but the Fate of humanity.  It would have been laughable if it were not so terrifying.
	“You have to help me, buddy.  I’m not that great at confessing.  She’s the one that knows how to do that.”  William looked up at his father with wise, ancient eyes and smiled, confidence unimpaired.  He had all the faith in the world in his two closest confidantes. 
xxx
Scully returned with the gray-blue twilight and stood outside another small basketball court watching Mulder work out his own frustrations as darkness fell slowly to drape the parking lot in shadows.  Will stood to one side, watching raptly as his father performed his daily magic and made the ball fly with only manual dexterity at his side.  Having worked off most of her own annoyance she could now watch fondly as Mulder lifted his son to assist him in a slam dunk…but she did not go unobserved for long.
As Mulder dipped to return their offspring to his own small feet he saw her standing behind the court.  He remained stooped for a moment, eyes on her, then slowly straightened and stood holding the ball casually pinned to his hip by one arm.  After a moment she walked toward him.  She could almost see him girding his loins for battle as he nodded and pointed to Will with his chin.  "We were just shooting some hoops."  Below him, William's worried expression dissolved as he looked up at his mother and read peace in her mind.  Mulder was still talking.  "Do you want us to stay out here for a while?  We don't all need to be cooped up in there."
Scully suppressed a small smile, glad that she was now able to find some amusement in her own fit of pique and its aftereffects.  "It's getting dark.  We need to get Will to bed, right Sweetie?"  Will looked up at her doubtfully.
"That's it buddy; you've hit curfew."  The last thing he needed was to be awake during what would surely be an emotionally chaotic interlude.  Mulder swung down and picked the baby up, pinned him to his free hip so that the boy dangled from his waist, giggling as he watched the asphalt slide by beneath him.  Scully turned to walk to the room, Mulder following with his chortling burden.  The chortling burden was unceremoniously tossed onto the bed as they entered, and he remained there, still giggling delightedly at the semi-roughhousing.  He loved to play with his Dada.  His giggle cut off and he sat up as Scully stalked up to Mulder and grabbed his face, kissing him hard.  Working off the anger was one thing, but she still had a lot of nervous energy to expend.
Half in shock, it took Mulder a moment to register her intentions, but then he pulled her gently away by her elbows and searched her face.  She didn't want to talk, and slid her fingers into his hair, ignoring the familiar scars of his old operation to tug down insistently.  It was truly unfair how much taller he was than she.
"No," he said firmly, and tried to disengage her hand.  "Then we would just be hiding from it."
Scully shook her head and slid her other hand up along his cheek, feeling the stubble rasp along his jawline.  He needed to shave.  She felt a shimmer of anticipation as the rough hairs prickled under her fingers.  She loved it when he needed to shave.  It was sexy.  She surprised herself with the sudden wish to toss him right there, and smiled determinedly.  "What if I don't want to talk about it?  What if I just want to let it work itself out?"  She tightened her fingers on his face, eyes hot on his.  She darted them briefly away to glance at the extra bed behind him.  "Go to sleep, William."  The baby stared at her for a moment, then obediently lay down and closed his eyes.
Mulder's own hand slid up to catch hers.  He pulled it gently from his face and lifted the knuckles to his lips.  "As appealing as that idea sounds," he began…but she was already kissing him again, hard and hot and fast.  He tried to stop her twice, but she was insistent, and in the end he gave in as she had hoped.  Once you know somebody, you know how to push their buttons.  Scully had learned all of Mulder's long ago.
After, she left him for the bathroom, angry at herself for using him; avoiding the question when he so obviously wanted to open up the lines of communication.  Upon sober thought, though, she wondered if there was even any use in discussing matters.  It wasn't as if they could do anything to alter the situation in which they found themselves.   But she knew that was a cop out.  She was as afraid to talk about it as he was.  --Don’t be a coward, Dana.  He wants to talk.  The least you can do is look him in the eye and do your part--
"This time and last time, Scully.  It’s the first time that you haven't been totally with me," he murmured to her as she returned.   She shook her head and slipped back between the sheets, lying a little apart from him as if their bodies echoed the distance that had grown up between them.  After a moment she sighed, knowing that at some point came accountability, and looked him in the eye.  What she saw there, the look of betrayal combined with understanding…it had been the same the day she had told him she was going to quit, to leave him.  The hurt little boy staring out at her was almost more than she could bear.
"What is there to say, Mulder?" she asked finally.  "There's not a whole lot we can do about it."
	He stared at her, opened his mouth with the look of the man preparing to walk across hot coals, but before he could say anything, Will had gotten up from his nest on the other bed, woken from his nap-on-command by the resurgence of emotional upheaval.  He came to stand between the beds and pointed at his mother.
"Talk, Mama.  Talk Dada out loud!"
Scully felt a rueful expression cross her face.  Nice to be made to eat your words by your own child.  Mulder's expression was triumphant.
"My son the marriage counselor," he quipped, but his eyes quickly grew serious.  "But he's right, we need to talk.  One of us might as well admit it," he murmured, and brushed a stray strand of hair away from her face.  "We need a break, and we can't have one, because the break isn't necessarily from each other so much as from the situation, and there is nothing we can do about that.  And since we can’t have the break, we need to learn to talk it out."
Scully dropped her fingers over the edge of the bed to squeeze her son's small hand.  She looked at the baby over her shoulder.  "You're right, Sweetie.  I shouldn't be telling you to talk if I'm going to be mute myself."  Half-turning, she helped him up.  The baby eyed them both for a moment as if assessing the situation, then crawled down to the bottom of the bed and sat down, staring at them both like a mediator.  Scully stared at the baby for a moment and then returned her gaze to her lover and bit the bullet.  He was her best friend.  She could look him in the eye.  Nothing she could say would shake the foundations of what they were to each other.  "I guess we just…took so long get where we are, to be able to be together…” 
"Well, who’s idea was that?" he asked teasingly.  "Wasn't mine."  The minute the words were out of his mouth he wished he could have them back.  He nearly bit his lip in frustration at his own tactless intransigence.  --Damn.  Finally get her to talk and then I throw in some smart-ass comment and screw it up--  He looked up almost fearfully, hoping that she wouldn’t be easily deterred just because he happened to have a relapse.  When he met her eyes she was glaring at him without heat.
Scully tried not to be put off.  She knew Mulder’s humour was mostly self-defense and that he recognised just as she did.  She could feel her own sense of humour come back, and was able to return his wit with her own dry levity even as she turned it aside.  They could not let the old patterns come up to block off their communication before it could really get underway.  “Thanks,” she muttered wryly.  “But because it’s been so long, even though I know it's perfectly natural to feel a little frustrated I feel like I'm betraying it, spitting in the face of all that pain to admit I feel a little stifled by all this enforced isolation."
He felt himself breathe a little easier.  --So we are going to do this.  Okay--  “Well,” he murmured, “we’re not making it any better by ignoring it.  And for what its worth, I feel the same way.   If it weren’t for you and Will I’d be dead by now.”  She began to protest, but he rode her over determinedly, suddenly urgent to let her know that he knew what she had done.  “It’s the truth.  You’ve saved my life just by being here, and I’m not talking about backup or antivirals.  I want you to know that I know that, Scully, and that I don’t take you for granted.  I’ll never do that again.”
She looked down, embarrassed.  “I know you don’t.  I’m just not sure how to say it.  It’s been so many years since we could really talk…”
“Did we ever?”  He was smiling gently.  “Aside from a few attempts in the early years I’m not sure we ever did.  We just hinted around a lot.”  He grinned then.  “Some of us less subtly than others, I guess.”
	She felt a smile cross her own lips, and sat up on the bed, sheet trapped under her arms, ready to go in and get it all out on the table.  “Well, Mulder, part of me wanted you to make me feel like a woman again... but part of me would’ve been appalled at letting anybody get that close.”  She grimaced.  “I was trying so hard to gain everyone’s respect.  If I let them see the real me, the me that went home at night feeling...”
Mulder sat up himself and grabbed her hand where it lay on top of the sheet.  “They all did respect you, Scully,” he interrupted earnestly.  “It was me they made jokes about.  You, they admired.  Not a little because you managed to put up with Spooky Mulder for so long.”  His eyes were warm on hers.  “I admired you myself.  I’m still not sure how you did it…and even though I know why you hung around I still can’t quite believe it sometimes.”  His voice lowered.  “God knows I didn’t deserve to have a second chance with you, Scully.  Or a third chance.  Or a fourth.  In most cases it’s three strikes you’re out.”
She couldn’t help the smile on her lips now, and she didn’t bother to try.  “You have your moments, Mulder.”
Looking at him now, she realized for the first time the answer to the question that the Smoking Man had asked her the last time they had met.  She knew now why she wouldn’t allow herself to love this man all those years ago, and why she had had to be cold and distant even when he had been throwing his lines out there.  After that smoking bastard had quizzed her she had questioned herself through long, sleepless nights.  Why wouldn’t she allow herself to love him?  His world had become her whole life.  Did she resent him for that?  Or was it her own fear that kept her from opening up her heart to this beautiful, complicated, flawed and wholly loveable person with whom she spent the better part of her existence?
Now, in retrospect, she knew it had been fear.  The willpower they had both used was matched and exceeded only by their fear, and that fear, not the possible consequences, had kept them from the moment of decision.  God knew willpower alone could not have kept them apart for so long.
Fear.  Fear of this kind of mind-blowing intimacy.  Fear of taking that step herself; and the hope that he would spare her the risk and do it for her.  Anger that he had not, though she knew as he did that it had been better for them both that things had not changed between them till after the Samantha question had been answered and he could look beyond that scar and see his life objectively again.  And yet, so many times she had wanted him to push the issue, too scared of her own reactions, of the power of the thing that lay between them, or too stymied by her own self-imposed emotional exile to cross that line herself...but knowing that once crossed by either of them, there would be no turning back.  Wanting him to do all the work; saying no with her mouth while her eyes said ‘Yes; take this step for me.’  --Very passive-aggressive of you, Agent Scully-- she chided herself.   And when he had tried to push it...she had turned him away; right into someone else's waiting arms.
It had been totally unfair of her to put that all on him for all those years, but she had been so fatally torn, so ambivalent about everything, having no idea what she wanted, that she had been simply unable to make a choice, to take original action--until fate had forced her to do so the night she’d fallen asleep in his apartment, in that year when he had very appropriately determined that that choice was hers to make and not his.  He had made himself available, and had very neatly turned the responsibility for that decision back on her.  In the wake of the end of Samantha’s dominion over his life, she knew he had already made up his mind, knew that he knew what he felt about her...it was she that had been undecided.  That final calm that they had reached in the last year had initially been ‘uneasily comfortable’ if there was such a thing, an unfamiliar ground that neither of them had known what to do with.  But they’d rolled with the punches, and now had ultimately settled into a kind of daily comfortable intimacy of a less strained nature that left the questions of the past behind in the new Truth of their union.
Not to be taken for granted, though.  Neither of them had yet done so, but…  --Oh, we could.  We could so easily…and God, how that would be like spitting in your face--
She reached out finally to lay her hand against his cheek as she had done once so long ago; this time not in demand but acknowledgement.  She looked upon him now, and remembered all the years, everything she had seen in him from the very beginning.  His dedication, his loyalty, his unswerving commitment.  Even when they had been just friends she had loved him dearly, for she had never met another human being like him.  Sometimes, though, she missed those days when they had been just friends.  They had been more playful then, but as their attraction had evolved into that steady warm regard and interdependence, the playfulness had become stilted and the emotional blackmail more serious.  And even when he had taken her presence for granted, he had still been her best friend, though it had taken her cancer to make him really see her as a separate entity again.  After that there had been nothing between them but the walls they had put up themselves in fear of the intimacy that they both yearned toward and turned away at the same time.
She looked upon him now, her best friend in this life and in all the others that he claimed to know.  Now a lover, but so much more than that; he was--and here she could finally move to lay beside him, to accept what he gave--he was the other half of her soul.  She knew by the way he held her that it was the same for him. No matter how long they were separate, they remained unconstrained by time and space.  
--We are One, and you complete me-- she thought to him, and willed him to meet her gaze.  --Intimacy through codependence?  Bah--  She smiled.
As if responding to her thought he shifted his head up from their linked hands to meet her eyes.  “Hey,” he said.  “We’re okay, right?”
"Yeah.  We're okay."
As if unable to stand the fear any longer he moved to cover her mouth with his, needing to erase the painful memory of the last few empty days with the fullness of their union.  And finally they could be in each other’s arms without any stifling, any imposition, and they moved to lie down, to face each other as the eve ticked on into night.  William had been fed earlier, and he now crawled up to snuggle between them and fell asleep, finally at peace as the vibe in the room had subsided to that warmth that he felt when his parents were in full accord.  An accord that could finally be expressed without hiding from the words that lay between one touch and the next, one look, one breath...and they moved their small mediator to the spare bed and left him to sleep.  As the fear, the tension and the pain of the last few days subsided in the face of their new determination, their accord gave rise in the end to powerful lovemaking.  While William slept on, their shadows moved in the moonlight, echoes resolving themselves into quiet sighs and whispers.  After a time the whispers slowly settled into words and the shadows took shape as tenebrous silhouettes of body echoes, and…  Scully was not sure when, but she had stopped being embarrassed or self-conscious about their lovemaking, about letting go of the iron-clad hold she kept over her emotions.  Relinquishing the driving compulsion of cold thought with its unwelcome controls, she gave herself entirely up to this thing that lay between them.
Mulder had apparently never been self-conscious about making love with her.
Despite the sheer startling intensity of their sex, the physiological response of two bodies was not surprising to her.  They had always had that between them.  What had always surprised her from the first moment they had come together was the astonishing range of expression, the astounding chemistry and completion of their sex; the feeling that they were somehow for a time leaving behind their separate bodies and boundaries to become an amalgamation, a Oneness, a wholeness…and the ecstasy of that symbiosis, though fleeting--or perhaps because it was fleeting--was triumphant in a wordless way that had no need for expression.  So many times since that first encounter, in the absence of communication, their lovemaking had become communion of a deeper sort--a rededication, an expression of things left unsaid, a redress of feelings long unspoken; a confessional and a sacrament.  Communion.  
True, it was not and should never be a substitute for verbalizing their concerns, but to make love was to confide.  Now that they had confided with words, confiding with souls and with bodies was no longer a crime or a bar to oneness but rather a more pleasurable road to the same end.
xxx
“We need to find some action,” he grinned mischievously the next morning.  “I think I need to see you interrogate someone at gunpoint again.  Or have you identify some rare piece of military aircraft on sight.  That always makes me get very turned on for some obscure reason.”
The tension had not resurfaced with the dawn, and the morning was going well.  Mulder, like her, was obviously a lot happier now that they had gotten the tough stuff out of the way.  She couldn’t help but feel amused, and even a bit smug at their accomplishment.  “You liked that, did you, Mulder?”  He had an interestingly sidelong way of expressing his admiration, and his relief.  He was lying on his side on the bed watching her eat breakfast with his arm behind his head.  He had long since bolted his like it was sawdust and was now assisting their son with his own tiny plateful.
“You know I did.  Scully, you eat like a bird.  Eggs may be a little more fattening than a rice tofutti Dreamsicle or a half-ounce cup of yogurt, but you still ought to try to keep your strength up.”
She put on her ice queen face, unperturbed.  God, everything was so easy again; like a reward for doing your chore.  It was hard to remember now how horrible things had been just yesterday evening.  “Yes, well, I ate big when I was pregnant,” she answered absently.
“I’ll keep that in mind.”
She looked up, surprised, and raised her eyebrow questioningly, but he had already looked away and was watching William gnaw at his toast from the crook of his Dada’s elbow.
Looking at him with their son, she wondered if they would ever be able to go home and stay there.  She realized now that that had been a part of her stress these last few days.  She had needed a home in her twenties and thirties because it was something she had never had as a Navy brat.  She thought in the end she needed one still.  The last thing she wanted to do was to raise William on the move as she had been.  She wasn’t sure how to accomplish it, but she did know that that was not what she wanted for him.
“When this is all over, Mulder…if it’s ever over...I need us to be able to make William a home.  He doesn’t need to grow up the way I did, never knowing where he’s going to be in the next year; and I don’t want that for him.”
She saw the consternation on his face as he raised his head from his charge to peer across the dim room at her.  “I know,” he said finally, gaze serious on hers.  He didn’t wait for her to ask how they could do it.  “But the only thing we could do is go back.  Now.  Before it’s too late and we never can.  And that’s not an option we can exercise.  Not without jeopardizing everything.”
“Yes.  But later…”
He never even flinched.  “As soon as this is over, I promise you we’ll give it a try.”  He looked down then, and she saw his uncertainty.  “I don’t know how good I’ll be at it, but I’m game to try this with you.  As long as you want me around.”
“I can’t think of any place I’d rather have you, Mulder.  To be perfectly honest, I want you where I can keep an eye on you.”
“I bet.  But you’ve got to promise me right now that you won’t come barging in on me in one of those herbal masks, ever again.  My constitution can’t take too many shocks of that magnitude.”
“You got it.”  She could smile at the picture he gave her, knowing that they would probably never have the chance to get bored with each other.  But despite that, they needed to be one and whole when the time came.  So they got everything out in the open, now while they still had the time.  Tomorrow or the next day might be the last.  They needed to be able to face it as one.
When the time came, they would be ready.
X   X   X

(Amor Fati, pt.51: “When There Is No Time For Fear”)

Various locales
Philadelphia, PA
November 19, 2002
3:12pm

	Scully stared aimlessly out of the coffee shop window while Mulder chatted with their waitress in a desultory fashion and William burbled to himself from his high chair.  Their son was finally beginning to burble full words...the only perk he had thrown their way in the last interminable month.  The stress of their unique situation was one thing...but the fact that William consistently and for a considerable period of time now had refused to obey even the simplest of instructions only exacerbated the problem.  The toddler for some inexplicable reason had lately become almost unmanageable.  Gibson, who had visited them twice in the interim, said that Will was beginning to assert his independence and to reassess his boundaries.  Dana Scully’s opinion: this was a case of very rotten timing to go through early teenagehood.  Perhaps their son had become as restless as his parents.  Well, at least he was talking more...when he wasn’t causing breakable objects to fly around the room and crash into the thin walls of their motel.
She and Mulder, however, had unfortunately had little time to solidify their new accommodations to communication.  As the last agonizing month had ground on and William began to ignore all directives, they had been kept busy just trying to keep him under some modicum of control...and consequently had both little time alone and little chance to discuss much of anything beyond the exchange of a few worried glances as another lamp jumped off a table or a dresser tried to migrate across their tiny prison of a room.  Meanwhile, the year turned inexorably on toward winter with no word from their Renegade friends, and Gibson had had little to tell them other than that the virus tests had seemingly tapered off with the advent of cold weather.  “They don’t exactly keep me informed, Agent Scully.  I’m not high in their chain of command, and the higher echelons definitely take keeping secrets for the sake of having them to be a way of life.  Our government could take lessons from them on how to...yes, Agent Scully, what a perfect word.  Obfuscate.  Thank you.  They could take lessons from our friends on keeping secrets just for kicks.  Probably have.  If you’re going to borrow a trick, borrow it from the masters.”
The news that the tests were becoming few and far between during the cold part of the year, of course, gave them at least some small hope that the final deadline might wait until the warm weather could cycle around and assist in the seeding of ‘Purity’.  North American winter was not the best season to gestate a new race of colonists that seemed to require heat to develop swiftly...and the Colonists, now no longer able to control the governments’ response to the menace, would need the Seeding to progress as swiftly as possible to avoid any Rebel countermeasures.
And so the world ground on outside the window, the traffic droning along and the people scurrying on the sidewalks, humanity going about its collective business blissfully unknowing and doggedly cheerful as the population began the manic, pained commercial jollity of the holidays.  It would be the first holiday season that Scully would spend without the rest of her family...but it would be the first that she would spend with Mulder and William in one place.  She wondered if that was coincidence, for it surely seemed that she must give up the rest of her life to have what she now had, precarious though it might feel.  She had made the sacrifice willingly, knowing all that it had entailed, but she missed the blithe certainty she had once had that the world would continue its inexorable course no matter what happened in her life...the certainty of her old existence.  She supposed she ought to be happy for what she had, that she had them both.  Live for today.  God knew if Will would ever see his second Christmas, or survive to see this spring.
--I’ve gotten positively cheerful, haven’t I?--  Scully kicked her brisk nature back into firm control, lifted her chin from her hand and sat up straight....and stopped halfway through her attitude check to stare out of the window in sheer surprise.
“What is it?”  Scully tore her eyes from the window to glance at Mulder, looking at her quizzically with his coffee cup halfway to his mouth.  Apparently, like her, he was aware of her every move whether he was paying particular attention or not.
“Nothing...it’s nothing.  I just could have sworn I saw Sk...Walter out there.  Never mind.”
Mulder began to look interested.  “You sure you were wrong?  It’s not totally out of the question, you know.  We are close.”
She returned her gaze to the plate glass for a moment.  Whoever she had seen, he was gone, swallowed by the crowd.  She shook her head.  “I doubt it was him.  And even if it was, we couldn’t risk contacting him.  They’re better off not knowing where we are.”
“That’s true,” he began, but at that moment their late lunch arrived and William began to complain loudly that he wanted his food, a development that made them both a bit nervous.  They didn’t necessarily want to placate him immediately and reinforce his unwanted behavior, but...  It was a fine line to walk, trying not to let their unusual offspring get away with bad manners while yet avoiding any outbursts.  They didn‘t want to be caught in the kind of trap wherein their small progeny would rule their every action, nor did they want him to grow up thinking he had no limits and no need for discipline; but they had neither the time nor the leeway to take him out and expose him to the world and its social niceties now while they were in hiding.
The fact of the matter was, due to their particular constraints they had had to curtail even their limited outings since the tiny powerhouse had begun throwing these strange tantrums, as any uncontrolled manifestation of his ‘talents’ in public might garner them the kind of attention they would just as soon avoid at this particular point in time.  Gibson had told them that they would simply have to wait the phase out, that William was at an age where he would really begin to get a grasp of what he could do would and would begin to experiment freely with his gift...but it was still an age at which he had little understanding of control or consequences, and certainly no reason to fathom the need for discretion.  Only last week they’d had to leave a restaurant fairly swiftly under the cover of a small amount of pandemonium as Will had decided to levitate an entire tray of coffee cups off of a waitress’s stand...and then drop them with a horrifying crash.  Luckily the waitress had assumed that she had somehow bumped the tray and had begun to clean up in a sort of shocked daze, one of her coworkers jogging over to assist.  This was the first time since that day that they had tried to take Will out.  They hoped that the low number of patrons would keep him from becoming over-stimulated.  The only drawback, of course, was that without a crowd it was a lot harder to ‘disappear’ should anything happen.
Their son was not quite eighteen months old, and already he was becoming more than they could handle.  
Luckily whatever Gibson had done with him since the last episode seemed to have helped, and Will, though he did crow for his food a few more times, waited patiently enough for it to come to him, and the meal progressed without incident.  After they had finished up, Scully took him off to the restroom to clean him up.  They emerged into the lobby of the restaurant, and the tiny prodigy immediately wriggled in implicit demand to be let down to walk.  She made a quick decision and lowered him to the floor, but kept a hold of his small hand as he charged ahead to investigate the two phone booths in the front of the coffee shop.  He tugged at her grasp insistently, exclaiming to himself in a high, excited voice.  Wonder of wonders and thank whatever powers may be, he seemed to be in a pretty good mood.
“He’s just as relieved to get out as we are,” Mulder murmured under his breath.
Scully nodded.  “You think we’re safe letting him go for a minute?” she murmured back.
“Depends on how fast you can run on those little feet.  You’re not wearing heels, so we’re probably okay.”  He grinned at her, relief painting his own features.  “Not that you didn’t do pretty good in heels when it came down to crunch time.  I don’t know how you did it.”
Scully smiled slightly in response and released their small son from their reluctant handclasp.  “Trade secret.  They only teach it to female agents, while you guys were out back talking about who got lucky the night before.”
Mulder’s grin went lopsided.  “And they got it directly from J. Edgar himself?”
Scully smiled in response to his customary wit, and Mulder dropped his hand to the small of her back companionably.  Together they watched the freed toddler as he romped gleefully past the padded benches in a beeline for the bank of enticing payphones...a dying breed, there.  Payphones were going the way of the dodo as the phone companies apparently decided that everybody had a cell-phone now.  Kind of unfair for the folks that couldn’t afford the things.
The tiny meddler reached up for the receiver nearest him, and they waited breathless, ready to dive in if he resorted to unnatural means to get the thing down.  There was a collective sigh of relief as he reached up to catch the cord in one fat little hand and tugged instead...nearly beaning himself on the forehead in the process.  Relaxing finally, they stood watching their precocious child for a while in silence before Scully finally brought up the thing that had been on her mind.
“I’ve been thinking about something Gibson said back in Alabama,” she said under her breath.  She felt Mulder turn his head toward her, inviting her to go on.  “He told us that William would have a hard time telling the difference between his own emotions and those of the people sharing space with him, and the turmoil and confusion would upset him.  That he’d need a lot of time alone to sort out which emotions were his and which are coming from other people.  I wonder if that’s not part of the problem.”  She looked up, meeting Mulder’s quizzical gaze.  He followed her, and his eyes encouraged her to pursue her thought to its conclusion.  She frowned slightly.  “We both know that he’s already too old to be sharing a room with us, but I’m sure that due to his special circumstances our constant presence is adding to his stress level.”
Mulder nodded and raised his eyes to look at their son again.  At that particular moment the toddler was showing no signs of stress.  He was holding the captured receiver to his ear and gabbling loquaciously into the mouthpiece, apparently at peace for the moment.
“I don’t doubt that you’re right.  Hopefully we won’t be stuck in this situation for long.  Its not healthy for any of us.”  He grinned provokingly at her.  “I certainly wouldn’t mind getting him his own room...for my own selfish reasons.”  He leered at her comically, and she couldn’t help the smile that curved her lips at his outrageous act.  They had been fairly frustrated of late on that front as well.  Not only had William been a trial in the daylight, but he had also taken to the annoying habit of waking up at the worst possible moment at night.  No doubt this was due to the emotional climate of the room on such occasions, but they both generally lost the mood fairly rapidly as the toddler climbed into bed with them and sulkily demanded attention.  As a consequence, one unfortunate side-effect of the situation was a continuing atmosphere of pent-up energy.  It didn’t help that they invariably felt guilty after such an episode, knowing that their own need for expression was more than likely yet another part of their emotional environment that might be impacting their son.  Consequently, that mode of expression had become lately strained and uncomfortable, and finally ruled out entirely.  Losing that particular outlet didn’t help their own stress level at all.  It also didn’t leave much for them to do, horrible as that might sound; it certainly narrowed the possibilities of recreation down considerably.
Scully had yet another fear to contend with related to their close-quarters-battle.  William seemed to be picking up on Mulder’s nightmares--if they weren't some kind of precognition, as Mulder had suggested for the both of them.  That was an idea she was not ready to deal with; both the possibility of it and the fact that should it prove true, then it would mean they were heading into some kind of danger.  But if their son was having precognitive dreams, then so was Mulder--or they were sharing them.  In any case, their son often woke up in a terrible state at the same time that she was contending with her partner’s night terrors, leaving her at a loss for whom to comfort.  She was only one person.  Mulder had of course manfully given over his first rights to her solace in favour of his small progeny, but the entire situation made it obvious to them both that their son simply was not meant to share a room with them every waking hour.  The stress was beginning to tell on them all, and the situation was quickly becoming untenable.
Will had finally tired of playing with the phones.  They managed to spring into action just as he made a sudden dash for freedom, and Scully caught his hand before he made good his escape.  Ignoring his squawk of protest as they pushed through the glass door, they hustled their entire party outside as quickly as possible to avoid any retributive outbursts from their offspring.  Once outside, however, he seemed to calm, engaged in looking around at the milling masses of traffic and humanity.  Mulder, taking the outside position on the sidewalk in an automatic response to both his upbringing and his unconscious need to protect them, reached down to take hold of his scion’s spare hand, and they began to swing him between them so that he would not protest the execrable tactile contact.  The swinging motion and the resultant pure joy generally distracted the child from the overload of impressions he would get from remaining in contact with two people at once.  Once in motion, though, Will stopped in mid-swing and turned his head to look across the crowded street.  Fearing a flare-up, Scully followed his gaze as he opened his mouth in a wide soundless chortle of delight and shouted a name they would never have expected from his tiny lips.
“NANA!”
xxx
“What?”  Mulder stared down at the toddler, surprised, then raised his own eyes, narrowing them and staring across the street to where their son was straining forward singlemindedly.  They both forgot their small progeny for a moment.
“Do you see anything?”  Scully felt like her eyes were going to strain their way out of her head, but she didn’t see anything.  Mulder however had detached his hand from their son’s and he spared her a quick glance filled with some indefinable emotion.
“Will’s the best early warning system anybody could want,” he muttered as he turned back to the interrupted vista.  “Look.  We’re being followed.”  Scully followed his gaze, almost afraid to see what waited.  The first thing her eyes fell upon, however, was not the person that she had expected, considering William’s use of the term ‘Nana’.  There, at the feet of a large stone building labeled ‘Bank of America’ slouched a familiar figure in ratty jeans and a pendleton jacket, reading a paper rather unconvincingly.  Her tone took on a slight tinge of awe.
“God...that’s Frohike!”
“Look a little further on.”
Drawing her cue from the point of his chin, she allowed her gaze to drift to the left...and saw the blond scarecrow figure of Ringo Langly pretending to use the ATM while trying to avoid the camera mounted in the wall.  A little further on and to the right of Frohike, Byers stood nonchalantly looking at his watch.  Frohike had given up his charade and was staring at them openly over the top of his paper.
Scully managed to push down the butterflies of adrenaline in her midriff.  “Well, at least we know they’re alright.  What do you think they’re up to?” she murmured to her lover in a low undertone barely audible in the crowd noise.  “It must have been important for them to track us down like this.”
“Especially when you know that they’re not alone,” Mulder agreed, and seized her arm as if to hold her in place as he then pointed with his chin once more.  A little further up the street from Langly to the left there was a break in the crowd.  Standing in front of a wrought iron fence in front of a mortgage company abutting the bank, the pale winter sun shone off the bald head of Walter Skinner...and bounced off the dark curls of Maggie Scully standing next to him, head upturned to his bowed one as if they were engaged in an intense conversation.
“Oh, God.”  Both the AD and Scully’s mother had turned their heads slightly in mid-counsel.  Skinner was trying to be furtive, but her mother was looking right at them.  “What do we do?  They obviously want to tell us something.”  --What the hell is Mom doing here?--
Mulder made a face.  “They don’t know what the hell they’re getting themselves into,” he muttered intensely.  “They don’t have any way of knowing that its safe for them to approach us...and we don’t have any way to be sure that they haven’t been tailed.”
Scully frowned thoughtfully, ignoring the voice in the back of her head gibbering at her to run straight over to her mother and their friends.  Absently she adjusted her grip on her whining son before he could slip away like an eel and scramble into the street.  Will sounded as frantic as she felt...as if their family on the other side of the street pulled at them both with an invisible umbilical stretching from her solar plexus...as if they might leave if they weren't stopped.  She forced her voice to remain steady and emotionless.  “They wouldn’t do anything stupid and give us away, I hope.”
Mulder was still staring straight ahead.  “Our contact told us it was okay to take a hand if it we had to in order to neutralize any threats to our cover.  If they keep hanging around like that they’re likely to get us spotted too, so I’d say this qualifies.”
She nodded infinitesimally and shoved down the little leap of triumph in her belly.  “What’s your plan?”
Mulder opened his mouth to reply, but at that moment Skinner took Maggie’s arm and disappeared into the flood of foot traffic on the sidewalk.  A moment later Frohike folded his paper up and stood, joining the human swell like a drop of mercury sliding into a larger body of the same.  He was quickly swallowed up by those of greater stature.  As if following some predetermined schedule, Langly took exactly the same amount of time to conclude his ‘business’ at the ATM, and then the jittery conspiracy theorist folded himself nervously into the crowd after Melvin, followed finally by Byers in his own appointed time.  Byers looked distracted and businesslike as he joined the flood.  Mulder straightened suddenly, his eyes never leaving the suited figure where it blended with the regular run of investment bankers and other nine-to-fivers.
“Well, if we want to find out we better follow them now.  It's a good way to see if they’ve got a tail on them.”  He was already moving, following the brown head of John Fitzgerald Byers where it bobbed above the crowd.  Scully had no choice but to follow with their son.
They remained approximately thirty yards behind Byers for several blocks, sticking to their side of the street and observing their erstwhile compatriots’ progress.  So far there was no sign that the oddly composited group was being followed.  They fetched up against Independence Park after a nerve-wracking half-hour.  Skinner and Maggie had emerged from the crowd to stand in front of Independence Hall as if stopping to take in the sights while Frohike leaned out to hail a cab about twenty feet away from them.  A bulbous yellow car took the bait and swerved in to come to a halt in front of the stumpy little man, and he leaned in the passenger window and spoke to the driver briefly before passing some money in through the window.  The car remained in place as he stepped back to turn and peruse the imposing edifice like just another tourist.  The remaining two Gunmen stood around trying to look inconspicuous and not really managing it all that well.  Mulder shrugged.
“Okay, here goes.”  Before Scully could say anything he had stepped out of the crowd on their side, showing himself brazenly to their friends.
“Dammit M...Jim,” Scully hissed at his back.  She absolutely hated it when he did that; took matters into his own hands without consultation.  She had told him once that he had a bad habit of making decisions that will affect the entire group without thinking of including others in the decision; and though he had become a bit more democratic, he still had an alarming tendency to follow his impulses.  Autocratic, some would call that.  And the thing was, he knew that they were a team, but he was such an impulsive, nerve-wracking...  And she would never be able to change him.  He would always be that way.  
Giving up, she watched Skinner look up from the other side of the street and nod an acknowledgement to his former underling before his eyes wandered past them in an unfocused manner.  The AD stood for a moment in plain sight, then shoved back his glasses.  She could see his eyes take on that incisive look even across the narrow eighteenth century street, and her mind reconstructed his features as if he were sitting across his desk from them like he had done so many times in years gone by, contemplating some knotty problem they had unwittingly plopped in his lap.  This one the Assistant Director had apparently solved in short order, however.  He stepped out away from Maggie, crossed the sidewalk to the stopped Taxi, and took a piece of paper from his left coat pocket.  They watched as he raised his head, and even from that distance they could tell he was looking straight at them as he leaned over and placed the piece of paper under the windshield wiper of the car.  Then he turned on his heel and walked back to Maggie, took her arm, and strode on up the street without a backward glance.  Frohike, then Byers, and finally Langly fell in behind them and disappeared into the crowd one by one...and before the former agents had time to decide whether to try to follow the group further, they were gone.
They stared at the bit of paper on the cab window for a long moment, waiting for any tail their friends might have to show itself.  No such telltale appeared, and after several minutes Will woke them both from their concentrated daze with a long interrogatory sound.  “Dada,” he said clearly, and grabbed Mulder’s hand with an insistent tug.  “Note!”
Mulder nodded.  “I see that, Slugger.”  He looked at Scully briefly.  “It’s now or never.  We better get that thing before the cab driver decides it isn’t worth his money and takes off.”  He disengaged his hand from their son’s and jogged into the street singlemindedly, looking neither to the right nor the left.  Once again taken off her guard, Scully opened her mouth to protest...but by then he was halfway across and gaining.
“Dammit,” she muttered.  It simply did no good talking to that man.  She’d been trying since their second case together at Ellens Air Force Base, and she had learned how unrepentant Mulder was for his little autocratic moments after that incident with the eco-terrorists at that cabin in the Olympia forest in Washington.  Without tearing her gaze from the cab and her approaching lover, she forced herself to look at things philosophically.  “Well, I guess one way or the other at least we’ll know,” she commented to her son, then swung down to lift him into her arms absently.  They watched as Mulder reached the far side of the street and stood still with the crowd parting around him for a moment as if waiting for an ambush.  He cautiously approached the cab and leaned over to speak to the driver, who nodded as he plucked the note from under the wiper blade and stepped back.  The cab pulled out immediately in search of more fares, leaving Mulder staring at the note in his hand.  After a moment he refolded it and started back.
As he returned to their side of the street he held the note out to Scully, face unreadable.  “It’s for you.  Tell me they didn’t just come all the way out here to tell you Mommy’s thinking of you.” 
Scully gave him a startled glance as she took the note in her free hand.  From her other arm Will leaned over the half-piece of paper curiously, making a hooting noise as she unfolded the tiny missive.  There were only two lines.
>>”Don’t be afraid, Starbuck, there aren’t any snakes.  Uncle Walt flushed them all out from the room.  21 W6 240.”<<
Scully lowered the note.  “It seems fairly straightforward to me.  We already know they’d have to be pretty sure they’d have lost anybody that was after them or they wouldn’t have risked contacting us.”  She looked up to meet her partner’s concerned gaze.  “Mom wouldn’t have used that name for me if it wasn’t safe.” 
Mulder nodded.  “That’s pretty much what I figured.  But what about the snakes?”  His voice betrayed only a vague curiousity, but she knew it was feigned.
“I hate to burst your romantic picture of me, ‘Sweetheart’, but I hurt a snake once, and I was deathly afraid of them for years afterward.”
He nodded solemnly.  “I think your Mom told me about it once.”  His eyes flickered up to hers, curious.  “You didn’t seem to have a problem on that case in Tennessee.  The Church of Signs and Wonders.”
Scully gave him a level look.  “Yes, well, I’ve since conquered that fear.”  She turned back to the note rather briskly.  “But this does refer to an actual series of events.  Mom used to have to tell me it was all right, that there were no snakes in my room, before I would agree to go to bed.  Missy shared my room, and she thought it was hysterical.  She teased me about it for six years before I managed to hide my reactions.”
“That’s what sisters are for.”  His voice was sad.  She forced herself to come back from memory lane to regard him thoughtfully.  They didn’t have time for him to guilt-trip himself over Melissa...any more than they had time for her to do the same.
“Yes, they are.  I’m okay, M...Jim,” she insisted, and met his eyes determinedly.  “What do you want to do?  The numbers have to be an address."
Mulder knew how desperately Scully wanted to see her mother just as he knew that she was covering her emotions over Melissa’s death for his sake...and to tell the truth, he wouldn’t mind a little contact with their former life himself.  God knew they could use a fresh infusion of news from the outside world to round out their Renegade-insulated view of recent events.  Skinner and the Gunmen were information and access...and he didn’t mind admitting to himself that he was very fond of Scully’s mother, whether he thought their former boss was in his right mind for involving her or not.  --More than likely they had been simply unable to put her off, though-- he reasoned.  Maggie Scully was a very forceful woman...kind of like her daughter.  The thought brought a ghost of a smile to his lips.
“Hey.  Come back.” Scully snapped her fingers at him, ignoring William’s attempts to grab at the note in her hand.  Mulder gave her his best democratic look.
“So, we doing this?”  He knew she was miffed at him for not discussing all their moves so far, and tried to keep his tone noncommittal.  Time to soften her displeasure before he lynched himself.  He tended to forget in the excitement of the moment that partnership equaled consensus decision-making...and he privately admitted to himself how unfair that was of him.  Unfairness aside, of course, she could make his life hell for hours if he pissed her off.  Not that he didn’t like to see her pissed off once in a while.  She was awfully cute when she was pissed...and decidedly hot when her eyes snapped at him in anger.  He shifted in slightly in his suddenly tight jeans and tried to turn his mind away from that one-way tack, instead following the progression of her thoughts as they moved over her face.  Guessing at her mental processes, at once alien and as well known as a home-county road, was a good distraction.  Hard practicality vied with yearning in her finely drawn features, and emotional needs with those of survival and caution...and her struggle to make no decisions based on gut instinct.  He wished she would stop fighting that particular battle and learn to trust her intuition...but she was getting better, and god was he ever proud.  He knew how hard that internal war had been for her.  He had witnessed it for the length of its duration.
After a moment she returned his gaze with quiet certainty.  “They wouldn’t have risked this if it wasn’t important.  We probably can’t afford not to.”
Mulder would never admit it, but he felt a lot better about his own conclusion when he had her backing him up.  It simply wouldn’t do his cavalier image any good to clue her in to how much he depended on her systematic discriminatory processes to see the loopholes he might have missed and to strengthen his own often hastily-assembled convictions.  “Yeah, that’s pretty much what I was thinking.”
xxx
Grayson’s Hotel
21 W. Sixth St.
Philadelphia, PA
5:26pm

Of course they had to watch out for their own tails along the way...and that involved a cab and a lot of twists and turns.  It had been a while since they had openly attempted to identify the various groups following them, preferring to err on the side of caution and avoid them all equally unless called upon to act differently.  Therefore it was a particularly edgy business this time around, as they had to both avoid the possible Rebels and/or Colonists that might have been tracked in by Skinner’s little coterie while yet trying not to completely lose their Renegade ‘bodyguards’.  It was interesting to watch the Renegades disappear and reappear behind their backs, alternating with the occasional suited Rebel sticking out like a sore thumb with its implacable mask.  There were no replicants behind them as yet, but the Rebel representatives hovering in the background were shaken easily enough with the benign interference of their Renegade friends, and after about an hour and a half of subterfuge they managed to circle around to the Grayson Hotel on Sixth Street with only their usual escort hovering in attendance to the rear.  They waited expectantly in front of the rather middle-range hotel for a moment, and as they had assumed she would, one of their ubiquitous followers detached herself from the honour guard to approach them on the sidewalk.  She didn’t bother with a greeting.
“My leader would like to inquire as to your intentions this day.  You were instructed to avoid notice.”  The clone’s voice was flat as any aliens’, almost masking a particularly nasal quality that surely hadn’t endeared the original owner of her genetic code to passersby.
“We were also instructed to act on our own best judgment if a situation came along that could jeopardize our anonymity,” Mulder responded rather brusquely.  “This is such a situation.  We are responding as we think appropriate.”  Beside him in Scully’s arms, William squawked his loud agreement.
The clone ignored the interruption, the only indication that she acknowledged William’s existence lay in the way she flattened her lips a bit further.  “Our mandate requires us to maintain a watch over both you and the individuals with whom you intend to meet.  It will be difficult for us to do so in this situation, for the representatives of the Rebel government have followed your friends here and will need to be distracted for the duration of your stay.  Please attempt to diffuse this encounter and return to your safe-house as soon as possible.  We can give you forty-eight hours before you must contact us for resettlement.”  Without another word their liaison turned and strode back into the crowd.  As she rejoined their escort, the entire group melted into the evening trickle of humanity outside the hotel, ostensibly dispersing to mount surveillance over all the approaches to the building.  Mulder looked down for a moment, obviously gathering up all his patience.
“I hate,” he began in a voice that spoke eloquently of gritted teeth,  “being at the mercy of someone else’s rulebook.”
Scully suppressed a sigh of her own and reached out to brush the back of his hand with hers.  She knew that if she was going nuts under the Renegade yoke, Mulder was surely going absolutely insane, whether he was used to similar constraints or no.  In the past such constraints were enforced by his own decisions.  He was not used to blindly following another’s rule.  He had never done so in the Bureau...but then he had had less to lose then, and he would not have minded sacrificing himself to his work.  She felt a sudden surge of compassion for her lover.  Neither of them was used to maintaining a facade for so long while laboring under the burden of inaction.  Mulder, like her, was a doer, and for a doer to be incapacitated was the worst frustration.  
“You ready Mulder?” she asked softly.  He nodded and visibly forced himself to relax as they entered the stone-fronted hotel.  They crossed the small carpeted lobby unchallenged to step into the shabby, once nicely-appointed elevator to the second floor, stopping before the well-worn door of room 240.  Mulder nodded once at Scully, and she shifted William at her hip to free her hand in case she needed to go for her concealed weapon.  She felt Mulder readying himself beside her, and raised her hand to knock twice.
“I hope they swept the room before they put out this little invitation,” Mulder muttered under his breath as she raised her hand to knock.
“Skinner knows the Game, Mulder, and he’s got the Gunmen with him.  They wouldn’t miss a trick like that.  Wasn’t it they that taught you to check the Bibles in the first place?”
“Yeah.  And I haven’t trusted my dentist since I met these guys.”  He nodded once, sharply, and she set herself for action and brought her knuckles down on the old wood with a sharp double rap.  There was a profound silence on the far side of the door.  They stood in full view of the peephole, and after a moment they heard the sound of a chain being withdrawn.  The door opened slowly to reveal the welcome, worried, and slightly keyed-up face of AD Walter Sergei Skinner.
The bald beautiful man poked his head out of the door to glance down the hall, squinting shrewdly, then nodded.  “Come in.  Before somebody figures out where you two disappeared to.”  His familiar voice rasped with some restrained emotion as he pulled back and held the door for them to file in.  They heard him close and bolt the door behind them, but Scully had eyes only for her mother standing a little before the hackers arrayed behind her.  The three Gunmen stood over by the wall in front of the hastily-drawn curtains, hands in their pockets and looking like an artfully arranged set of statues as Maggie Scully took one step forward and smiled, tears suddenly filling her eyes.
“Oh, Dana,” she murmured.   Scully felt her own eyes begin to sting, and quickly tore her them from her mother to bend over and release the captive toddler from her arms.  William ceased his almost constant struggles as he was freed to his own devices, and he crowed exultantly as he made a beeline for the beloved woman on the other side of the room.
“NANA!” he shouted, and launched himself into her arms.  Maggie caught him mid-lunge and lifted him into her arms.
“Oof.  William, you have gotten big!  How’s my little Liam been?”
Mulder was watching the scene from slightly behind Scully, and at Maggie’s last words he leaned over to murmur, “Liam?”
Scully brushed impatiently at the dampness in the corners of her eyes.  “It’s short for Uileam, the original form of William.  It was Dad’s childhood nickname until he joined the Navy,” she informed him.  “She was trying to call him Willie.  I stepped on that one, so she settled for the other.”
Maggie must have heard the aside, for she broke in then, her face inches from her grandson and seemingly wholly absorbed in the reunion.  “It’s a good Irish name,” she said helpfully.  Her eyes flickered from her daughter to Mulder and back again.  “It means ‘shield, a protector of the people’.”
Mulder shared a significant look with Scully.  “Well, isn’t that interesting,” he murmured for her ear alone.  “Did you know about that when you...”  Scully opened her mouth to reply, but Maggie was already crossing the room to them.
“Dana,” she said simply, and opened her free arm to embrace the daughter she had feared she would not see again.  Mulder stepped back, feeling a little out of place, and stood with Skinner watching the small family reunion play out.  He was a little nervous.  After all, he had been the one to take her daughter and grandson away into danger.  Who knew how this woman, the mother of the strongest person he knew and the woman he loved, would respond to his renewed presence after so much had changed.  But if he expected a silent rebuke, he had not the measure of Maggie Scully.  After a moment the matriarch emerged from her daughter’s arms and pinned her partner with a gentle look of welcome.  “Come here, Fox, and give me a hug.  No excuses, young man.”  She twitched her fingers toward the open space between her slim, still girlish arms.  “Come here.”
Feeling like an erring child, Mulder hesitated for a moment...but there was nothing beyond loving welcome in this amazing woman’s face.  He stepped forward almost nervously and allowed himself to be enfolded in the kind of hug he had always wanted from his own mother but never had.  It felt good.  Warm, encompassing, and wholly giving.  Maggie didn’t want to change him or to punish him...she simply accepted him for who he was.  He was moved deeply, and simply stood in the embrace for a while, not trusting himself to speak.  He hadn’t realized until perhaps just at this moment how much he had hoped for and needed Maggie Scully’s blessing on his and Dana’s relationship, how much he had needed at least one member of Scully’s family to be in his corner.
“Hey G-man.  Break it up and stop hogging all the pretty ladies.”  Frohike had pushed himself away from the wall to stalk up and take Mulder’s hand.  “Damn glad to see you’re okay, Mulder.  It’s been tense, wondering how you were managing.”  He then looked up to meet the eyes of the diva that had slipped from his fingers.  “Damn glad to see that you’ve managed to stay safe.  All of you.”  His grizzled face folded into a grin and his eyes lit as he looked at Scully.
“Ah, Melvin,” Mulder grinned, and took the grizzled man’s hand.  They engaged in that peculiar male hug that involved a handclasp and some incessant back-pounding.  “How’re my videos holding up?  You better not be wearing them out; my stuff doesn’t go on the auction block by default you know.”
Frohike put on a wounded look.  “Would I do that?”
“Yes.”  Mulder turned just in time to intercept Byers’ handshake.  “Good to see you, Byers.”
“The Oak lives,” Byers said solemnly.  “Good to see you alive, Mulder.”  He nodded once and stepped aside to allow Langly to greet their old sponsor, turning attention to the other half of the duo.  “Agent Scully.  I’m glad you and William are well.”
“Thanks.  It’s good to see you.”  Scully for some reason felt ridiculously sentimental about this whole thing, and tried to shove down her emotions.  God, the last time she had seen all these guys she had been leaving never to return, and her entire future had been uncertain.  Well, not much had changed in that arena, but at least she had accomplished the one thing that had made her heart run cold with misgivings when she had first set out.  She and Mulder had managed to come together.  She could still be sitting in that flophouse in Michigan if they hadn’t.  Suddenly she was ready to count her blessings once more.  “We heard you got into some trouble a few months ago.”
Mulder was shaking hands with a twitchier-than-usual Langly, back in style in one of his ubiquitous Ramones t-shirts, and the skinny blonde man looked up in surprised confusion.  “Yeah, we…sort of faked our deaths.  We’re technically on the lamb ourselves right now.”  He ignored Mulder’s expression of shock.
“It’s a long story,” Byers broke in quickly.  “We’ll tell you about it later.  But we knew the ropes, so we figured we could find  you without getting you into trouble.”  He nodded toward Skinner, obviously uncomfortable with the subject, and the obligatory round of greeting went on for a few more minutes before the Assistant Director stepped forward and held out his own callused hand, eyes quietly intense behind his ever-present spectacles.  
“Good to see you again, Mulder,” he grunted.  “It’s been too long.”  The last time they  had seen each other was right after William had been born.  They shared the back-slapping hug before he lifted his eyes and nodded to Scully.  “Dana.”  His eyes flickered to William.  “Glad to see you’re both alright.”
Scully smiled back at their former superior as Mulder took the AD’s hand.  “Walter.”  He grinned, his irrepressible nature reasserting itself.  “So what’s with the party?  Not that I’m not glad to see Maggie, but it’s a little dangerous.”
At this, Skinner looked a little embarrassed, if that were possible, and a painful red flush crept up from under his collar.  He opened his mouth, but Maggie rescued him before he could explain.  “Walter has been looking out for me after you two had to leave, just the way he promised you, Dana.”  Her eyes glittered.  “He started coming by every week to check on me.  I guess you could say we’ve become very good friends, and he’s been coming by more and more often lately.  I think our...new friendship put him off his guard, though, and the last time he came to visit he let something slip.  Once I knew you two were in danger I refused to be left behind.”  Her eyes became serious for a moment.  “I know I don’t know everything that’s going on Dana, but I will not be kept away from my daughter and my grandson if I know they need help.”  She looked up from her daughter’s eyes then to meet Skinner’s gaze.  Something seemed to pass between them, and suddenly Maggie Scully looked very smug.  “Walter has learned not to try to change my mind once I have it made up.”  She smiled contentedly at the Assistant Director.  Mulder eyed them, obviously confused, but Scully was staring at her mother in open disbelief.
“Mom!” she began, but Maggie interrupted her sweetly, face composed and eyes patient.
“Oh, don’t look so surprised, Dana.  I’m not completely over the hill yet...and Walter is far from it.  He’s been a blessing and a joy to have around.”  She smiled at her daughter.  “One of the things I wanted to do was to thank you for inflicting him on me.  I was upset at first, thinking you were babying me, but now I see that there was a reason behind it all...though perhaps not one you had intended.  You may have forgotten it, Dana, but God works in mysterious ways.”
The reality of the situation was beginning to dawn on Mulder.  He turned slowly to regard his former superior with a look of disbelief that echoed his lover’s.  What he saw in Skinner’s face confirmed their suspicions, and Mulder’s face suddenly cracked in a grin of unholy delight.  “Well, Walter!  I never knew you had it in you!”  The wry deadpan tone of voice had deepened to almost gleeful devilment.  “Welcome to the family...‘Dad’.”
“Shut up, Mulder,” Skinner said sourly.  He was blushing; he was actually blushing.  That painful flush had risen from his neck to wash his face in an incongruous brick red, and he looked decidedly uncomfortable.  Scully smiled and removed her squirming son from Maggie’s arms to reintroduce him to her mother’s paramour.  Skinner seemed to take the distraction as a gift from god even as he avoided his former underling’s gentle gaze.  He seemed unsure how to relate to Scully now that their circumstances had changed, and he took refuge for a moment in untangling the toddler’s limbs.  Scully took pity on the poor man and let him slide for a moment.
“He’s gotten a bit bigger since you last held him, Sir,” she murmured, but she had begun to smile at him as he took the toddler from her and held him dubiously.
“I’m sure he doesn’t remember me,” he managed after a moment, eyeing his small passenger.  William eyed him back, hand thoughtfully positioned in his mouth.
“Unk,” he commented finally, seeming proud to have hit on the appropriate title.  Skinner nodded, peering through his glasses at the toddler.
“Hi, William.  I’m your…uncle?”  He glanced up at Scully.  “Actually your Godfather...”
“Skin-man!” Mulder crowed gleefully from behind Skinner’s shoulder.  Skinner threw him a withering look over the baby’s thick hair, his blush somewhat abated in the face of Mulder’s relentless ribbing.
“Let me know when I’m done amusing you, Mulder,” he growled under his breath.  Mulder didn’t stop grinning gaily, but he did finally let up, reaching out to take Will from his uncomfortable superior and returning him to his own feet.  Released, the tiny person looked up at his godfather for a moment, then turned and ran back to Maggie like a steam engine, thrusting his arms up in implicit demand.  Maggie scooped him up with alacrity and moved with exquisite sensitivity to sit on the couch on one side of the room next to the Gunmen, who had all taken up perches on various surfaces in the room.   As soon as she was out of range Mulder nodded and returned his gaze to the Assistant Director, eyes serious.
“Okay, so what’s been happening around the FBI?  Anything we should know about?”
“Other than Doggett finally finding the guy that killed his son?”  He opened his mouth to continue, but Mulder looked interested.
“How did that happen?  When Reyes last asked me to help them look into it it seemed to be pretty much a done deal.”
Skinner looked down for a moment.  “No, I believe I’ll let Doggett tell you about that.”  His voice was thoughtful.  “It’s really not my place to discuss it.  But as a consequence of that entire state of affairs, you’ll be overjoyed to know that AD Follmer is no longer a roadblock to your efforts...”  They blinked, but did not enquire further, and he moved on.  “...And we’re still not sure what Kersh is up to.”  His eyes were unreadable as he turned to Scully.  “Doggett says he misses having you pop up in the Basement occasionally.  He told me to tell you that you brightened up his day.  Reyes sends her regards too, and her expectation that everything is going as you had hoped, no harm no foul.” 
Scully didn’t reply for a moment.  She couldn’t tell Doggett that working with him day by day had only emphasized for her how much she missed and needed Mulder, emphasized how deep was that empty place in her soul where he had dwelt while he had been gone from them, and where she had kept the hopeless hope alive for him all those months.  Had not wanted to burden her interim partner with the revelation that for her, every moment spent with him in the field, every day working in that ridiculous new desk in the office, every moment of every day at work and at home had only served to remind her of the synched, unconscious beats and rhythms that she and Mulder had worked out together, and which she had been missing in his fatal absence.  Every moment that she had stepped into the Basement Office after Mulder’s departure had been a physical blow, as the past had overlaid the present, leaving her filled with a kind of wistful pain.  The busy, cramped nature of the accommodations had only emphasized the emptiness within her in that horrible time, and the very newness of her collusion with Doggett had only outlined for her how instinctive her relationship with Mulder had been, how as the fearsome duo, they had acted even in the early days like people who had been partnered for far longer than they had been...and more and more like an old married couple as the years had gone by and their prospects for any life outside the one they shared had faded.
She doubted that even had Mulder never returned that she and Doggett would have ever developed the same kind of unconscious complement to each other’s styles as they had done so early on.  That kind of unique chemistry either happened or it didn't--and she and Doggett had in a way been far too much alike.  Pragmatic, and set in their ways, though Doggett was a subjectivist where she was an objective scientist.  Their styles had not complemented each other so strangely nor so immediately as hers and Mulder’s had, and though they had worked out their own form of partnership, it had not been either as smooth or as immovable, though it had been dependable.  Even had her partnership with him have gone on for years, she knew that there would have been secrets left untold, and intimacies of the mind and soul un-reached-for.  With Mulder there had been no secrets left untold, and no reason to be shy or to avoid certain...entanglements.  She hoped that Doggett would be able to work out the kind of professional relationship with Monica that their joint history promised; one of deep respect and committal, the kind that allowed them to predict each others’ moves down to the last breath.  It was that kind of intimacy that had saved both her and Mulder’s souls as well as their lives over the years...and it was the kind of working relationship that they would never lose, even had they never had the unique pressure to move beyond and onto a different level of functioning. 
“Is that the reason for this little reunion?” she asked Skinner softly, unwilling to retread the paths of memory just now.  It was definitely time to get back to work.  “Did they find something we need to know about?”
xxx
“Not on their own,” the familiar voice of Ringo Langly echoed across the room.  The blond hacker leaned forward from his seat on the arm of the couch, hands still buried in the pockets of his jeans.  He seemed if possible more uncertain than usual.  “We’ve been staying productive while we pulled off our little hoax…”
“It was something to do,” Frohike broke in a little grimly.
“We actually managed to stumble onto some new information,” Langly continued.  “Something’s up in the DARPA database.”
“Something’s been going on lately that we can’t quite pinpoint, but whatever it is, it’s moving like a countdown, speeding up by the day,” Byers chimed in from his place against the wall.  “Frohike has some theories...”
“But you guys are the ones that’ve been out here for longer.  You probably have all the pieces we don’t,” Frohike finished.  His gravelly voice was almost as uncertain as Langly’s had been under the bravado.  Whatever they had seen had shaken up the unshakable trio.
“What happened to you guys?” Mulder asked in that semi-amused, amiably intent tone that said he was more concerned than he let on.  “Someone come after you for fronting for us, or what?”
Frohike grinned suddenly at him.  “The world doesn’t revolve around you, Mulder; we can get ourselves into our own brand of trouble without you.”
Byers nodded.  “Some old friends showed up with a nice little mission.  We were stupid and took it; someone was obviously trying to get us out of the way.”  He noticed Scully staring at him in anxiously and fell silent, letting Langly take up where he left off.
“It didn’t work, though,” the blonde man piped in quickly, “and we managed to get out of there.  But we had to lay low for a while.  Your pal Skinner here helped out; he even got us a nice State funeral over at Arlington,” a wide grin of smug amusement for that oxymoron, “and then he kept in touch so we could contact him with any info.”  He grinned at Skinner like a gaunt mannequin.  “He’s a pretty cadgy guy, for a straightlaced fed.” 
“Hey, take it easy Langly; I’m a fed too you know.”  Mulder was staring at Skinner in renewed amusement.  “Oh, how the mighty have fallen.”
“You were a fed, Mulder,” Byers interrupted quietly.  “You were never very good at it though.”
“Like you, narc.”  Frohike nudged Byers with his shoulder.
Skinner was manfully ignoring both Langly’s taunts and Mulder’s over his inevitable corruption.  “Anyway, when they came to me with this, I knew as well as they did that it was something you needed to see right away.  We thought if we all put our heads together, we might be able to put together a fuller picture.”  He frowned disapprovingly.  “Things have been pretty shaken up at the FBI.  It’s kind of like an anthill that got kicked.  The anthill’s been rebuilt from the inside with a new queen; you both knew that...but it’s not as secure as it used to be, and it’s like everybody’s waiting for something, like the whole building is holding its breath.”  
He cleared his throat a little grimly.  “Then there’s this new ‘medical exam’ that the powers that be have initiated.  They seem particularly interested in those of us that have these,” he tapped his upper left arm where a smallpox vaccination scar would be, and his eyes narrowed at them significantly, then shifted his gaze to look at Scully pointedly, “and everyone that has been to the appointment sets off the metal detectors downstairs.”  He paused, considering.  “They’re going through people pretty fast...agents, admin, dependants, and the military as well I think; anyone They can order in.  The general public are a little harder to pin down...but I wouldn’t be surprised if They start getting people during the flu vaccinations this winter.”  He pinned his two former underlings in a piercing gaze.  “What I want to know is, why would They want to help so many people?  What exactly are They up to, and how does it affect what you two are trying to do?”
Mulder recovered first, turning to look at Scully.  She shook her head.  “I thought they’d lost the technology when the Smoking Man took it from them,” he muttered to her under his breath.  “That’s what Gibson told us, isn’t it?”  Before Scully could respond Skinner leaned forward to interrupt them, surprise evident on his face.
“Gibson?  Praise?  I thought...he’s been missing since we went to Arizona to look for Mulder.”
“Well, he’s turned up again,” Mulder grimaced, and his voice became richly sardonic.  “He’s been a veritable fountain of information.  He’s been hanging out in the woods with a bunch of alien political renegades and runaway clones; the same faction that is now protecting Scully and William and I from the Rebels that are running our government, and the Colonists that want to take it back.”  His eyes pinned those of former superior.  “There’s a lot to cover.  Basically, though, they’ve let us know that the Colonists are in the final steps.  The Renegades have been experimenting, testing their own people to see if partial hybrids and carriers of the alien DNA can fight off the virus.”  His eyes took in everyone in the room, the regret that Scully knew he felt at involving Maggie in all of this not showing on his face as he dropped smoothly into theory-mode.  “Apparently clones have half an immunity and can hold it off long enough for steps to be taken, though they haven’t told us yet how the latest experiment went.  They were going to infect a clone and then operate to remove the developing fetus, and then see if the host could recover with half an immunity.  But apparently people with the chip, the same chip that sent Scully’s cancer into remission, become carriers of the alien genetic string and can resist the virus entirely...as long as the chip they have embedded is working on all cylinders.”  His eyes glittered with frustration at the reminder that Scully was not yet immune.  “Or at least that’s what they’ve led us to believe.”
“They can care less about saving us as a species,” Scully stepped in, her eyes grimly candid on the Assistant Director’s.  She too felt a twinge of regret that her mother had to hear all of this, but she was helpless to change that now.  “But they’ll save us if it means that the Colonists’ plan will fail.  And that means helping to make the human race immune.”  She shook her head.  “The more people who have those chips, the less Colonizing fetuses will be born, and the easier it will be to turn back the tide when it comes.”
Skinner stared at them and spoke vehemently, eyes hard as he avoided arguing about the ‘impossibilities’ in favour of discussing the problem logically.   “If that was the case, why didn’t They start planting these chips in people a couple of years ago?  You have to admit, this is all fairly last-minute.”
“They couldn’t risk allowing a hybrid to develop before,” Mulder said promptly, “because the minute They did, the Colonists would have struck.  And a generation of carriers, like me, like Scully, would surely produce a generation of organic hybrids...like William.”  His eyes revealed no emotion as he spoke, but Scully could see the set of his shoulders harden as if to deny the threat that their son’s existence posed.  “So They fought a delaying action, took control, stalled, destroyed any remaining hybridization projects...and tried to kill our son, the first of the new world order, to keep it a secret until the time was right.”  He glanced at Scully again.  “What I can’t figure out is how They got a hold of the technology to make more chips if the only government information on that branch of the Project was lost when the Smoking Man took it from us in ‘99.  Even if They had wanted to get a jump-start on the implantations once They were in charge, They couldn’t because he conveniently stole it at almost immediately after Rebels took charge.  Knowing how long it probably took Them to penetrate all levels of government and weed out the remaining Syndicate operatives, I don’t see how They could have gotten a hold of the information before he stepped in and sold us all out.”
“Well They obviously have it now, so They must have figured it out.  Maybe They work quicker than we give them credit for.  They’re obviously more ruthless in some ways than the other guys were...and They’re definitely more hands-on.”  Skinner still had a marine’s mindset.  The how was not important.  It was.  That was enough.  The next order of business was ‘what are we going to do about it’.  “But there’s one thing I don’t understand.  If these Rebels you say are in charge want to...destroy your son and the Colonists want to take him and kill Mulder, then why is this third group trying to protect you?  What reason do they have to want to help you keep your son?”
“Because of that delaying action we just told you about, and the possible relief that it will bring,” Scully told him softly.  “Apparently the Colonists are a splinter group.  Their society for the most part is opposed to what They’re planning here, and once They found out about it, the Rebels came in like guerrilla activists to put a monkey wrench in things...working to buy time till Their own government can decide to take a hand.  The group that’s protecting us think that William is the key to convincing that government to put a stop to the Colonization.  So they’re holding off both the Rebels and the Colonists for us...and waiting.”
--And it’s driving us insane--  she finished in the privacy of her own thoughts, but she kept her eyes hard and determined on her superior’s.
Skinner held her gaze for a moment, then his eyes flickered to Mulder’s.  “I bet that’s a little hard to accept,” he muttered finally.  Then something seemed to occur to him.  “It could all just be a front, you know; that whole scenario.  A story to keep tabs on the two of you, and him.”
“It could be,” Mulder agreed, eyes unblinking and voice steady, “but everything in the x-files points to the main possibility that what they’ve told us is the only real answer.  And we’ve had to believe them, to survive.”  He glanced over the back of the couch to where their son sat on his grandmother’s lap, then his gaze dropped to his partner standing next to him.  “He has to survive.  That’s all that matters now.  To both of us.  And to the world.”  Though soft, his voice rang with as much quiet conviction as he had ever displayed in his earlier search for Samantha, and there was no sign of faltering in his frame.  Scully’s voice was flat and soft as she joined him there.  She couldn’t believe how numb she felt about it all.
“So that’s it, then,” she said.  She glanced up at Mulder.  “Easter at the latest?”
He nodded solemnly.  “Soon as it gets warm enough, probably.”
“What the hell are you two talking about?” Skinner interrupted impatiently.
Mulder raised his eyes from his lover to regard his former superior grimly.  “It might not go as smoothly as it would have had the Syndicate remained in charge, but enough of the old framework still exists for things to fall into place.  The Rebels can’t have rooted all the Project operatives out, and all the Colonists need is a three-day weekend when people are away from home.  A holiday, preferably in warm weather.”  He smiled a little grimly.  “You’ve been privy to this part of it for years, Skinner; ever since we uncovered it back in ’98.  A State of Emergency will be declared when the first cases are reported.  FEMA will take charge from the CDC.  I don’t know how many operatives the Rebels have managed to plant in FEMA though I’m sure they have the CDC well in hand, but I doubt it will be enough to stop at least the first stages.  People will start to get sick, the warmer the better.  The hotter states will be the most in peril.  By the time the Rebel government steps in to counter the old framework, the damage will be done.  The virus will have spread out of control.  Only those with immunities will survive long enough to be dealt with, and that means the chip.  The Rebels are scrambling to save Their own asses at this point.”
Skinner frowned thoughtfully.  “So you think They’ll start as soon as it gets warm?”  He shook his head, looked up at them both.  “God, I don’t know why I ever listened to you, Mulder.  I don’t think I want to see Armageddon in my lifetime.  Ignorance is bliss.”  He glanced over at the Gunmen hovering to one side.  “But it backs up what the guys have found.”  He nodded to the Boys.  “Tell them.”
“Well,” Byers said a little hesitantly, “perhaps it would be easier just to show you.”  He stood up from the arm of the small easy chair he’d been perching on and leaned over to tug a laptop out of a small briefcase beside the connecting door.  He approached the trio with the laptop and set it down on the small table next to the complimentary coffees and the small ‘comment notebook’.  Langly and Frohike followed him unobtrusively as he leaned over the small computer and flipped it open, fingers moving rapidly over the keys, then held it to his torso as if hesitant about showing off a new toy with as yet unknown capabilities.  
“We hacked into the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and snooped around a little after Skinner here told us things were heating up...and this is what we found.  We saved it offline so you could see it without Them tracking us.”  He hesitated a moment longer, then turned the screen to face them.  The top of the page was full of classified warnings and security level coding, and was very utilitarian.  Blue background, DARPA seal, NSA security measures in place...and a black text box with a very small scrolling button for a very large file...an encrypted one.  The only recognisable element in the text box was a set of small counters at the top that ticked off endless seconds, minutes, months, years, and next to each, a date.

INTERCEPTED INTELLIGENCE.  PRIORITY ALERT.

July 07, 2002
Civilian operation to commence immediately.  Negotiations continue in phase three, stalled.
Eviction notice to be served at undetermined date, post May 2003.
April 01, 2003
Final date for successful implantation.  Continue negotiations.
Eviction notice to be served by May 2003, date yet undetermined.

There were six more date boxes that had not yet loaded.  Mulder raised questioning eyes to Langly, and the Lone Gunman held up his large splay-fingered hands in protest.
“We’re working on it, Mulder.  The last few dates might tell us something more, but...”  He gave that uncomfortable grimace again.  “We tried to un-encrypt that file, but its like nothing any of us have ever seen before.  Frohike even tried, and he knows how much better my kung fu is than his.”  He ignored Frohike’s sneer.  “This was actually the toughest hack I’ve ever done.  It was definitely a rush.  I doubt that anybody that isn’t supposed to has seen this page or has any idea what the countermeasures will be as they’re listed here.”
 “Well, I doubt that it matters at this particular moment,” Mulder muttered after a moment.  “We have enough to go on for a while yet.”
Skinner nodded and broke in, his voice flat in the quiet of the room.  “You two should know something.  Kersh has disappeared.  He’s been gone for about three weeks; no one seems to know or care where.  They did the official pooh-poohing and that was it.  He’s been in and out a lot before this, leaving for a while and coming back looking very worried...but he’s never not come back before.”
“Maybe he found a rat-hole to play in with all the other rats,” Scully murmured vindictively.  She didn’t care if Kersh had wanted to get Mulder out of the way because he had some small faith in their ability to stop this thing, or so that They could divide and conquer and then kill them while they were divided so that they could have a go at Will...or to keep Mulder from raising their child.  Whatever the man’s motives, she had never forgiven him for that lost year in which Mulder had been forced to disappear from her life and their son’s.
Mulder was staring at her.  “He may not have always been on our side, Scully, but the man did save my life last year.”
“So he says,” she retorted grimly.  “I’m still not convinced.”  
Mulder shook his head, preferring not to argue about it.  There was no way to know anymore.  He returned his gaze to their former boss.  “So that’s it, then.  We’re building up to the final crescendo before all hell breaks loose...and except for a vain hope we don’t have a leg to stand on.”  His lips curved into a merciless grin.  “What does Doggett have to say about all this?  He still refusing to believe in the existence of Extraterrestrials?”  He gave a patented ‘Spooky Mulder leer’, and dropped his voice to an ingratiating spike of sardonic wit, sounding exactly as he had the day he and Scully had met.  She remembered the tone clearly.  ‘Do you believe in the existence of Extraterrestrials, Agent Scully?’  Despite the grim subject-matter of their conversation, she couldn’t help the small smile that came to her face. 
“Well, he does admit that this timetable seems to indicate something fairly apocalyptic, but he’s still wanting to believe that it’s all some big government plot with very terrestrial origins.”  The A.D. shook his bald pate suddenly from side to side, an incredulous gesture.  “I still can’t believe that I’m buying it.  Like Doggett, I’ll buy the conspiracy thing, even though its tough for the inner soldier, but we know enough to admit that Uncle Sam does some things we wouldn’t countenance if it were up to us.  But an alien takeover...”
“Well, you’ve got the edge on Doggett, Sir,” Scully murmured softly.  “You’ve seen the ship that abducted Mulder, and you’ve seen the Bounty Hunter and the Black Oil in action.”  Her eyes were solemn on his.  “You’ve seen...and you’ll never know how much it’s meant to me at least to have you on my side when I needed somebody to believe with me.”
Skinner threw her a look that might even be a little instigating.  He glanced over at Mulder, who was looking at Scully with a blank expression on his face that could have meant anything.
“Well, Dana; you’ve said it and he isn’t smiling.”
Scully looked away.  “Yes, well he only gloats when we’re alone,” she said after a moment.  “We have a nice little show of solidarity in public.”  She shook her head and looked up at him through the brown curtain of her dyed hair, her voice gone brisk again.  “But much as I was afraid to Believe, and let that belief upset my view of the universe, its not exactly smart to continue to deny something’s existence when that denial could spell fatal danger to oneself and one’s child.” 
Skinner’s expression sobered thoughtfully.  “I suppose that’s true,” he murmured after a moment.   
Mulder was glancing from one to the other of them, looking a little put out that he had missed something.  “What’s this?”
“Oh,” Skinner said airily, and grinned.  The war-horse actually grinned, the expression almost incongruous on his stern countenance.  “Just something Agent Scully said a while back, while we were in Arizona searching for you after you took your little ride.  Doggett saw someone that looked a hell of a lot like you fall off of a high cliff and then get up and disappear.  He was sure he’d solved his crime; Spooky Mulder’s gone crazy and got himself killed.  Scully told him it wasn’t you at all, though.  That really threw him for a loop.  I think he thought she was delusional or something, gone over the edge after her partner like some Thelma and Louise pact.  He asked her what the hell she was talking about, and she tried to evade his cross-examination for a while.  Told him that he didn’t want to know.  But he kept on her and she finally said it was this ‘bounty hunter’ you two keep talking about, that it was alien.”
At Mulder’s very interested look, Skinner seemed to settle in, really enjoying himself.  “Doggett wasn’t convinced,” and here his voice became a bit more earnest, “but like she said, I saw the ship in Oregon, and nothing would ever convince me that you would stoop so low as to fake evidence of alien abduction just to validate your work.  You’re far too principled about your Truth for that.”
“Thank you.”  Mulder inclined his head, and Skinner acknowledged it with a nod before he continued. 
“I asked her if this was really something she thought we had to worry about, and she told me that she thought that it was true, and possible, and that wherever you were at that moment you had better damn well be smiling.  She hasn’t managed to take it back yet...at least not to while I was around to witness it.”
Mulder was grinning openly as he carefully avoided looked down at his lover’s tense shoulders.  Scully met his eyes coolly and resisted putting her hands on her hips.  “What, Mulder?  Say it.”
“I didn’t say anything,” he countered in a lazy voice, and spread his hands in mocking surrender.
Scully tried to stay annoyed, but she couldn’t quite manage it.  The high tension of the night seemed to be breaking in her again, and she had an insane urge to giggle.  She suppressed it with a mighty effort and turned her head away disdainfully, trying to maintain whatever shreds of her dignity remained.
“As fun as all this is, I think we ought to eat.  Mom, you guys had dinner yet?  Because I could kill for a pizza right now.”
Maggie smiled quietly from the shelter of the spavined sofa.  “No, sweetheart, but we probably ought to feed this baby tonight.  I’ll make the call...”
“No, I will, from a downstairs courtesy phone,” Skinner broke in quickly.  He glanced at Mulder and Scully.  “Pepperoni?”
Mulder glanced at his partner.  It was her turn to choose.  She shrugged in response.  --Sure, anything--
“That’s one.”  He turned to the rest of the room and began taking requests.  The talk turned to less dangerous subjects while they waited, and the rain came down outside.
xxx
As the night wore on and the pizzas slowly disappeared, Skinner quietly pulled Mulder aside.  They stood for a moment watching Scully, Maggie and the baby sitting together on the couch, the Gunmen huddling over the trio and clumsily trying to engage the toddler in play from their perches around the edges of the furniture.  The picture was one of such quiet content that it wrenched at Mulder’s heart.  Would Scully ever be able to have this and keep it?  He knew she wanted it; the ability to move at her own free will, to raise their son as best she might without fear, to settle in a place that she could call home and to sit with her mother and simply be...to sit with him and simply be.  It was a similar feeling to that he had felt when he’d watched her with the Hosee’s baby in Bellefleur before he’d been abducted.  So much had been taken from Scully in the wake of the tornado that was his life...so much of her peace of mind had been lost, never to be regained.  The picture before his eyes haunted him even as it warmed him, because he knew as well as she did that it was an illusion; a soap bubble that would sooner or later be pricked, and tomorrow or the next day things would go back to horror, pressure, fear, tension...and this content will seem like a foolish dream in the face of the exigencies of their harried lives.
“Would it kill you to marry her for real, Mulder?” Skinner broke into his bitter reverie, nodding at the ring that lay nearly forgotten on Mulder’s left hand.  Drawing himself out of the drowning-pool of his thoughts with a quick jerk, he summoned all his sardonic wit and raised his eyes to glance at his former boss.
“This really bothers you, doesn’t it Walter.”  Deciding that maybe a little needling would turn aside Skinner’s unwelcome meddling, he quickly changed tactics.  “What is it, some fatherly sense of propriety?” 
Skinner grimaced at him like a baby with gas.  He was obviously annoyed at Mulder’s continued ribbing, but he was a determined man and would not be distracted from the question at hand.  “You and I both know I have always felt a special, possibly paternal fondness for Agent Scully.  I care about you too, Mulder; the way you care about a wiseass little brother you'd like to smack for insubordination on occasion.”  At Mulder’s cocky grin his eyes hardened.  “But the fact of the matter is, Mulder, you two have a baby, and you’ve been together for God knows how long...”  He held up his hand before his underling could speak.  “Never mind, I don’t want to know.”
Mulder looked thoughtful.  “Three years,” he told him anyway, then turned his gaze up to meet Skinner’s calmly.  “Scully and I have talked about this, and right now it’s just not what we want.  Besides, what would be the point?  We can’t use our real names, so it wouldn’t be legal...and really; is it the most important thing to worry about right now in the face of all this?  The world is quite literally coming to an end right in front of our eyes; I don’t think the legal status of our relationship is that important.”
Skinner glanced over at the tiny family on the couch for a moment before he raised his eyes from the warm tableau and looked into Mulder’s with a forceful candor that sought into his former agent’s soul.  “Look at that, Mulder,” he asked quietly.  “Look what you have there.  End of the world or no, are you sure you don’t want to do everything you can to hang on to that?”
Mulder regarded the older man for a long moment.  “For my own selfish reasons, yes I do,” he murmured.  “You have no idea how aware I am of what I have there, what I owe to Scully.”  His voice seemed to harden.  “And right now I’m doing all I can to keep them safe.  Both of them.”
Skinner’s eyes never faltered, but an understanding seemed to flicker in them.  He narrowed them, and that flicker became dangerous.  “You’re giving her a loophole,” he said accusingly after a moment.  “You still feel guilty for the alterations your relationship has made in her life, and you want to be able to sacrifice yourself if you need to without dragging her down with you.  Some kind of compensatory self-immolation, is that it?”  As Mulder stared back at his superior unblinkingly, Skinner shook his head adamantly.  “That won’t work, Mulder.  She’s as dedicated as you are.  Even if you were gone, she won’t run; she has even more reason to fight now than you do.  If you gave yourself up she’d only fight harder.”
The former marine gazed over at the couch, eyes unblinking as if he were speaking prophecy.  “It won’t hurt her any less to lose you than it would hurt you to lose her.  I hope that isn’t what you’ve been telling yourself with this hair-brained scheme of martyrdom you have cooked up.  You may not think you mean as much to her as she does to you...but you weren’t there before, the last time she lost you.  It nearly destroyed her.”  His voice lowered and became harsh with memory as he stared into the other man’s eyes.  “Don’t do that to her, Mulder.  Don’t underestimate her loyalty and don’t martyr yourself to her sister’s memory, or to the memory of her former life.  She doesn’t want it.  Whatever you think, she doesn’t blame you, and if I know her she hates it that you blame yourself.”  His voice went hard as stone then.  “I won’t stand around and watch her be destroyed again.”
The deep voice softened as the former marine relented finally.  “Do yourself a favour, Mulder, and accept her, because she’s not going anywhere, and she’s sure as hell not going to let you go anywhere.  Not again.  She’d tear the world apart to keep you alive.  I’ve seen her do it more than once.  And she’s a hell of a lot tougher and a lot more stubborn than you ever were.”
Mulder nodded.  “I know,” he said softly, but within his heart he felt something cringe, some guilt-ridden imp that thought he did not deserve what he now had.  As a psychologist he knew about self-sabotage.  Didn’t mean he wasn’t human enough to do it anyway, consciously or unconsciously.  “I know.”
xxx
In dark of night, after the gunmen had buried themselves in a corner with a laptop and Skinner had gone to the other room to make his evening ablutions, Maggie beckoned the two former agents over to the couch with her free hand; the other had been pinned when Will had fallen asleep in his Nana’s arms.  They looked over the back of the sofa to view the limp toddler, undone by exhaustion and the combined impact of five new minds in one small space, snoring around a slack rosebud mouth.  His head dangled from the back of his grandmother’s forearm like a heavy growth as Maggie looked up from the little boy’s sauce-speckled face to smile at them. 
“He’s lovely, my dears,” she murmured to the couple standing behind her, and her eyes twinkled merrily.  “Of course I’m biased, but you can’t convince me that he’s not the most precious Miracle.”  She smiled at them then, a different smile than the soft reflective one she’d held for her grandson.  This one was slightly teasing, and her eyes fairly sparkled.  “So Walter tells me you two have been 'playing house'.”  She nodded at the ring on Mulder’s hand and then flicked her eyes to her daughter’s similar adornment.  “He seemed quite annoyed about it.  He went to bed muttering about how stubborn you two are.  I think it offends the dear man on some deep level that you haven’t yet made it official.”  Her voice was as patient and gentle as ever, and her face gave no indication of how she felt about the matter.  There was no judgment in her voice, no denunciation for their living in sin as Mulder had thought she would surely see it...but then she was doing the same, and Maggie had already proven to be far more open-minded than he had any right to expect over the years.
He avoided Scully’s eyes, still unsettled by Skinner’s unwelcome observations.  He respected Maggie Scully, though, and he didn’t want to lose the formidable woman’s good opinion.  He wanted to tell her that he loved her daughter, that he would give anything that Dana, not Scully but Dana, needed from him...but Skinner’s words seemed to echo in his head.  --Do yourself a favour, Mulder, and accept her, because she’s not going anywhere, and she’s sure as hell not going to let you go anywhere.  Not again.  She’d tear the world apart to keep you alive.  I’ve seen her do it more than once--
--And get herself killed in the process, if I let her bind herself too closely to me-- he thought angrily back at the voice, and winced at the thought.  It didn’t even bear thinking about.  He had to be able to keep his distance from her...for her own sake.
He was rescued from the moment by Scully herself.  “Even if that was what we wanted, even if it were necessary, Mom, we’re living under assumed names right now, so it’s really not possible.”  Her eyes flickered briefly to settle on Mulder’s face, and he avoided meeting her gaze.  After a moment her eyes passed back to her mother and child.  She wasn’t disappointed...but she did need to know why.  Someday he would have to tell her, to confess his sins and be told that he was being a fool.  He didn’t mind being scolded by Scully and in fact rather looked forward to it, but the thought of losing her made his spine congeal like ice.  Scully, though, had turned back to her mother and was smiling softly.  “I’m happy, Mom.  Don’t worry about that, at least.”
“Oh, I know you are Dana, and I’m happy for the both of you.  I want you to know that.” Her gaze took in her daughter’s partner in life, and she settled a hand on Mulder’s.  “I want you to know you have my blessing, Fox.  I get to say that unequivocally now that my husband isn’t here to bluster and shout as he no doubt would have done.  You have my blessing.”  She looked up at her daughter.  “Both of you.”  
“You have no idea how much that means, Maggie,” Mulder murmured.  But he still didn’t meet his lover’s eyes.
X   X   X

(Amor Fati, pt.52: “Delve”)

Grayson’s Hotel
21 W. Sixth St.
Philadelphia, PA
9:06pm

It was getting late, and both Skinner and the Gunmen had finally adjourned to the adjoining room, the latter sprawling out like a pack of ill-housebroken dogs on chairs and spare furniture.  Back in the first room, Maggie was still holding her grandson as she talked quietly with her daughter and son-in-law.  As the conversation went into its second quiet lull she shook her head.  “I guess I should probably take the baby and turn in, Dana, Fox.  He certainly sleeps deeply now, doesn’t he?”  She smiled at them both, raising her eyes from the sleeping toddler.  “He never used to do that, even when he was safely tucked away in my little ‘nursery’.”  Her placid gaze seemed to focus on Mulder for a moment, eyes soft.  “I think maybe he knows that his world is the way it should be now.  He felt something missing before.”  Mulder looked down, feeling for some reason slightly embarrassed at the full acceptance Mrs. Scully was holding out to him like a gift-wrapped package, and Maggie gently broke eye contact, shifting to lift her grandson off of her arm as she rose from the overstuffed sofa.  Scully rose at the same time, holding out her hands preparatory to taking up her burden again, but unfortunately the movement shook William awake.  He opened his sleep-clouded green eyes to regard the three adults standing over him and opened his small red mouth.  He didn’t yawn, however, just raised his sleepy eyes to his grandmother’s face.
“Dadda wants me to spend da night wit’ you, Nana,” he said in a voice mushy with sleep.  It was the longest sentence he’d yet spoken, and the words were quite clear.  Scully gave a start and stared as her son turned his gaze to his mother  “Nana wants me to stay wit’ her too, Mama.  S’okay.  You go ‘way.  Go walk outside wit’ Dadda.”  His voice was almost peremptory, but he had already closed his eyes and was slipping back into his now well-recognized coma.  Orders given.  Mission accomplished.  Scully pointedly avoided looking at Mulder’s blank face, suddenly sorry she had taught her son to repeat everything she said.  Now he was talking in earnest...and that combined with his particular gift of gleaning public thoughts could lead to some embarrassing circumstances.  It had been well over two years since she and Mulder had had any time alone, and she wanted the baby to spend the night with his grandmother as much as Mulder apparently did, just to get a break from the constant unleavened pressure that his presence put on their minds.  She fled from that thought guiltily.  It wasn’t William’s fault.
Maggie was grinning openly at them both.  Scully made another abortive attempt to reach out to take the dozing toddler, feeling wretchedly guilty about wanting to ditch him for her own selfish reasons, but his grandmother jerked him gently out of reach.  “They say a wise child is born of wise parents,” she said in her sweet voice, but her eyes were knowing on her daughter’s face.  “The baby is right, Dana.  I would love to take him.  He and I have a lot of catching up to do.  You two have some time to yourselves, and I’ll spend some well-deserved time alone with my grandson.”  Scully opened her mouth to protest, but her mother overrode her inexorably gently.  “Oh, come now; both you and William will survive one night without each other if you leave us be.  If I know you Dana, you haven’t had him out of your sight since you left; not for a moment.  It's not as if you will have been able to put him in daycare, is it?”  At Scully’s agonized look and Mulder’s uncertain one, she finished rising to her feet and stood holding the limp and dozing toddler before her like a buffer.   “Shoo,” she said firmly.  “Get out of this hotel and go for a walk.  You need time, and from what you two have told me about your recent troubles in public, you could use some fresh air to boot.”
She smiled in exasperation at their identical poleaxed expressions.  “Go out, have a drink.  The world won’t fall apart if you take a few hours off.  If there’s any trouble I have Walter and these three nice young men right here to help me keep him safe, and God knows this may be your last chance to take a break for a long while.  I didn’t hear exactly what is happening, and I don’t need to know to tell you that you need it.”  She kissed her daughter on the cheek.  “I’m kicking you out of my hotel room.”  She grinned into their embarrassed faces and turned her gaze firmly on Mulder’s, eyes dancing as she teased them gently.  “Don’t bring her back till some nicely scandalous hour, Fox.”  When they remained staring at her like startled oxen she stepped forward, obviously planning to give them a little shove to get them moving.  “That was an order, Dana.”
“Yes ma’am,” Scully muttered automatically, and turned sheepishly to Mulder.  “We’ve been dismissed.  You’d better grab your coat.”
xxx
Scully was already halfway down the hall, suddenly desperate to get away from the inside of any building by the time Mulder had grabbed his coat and caught up.  He caught her arm outside the door of the hotel room, pulling her back to look at her thoughtfully.  Scully returned his gaze quizzically, obviously surprised at the intense look on his face.
“You know she’s right, Scully,” he murmured without preamble, and kissed her suddenly, mouth descending on hers in a way that made her stomach do loops and a small but determined heat burst into being a bit further south.  After a moment he moved away just enough to speak, his lips brushing hers with every word.  “I thought I had worked it out so I wouldn’t have to look at you for days on end and pretend it wasn’t affecting me.”  He sounded a little grim, his face was set, and he looked so determined and unthwartable that she nearly giggled.
“Well then don’t pretend,” she murmured back.  Her gaze turned serious.  “She is right, Mulder, but what if They come while we’re gone?  I’d never forgive myself if we come back and he...”
Mulder interrupted that train of thought without a qualm, stepping firmly on his own misgivings.  “If our silent friends can’t keep an eye on the building for a few hours, then we’ve never been safe with them.  We’ve left him alone with Gibson before and nothing’s happened.”  His gaze was candid on hers.  “We need a break, Scully.  We can’t keep doing this for too long.  It’s insane.  It’s driving us insane...and God knows that’s not too far a stretch for me anyway.”
She felt the absolute frustration in his gaze and nodded.  “You’re not as bad as you like to think.  You forget, I know you.”  She smiled.  “Okay, so we let them know he’s still in there, and we follow our orders and go for a walk and maybe a drink.  And come back long after curfew.”  She felt that almost inexorable need to giggle again, and thrust it down determinedly, ignoring the backlash of the day’s, the months’ emotional overload.  Mulder was right.  If they didn’t get out at least this one night they would lose it when they needed to be cool.  It was time to take a night off, ridiculous as that sounded in their present circumstances.
They were accosted by their ever-present friends as they stepped away from the building and onto the damp sidewalk.  “Where is the child?” the female clone demanded sharply, stopping in front of them like a policewoman.
“He’s still inside,” Mulder told her amiably.  “We’re going to do some reconnoitering.  Can you keep an eye on the building for us?  Thanks.”  His tone was pleasant, but Scully could hear the flat undercurrent beneath it that said he was on the edge of a violent reaction.  If the Renegade told them they couldn’t leave he would likely start throwing punches.  Scully resisted the urge to place a placating hand on his arm.  Luckily it didn’t come to that.
“What you are planning; will it endanger us?” another voice murmured out of the dark near the corner of the building to their left.
Scully’s voice had a dangerous edge herself, she was surprised to note.  “No,” she said firmly.  “We’re just going for a walk.  We need a break.” Her words took on a tone that was had just enough resentment in it to sound sarcastic.  “Haven’t you people ever needed a break?”
The alien that had addressed them stepped forward into the quaint lamplight of the Philadelphia street, and eyed them like a diagnostician.  “Your minds are in turmoil, that much is obvious, and they have been for some time.  This is how you must purge them of frustration?”  At their flat looks, it seemed to take on a resigned air.  “You make it difficult for us to keep you safe.  We would prefer that you do not take this course of action, but this will perhaps be the best time for you to do so.  You will return before the sun?”  It was not quite a question, and Mulder’s lips flattened a little.
“Probably.”  It came out like a monosyllable.
The alien nodded.  “You will be observed, but we will not hinder you, and your escort will not be visible.  This building is secure.  Please return before dawn.”  It turned without a final word and strode back to disappear into the shadows between the hotel and the next building.  The female clone remained staring after her compatriot for a moment, then returned her gaze to the two former agents.  Her blonde ponytail gleamed in the faint light of the streetlamps.
“There should be no danger this night,” she muttered darkly, and turned to resume her loitering in front of the doors, her athletic build like a barrier.  Scully and Mulder exchanged glances and made good their escape before their bodyguards could change their minds.
Walking the gleaming, rain-soaked streets in the chill wet air of November hand in hand, they remained silent for a long time and simply took in the night.  It felt good to be summarily freed from their eight-month prison for even a few hours, to walk through the sharpened pools of glimmering light from the old-fashioned lamps that lined the Philadelphia streets and to smell the damp fragrance of asphalt only briefly heated by a now-forgotten sun and suddenly cooled by the unforeseen rainstorm.  They wandered aimlessly through the city, heading away from the posh stern buildings of downtown Philly and the fitful gleam of those hundred year old Philadelphia streetlamps and toward the bars that lined a side street they had passed earlier in the day.  Most of them were sports bars.  Any of them would do.
As they walked, Scully tried not to remember the last time she went bar-hopping in Philly...though it was hard for either of them to forget, with the evidence of that particular adventure literally tattooed on her body.  Suddenly, her Ourbourous seemed painfully obvious on her lower back...blazing on the exact spot where Mulder was wont to put his hand when they were walking anywhere.  She wondered if he were thinking of it.  He had known all the details of that case...but he had never expressed anything but admiration for the tattoo itself.  He seemed, actually, to find it quite sexy, and knowing that he did made her feel sexy about it.  Unfortunately, feeling sexy and carefree in that moment made her feel like she was somehow faltering at her post; like a soldier caught sleeping on guard.  She was just not used to relaxing anymore.
“We shouldn’t be doing this, Mulder,” Scully murmured finally after a few endless moments.  She was the first one to break the silence.  “This is ridiculous.”
Mulder sighed.  “Yeah, it is; but everybody needs to be able to put aside their responsibilities for one night.”  He looked at her as they walked in step, linked hands swinging lightly in the chill air.  “Especially now,” he murmured, “when everything is about to change forever.  The dead speak to us, you once said.  Later on I said if they were to give us any advice it would be to eat, drink, and be merry.”
“For tomorrow we die?”  Surprisingly, her voice was light, a shimmer of laughter held behind it.   He smiled in response and looked away down the long black gleam of the street stretching before them, wondering like her just exactly what they thought they were doing.  But the joke had put him in mind of something he had wanted to ask her for a while.  They had never seemed to be out of the tension long enough to have the time to reminisce properly.  The events of the evening had brought the question to the surface, however, and after a moment he worked himself up to ask.
“Do you often think of your father, Scully?”  His voice held more than the gentle curiousity of a friend.  It was nice to be like this again.  Just them, talking business, philosophy and personal history in that same quiet tone, to feel the unpressured Mulder come back out and the unpressured Scully rejoin him.  It had been too long.  Scully allowed the question to wash over her without wondering what was behind it.
“Every day.  I think of him every day, wondering exactly what his Starbuck is up to now, what kind of trouble the rebellious daughter is getting into.”
Mulder nodded, silent for a moment.  “Would he be happy for you, do you think?  Or would he take the same dim view of this that his son has?”  His voice retained that quiet curiousity, but she could hear the personal interest behind his voice.  Unbidden, her throat tightened.  --God, would Mulder ever stop fighting the world for approval he tells himself he doesn’t need?--  She knew that part of the anger that Mulder often directed at her brother was tempered with defensiveness, she suspected because deep inside he felt that Bill was actually right.  She knew that Mulder held himself personally responsible for every bad thing that had happened in her life since they had begun working together.  It never seemed to occur to her dear single-minded lover that to take responsibility for all of that was to deny her her own personal power.  She sighed, knowing that they would have to get into this someday and not looking forward to trying to convince Mulder that she was capable of making her own decisions and accepting the consequences.  She waited until she had her voice under control before she spoke, squeezing his hand again.  Now was not the time, and besides; she couldn’t give her partner absolution; it was up to him to make his own peace.
“I don’t know.  My safety was always first with him.  Like Bill, I doubt that he’d consider me capable of taking care of myself in that regard.  But then maybe I’m underestimating him.”  She sighed again, gazing into the halo of gilded light just ahead.  “I think he’d be glad for me that I gave birth to a son that resembles him a little, and that I’m happy...but also I think he’d bluster around you a little...maybe a lot.  Maybe less than Bill, maybe more.”
“Well, good.”  At her startled look Mulder grinned suddenly.  “That’s what dads are supposed to do.”  As her look faded to amusement he caught her off guard again.  “And frankly I’d rather have your father to deal with than Bill.  He was probably just as no-nonsense as your brother, but he sounds like he trusted your judgment more.”
Scully smiled back at him, glad to let the tension ooze away for a time.  “You may think he’d be easier than Bill, but you didn’t know my father.”  She swung his hand gently, body forgotten in the rhythm of the walk as the conversation swamped her memory.  “The first boy I ever dated left my house scared to ever touch a girl again.  He didn’t date anybody for the rest of the year, and he never talked to me again, not even to say hi in the halls.  It was embarrassing, I’ll say that much.”
Mulder’s grin hadn’t slipped as he turned his head to listen.  “Well, that’s what he gets for trying to touch Daddy’s baby girl.  It’s only right.”  She looked at him strangely, and he continued inexorably.  “It’s the accepted order of things, Scully.  If he didn’t want to beat the crap out of me for stealing his little girl I’d know he wasn’t accepting it at all.”  Seeing her confusion at his inconceivably male logic, he elaborated patiently.  “Hostility at least acknowledges a person’s existence.  If he wasn’t hostile he’d be treating me like a distant stranger that he’d rather see the backside of.”
“Well, he might have done that too,” she allowed after a time.  She swung his arm a little playfully, looking up at him.  “Are you afraid he’s watching over me, waiting to get you?”
He looked down at her upturned face for a moment, expression serious and tender.  “Oh, he’s with you, Scully,” he said, suddenly serious.  “He watches out for you and William every day.”  Scully stared at him, startled, then stopped dead in the street to turn and take her chin in his fingers.  He tilted her face up so that her eyes met his, smiling in that tender way that undid her heart.  “You know it and I know it.”  He dropped his fingers, but the chin stayed up, and her eyes became if possible just a little damp.
“Mulder, would you sit with me while I read Moby Dick to our son later?”
Mulder felt absurdly flattered for some reason, as if he had passed some test.  Scully had always assumed he would want nothing to do with that evening ritual before, obviously considering it something between herself, her father, and her son.  He hadn’t necessarily felt left out, but....  He smiled.  “I’d love to.”  --Not because I really give a damn about Moby Dick, though--  He left that thought unvoiced.  It was enough to be invited into that part of her life.
Scully felt her heart suddenly expand and contract as she looked into that beloved face.  There had always been the times when she had been completely charmed and touched by him, even back when their friendship was still new.  She had the privilege of seeing a whole different side of him than the rest of the world, and she was quite happy to keep it that way.  The world could have Spooky Mulder and Mulder the Crusader; this was her Mulder right here.  Mulder the Lover, Mulder the Best Friend.  
They started walking again, and Mulder watched her unobtrusively as they paced along the verge of the damp street.  Reveling in the way her eyes sparkled in the lamplight, in the muted glow of her shining hair...comfortable yet exciting, her quiet beauty took his breath as always.  Skinner’s voice came to his head once again unbidden, like a harbinger of fear.  --Look at that, Mulder...look what you have there.  End of the world or no, are you sure you don’t want to do everything you can to hang on to that?--  Selfish.  Selfish and dangerous...and yet he could not seem to stop himself.  He quickly thrust down the echo and turned them down the side street they had marked earlier, trying not to think.  If Scully noticed his distress she gave no sign.
Picking a building at random on that slightly more active street, Mulder and Scully stopped at a likely looking bar with a Guinness sign in the window and went in for drink.  The place was not deserted, but it wasn’t overcrowded either, and they found a nice table they could put their backs against, out of the way but not cornered.  They sat down in a cloud of throbbing music and watched the small knot of dancers whirl around inexpertly on the sticky dance floor until the cocktail waitress sidled through the nonexistent alley between booths to approach them.
“Wa ya have?”
Mulder glanced at Scully.  “I’ll have one of those Moose Drool things, and...”  Scully nodded.  “Two.”
“Got it.”  The woman swerved away and reappeared a minute or two later with the beers.  Mulder and Scully sat in companionable silence for a while, perhaps remembering the last time they’d shared a beer in peaceable intent.  It had been the night that William was conceived, ages ago it seemed now.  Seldom had they done this even in the heyday of their friendship.  She remembered the birthday she’d celebrated with him in Ripley’s, their favourite bar in DC, on the day he’d given her the Apollo keychain.  God, that was a long time ago.
“Mulder, this really is ridiculous, you know,” she finally burst out, unable to contain the odd sense of incongruity she felt.  She wanted to sink into this night and just relax, just once as she had done, it seemed so long ago now, when everything had still made sense and there had still been breathing room between battles.  They seldom had those spaces now, and she feared to relax her guard even for a moment, feared that there would be nothing left when she looked up again if she forgot what they were trying to do.  “The world could be coming to an end outside and we're in here, shirking our responsibilities to play.”
“This is the best time to do so,” he interrupted, and reached out to drop a hand over hers where it curled helplessly around the thick brown glass of her bottle.  “It might be the only time we ever will.  Last interlude, calm before the storm.”  His voice took on that faintly remote tone that said he was waxing philosophical.  “When the world ends, finally; Armageddon, Ragnarok, whatever you want to call it...I’d rather be like the Norse than the Christians.  Prayer is all good, but I think odds are that we’ll end up facing it with a sword in one hand and an ale in the other.  We will win or lose this thing knowing we’ve done our best, but at some point we have to concede that we’ve done all we can and leave the rest up to Fate.”  He smiled faintly at some unseen vista.  “All we can do at that point is drink a toast and hold hands and be grateful that we got to live to see it all, and that we’ll go down still surrounded with the people we love.”  He turned the smile on her then, conceding a point.  “And then maybe pray a little.  When there isn’t anything else left to do.”
Scully smiled.  “You’re maudlin tonight.  You normally don’t give points away that easily.”
He smiled back at her.  “Yeah, well you make me mushy.”  He tapped the back of her hand with his finger.  “Remember when we were stuck in Florida?  You told me that that was the struggle; to give meaning to death as we do with life.  What more meaning can we give it before we finally relinquish control?  We’re here.  Together.  We’ve pushed and pushed and at some point inertia has got to take over.”
“We’re not done yet, though, are we Mulder?”
He looked surprised, and his hand twitched over hers.  “No, of course not...but when we are, we have to learn to let go and be content that we did our best.”
“Strange to hear that coming from you, the fight-to-the-last-breath man.”
He grimaced at her.  “Well, I never said I wasn’t going to fight to the last breath...” and his challenging grin resurfaced like the sun coming out from behind the clouds.  “But you’d better be there to hold my hand when that breath comes or I’ll be very pissed off at you.”  --And can you offer the same to her, Mulder?-- his conscience jabbered back accusingly.  -Selfish--  He blatantly ignored the voice and waited, finger still moving in a light caress of encouragement over the back of her hand.  She finally smiled back, unable to resist.  Locked into each other’s eyes the way they were, they nearly didn’t notice when the cadence of the song changed and all but two of the couples on the floor retreated back to their seats.  As the song picked up, slow but with a throbbing beat that seemed to beckon from the floor, Mulder grinned again, wanting suddenly to move, to thrust away thought with action.  “Speaking of...”  He stood up suddenly and held out a hand, expression filled with playful challenge.  She stared up at him, for some reason unable to believe the incongruity of the moment.  Mulder, in jeans and a turtleneck and looking dangerously reckless, inviting her to dance with him as they had only done once in their time together.  She knew something was bothering him, but she assumed that it was the same thing that worried her, and she didn’t want to think about it anymore tonight.  A small voice suddenly leapt up in the back of her head.
--Why the hell not?  Laugh in the face of the Devil--
She stood up decisively and left her beer behind to take her lover’s hand.  He swung her into his arms with a laugh and stumbled them four-legged through the last rank of tables to the dance floor, where he flipped her out in a half-spin and then tugged her back in like a shuttle to a homing beacon.  She couldn’t help but laugh at the mock serious expression on his face...but she saw it change to something a little more intense as he took her in, and the look in his eyes caught her breath.
He pulled her close then, folding his arms around her in a move so practiced that it took her breath completely.  Without conscious direction her arms rose to his neck and she laced her fingers at his nape, wondering where the hell he had learned to do that, and how long he had been planning it.  She stopped thinking when he dropped his hand to the small of her back and dipped her slowly, his other hand sliding up to rest between her shoulder blades and putting them in contact along their entire lengths where once they would have kept a safe waltzing distance.  --We aren’t kids anymore-- his body language seemed to say.  --We’ve acted like scared kids for too long.  We can be adults now, and it’s time we tell the truth--
And suddenly she didn’t care anymore.  Giving into the moment, she leaned into him, feeling his body curve to wrap around hers as it had when he had shown her how to bat as if she didn’t already know...knowing that to let him show her meant that she could spend the evening in his arms without guilt, as now knowing that he had to stoop to rest his cheek against hers and not caring one bit.  The music faded into the background as her senses flooded with a chaotic jumble of heated and disjointed impressions...the beeswax of the tiny dance floor accented with the rank smell of stale beer from the corners...and the underlying and yet suddenly immediate aroma of the cologne that Mulder wore, the familiar scent of it, as much a part of her conception of him as was his cocky grin and jaunty theory-making, and yet so subtle and taken for granted that she had nearly forgotten it until now.  All of it melted finally into a single lasting impression of their inextricable oneness as she slid her fingers into the thick hair at the nape of his neck, the pent up frustrations of estrangement, overexposure, and imprisonment in the last several months suddenly falling away into a noiseless clamour in the background of consciousness even as it forced her to abandon all her careful walls and take him into herself.  She could feel the inhibitions fall from him as well as he pulled her to against his lean length with a half-rough, half-tender motion that left her breathless with a sudden jolt of need...and they stopped dancing to simply be, allowing their bodies to glide over each other and swaying to music totally forgotten save as a driving presence in the back of consciousness.  
Tangled, her sensations faded into a few distinct impressions; the texture of his hair threading through her fingers...the familiar sweep of his shoulders...the suddenly dangerous and yet beloved landscape of his body as it bumped and slid and moved with and over hers...the known quantity of his unique and dangerous mind...heat, dimness, and the return of a desire she had feared was gone, lost in the stresses of their daily life.  That desire was now untethered with nothing holding them back for the first time in three years.  No child to fear for, all worries and tensions laid aside for this one night, and nothing to pull their thoughts away from this moment.
They remained on the floor in a kind of swaying symbiosis as the song dwindled, then finally came apart, though they kept hold of each other’s hands as they stepped off the floor.  Somewhere in the first rank of tables where the faster dancers had retired, a someone or three began to clap.  Drawn out of their haze, they looked up as one to behold a small audience of the couples and groups that had left them alone on floor.  A few of the faces were decidedly envious.
“I guess its better than karaoke, eh ‘Hon’?” Mulder cracked as the next song started and the other dancers dragged each other back onto the recently vacated floor.
Scully kept her eyes on the obstacle course of chairs as she wound her way back to their table, her hand firmly clasping his.  She was not letting him get away after that.  “Not a chance, ‘Sweetie’.  You’d have to get me a lot drunker than this before I’ll sing in front of anyone but you.”
“Is that a challenge?”  They resumed their seats, and Mulder raised his gaze playfully to hers, a tenderness and a heat still lingering there...but what he saw as Scully’s molten eyes bored into his accomplished its purpose and took his breath in revenge.
“You don’t need to waste the money to get me drunk, Mulder.  You already have me coming home with you tonight.”  Her look was blatantly inviting, and Mulder took momentary refuge in wit.
“Oooh!  That I would ever live to hear a woman say that to me.  Is that a proposition, Doctor?
Scully smiled and resisted the urge to slap him.  She settled instead for eyeing him playfully.  “If you don’t recognise a proposition like that when you hear one, love,” she said lightly, “then I don’t know what to do with you.”
Mulder smiled, choosing not to make a big issue out of the endearment even as it made his heart leap in a new and painful way.  One thing that their need for discretion had accomplished; they had had to start using all the endearments that had once been taboo between them in order to avoid using their names, and that had in turn led to an easing of the path to that one word they both had such a difficult time saying.  “Too bad; I think I’m gonna hold you to it anyway.”
She seemed unaware of what she’d said, still engaged in the game.  “I’d be fairly annoyed if you didn’t.”
“Okay.  Just so we’re on the same page,” he said casually, and tried to thrust down the note of triumph in his voice.  He may have been the one that said it first, and she had blown him off.  But she had said it twice now in the course of the last eight months; hooray for being in hiding.
Scully’s eyes were still smoldering on his, and her look was very sure.  “Oh, don’t worry,” she said firmly.  “We are.”  She reached out to pick up her beer and took a very casual swig ...but her eyes never left his.  She smiled suddenly.  “We should do this more often.”
He couldn’t quite stifle his laugh, but he managed a nod as he swallowed a swig of his own beer.  “Wouldn’t that be nice,” he murmured.  Scully either didn’t hear him or didn’t care to think about their constraints anymore tonight.  He was sure it was probably the latter.  He knew how good her ears were.
They remained in that bar for about two more beers and finished off a couple more dances; one a bit quicker and with time to show off moves they hadn’t used since their first dance, though he had often hoped for an opportunity, and one more slow one to top off the night.  They were both in a certain mood as they left the bar at about twelve-thirty, ready to call it a night early and make their way back to the hotel to consummate the date their dancing had set for them.  They certainly headed back out onto the street a deal more relaxed than they had been coming in.
The relaxed mood, unfortunately, was not meant to last.
They had made it only about a block when it happened.  Someone or something detached itself from the shadows between one building and resolved itself suddenly into a vaguely human form that grabbed Mulder by the shoulder.  By the time he spun around, dragging Scully back with him, it was too late.  They had already been identified. 
X   X   X

(Amor Fati, pt.53: “Eyes”)

Mulder stumbled back from their attacker, thrusting Scully away in an almost instinctive gesture, and stared a bit wildly into the dark space too narrow to be categorized as an alley.  Trash, a bottle or two...and that shadow.  The shadow stepped forward to accost them again...and their alarm faded to pure shock as their shadowy assailant moved slowly into the light of that lone streetlamp.  Mulder could not quite contain a grunt of surprise as the faint incandescence back-lit a cloud of blond hair, outlining the high cheekbones and icily pretty features of the former Special Representative to the Secretary General of the UN.  The mood evaporated like runoff in the New Mexican summer.
“Mulder?”
Mulder put a hand out to steady Scully, but his eyes remained on the former diplomat.  He narrowed them sharply and nodded once.  “Scully, I’m sure you remember Marita Covarrubias.”  Ahead of them both, Marita’s face was as unreadable as any shapeshifter.
Scully recovered quickly and drew up even to her partner.  “Ms. Covarrubias.  Yes, I remember you.  I know my partner was afraid you had met an unfortunate end.”  Her voice was carefully neutral, but her frame was as tense as Mulder’s and ready for any action that might be called for.
Mulder took up the thread of conversation from her.  “Yeah, we’re glad you’re alive, Marita.  Haven’t seen you since before your boyfriend Krycek bought it.  Glad you managed to get over that nasty bug you were exposed to.”
The diplomat’s lips thinned with distaste, and maybe the memory of pain.  All her former icy beauty had disappeared in the face of that pain, and her face for a moment took on the gaunt look of a plague-survivor; a haunted, almost emaciated look that shone from her hollow eyes and testified to the rigours of an ordeal that Mulder too had been through and had tried to forget.  “It’s been awhile.”  Her voice was a bit accusing, and hoarse with that remembered pain.
“Luckily the entire set-up remains fresh in my mind,” Mulder responded softly.  “My dear hapless half-brother made a report on his own findings before he met his unfortunate demise.  You happened to have a small starring role near the end.”
“And so did Alex, I suppose.”  If possible her lips flattened further.  “I hear he got shot by your pocket Assistant Director.”
“Does that disappoint you, Marita?”  Mulder’s eyes were unreadable.
Marita's face was unreadable.  “I mourn him and I bid him good riddance.  Alex was a foolish tool, nothing more.”  Her face took on an involuntary look of quiet agony, taking on once again the gaunt shadow of her own private mental hell as it was reflected in her haunted eyes.  “And yes, you’re right; I was exposed, and vaccinated...and re-infected, over and over again.  But unlike your experience in Tunguska Mr. Mulder, I never fully recovered.  As you saw it happen in Russia, there are some who are...biologically less well-attuned to the changes as others, who do not last as long.  I did not have that certain affinity for which your ‘father’ was so proud of in you.  That year...”  
Her voice trailed off.  “At the risk of sounding reminiscent, I was nearly dead when those bastards in the Resistance  took over.  Almost, but not quite.”  She stopped abruptly, and her lips thinned again, making her cheekbones stand out even more hollowly and sculpting her once-pretty face into a pinched grimace.  “I’m lucky the Consortium had administered the new Russian vaccine to me before They showed up.  They proved to have excellent timing.  The Elders had just gotten the vaccine built up to where it might have worked past the first thirty-six hours.  I was the only one to benefit from it, though at the time I thought I would rather be dead.  There were deleterious effects.  I’m sure Agent Scully, as a doctor, could vouch for that.  My body chemistry has been compromised.”  She shook her head.  “Suffice it to say I have as many reasons as you do to want to stop Them.  Both.  I only helped your...father...” she grimaced, “because I was still convinced that playing along was our only hope.  Alex no longer was; he’d gotten caught trying to sell the last chip off to the Rebels.”  At Mulder’s stunned look she smiled softly, and though it was a predatory smile it brought back her normal pale prettiness and flushed away the image of the tortured soul she had become.  “Ah, you didn’t know that, did you? You thought his main betrayal was taking possession of the digital tape."  She shook her head in negation of that possibility.  Alex got himself thrown into a Middle Eastern prison for almost a year after the Rebels took over and he realized the balance had turned.  He was always great at switching sides when the situation called for it.”
At Mulder’s truculent look an impatient expression fleeted briefly across her sharp features, making her look peaked in the half-light.  “If you’re worried that I might not really be me, you can check my neck, or have Agent Scully do it.  They didn’t think I was worth the effort of cloning.  Not like my companion here.  But then, perhaps you will believe him; he is one of that ilk.”  At her words both agents glanced up in surprise.  They hadn’t been aware that anyone else had joined them in the alley.  On the end of Marita’s last breath, however, a tall ascetic shape detached itself from the shadows like a benign and debonair vampire.  He too they recognized as the streetlamp illumined his sagging face.  The English Consortium member that they had mentally dubbed ‘the Well-Dressed Man’.
Scully recognized him first.  She had, after all, seen him looming over her several times in the past.  “Mulder, isn’t he…”
“Yes,” he replied quickly, voice flat.  “I saw him go up in smoke after he gave me the vaccine when you were in Antarctica.”  His gaze had never left this new apparition, and his voice was flat, betraying not the slightest hint of the shock Scully could feel humming through his tense frame.  “I suppose that means that the original English Elder was worth cloning, then?”
“Yes,” the cultured voice of the clone echoed softly over the damp streets.  “He was until he assisted you.  That was a foolish thing for him to have done, but it bought us all time, and at that point I doubt he felt he had any other options.”  The clone was even less forthcoming than his predecessor.  “Now that this reunion of obviously dear friends has been completed, there is some business to accomplish.”  The clone paused dramatically.  “We come bearing news that might be of some interest to you, sent by the enclave that shelters us.  Information that perhaps the enclave you have joined is not privy to, or more likely information that they had thought to spare you for their own reasons.”
It was one too many shocks in one night.  Mulder stepped back grimly, hand on Scully’s arm.  “If its news that endangers our standing with them then we had probably better not hang around to risk it.”  He turned to Scully.  “Let’s go.  I don’t think we have anything to say to either of these two.”
Scully had torn her eyes from the dead man to stare up at her partner in surprise.  “Nothing to say?  Mulder, they’re not doing us any harm, and I don’t doubt that whatever they came here to tell us is important on some level or another, or they wouldn’t have sought us out this way.  It can’t be the safest thing for them to do.”
“Indeed it is not,” the cultured voice of the manicured doppelganger rang out on the quiet street.  “But we have been asked to perform this service.  There is somebody that wants to see you.  Somebody that I am sure you remember.”
Scully stared at her old informant warily.  “I suppose it’s too much to ask to hope that this personage is somebody we should trust.”
	“Ah, no; unfortunately Ms. Scully I wouldn’t say so.  But then that is not surprising, is it?  You seldom trust anyone, from what I gather.”  The clone’s eyes flickered to Mulder and back again.  “No indeed, I wouldn’t say that.  In all actuality I would say that any one of us that trusts this man is a fool.  But you have gone to hear him out before now, and I do not doubt that he might have something of importance to add to your understanding should you meet with him again.  You will be in little danger from us; the members of your own enclave protect you even now, and the person we speak of is a captive, and as of this moment of little harm to anyone.”
	Mulder’s face was flatly dangerous.  “Do we get a little time to consider it?”
	The clone eyed him astutely for a moment, eyes glittering in the dark.  Beside him Marita was like a pale insubstantial wraith.  She caught Mulder’s eyes grimly and shook her head just slightly enough to be seen.  ‘Not too long,’ she mouthed.  Ahead of her, the clone was speaking again.
	“Consider all you wish, Mr. Mulder, but remember that to take us up on our...offer...you must slip away again as you have done tonight.  Your enclave wouldn’t want to see you exposed to the interests of another, despite the fact that they’re all ostensibly working toward the same goal; they each of them seek any advantage in this fight to keep from being wiped out.”  The eyes still glittered.  “We can wait a day, but then we must leave this city.  Make your decision quickly.”  Without another word, the clone seemed to melt back into the shadows, leaving Marita standing alone in the faint light angling in off the street.
	“Don’t take too long thinking about it,” she murmured.  “We’re taking a real chance here.  Your...bodyguards...are watching this little meeting with some modicum of disapproval.  If you want to take us up on our offer or discuss it further, meet us here in twenty-four hours’ time.”  Then with a furtive glance around she too drew back into the shadow of the tiny alley and disappeared.
xxx
The two former agents made their way back to Grayson’s Hotel in a daze, and let themselves in past both Renegades and doorman with very little comment or discussion, slipping from the elevator to the nearest door of their suite in a bemused silence.  All was quiet, the room cast over with the breathy pall of several sleeping bodies.  Frohike, Langly, and Byers lay scattered haphazardly around the room on pillows on the floor and on cots, like an unlikely harvest cut down with a giant thresher’s flail.  On the king-size bed, Scully’s mother lay on her back with William sprawled against her bosom, Skinner slightly to one side and unconsciously cradling her hand in his.  At any other time the scene would have seemed incredibly surreal to them both, but at this particular moment nothing seemed surreal anymore in the face of this most recent revelation.  Without waking anybody they made their way through the connecting door to the first room and went through their evening routines as if in a cloud of quiet unrest.  There was certainly no way that they could bring themselves to fulfill the earlier promise of the night; not now when that spell had been so harshly burst in the strobe light of unwelcome disclosure.  Mulder moved in absently to lie behind Scully as they took to their bed, fingering her pale, fine-boned hand in his, but neither slept for a long time.  
It was about four AM when Scully woke with a start from a light but restless doze to behold the unnerving sight of Mulder, to whom she had turned somewhere in the wee hours, tossing his perspiring head reluctantly against the damp, overstuffed pillow, murmuring fitfully with eyes squeezed shut as if to deny what the recording instrument of his mind showed him on the endless reel of nightmarish memory.  The sight jerked her suddenly and completely awake as it had always done, and she shifted to take one stubbornly balled fist in hers and gently pry the damp fingers open.  She should have expected him to dream, here in a new place.  There were always bad dreams on the first night in a new place.  But then, she had been distracted or she would have turned the TV on to tide over the rumours of the brain.
“Mulder.  Mulder, wake up; it’s just the dream,” she murmured, and louder when he did not stir or acknowledge her, “Mulder.  Wake up.  Come back.”
“No...no we can...”  His restless murmur filled the night with a quiet susurrus like the murmurs of unquiet ghosts.  “Don’t give up.”
“Mulder?”
“We can rebuild it...” he mumbled insistently, and turned his head back into the pillow with a movement of sharp denial.
“Mulder, wake up.  You don’t need to stay there...”
“No!” he burst in suddenly, and every muscle in his body seemed to tense.  “Don’t leave me!  SCULLY!”  Voice harsh with fear he started up, eyes shockingly open and staring around the room wildly as if expecting to find her gone.  Startled, she squeezed his hand and firmly commanded her heart to stop fluttering.  This was a different dream then.
She knew the dream was seldom the same anymore as it had once been, all those years ago.  Finding his peace with Samantha’s abduction in their last year on the x-files had put paid to most of that agonizing dream cycle where Mulder relived, over and over again every night, the traumatic ‘memory’ of his sister’s abduction...but after only a few months of relative peace, the spectre of his own abduction and torture had reared in to replace that old warrior with fresh terror.  Her heart clenched each time she had sat with him while he struggled, endlessly, to exorcise that demon...even more so now that she knew the particulars fearing the damage that reliving that torture might do to her lover’s mind.  She had hoped that finally telling her about it would release him from that spell, but...  In any case, this dream seemed to be different, and in order to know how to help him to heal she would need to know what it had been.
“I’m here,” she murmured reassuringly, and ran a gentle thumb over the back of his hand where it clenched in hers.   --I’m always here; I’ll never leave you--  
Mulder was squeezing her hand back, almost crushing her palm in his panicked grip as he looked at her, eyes still unfocused.  She sat up all the way and gently detached his fingers so that she could shift his grip, and tried to push him back down.  He resisted.
“You...”  He stared at her through the jumbled mass of sleep-tousled hair, looking suddenly so young and vulnerable that she had to swallow a lump in her throat.  He looked like William.  He looked like their son, awake from the same dream and shuddering with a baby fear and lack of understanding.  At least she hoped he would not be disturbed this night, safely ensconced as he was in the other room within the sheltering arms of his grandmother and perhaps muted by the nearness of her own buzzing, sleeping mind.  Their son had begun to pick up on Mulder’s nightmares all too often of late.  
“You left me,” Mulder said finally, and his tone was accusing.  “When did you come back?”  Then he shook his head.  “No, it was the dream again, wasn’t it.”  He slumped suddenly, dropping back to the pillows as if completely surrendering to the wiles of the night.  He threw his free arm up over his forehead and stared at the ceiling for a moment, a rueful grin crossing his face and gone just as quickly.  “You must be getting really sick of this.”
Scully lay down carefully beside him, never once letting go of his hand.  He did not try to reclaim it.  “No, Mulder; I’m not.  I told you I’d be here when you needed me, didn’t I?”  She smiled softly, reminiscently, and raised the hand that she lay on and brushed his damp hair back from his cooling brow.  Her fingers brushed the old scar and slid past it like a whisper.  “It wasn’t the same one, was it?”
He avoided looking at her for a moment, eyes still tracing the cracks in the ageing plaster of the ceiling as if trying to commit them to memory.  “No,” he finally admitted it.  “I’ve been having this one for a few years now...” He glanced at her as if curious to see how she would take this news, “Ever since my little ‘operation’.”  He tapped his head gently with his free hand and then subsided back against the pillows once more.  “Usually it's just a dream, but this time...”  He met her eyes fully now, and she could see the querulous little boy in there, lost and seeking understanding of a phenomenon that he could not define.  “I don’t know now if he’s supposed to be my inner child, my inner idealist like the Jungians would say and as I once thought, or if he somehow represents my Quest, my baby... or  you.  Something that we’re trying to build together.
“This boy, he always comes to me,” he continued.  “It’s on a beach, the kind of beach I used to frequent with my family when I was a kid.  He’s building a spaceship out of sand; life-sized, a work of art.  Exquisite...and probably very like the one you saw in Africa, or the one in Alberta.  He wants me to help him, and usually I do...”  He raised himself up urgently on one elbow, and his gaze hardened on hers.  “For the last few years I’ve helped him.  But during my surgery, when I first had the dream, I had chosen a different life, had given up my work for a false sense of security, and he confronted me about it.  Started to kick the ship apart.  When I asked him why he told me that it wasn’t his spaceship, it was mine, and I was the one destroying it.”  His eyes flickered.  “Then even though I had been told you were dead you came in...and told me I had betrayed our Fight for creature comforts, and that I had to get up and fight the Fight.”  He looked her straight in the eye now.  “You were my conscience, speaking back to me...and he was my soul, a warning.”
His eyes looked inward now, recounting.  She didn’t dare interrupt as he went on inexorably.  “Ever since then, its always ended with me helping him to rebuild the ship...until now.  Now he’s accusing me of ignoring my task, of hiding from my responsibility to the world.”  He shook his head slightly, still looking down at the bedclothes and plucking at the sheets with thumb and forefinger as he thought it out.  When he spoke, it was with the air of a man making a frightening, reluctant confession.  “This is the first time I’ve had it in a while now, Scully, and now that he’s old enough, I can see the resemblance.  That’s what really scared me.”
“What Mulder?”  She was shaken by the uncertainty, the self-accusation in his tone.  “What resemblance?”
When he finally raised his eyes to hers, they were haunted.  “His hair is a bit lighter, but he looks like William, Scully.  He looks like our son.”
	She felt her stomach drop, and fought off the sensation.  --Some dreams are just dreams-- she told herself ruthlessly.  “Mulder, I know you don’t want to hear this, but there are probably a hundred different explanations.  William has become the Quest now; the thing we are trying to build.  If this boy now wears William’s face...”
	“Yes, there are explanations,” he interrupted sullenly, “and that one probably comes the closest.  But....”  He shook his head, driving away the frustration.  “None of those explanations, even that one, would satisfy me right now Scully; you know that.  And not because I don’t want to hear it, and not because I want there to be some pat paranormal explanation for what’s going on in my head.  I am a psychologist, remember?  I know that some of these things are just the things I want to see, and the things that I fear.  And it represents the tenuous nature of the thing that I do fear the most, Scully, but this time it’s the feeling I can’t shake...a horrible foreboding.  Have you ever had a dream that left you feeling so unnerved that...”
	She didn’t bother to nod acknowledgement.  No matter how much she tried to deny it, there were dreams that she had had...  And there was no reason to hide it anymore.  Science may not explain the how in this case, but faith could still supply the why.  No matter their source, dreams like this could tell them things to watch out for, and warn them when something was coming.  She had wondered for some time if Mulder’s nightmares might not stem from his openness to this kind of experience.  Especially now that she had experienced them for herself.  “What do you think it means?”
	“I think that something is coming...or maybe I only fear it.  Maybe that’s what’s coming through; my fear of having to make a choice that no one should have to make.  A choice between our mission and...the things we hoped might survive.”  He glared suddenly at her, and his grip on her hand became fierce once again.  “And I don’t really know if I give a damn, Scully,” he said harshly, “because I will not sacrifice our son; not to fulfill any damned destiny, and certainly not to save these people.  I’m not even sure sometimes that the world is worth saving.”  His voice rang with disillusionment, the alienation that had always licked sullenly beneath the surface of his caustic exterior...and the kind of alienation she knew she would have to keep from striking their own son.  Scully suppressed a shudder.
	“I don’t think we’ll have to, Mulder,” she murmured firmly.  “Maybe that’s wishful thinking on my part, but there’s a reason that he was born, and it wasn’t just to die, or to satisfy some galactic agenda.  It’s a narrow window of hope we’re banking on, I know...but I would take it to mean that the choice is already made.  We’ve made it.  His existence alone leads me to believe what I already feel in my heart.”  She caught his angry, self-flagellating eyes with her quieting gaze, and wriggled her fingers gently in his grasp.
“The human race is worth saving, Mulder.  We have to believe that, or what are we doing here?  The Truth is a cold dish when it’s set out alone--and the conspiracy no longer exists to be exposed.  In the absence of that enemy, all we have left to face is that faith.”
	“It also means that there’s nothing left to believe in,” he retorted softly, “and no more demons to slay.  Goliath has been cast down, Scully; and David alone cannot bring down the very Gods.”  He stared into her eyes, and the look in them was that of a lost soul seeking absolution.  “All I have left to Believe in is right here in this room, and in the next.  If I lose it, any of it...I just don’t give a damn anymore.  Before I only wanted to save it because I knew you would want to.  I’m saving the world for him now...because I can still see a reason in your eyes to do it.”  His eyes seemed to cleave into her very soul, and the need for balance within those depths took her breath.  “Never stop telling me it’s worth it, Scully.  You’re my faith in life, in some reason for all this.”
	When she could reply, she spoke with soft certainty.  “I won’t stop, Mulder, because I won’t give up.  And neither will you.  You never could then and you won’t now.  There’s a reason for all this,” she murmured with quiet assurance.  “I see it every time I look here.”  And she lifted his hand in hers and placed it against her heart.  “I have to believe in that...and I hope you can too.  And if you can’t...then believe in me.”
	When he looked down again it was with something akin to gratitude.  “I don’t suppose you could reassure me of that?  I don’t much feel like sleeping anymore, anyway.”
	“I thought you’d never ask.”
xxx
“When you were gone I did this,” she told him later, lying in the warm circle of his arms.  “I dreamed, like you.  It scared me.  Terrified me.  And I knew, finally, what it was like for you to wake up alone all those years.”
“I was never alone anymore once you came into my life, Scully.”  His fingers, running in a long endless caress over the cooling skin of her back, whispered over the now-smooth edges of her Ourborous tattoo, and Scully remembered as she always did the intoxicating combination of pain and pleasure that the getting of that tattoo had stirred in her.  In most cases the body memory of that feeling caused her to turn toward him hungrily, and run her fingers through his hair in implicit demand...but tonight she simply wanted to be with him.  It had been so long since they had enough time and no worries to do this properly...but once spent, the upsurge of tumultuous emotion had been released to give way to a kind of unhurried calm.  Everything seemed to hold its breath in a hush, as if the world was waiting motionless and listening for a cue to leap into action once more--the final dance.  Their earlier considerations now seemed almost remote in the face of this, more certain truth.  Here was humanity.  Here was life, and the celebration of it in the midst of death.
Outside their cocoon, through the thin walls that separated this room from the next they could hear a sudden sharp exclamation as William woke and asked querulously for his Mama...and the quiet murmur of Maggie’s voice rising like a tendril of fog through the walls as she reassured the toddler and sent him back to sleep.  The noise apparently woke the Gunmen, who were more than likely unused to being disturbed from slumber by the sharp voice of a child.  There was the unmistakable bass rumble of Frohike’s voice, then Langly’s higher shrill raised in sharp contrast, and the quiet murmur of Byers encouraging them all to go back to sleep.  “God, guys; its just the baby.”
“Loud little sucker,” was Frohike’s sullen reply, followed by another miffed-sounding comment from Langly, mercifully muffled by the thin wall.  Skinner’s voice, then, murmuring something to Maggie, and her reply, equally unintelligible, before silence reigned again beyond the far wall.
“Nice to let someone else deal with him for a night,” Mulder commented gaily.  Scully gave him a dirty look before she acquiesced to the moment and subsided against his warm reassuring bulk.  “We should probably try to get back to sleep; it’s only about five.”
“I’m awake,” she murmured back to him, “and not likely to go back to sleep now.”
He settled his shoulder blades in a little deeper against the pillows and raised his left arm to slide warm fingers into the nape of her neck, rummaging gently under the thick curtain of her hair where she loomed over him.  She shivered at the caress as he allowed his fingers to echo the question that passed from his full, amused lips.
“Are you?”
“For a little while yet.”  She raised her head against his hand to look him squarely in the eye.  “The original intent of this night still stands, I think.  We’ve been doing nothing but sleep for three or four months.”  She made a sour face.  “There wasn’t anything else to do.”
“What are you trying to tell me, Scully?” he teased.  Let her work for a repeat performance.
She didn’t hold it against him.  “That I would really rather you didn’t go to sleep yourself just yet.”  She always had been the patient one.
“Oh.  Well, that was just one of several options.  I wasn’t exactly banking on it.”
“Good.  ‘Cause if you were I was ready to make a serious pest of myself.”
“You’re already a pest, Scully.  That’s part of your constant allure.”  The only way to stop her pinning him with the brow was to distract her...and it was definitely the most favorable method.  It worked admirably, and it wasn’t long before she gave up coercion to apply herself to the task at hand.  The latter half of the evening passed with a deal less angst than the former...and the morning came like renewal; the new sun washed clean of the fears that plagued the dark.  Ready to go on.
xxx
	That morning might be their last with the company.  The Renegades had said they could keep this building secure for thirty-six hours, but if they chose to make that meeting tonight, they might not be able to return.  Scully emerged from the steaming bathroom a beat behind Mulder, hair still damp, and ceased rubbing the unruly mane with the towel to behold her partner, who had left her to finish their shower alone to go make sure their guard was still on the door.  With heightened awareness, she quietly enjoyed the way his shapely behind molded nicely in his gray sweats where he stood in his ubiquitous white t-shirt, slightly bent over as he brewed a packet of complimentary coffee on the small courtesy table and exchanged jaunty remarks with Frohike.  The small, frog-like man sat looking creased and disheveled on the back of the small sofa.  He didn’t look like he’d gotten much sleep.  Mulder, however, looked much more relaxed than he had in some time.
She wondered if her own satisfaction showed as clearly, and fought down a blush.  They hadn't had much time for sex in the shower lately, either.  
“Will you stop it with the videos, Mulder?”  The conspiracy theorist had thrown up his hands as if in defeat.  “They’re okay, I took good care of ‘em.”
“Well you better keep taking care of them, Melvin, or...”
“Like you need ‘em anymore anyway.”  It was a sullen, envious comment, and Mulder grinned at the other man with annoying male smugness.  
“That’s none of your business, Frohike.  You said it way back when you first met her; ‘May the best man win’.  The best man won.  Deal.  You got the videos.  It isn’t gentlemanly to fish for details.”
Scully finally decided to break up this little party before it really got out of hand.  “Something I should know about?”
Frohike’s head snapped up sharply.  He had obviously had no idea that she’d been standing there.  Mulder had known, however.  It was easy to tell that from his stance.
Frohike had the grace to look embarrassed.  Mulder did not.
“Ah...uh...well, good morning, if it isn’t the lovely Doctor Dana,” Frohike covered with false charm.  Mulder just kept right on grinning, his back still to her as he bent over the coffee, obviously glad he wasn’t the one in the hotseat.
“Good morning.  Now talk.”
“Ah...”  Frohike looked appealingly at Mulder for rescue.  Mulder simply raised one shoulder and let it drop.  --Your problem, Melvin; get yourself out of it--
“Ah, well, Agent Scully...back when...”  He cleared his throat and then grunted defensively, “You were fair game!  Mulder said you were just his partner.”  He glared at his former federal patron.  “He didn’t tell me he had designs on you himself.  Dog.”  He glared accusingly at the former FBI agent.
Scully pulled her eyes in from the hacker to glance at Mulder’s back, amused.  She wondered how long ago this had been.  She had taken Mulder to task at length for giving Frohike her phone number all those years ago.  The little man had called her ceaselessly for months on end until her abduction had channeled his specific regard for her into a more...respectful outlet.  She had liked it much better when he’d started bringing her flowers, though he’d looked uncommonly ridiculous in a suit.  Suits looked good on some men...but definitely not on others.  She wondered now if he had worn one to try to compete with Mulder; wondering if that was the kind of guy she dug.  Poor Frohike.  Her eyes wandered to Mulder questioningly, obviously ready to hammer him for the details.
Luckily for both men, Maggie entered at that moment carrying a freshly bathed, diapered, and altogether cheerful-looking William, who was burbling happily to himself and tugging at his grandmother’s curls in a desultory fashion as he stared at the bubbling coffeemaker.  He saw his father and held out a small hand for his morning hi-five.  “Mor’n, Dadda.”  He was certainly talking more than he had done when it was only them.  He probably hadn’t felt he needed to communicate verbally with parents that had learned to read his every intention.  With his Nana, a person he knew required verbalisation, and whom he desperately wanted to please...
Mulder smiled and answered the gesture with their obligatory slapping of palms.  “Morning Slugger.  Did you sleep well with your Nana?”
“Yup.  Nana smells good.  An’ she sleeps quiet.”  He caught sight of his mother then, and began to bounce in Maggie’s arms.  “Mama, you feel better!”
--Mother of God--  She glanced at her own mother and felt the blush rising again, sensing as she did Mulder’s suppressed mirth as he turned away to busy himself once more with the coffeepot.  Maggie was looking at her with an approving smile.  What did she have, a big red sign on her forehead?  She tore her eyes away to look back at her son.  “Yes I do, Sweetie.  Thanks for staying with your Nana last night.”
“S’okay.  Cos’ I need’d a break too.”  He grinned a baby grin that looked exactly like the lopsided thing that usually crossed his father’s face as he turned back to face his grandmother resolutely.  “Nana, Willm’s hung’y,” he said warningly.
“Well, that certainly makes sense, Liam.  Come on, then; let’s go see if there’s any fruit left in the basket until your uncle Walter can order up some breakfast.”
“O’nges,” he stated firmly.  “I don’ like gra...”  He glanced at his mother for help, heard the word on her mind before she could supply it verbally.  “Yeah.  Grapef’ut.”
“Okay, we’ll give the grapefruit to your mommy and daddy.”  She rubbed noses with her small grandson in a kind of easy intimacy and raised her eyes to smile across the room at her daughter as they moved toward the fruit basket next to the coffeemaker.  “Fox.  Good morning.”  She stood on tiptoe to kiss Mulder’s cheek while Will made a determined grab at the biggest orange in the pile below.
Mulder was blushing a little now, too.  “Good morning, Maggie.”  Scully smiled as she moved to perch easily on the back of the small sofa.  She knew that it was as weird for Mulder as it was for her to have their relationship flaunted so openly before their old friends, to have it be so accepted by her mother...but for Mulder it was more.  He was not used to having more than one person in the world accept him, as he was and with no qualms or requirements for change, no demands for conformity to a pre-established mold.  Maggie was smiling warmly at the man who was to all intents and purposes her son-in-law.  She reached out to help Will to lift the orange he had chosen, simply too large for his small hand to grasp, and sauntered over to the sofa next to Frohike.  She scored the tough hide of the fruit with her thumbnail and began peeling it absently while William looked on in fascination.
“Tha’s not how Mama does it.  She don’ like to get juice unner her nails,” he informed his grandmother sagely.  She murmured some response.  Mulder finally left the coffeemaker and came to sit beside Scully on the edge of the couch, hands taken up with two brimming cups of java, one lighter and the other sweeter.  He handed the appropriate mug to his partner.
“Maggie?”
“Oh, I’ll catch the next one, Fox.  I’ve already had some, and we have our hands full, don’t we Liam?”  William looked up from the proceedings to eye all parties interestedly as the ebb and flow of emotions and thoughts, reactions and memories eddied through the participants and around the room.  Maggie’s eyes flickered to her daughter and then to Mulder, and back again.  “So, did you have a good time last night?”  There was no hint of teasing in her voice, only that warm matriarchal elegance that marked her the kind of prepossessing and capable maven that Scully envied.  She had often despaired of ever gaining the self-possession that her mother showed daily under pressure and without effort.  Self-possession and elegance.  There was no hint of anything but polite inquiry in her gentle voice, but this time it was Frohike’s face that went red, and he stood up and excused himself, mumbling something about waking Langly up to check into the progress on their pet database.
After he left William smiled suddenly with a sweet baby smile that threatened to break Scully’s heart, it happened so seldom lately.  He lifted his small arms like a winning Olympic athlete.  “Ever’body’s HAPPY,” he crowed exultantly, and beamed at the entire room impartially.  “Mama, I want ever’body to stay happy.”
Scully bit her lip.  How to address this?  She opened her mouth, but before she could answer, Maggie came to the rescue.  “Here, here’s your orange William.”  She placed one segment of sunshine into her small scion’s hand and passed her clean hand over his downy head.  “I’m sure your mommy and your daddy want that too, little Liam, but sometimes it can’t always be that way.  I know someday they will finish the thing that you have to do, and then you can come and see me anytime you want to, and you will all be happy and so will I.  We just have to be patient.”
William sought his grandmother’s eyes with heart-wrenching trust, as if desperately seeking surety.  “Promise?”
Maggie raised troubled eyes to regard her daughter.  “We all promise to try, William; don’t we Dana.”  It was less of a question than it was an order, and the gentle voice suddenly had a note of steel in it.
Scully tried to hang on to her earlier feeling of well being as her own doubts come to settle in on her again.  She knew her mother was concerned.  Were they really doing the right thing keeping William with them?  Or was she just being selfish, keeping herself whole and her threatened family together to the detriment of her small son’s peace of mind?  As if reading her thoughts, Mulder moved his hand to cover hers.  “It’s better than the other way,” he murmured for her ears alone.  God, how did he always know what she was thinking?
“William,” Maggie smiled and bent her head to the small boy’s ear.  He had stopped chewing the orange segment with his tiny white teeth and was staring at his mother in consternation, obviously sensing the change in the room.  He broke it off to glance up at his grandmother questioningly, yellow juice dribbling from his small red lips.
“Wha’ Nana?”
“Can you go see if uncle Walter has finished ordering the rest of the breakfast yet?  Tell him I said you can’t eat just an orange for the most important meal of the day.”
Diverted, if not openly glad for an excuse to leave the sudden emotionally complicated room, the little boy swung his legs eagerly and began to slide south.  “’Kay.  I wan’ eggs.  An’ toast.”  He slithered the rest of the way off of her lap and padded to the connecting door in a half-trot, half-jog, still carrying his orange.  He slipped through the half-mast aperture and disappeared into the room beyond.
Maggie had raised her eyes from his progress to regard them both solemnly, and as Scully opened her mouth to protest or defend, she raised her hand to forestall her daughter.  “No, Dana, let me speak.”  She dropped her hand and looked down, obviously considering her next words with care.  “I don’t pretend to know all the particulars about what you two are trying to do, but I’ve heard enough to know that it’s terribly dangerous.  So I know you wouldn’t expose that angelic little boy to the stress of this life you’ve been living if he wasn’t in more danger had he stayed with me than if he went with you.”
“Angelic?” Mulder murmured in protest, but Maggie went on as if he hadn’t spoken.
“Maybe not lately, but then the normal patterns don’t seem to apply to my grandson.  He seems to be beginning his ‘terrible twos’ a bit early...but then he seems to be beginning a lot of things very early.  His diction is clear, his ideas precise, and he knows what he wants...but he is very unsure, and despite how he sounds he is not mature enough for the pressures that he is faced with.  Dana,” and now the gentle woman turned to her daughter earnestly, “did you consider the emotional dangers as well as the physical when you chose this path for the both of you?”
Scully looked down, fighting back the tears that wanted to spring from her eyes.  “Yes,” she said finally, simply.  What else could she say?  “Yes, and I knew that it would be hard...for all of us.  But Mom,” and here she raised her head again, never more grateful than she was now for the silent support that Mulder lent her through their clasped hands, “even if I could take it back now, I don’t think I would.  He wasn’t safe back home, with or without me...”  She raised her eyes to Mulder’s then, knowing what this admission would do to him, and knowing that it had to be done anyway.  “I even considered...giving him up...before I left.  Knowing what his life must be like, either with us or with me only, I considered it.”  Beside her, Mulder stiffened but made no other sign of how her words had affected him.  His face held no expression...but he did not remove his hand from hers, and that was enough.  She picked up her voice a little and went on, feeling the strength of her convictions rise up to supplant the fears.  She had been through this in her head over and over and over again in the last eighteen agonizing months, both with and without the bulwark of Mulder’s presence--indeed she had thought of little else--and she had to believe that the conclusion that she had come to was the right one.
“William is...special, Mom, and if I were to try to give him another life for his own sake, the people that want to take him from us would find him.  No one is better than They are at finding the things They want.  There isn’t any other way, because whether we’re in his life or not he’s a target...for his own reasons.  And whether the ones that found him were the ones that want to kill him or the ones that want to take him and...use him, he would still have a less certain life even than the uncertain one he has here with us.  We know how to protect him, and...” and here she glanced up at Mulder again.  His strong face was no longer blank but filled support and full accord...and the strength of both their convictions, united on this one point.  “And how to support his...gifts.  I no matter what the price, to any of us, it has to be less than sentencing him to an upbringing among strangers that would label him a freak...that would let him label himself as such.”
Maggie was staring at her hands.  “Walter hasn’t told me much of this, Dana, for reasons I am sure you both know better than I.  But I know how to pay attention, and the one thing I have gleaned in the past few years, no more so than now, is that whatever you’re doing and whatever my beautiful grandson is meant to do, it is one of the biggest things that has ever happened on this Earth.”  She raised her eyes then and met both of theirs.  “I would rather remain ignorant of such things...but you tell me,” and here her voice became suddenly firm with an edge that was almost fierce, “you tell me, either of you, the minute there is anything that I can do to help you and that child, because I would surely lay down my life if I thought for one moment that it would help you to keep him safe and sane.  Do you understand me, Dana?”
Scully stared at her mother for a long moment, speechless, before she managed to find the words.  When she spoke, her voice was thick.  “Yes Mom, I understand you.  And I promise to keep you involved if that’s what you want.  You have my word on that.”  She knew better than to gainsay the woman that had raised her.  Not on such a point as this.  Sweet, yes, and strong like a whip of willow, she would bend but she would not break...and she was like iron when her family was threatened in any way.
“Fox?”  Maggie’s voice brooked no mutiny on this one concession.  Mulder cleared his throat, and his hand twitched on Scully’s.  Scully knew suddenly the struggle that must be taking place within her lover.  He had refused to allow Maggie to become involved even on the most artificial level, had kept her innocent with a stubborn resolve that outmatched even her own daughter’s...and she knew why.  Mulder, she knew, felt that one more Scully to be harmed because of his Quest would damn his soul for eternity.  She knew further that if Maggie were to come to harm in this, that it would destroy her relationship with him as surely as it would destroy her own piece of mind.  He would drive her away for her own supposed safety with no more emotion than a charging bull, untouchable and inconsolable in his guilt...and yet she had not hesitated in answering her mother with the affirmative that had opened that forbidden door forever.  She hoped that he could forgive her.  She had had no other choice.
Mulder’s insight managed to surprise her once again, though, as always.  “I should say no, Maggie.  I should tell you to go home...I should have made you leave the moment I saw you here yesterday, no matter how curious your presence made me.  But...if there’s one thing I know very well, it's the look of a Scully woman with her mind made up.”  He sighed then, and looked ruefully at his partner before he turned back to his mother-in-law.  “Just promise me one thing.”
“What is that, Fox?”
“Please don’t get yourself killed.”  Scully wanted to grab his hand and hold it to her cheek.  The resigned desolation in his voice tore at her heart and left it bleeding.
“Tit for tat, Fox?”  Maggie’s voice was tinged with amusement, and her eyes sparkled with the reflection of the small smile at the corners of her careworn mouth.  “I’ve managed to live this long, and I don’t have any intention of dying yet.  I’ve just started this whole new life, remember?”  She looked at him with something akin to compassion then.  “I know you feel responsible for Melissa, and I know that my son has fostered that belief in you...but whether you accept it or no, there are some things that happen in this life simply by pure unhappy circumstance.”  Mulder’s lips flattened to a thin line of pained denial, but she ignored him to roll on with the inevitability of the tides.  “I take on this risk willingly, Fox, and in full knowledge of what I am suggesting...and I do it precisely because I will not outlive yet another child that I love.  That is more valuable to me, Fox, than your peace of mind, Dana’s...or my own life.  Remember it.”
Mulder was staring down at his hand where it lay clenched in a death grip with Scully's.  Only she knew what this moment meant to him, the dreadful weight of it.  His hand did not ease in its tetanus, but his voice was soft as his eyes as he looked up at her mother.  “I don’t think I’ll ever forget it, Maggie.”  The pain was palpable...but there was something else under there...something indefinable.  She thought it might be relief; relief that the confrontation about Melissa, and about Maggie’s involvement, was finally over, the rug aired.  She hoped he wouldn’t spend all his energy stomping on it after the fact, or he would have little left when the time came to do battle with their greater demons.
xxx
“GOT IT!”  Langly’s voice seemed to crawl with satisfaction from the other room.  They looked up in time to hear a faint intake of breath.  “Oh God...hey, you guys had better get in here!”
	They moved quickly from their perches on the sofa back to slip through the slightly-ajar portal.  On the other side, the Lone Gunmen and Skinner stood in a ragged semicircle around the laptop where it was set up next to a large conglomeration of wires and metal that Scully knew was some kind of anti-tracking agent the Boys used when they were online to avoid piggybacks.  William hung forgotten from Skinner’s shoulder, seeming to reel slightly from the impact of a shock that was so palpable in the room that even they could feel it.  Without a word the two former agents jogged over to join the semicircle while Maggie reached out to take her grandson from the Assistant Director’s numb grasp.
	Langly’s superior kung-fu had finally done its work.  The six remaining countdowns on the encryption were now visible, and together the seven dates seemed to sound like the complicated clicking of a cell door closing and locking down on the ring of doom.

INTERCEPTED INTELLIGENCE.  PRIORITY ALERT.

July 07, 2002
Civilian operation to commence immediately.  Negotiations continue in phase three, stalled.
Eviction notice to be served at undetermined date, post May 2003.
April 01, 2003
Final date for successful implantation.  Continue negotiations.
Eviction notice to be served by May 2003, date yet undetermined.
May 01, 2003
Last day to acquire priority merchandise and eliminate all other proceeds.
Priority merchandise must be destroyed before Seeding date can commence.
May 30, 2003
(date undetermined, seek intelligence from Colony Infiltrators)
Final day to release Purity.
Seeding to commence antedating this announcement.  Eviction notice to be served.  Cease all negotiations.
Emergency units to remain on stand-by until crisis is past.
October 13, 2003
Cut-off date; squatters to be removed at this time.
Remove all ground units if necessary and plan orderly retreat.
November 21, 2003
Farms established, original landowners reinstated.
Request extra units to combat menace?
April 14, 2009
All proceeds from merchandise to be recorded.
Results to be sent to Home System.  Evolution will cease.
May 21, 2012
Operation Overrun complete.  Evacuation of Home System will begin at this time.
Earth will be relinquished to Sons. 
December 21, 2012
Earth will be discarded by Sons; experiment will be declared unviable.  Relinquish Home System?
End of Resistance effort.

Mulder and Scully stared at the screen as if mesmerized.  Scully felt her entire being numb at this unbearable onslaught of dates and figures that catalogued both the quiet inexorable facts of their demise...and the death warrant that lay in wait for their child among the hopeless categorical list of desperate measures to be taken at each step by a government that had no backing from the beings that were their only hope to end the struggle.  Neither of them heard Skinner talking at first.
 “I’ve been putting feelers out since the ‘routine medical check-ups’ began,” the bald man murmured softly into the stunned silence.  “I had an interesting call the other day, just before the guys brought this to light, but I had no idea what he was talking about until now.  I’ve just now remembered, and in this context...”  He glanced over at Mulder, his eyes inscrutable behind their thick lenses.  “It seems your old friend Senator Matheson is taking an interest in things again.  He...ah...encouraged me to pass along to you that your talents could be well-used in the current situation.”  At Mulder’s hard look and Scully’s startled one, Skinner went on grimly, “All you would have to do to ‘secure your place in the ranks of the Saved’ would be to turn in a certain piece of ‘priority merchandise’ to the ‘proper authorities’--and this entire situation would be no more.  Like I said, I had no idea what he was talking about.  I thought you two had managed to find something They’d wanted while you were out here, but now, in this context...”
Mulder straightened up with a muffled curse.  “That...” he began, face incensed, then just as suddenly turned away, fists clenched at his sides.  Scully stared after him, face registering first shock, then a weary sort of resignation, and then a hard look of feral determination that almost frightened the Assistant Director with its intensity.  This was a mother ready to fight to the death for her child.  She was gazing now equally at that child and at the lover who had helped her to create and nurture him, her face a study of conflicting emotions.  She wanted to go to the baby, pick him up and hold him to her and pray until she couldn’t pray anymore...and she wanted to go to her lover, her partner, and offer him whatever comfort she could.  The first option she knew would result only in a squirming demand for release and possible psychic damage to a child who did not need to be in contact with such desolation as she now felt...and the second was impossible just yet.  Mulder could not be touched until he had gotten control of his rage.  He was unpredictable when he felt helpless...and though she knew he would never hurt her, he might hurt himself trying to hold the violent emotions in.
Skinner was still watching them.  The former marine’s eyes were now full of something akin to compassion as he observed the subtle currents that ran between his two former underlings.  Always they had had this kind of tension between them; the tension of people who wanted to go to each other but could not...and didn’t necessarily need to in order to maintain that umbilical-like bond that stretched, almost visible, between them.  Now they did not resist the pull because they feared to succumb, but because they knew that other times would come, and in this, it was better not.
He finally spoke up when he thought it was time to shock them back to reality.  He doubted his opinion would be taken very well, but it had to be said.  He cleared his throat first.  “Ahem.  Looks like you’re kind of in a Catch 22.  William is going to be very popular in the next few months.”  His tone was commiserating but there was an undercurrent of steel there as his penetrating gaze bore into theirs, and both their heads jerked up to regard him in startlement.  “If I were you two, I’d crawl into a very deep hole with that little boy and never come out again until this thing resolves itself; Renegades or no Renegades.”
Scully looked up from her concerned perusal of her partner to regard her former superior.  She opened her mouth...but whatever she might have said was drowned out as Mulder stalked back to the tiny cadre by the table.  “And let Them win.  That’s what you’re saying.  Just let them win to save our own asses.  To be like Alex Krycek.  Like...” he glanced at Scully, the self-denigration and rage there enough to freeze her heart.  “Like my cigarette-smoking bastard of a father.”
“WHAT?”  Skinner looked like his eyes were going to bug out of his head.  Scully reached out a hand.
“Mulder...”
Mulder’s eyes were hot as he jerked his arm away.  “No, Scully, don’t try to placate me.  I’m not going to fold just because our situation is untenable...and it’s not because of my principles, and it’s not to score one over on that cancerous sonofabitch by proving that I’ll never be his son.  We are not going to give Them William to save our own asses, and we’re not going to sit by and let the world go up in flames while we watch and do nothing.  There is another way.  We just have to find it.”  His eyes, gray as slate in the dimness, hardened with that same determination that had so drawn Scully to him, all those years ago...but harder now, less a look of wonder than a look of implacable need.  The Quest, more than ever now, had become life...for them all.
Skinner’s eyes were flickering from one to the other of them, assessing, revising.  “And then do what?  Hope that everything will magically be okay again?”  His voice was harsh as he speared them both in a no-nonsense glare.  “I don’t know as much about all this as you two do, but I will tell you one thing.  Knowing what I do now, nothing will ever convince me that there is a once-off, no strings attached, pretty in a pink ribbon way to end this whole thing.  It’s too big for that.  Your ‘Rebels’ may think that eliminating that defenseless baby will help them to win this race, but I doubt that will work anymore than your hopeful little scheme.  I don’t think these Colonists have anything to lose anymore, and They’re running out of time.  People with their backs against a wall and nothing to lose are very good at throwing off plans even sixty years in the making if it suits their purpose, and no matter how hidebound these aliens of yours are, They have to know Their triple threat has dwindled to a desperate last effort.”
His voice became hard then, the voice of a man speaking some tough truths.  “When this thing hits the fan, it won’t be on your heads, my friends, nor will it be on your son’s.  If there really is some ‘Home System’ out there full of the more moralistic set of aliens, then They are the most cowardly bastards I’ve ever heard of, for They’d rather hang us out to dry than risk Their sweet asses to take care of what is ultimately Their responsibility.  They started this, and if one were to believe in what you two have brought to light over the last decade, They started us.  If They don’t step in soon They’re going to go down in whatever history is left as the biggest bunch of hypocrites ever to exist in the Universe, for They’ve become so mired in high morals that They’ve forgotten how to act on them.  And that is unforgivable.”  His voice rang with a sudden denunciation that showed his scorn of a race so unwilling to fight to uphold their principles.  This was the war veteran Skinner, the man who had fought a losing war but had never backed down in the face of his duty, and contempt ran rampant in his tone.
“That’s one thing that you two do that these...these things can never understand, Mulder, Scully.  You see the unwilling dichotomy of your morals...and yet you act on them, no matter what it costs you.  And you two have fought even when I thought there was nothing left for you to fight for, nothing left to lose or to gain.”  His voice then turned from its normal air of quiet command to a tone of such respect that she had to avoid glancing at Mulder to see how he was taking this.  She could almost feel him reeling from where she stood as Skinner went on flatly, but with faith in them ringing from his very being.  “And that, more than anything, is what’s made me back you, and finally to follow you both...no matter where you lead.  Because you’re the two most honourable soldiers that I have ever had the pleasure serve with.” 
 He grinned then, a short smile but sincere.  “And now that Krycek’s not around to nanobot me anymore, I guess I’m free, finally, to follow my conscience.  Now, when it really comes to the point, I can stop playing it safe and start taking sides.”  He looked at them through those piercing ovals of glass with something in his eyes that could not be labeled...something halfway between pride and admiration, sorrow, determination, and fidelity.  “Now that we don’t have anymore split loyalties to deal with, I’ll be the first to tell you that you’re my Generals on this.  It’s too late in the game for dicking around.”  He didn’t salute, but for some reason his erect stance made her think of it.  “You tell me what you need me to do, and I’ll do it.  My position in the FBI has done us all the good it’s going to do us for the remainder of this Fight.  Now you need me as a soldier.”  He shook his head slightly.  “I somehow knew in my heart that I hadn’t fought my last war yet.”  How had they ever thought his loyalties suspect?  Divided, yes, officially; but Skinner was with them.  And somehow that made her feel a great deal better.
Mulder was the first to speak.  He cleared his throat.  “Welcome aboard the troop transport ‘This Island Earth’, Sir.”  Despite his flippant words, his tone was far from sarcasm.  He was heartened.  “You can keep doing what you have been doing.  You can be our liaison at home, and be ready when we have a clear game plan.  You can pass this on to Doggett and Reyes and anyone else we can trust to back this up...” he glanced over at Maggie where she stood pale-faced and worried, off to one side, “and you can do your goddamndest to keep that woman over there alive until this is over.  After this all his the fan, as you put it, I don’t think anything is going to be left recognisable in the wreckage.  We can only hope that some of what we’ve fought for will make it through.”
Skinner nodded, watching as Scully came up to lay one hand on Mulder’s upper arm.  Something passed between them in a silent flash, and he saw Dana nod in agreement.  “Where are you two going next?”
Mulder glanced down at his lover where she stood, as always, exactly level with him and by his side.  Ready for what was to come.  “We have to go see about a contact,” he muttered.
xxx
The rest of the day passed like molasses on frost, spent in the kind of disconnected conversation of people penned up and awaiting some final doom.  That evening there was a short flurry of discussion over whether to leave William behind.  In the end, however, one argument stood above the rest.  No matter how terrifying an idea it was, no matter how bad a taste it left in their mouths, they had left him alone with either Skinner and Maggie or the Renegades any number of times in the last few months.  Just because they now knew how truly dangerous that had been did not mean the danger had not existed before they had seen proof of it on the DARPA countdown.  Better the devil you knew than the one you did not.  They had absolutely no way of knowing if this little jaunt they were taking was a trap or not, but should it turn out to be one, Skinner and Maggie and the Boys could be trusted to make sure that William was safe and remained under the Renegades’ protection.  They doubted that they would get such a promise from those with whom they now went to rendezvous, whatever their allegiance...and the entire set up could just as easily be a simple ruse to get William away from their Renegade bodyguards so that he might be taken to whatever party wanted him the most and had gotten the closest.  They would be able to tell from their reactions what the clone’s and the former UN rep’s intentions were when the two saw that they had failed to tote their fated progeny along on this little side-adventure.
Outside the hotel they were approached again by their bodyguards.  The leader, seeing that they did not bring William out with them, nodded once to the clone beside him.  The man nodded back, turned on his heel, and disappeared through the double doors of the hotel.  The alien then looked at them a little grimly.
“This other enclave wishes you to contact them so that they might show you something that we have not?”  Its expressionless face bored into theirs like a bludgeoning implement.  “Do you not doubt that there is anything there that you would need to see?”
Well, that was an answer to one of their questions.  Apparently their contacts really were from of the Renegade cadres that dotted the landscape along their line of march.  They had been sheltered within the territories of several such during their long summer of flight.  It was good to know that they were not walking blithely into a Rebel ambush or a Colonial entrapment scheme.  “Maybe.  On the other hand, we haven’t exactly been informed as to how well all your little groups keep in touch.”  Mulder was at his most caustic right now, still barely containing the fury of the last few hours.  The uncertainty they were both feeling had her as on-edge as he.  She wondered how long before he would pop.
“I can assure you that you will not like what they have to show you, Mr. Mulder,” the alien answered softly, “but it may be educational.”  It glanced at Scully.  “Will you accept an escort, then?  We would protect our investment in you as we would protect the one that yet lies within these walls.”
“Sure, what the hell; make yourselves at home.”  He needed to take a deep breath.
“They told us to come alone,” Scully broke in quickly, forestalling further outbursts.
“Yes, well we may share common aims, but there is no love lost between the enclaves like us who harbour only Project refugees, and those like the one to which you wish to pay a visit, who choose to offer asylum as wel, and unwisely we believe,l to former Project leaders such as...ah, but yes, perhaps you already know?”
“The Elders are all dead,” Scully returned grimly, “burned to death by a violent chemical reaction when the Resistance first made itself known.  The representatives we met were either refugees such as you might take in, or the clones of Project leaders that are no longer any threat to us.  I guess you could say they’re all refugees.”
“Perhaps, perhaps.  But I think that you do not know all that you think you do.  Some prisoners, kept under guard, are still every bit as dangerous as they ever were, despite the alarming changes in their fortunes.”  The alien seemed to come to a decision.  “But then, you will have finished downloading the Countdown on your ‘Defense Projects’ database by now, and you know how limited is both our time and our resources.  Perhaps then, you should see how far those limitations go.”  It nodded.  “Just remember that should you become too involved in the happenings of now, you may too early be reintroduced to some of our agents within the Rebel government that walks your halls of administration near your old home.  Some you already know.  Others you do not wish to meet until we know that you are safe to meet them.  Remember it.”
Mulder and Scully exchanged glances, but when they turned back Mulder was as resolute as she was.  “We’ll be careful.  But we have to go.”
“Very well,” the alien said.  “So be it.  Lead us to the place of your rendezvous with this northern cadre, and we shall see.”
They moved off down the now-dry streets at an even pace, striding purposefully from lamp-lit pool to lamp-lit pool in the moonless night while their small Renegade escort of two trailed behind.  Grayson’s Hotel had been left well guarded.  Retracing their steps from the evening before, the small party soon approached the mouth of the small alley where they had been accosted during their too-short hiatus from fear the other night, and stopped to await the arrival of their contacts.  They did not have to wait for long.
Just as Mulder was beginning to get antsy, a shadow detached itself from the wall of the tiny space and settled in place in the small patch of twilight between them, the nearest lamp, and the tangible darkness of night shadow.  “You were told to come alone,” the suave English voice accused softly from the gloaming.
“Yeah, well we couldn’t risk pissing off the enclave that was protecting us, could we?  You couldn’t give us any assurances that we would be safe, or even that you were who you said you were.  For all we know, you could be bait in a trap to get us to expose ourselves, expose our son, to the Rebels or the Colonists.”  Scully didn’t have to look at Mulder to know that he was still very much on that hair-trigger edge.  His voice seemed to crackle through the night with a desperate need to act, to move things in their favour.  She was about to jump in when the svelte trenchcoat-swathed form of Marita Covarrubias resolved itself from the shadows behind the Well-Dressed Man’s doppelganger.
“Where is the child?” she asked.  Her wan face was concerned as she glanced from Mulder and Scully to her clone sidekick and then back at the party on the sidewalk.  “He wanted to see the boy.”  Scully felt her heart shrink in her chest.  Who wanted to see their son?  Was this indeed a trap?
Marita must have seen the look on Scully’s face, for her eyes focused on her fellow g-woman with a look of faint amusement oozing out from under the surprise.  “Oh, don’t worry, Agent Scully; you’ll still get to see this contact.  I doubt he’d give up the chance to taunt either of you just because you were too wary to bring your little bundle of joy.  I do hope, though, that you’ve left the child in a safe place.  He’s rather vulnerable right now.”
“Yeah, so we’ve heard; high demand item.”  Mulder’s face bore that dangerously blank look as he leaned forward.  “Look, Marita; either we go like this or we head back to our hotel and walk, because we certainly didn’t want to leave our son behind any more than we wanted to take him into some kind of damned trap with us.  Make up your mind quickly.”
Marita gave a quick shake of her head and spoke as if to herself.  “He won’t like it,” she murmured, "but he's not the only one, and we don't exactly cater to him anyway."  She glanced up at her tall wraith of a comrade.  “We do, however, need the information that he can give us.  Shall we invite them anyway?”
“I do not think we shall have another chance,” the distinguished-looking clone murmured as softly.  “Perhaps we shall see the child another time.”
Marita nodded and glanced around as if to make sure they had not been followed.  “Okay, come on then.  Hurry up; there may be replicants out there--from both sides--and we don’t want either group to know where we’ve set up camp.  Not yet, anyway.”  She glanced over at the Renegades standing behind the two former agents.  “You two coming, or not?  You have safe conduct; our leader was pretty sure they wouldn’t be able to convince you not to shadow them.”
“And you were willing to take that chance?”
“To see the child?  Certainly we were.  Weren’t you?”
The Englishman’s clone stared down with icy superiority at the alien and the clone that flanked the couple they had courted thus far.  “We must all see that for which we would sacrifice so much,” he said grimly, “or else the entire movement may come to naught when we need most to be of one accord.”  
The alien nodded and turned his head to look at Mulder and Scully before he reasserted his ocular tug-of-war with the other representative.  “When we see that your intentions are honourable, we will arrange for a more personal meeting for your enclave leader.  Until then we will go as assurance.  Your representative may return with us, should he so wish, to see the child with his own eyes.”
The tall, ascetic clone nodded once, sharply.  “Yes.  I suppose that will have to do.”
As they rounded a corner and approached a dark car with open doors on a small side street, another Renegade leaned out.  “Where is the child?” he asked sharply.
“Never mind,” Marita snapped coldly.  “Other arrangements have been made.”  The driver’s lips flattened into a disapproving line, but he uttered nothing further and pulled his head back into the sedan’s dark cab.
xxx
“I don’t suppose you’re going to tell me where we’re going?” Scully asked in a resigned tone as she stepped into the car behind the blond former UN representative.  Behind her, Mulder grunted a short bark of something that might have been sardonic laughter.
“Or at least how far,” he muttered.  They were both well used by now to being driven off to odd destinations in the middle of the night with no real explanation.
“It will take a couple of hours,” the woman answered shortly from within the vehicle.  “I suggest you settle in for the trip.  I hope, as I have said before, that your friends here are as good as they pretend to be at guarding your son’s well-being.”  From the front passenger seat the Well-Dressed clone nodded curtly.  The sedan pulled sharply away from the curb even as the last of their two bodyguards pulled his legs into the back seat and shut the door.
They drove into the unleavened night for what seemed to be hours, and Scully could feel her own anxiety climbing with every mile that separated her from her son.  Beside her, Mulder seemed as tense.  She was surprised that he wasn’t jiggling his knees as he stared out past their Renegade bodyguards into the inky blackness outside their window.  After a while, long stretches of tree-covered slopes began to appear like ghosts outside the dark glass, hardwoods and soft whipping by like grainy shadows in the night.  The air inside the cab seemed to become somehow more rarefied, despite the number of people breathing (or pretending to breathe) the available air within it.  Scully moved her jaw and felt her ears pop.  “Where the hell are you taking us?” she demanded sharply after a few interminable minutes.  There was no response.
After what seemed to be hours more but was probably only a half hour by normal standards, they seemed to finally reach a destination that suited their guides.  At any rate, the car slowly ticked to a stop and went quiet.  After a couple of hours of riding the sudden silence felt deafening on their depressurized ears.  “We’re here.  Get out.”  Marita suited action to words and popped the door open.  Her vacated spot was filled quickly with a blast of semi-frigid November mountain air, redolent with the cold spicy scent of fir and maple gone crisp with chill.
“Why do these people love the woods so much?” Scully complained lightly to Mulder as they extricated themselves from the cramped cab behind their bodyguards.  She shook the stiffness from her body, feeling like she had after that horrible series of bus-rides earlier in the year.  God, she was sick of trundling around on roads to nowhere.  Between the recent busing around and their tandem years of x-file-seeking in rental cars, she felt that she would be happy never to drive anywhere further than a half-hour’s trip again in her life.
“Forests are good protection, even in these ‘vacationing areas’,” their erstwhile silent companion answered her absently.  The nameless clone shook his head.  “The only people that frequent them are the occasional hikers and bicyclists, and they can be easily redirected.  Humans still fear the forest.  Whether that predates their use as fertile experimental grounds for our patrons here or not is immaterial.”  He didn’t look at the alien that accompanied him, or he might have seen a flat look of disapproval there.  “I’ll go make sure of their intentions.”  He moved off after their chauffer, never looking back once.  The alien followed him with its eyes.
“Clones.  Useful, but unpredictable.”  It seemed unaware that the Englishman’s doppelganger stood not ten feet away and well within earshot.  “Come.  We must follow our guides at a cautious pace.”  It waited for Mulder and Scully to make after Marita’s disappearing form before it swung in to take up the rear ahead of the Well-Dressed clone.
They moved into a sort of thicket past the small clearing in which their ride had come to rest and penetrated deeper into this short neck of trees.  After a few minutes of slogging through the springy, chilled undergrowth, Scully spotted what appeared to be a yet another small clearing ahead, taken up for the most part with a denser shadow.  She nudged Mulder, who nodded and redoubled his attempts to keep up with their inexhaustible guides, they stepping through the trees ahead of them like so many ghosts.  They approached the shadow, which turned out predictably to be a cabin, or rather the southern wall of one, looming over a small cleared space like a statement of voluntary isolation.  Choked by the brush and trees that grew up against the very logs of the aged construction and un-lit by any moon, it somehow seemed less sinister than simply uninhabited, neutral.  As if to put paid to such a notion, a door opened suddenly in their faces, seemingly detaching itself from the wall.  A little ahead of them, a flashlight clicked on, blinding in the gloom, clicked off, and then on again, destroying all vestiges of their night vision.  There was a short silence, and the door opened wider to reveal a room so well chinked that not a stray beam from the lantern within had penetrated the solid construction of the walls.
“You will wait here while we go to find the Leader,” one of their faceless guides muttered crisply, and the aliens of that cadre seemed to melt into the woods surrounding the cabin without another word.
“Someone wants to talk to you.”  It was Marita that spoke this time.  “In there.  I’ll come for you when we're ready.”  Her voice was as svelte as her figure in the dark as she pushed the door a bit further ajar and turned away to disappear as abruptly into the trees.
Ahead, within the cabin, the dimness coalesced and retreated before the flashlight’s stray beam, the two light sources seemed to combine forces, and they were able to see into the room lying directly before them.  Fickle, almost mischievous, the light danced, glancing off of smoke-darkened beams, and lit upon a figure sitting stiffly in a chair as if bound.  Then the light broadened in its beam...and they looked full into the face of a dead man.  
X   X   X

(Amor Fati, pt.54: “Of Gods and Monsters”)

Northeast of Grahamsville, NY
West of Ashokan Reservoir resort area
10:56pm

Staring at the sagging, withered visage of a man they had never expected to see alive again, Mulder moved ahead of Scully with single-minded protectiveness and stepped through the obstructing brush as if it didn’t exist, never taking his eyes off of the second occupant of the tiny room where their age-old nemesis sat bound to a chair.  The Renegades, both familiar and new, guard and ambassador, stood forgotten around the reinforced doorframe as Mulder spoke, voice flat and emotionless.
“I’m supposed to say something like, ‘I come once again and unaware, Old Man, to cast my despite in your teeth’...is that right?”  His eyes sparkled with something beyond hatred, but his voice never wavered or spiked with the anger that he must surely have been feeling.  “I don’t know why I should be surprised; we can’t seem to turn our backs on you.”  His tone bore such a withering weight of sarcasm that Scully thought her partner was going to leap on the bound man like a rabid dog.  But the lost creature that they had come to call The Cigarette-Smoking Man only smiled that familiar, too-wide smile and drew a slow, steady breath through the hollow metal graft that was his tracheotomy.  His charming voice floated across the small room to them through the haze of lamp-light as if from a great distance, suspended on that single fortifying breath that stood sentinel between him and waiting mortality.
“Ah, how I have missed you, Fox my boy,” he said cheerfully.  “How I have missed it all.  Your spunk, your single-minded fidelity to your crusade, your bullheaded, intractable refusal to accept the reality of your situation...and yes Fox, even this unfortunate predilection toward overdramatisation.”  His eyes flickered to Scully where she stood frozen in the doorway, heart frozen with disbelieving dread as that well-known, saturnine countenance creased with some private mirth.  His voice was almost jovial as he drew another whistling breath and turned his avuncular charm upon the woman whose life he had once held in his hand.  “And you, Dana dear.  How lovely!  Lovely to see you again, alive and in one piece after the travails of the past year or two.  I truly missed you both, and you must know how terribly I worried.”  The air whistled unnervingly in and out of the scar in his throat as if to belie the easy gentility of his conversation.
Scully felt the words rush out of her before she was aware that she had thought them.  She stared at this crippled wreckage of a man in marked distaste.  “You mean you worried about how your experiment was faring after you sent Mulder off to be taken by the Colonists to be used as some kind of damned experimental next-step in the hybridization Project!”  Scully felt suddenly livid as she stepped into the room and glared at their nemesis.
The Smoking Man smiled a soft, paternalistic smile.  “Ah, yes; I had wondered what Their next effort would entail after the Resistance took over all their tools, the infrastructure They spent the last sixty years...funding.  It must have been a hell of a blow.”  He smiled again, that weird, broad smile that so unnerved them both.  “Unfortunately, though, I was...unable to offer my humble efforts to the New Project.  I had had to play both sides like my dear protégé Alex Krycek in order to survive...and then due to a small run-in with that promising but shortsighted young man I ended that year in seclusion, being nursed back to what now passes for health by certain persons who thought it might be in their best interests to secure me as a sort of insurance policy to their new pursuits.  Former acquaintances of mine, you understand, who now without the Colonists’ patronage had had to make new alliances...some of them not exactly conducive to good relations with their former superiors.  One of them was my nurse, who called the doctors that were once my underlings in the Project...underlings now scrambling to secure a toehold with the new Order.”  He grinned.  "So you can see the rumours of my demise have been somewhat exaggerated." 
The old man’s strange, too-wide grin moved off to be replaced with something that might have been mistaken for concern, a plea for understanding...in anybody else.  The hideous whistle of his breath through the tube in his throat seemed to echo eerily in the small unadorned room.  “I really had no idea that The Colonists would take you, Fox my boy, though I did suspect that the recent changes in your body chemistry might entice Them.  Why would I want Them to take you into Their own hands when you were my chance to rebuild the Project; my chance to save what little of my work remained?  Surely you must understand that until we came upon that damaged ship in Oregon, you were the only hope we had left.”  He shook his head slowly in a theatrical show of regret.  “Young Gibson had not been able to pass on his genetic anomaly to us...and ‘Wellspring’, the fetus that had driven the Project thus far, had been taken by the Rebels.  They did not share the Colonists’ offhand approach.  By that time I was no longer privy to a very great deal, but I still had my own people.”  His mobile face took on an expression of genial sadness as untrustworthy as his words, and he leaned forward against his bonds and struggled with labouring lungs to take in the next breath.  “We were both dying, Fox.  I now am as ill as you might have become, and the Colonists wanted you that They might finish the work that we had begun before you expired as a result of our mistake.  I had actually tried to keep you secret...”
“So that you could continue to use him to your own ends!” Scully broke in angrily, disdain and contempt bleeding from her voice like curdled molasses.  “And when you could no longer maintain his health in the face of an imbalance that you created, you offered him up like a sacrifice to the new Gods of the Colonisation!”  Her voice rang with hatred in the tiny space.  Behind them, the Renegade guard shifted to turn its head and watch them forbiddingly, but made no move to head off this confrontation two years in the making.
The Smoking Man was not about to drop his fight.  “And saved his life into the bargain; do you forget that, Dr. Scully?” he continued in his unruffled calm.  “Despite all your medical lore, could you have saved him had you known?”  The smug knowing in his charming voice did not change, but the insinuation was there and Scully felt her heart quail at the barb hidden there.  She had felt helpless in retrospect largely because she didn’t think she could have saved her partner from the scourge of his latent brain fever.  Perhaps if she had had access to the chip...but no.  The imbalances had gone too far.  She refused to give way, though, and glared back at the old bastard frostily.  He seemed to be on a roll.  “Ah, yes; you had forgotten, Dana, didn’t you.  You forgot because you didn’t want to think about it.”  Scully started, darting guilty eyes at Mulder, who had not moved from his spot in front of the old man since she had first spoken.  She felt suddenly sick to her stomach.  That time had been so confusing, so horrible...
The Smoking Man was returning her frank regard with a look of ingenious calm, voice once again affable; the serene patriarch.  “I have studied you both, you see--you have no idea for how long.  My colleagues came to believe that we had made a terrible mistake when we assigned you to accompany my dear boy on his mission, Dana.  They didn’t know that I had been watching the both of you for a very long time any more than they knew that I had as much claim to Bill Mulder’s son as he did, if not more.”  He redirected his gaze to Mulder.  “You needed a champion, Fox.  Someone to depend on; someone that would keep you going while you fulfilled your purpose...and someone that we could take away should you prove unmanageable in the position that we had set up for you to fill.”  Mulder returned the look impassively, refusing to give anything away to their oldest nemesis, and after a moment their enemy’s eyes flickered back to Scully as if hoping to find more reaction from her than from the man he had manipulated from the day he was born.
“And you have performed admirably, Dana; oh, beyond my greatest aspirations.  Through you, this dear boy of mine has even perhaps managed to shed the hair shirt that he has worn for so long as he tried to expiate the sin of the father that lay upon his blood...”  The smile widened again.  “The sin of both fathers.  Unfortunately, of course, your presence and the danger it has placed upon you has given him another hair shirt to wear--this one a bit more difficult to shed, with it’s presence a constant reminder.”  He grinned hollowly at his son.  “Difficult, isn’t it Fox, to wear such a heavy burden and yet to be powerless to protect the people we love from the fate that others have decreed for them?”  He shook his head sadly once again, hitching up his breath like a drover hitching up a team of horses on a sharp incline.  “I have found that it is far better not to love at all; to avoid all such attachments.  But yet I must still admit to such a weakness.”  He took yet another wheezing breath through the scarred hole of his tracheotomy.  “Ah, but I have become so fond of you both.  My children, both of you, now.”
When neither of them replied, he seemed to fill with something akin to hunger.  It brought to light what he really was; a feeble old shell, broken, lit only with a piteous need to feel his life’s work had not been in vain.  He leaned forward a bit against his bonds; a wasted, shriveled husk of a once-powerful man, and his eyes took on a look of something that might have been curiousity.  “So you have pieced it all together now, have you?  Or so you think.  Roswell.  Our terrible surprise.  The sheer serendipity of it; we would never have known about the Colonisation if the ship had not crashed, the result of an interstellar Resistance-Colonist dogfight come too close to home.  Our use of the bodies as a bargaining chip.  We tried to use the DNA from the survivor and failed, way back in 1951 when in our interrogations we discovered to our horror what Their plans were for us.  When that didn’t work we tried to use the new field of genetics...to create a biological agent, a poison that could stop them...but as the general public has now learned so much further on, mature cells are not amenable to that kind of tinkering.  Stem cells, fetal stem cells were what we needed, what our predecessors convinced Them we needed to begin our fledgling work as Their agents here.  They always preferred not to get Their hands dirty when others could do the work for Them, and prepare their way.”
Mulder’s voice was disdainful.  “And you were only too happy to do their dirty work for Them.”
“With the help of a few choice enforcers to see that we remained aware of Their scrutiny and of our timetable, yes.  But so hands-off were They that They could not keep hold of the Project once they lost their lever:  our little gentlemen’s club.  Their window.  The Rebels in a way, were much more shrewd.”  He said it without admiration.  “They got in and got their hands dirty from the start, at all levels, and immediately.  The Colonists had no response to that kind of heavy-handedness; They were taken completely at a loss, and scrambled for a response too late.”
The hated visage seemed to hollow and he hitched another dying breath in a series of dying breaths.  “Perhaps things may have been different, Fox, had the Rebels intruded themselves decades earlier, but only fools look back to what might have been.  The decision to collaborate was made long ago, and by the time your ‘father’ and I were recruited, the future had been set.  He was the one of course who gave us hope for a small subversive resistance such as we employed, in essence birthing the true Syndicate as you saw it, back in 1973.  A very clever man, Bill Mulder.  A traitor in the end, you know.  He always had too much sentimentality for the kind of work we had to do.  That was his weakness...”  His countenance hardened like etched stone.  “As it is yours, Fox.”
Mulder made a face at him.  “I’m sure we don’t all need a trip down memory lane to remind us of why we’re here, you sonofabitch.  No matter what you say, you will never be half the man my father was...and I will never acknowledge you as anything more than an opportunistic leach that spawned me by accident in order to score one over on a man you once called your friend.  I know you didn’t care for my mother; not one damned bit!”  Scully reached out to place a hand on Mulder’s arm.  He was quivering with some indefinable emotion.  Rage?  Fear?  If she could not soothe him, their precarious safety here might become a deal less assured.  But Mulder apparently managed to regain control of himself...at least marginally, at her touch.  Good thing too, for the Cancerman wasn’t done baiting him.
“Oh, I cared for her Fox; perhaps too much.  As I cared for your sister Samantha."  He sighed with exaggerated regret.  "If only she hadn’t run away.”  He ignored Mulder’s fists, balled in a sudden resurgence of rage.  That had been, after all, the point.  He seemed to be trying to goad his former patsy into attacking him.  When it didn’t work, he moved on with the pragmatic practicality of a man used to making his way in the world with all the assurance of one who had the authority to move nations.  “We all wanted to get our hostage families back, Fox, the families held so long away from us that They might guarantee our complicity.  I cared for Cassandra too.  I should have killed her when I had the opportunity, but I simply could not bring myself to destroy the mother of one of my sons anymore than I could cold-bloodedly sentence the other to a lingering death.  You do know that it was I that convinced the Bounty Hunter to save your mother when she was ill, don’t you?”
“You,” Mulder began stonily, “do not get to speak of my mother.  Ever.  Again.  You got it?  You used her...just as you used my sister.  And Scully.  And your wife and children, whoever their mothers.  Just like you used everyone who ever cared whether you lived or died, everyone you ever came in contact with, and you used the fears of an entire generation against them.  And that, old man, is a pattern that can never be forgiven, no matter what your hidden agenda was meant to accomplish.”
The Smoking Man shook his head sadly in the face of Mulder’s contempt, seemingly unmoved by the recitation of the victims his life’s course had spawned.  “You wouldn’t understand.  You weren’t there, where we were; you’ve never had to make such a choice.  A hard choice makes hard men.”  His eyes seemed to drift back through time; he apparently did not consider the choice Mulder and Scully had to make regarding their own son to be as difficult or as terrifying as his own.  “We were all young men once too, Mulder; family men, idealists, patriots all...and all with no other choice but to subordinate ourselves and hope for the best.”  The wise, hard eyes glittered in the faint light of day as it sifted through the cracks and chinks of the cabin walls and shattered the colonies of dust motes floating on the serene air of an early sylvan morning.  “We were the finest products of our generation, or of any other I would venture to say...but with insecurities, of course, born out of fear.  The aliens exploited that.  Better men under pressure I have never had the opportunity to serve with, before or since; able to sacrifice all they held personally sacred to make the decisions that no one should have to make.  To decide who would live and who would not; in our own families and in the greater world.  Terrifying...and edifying.”  His merciless face seemed to gain the cast of a lost soul, and he took another wheezing breath around the collapsing hole of his untended tracheotomy.  “One can learn a great deal about the true nature of the human race in such circumstances.  I consider myself, in my own humble way, to be a student of the human condition.”  
His voice and demeanor became suddenly reproachful; a man facing the disappointment of a son that would not see reason.  “You think that we cast off all hope when we joined our hands with the enemy, do you not?  Ah, my son; you must realize that we were still stretching out toward that same vain hope that Bill Mulder envisioned when he threatened to expose the Project.  Even as we postponed the invasion with our bumbling attempts at artificial cloning, we looked for an answer.  Then, young Master Praise gave us new hope...and new fear.  Fear that we would be found out.  The vaccine.  The end of it all; the destruction of the Antarctic containment.  So much stress.  Finally understanding the Process, and then being unable to halt the doctors moving on their own orders...for they knew only their goal, and not our reasons for stalling it.  Cassandra.  The first using the process pioneered by our dear Gibson, and quite accidental.  Then you, Mulder.  Oh, how proud I was.  And terrified that They would find you before I could make a decent bargain.  One that might save us all.”  He sighed.  “And then Alex made off with the last chip, after all the information about its making had been fruitlessly destroyed, and I had to have him...remanded into custody so I could curtail his self-destructive activities.  He tried to go behind my back, Fox, for his bargaining opportunity, rather than trusting me to do what was needful for us all.  And that I could not allow.”
Mulder was staring at him.  “I just can’t understand you, old man!  The Rebels were the better option all along; couldn’t you see that?  If you had only worked with Them the moment They made themselves known to you, or even after, by giving them that chip...  You had to have been given a chance to join them...Spender told us they had infiltrated your very innermost councils.”
“But we were not so gullible as all that, Fox.  To err at that moment would be to commit suicide...and then all our careful planning would have come to naught.  All the sacrifices, all the pain...in vain.”
“You mean you couldn’t stomach the thought of abandoning your life’s work for a thin hope!  Why did you do it?  Why sell out humanity’s last chance for survival?”  Mulder’s voice was harsh with condemnation.
“Then, or now?  We could have joined their fight when they first arrived, Fox, but we lost that opportunity when we returned a Rebel fighter to Their custody.  Certainly the Rebels would not accept me; not after all my years of involvement.  But more than that, I believed in what we were doing.”  He smiled slightly.  “Some of my compatriots were more foolish, and attempted to move on, to forget the lost families of our youth, hostages that they believed we would never recover.  Their new families only served to damage their concentration on our goal...and so all other ties were eliminated.  As happened with my English colleague, who for one was of the same opinion as you and took up the same argument your father would have made had he still been alive.  But then, Bill Mulder had been against the hybridization Project all along.”  The lined face seemed to become philosophical, and the intake of air whistled mournfully through the half-clogged tube in his throat, a constant reminder of the final futility of mortal goals in the face of life’s end.  “Your father knew, perhaps, what we only found out in the end...that we would become but a bunch of old, lonely men, hoping against hope for their families’ return, and selling their souls for that moment.  And so he resisted, and your sister was taken to...encourage him.”
His look then took on that same predatory gleam that had momentarily deserted him.  “You honour him, Fox, by fighting it no matter how foolish such an aim may be, and so even though your cause is childish and doomed, still it is good to see.  That unending fidelity!  But did you know, Fox, that his was the vaccine side-project, and through that the genetic experimentation that caused you so much agony?  He knew that we needed the alien genome to proceed; to analyze its weaknesses.  It was he that first said, ‘Let us develop your hybrid for you, that you may keep your hands clean.  Give us the base genome, and we will do this work you need from us.’  So that we would be useful to Them.  So that we would be given free rein to prepare the planet as They would not have done.  And so They would not be here to see what we were doing, to prepare.  The vaccine.  We had tried so hard for so long to keep you under control; for each time we were required to call the Bounty Hunters in for assistance, to help clean up a breach too great for our own abilities, we risked exposure of the hidden Project that Bill Mulder initiated.  And so I was called upon to tidy up matters here.   So that we could prepare.” 
“So that you would be complicit in murder, in torture and in defrauding the world,” Scully countered before Mulder could.  “We know what Mulder’s father did.  And we know that you never forgave him for it.  That you tried to steal his children away as revenge...and all the while you were biding your time like a spider in the dark!”
	The old man smiled a deathly smile.  “After they tried to have me killed, I guess you could say that I lost faith in the direction my scared, useless colleagues had gone in, and I started making other alliances.  I had opportunities to buy my way in to the new Movement.  I let the Syndicate think I was still their firmest supporter, ready to go either way.  The Colonists no longer had the hostages they had once held away from us, and I had nothing left to lose.  I wanted you to join me, Fox, but even without you, I would go with whatever solution presented itself.  I told Jeffrey once not to become part of someone else’s crusade.  To pursue your own self interest always.  That goes for you as well, Fox.  It is what kept me alive.  What kept you alive.”
	Mulder glared frostily at the man that shared his genes, unmoved.  “You lie to yourself.  You made me part of your crusade, old man.  I thought I was pursuing my own self-interest, but all I was actually doing was your dirty work.”
	The old enforcer nodded.  “You can kill a man, Fox, but you can’t kill what he stands for.  Not unless you break his spirit.  As I broke Bill Mulder’s.  As I tried to do for you, so that you would turn to me.”
	“My father wanted to save everyone, not just your chosen elite!”  Mulder’s voice was harsh, angry.  “You may have broken him from that path, from being the lone dissenter…but you can never force me away him.  I will honour his memory, and so will my son!”
	The Smoking Man smiled quietly.  “It would have broken you had I taken Scully away.”  The shrewd eyes were calculating as he looked at them both; he knew exactly how much that one flat admission stung them both...because they knew without a doubt that it was true.  “Unfortunately, I overlooked that possibility the first few times, concentrating instead on your obsession.  Every time your life was threatened, I saved you as an indulgence so that I might get what I wanted.”  His face was hatefully mild, as if he considered destroying a man’s life of little moment.  More than likely he did not.  “But the x-files?  Those were not worth saving as was the man.  Destroying the evidence you had collected over the years, could accomplish much more than killing the man…who could still be useful to our cause…and to me.”
	Mulder wanted to turn away, but he couldn’t quite make himself move.  The casual way in which this bastard had taken his life away, so many times…  The devastation, the utter desolation he had felt when this man had broken his soul with the hoax, making him responsible for Scully's cancer...and later when he burnt his painfully gathered clues, the tidbits that nourished him, tried to break him…  Only Scully had pulled him back from the brink, a place into which he had wanted to fall into the darkness; both times.  Because he had owed her.  Owed her a life.  If the old man had taken her away from him instead…
And he had nearly chosen the other path.  Nearly chosen to let the Smoking Man win, to let Them win…and to take Scully with him.  To save her by forcing her into a kind of life that to her would be worse than death.   Having lost everything else, he had nearly gone to El Rico with Them.  He had almost chosen slavery.  He knew now even more than he had before that he owed Scully his all.  She had saved him so many times.  Standing next to him like a still, enraged statue, she was the strength he needed to be able to turn away every blandishment the old bastard threw at him.
The Smoking Man wasn’t finished trying, though, despite the resolute expression on his son’s face.  “Yes, Bill would have exposed my more personal aims.  As I told poor Jeffrey, he was a good man and a friend, but he betrayed me in the end.  I had to choose to destroy my friend...and now I sit here bereft of his council.  Now when it is all over, and all our high ideals turned to dust.  I tell you, Dana, Fox; one should never live long enough to see all one’s plans come to naught...any more than one should be forced to outlive a child.”  
“The child you killed! Because more than any of your sons, your ‘Project’ was your child, to be nurtured...and to be saved at all costs.  At any cost, even the life of your own son!  You killed your only legitimate child because he refused to bury the Truth!  Refused to uphold what you were doing to the American public, to the world, refused to support any longer your unconscionable abuse of power!”  Mulder’s harsh, accusing tone went cold again.  “So don’t give us that show of mourning.  You didn’t give a damn about Spender, any more than you gave a damn about Samantha, or Cassandra, or my mother!”  He was livid as he stared down at the man that had cold-bloodedly gunned down his half-brother.  The Smoking Man was looking away through the blanket-covered window of the cabin as if seeing a far-off vista.
“Ah, yes; dear sweet little Jeffrey.  Yes, that boy was a great disappointment to his father,” the old bastard said dispassionately.  “He was not acceptable to the Colonists and he had no gumption.  He was always his mother's boy, more than he ever was mine...and far too open to suggestibility.  No vision.”   He shook his head sadly while his bound body sat unmoving, and drew in another mournful, wheezing breath as if trying to make them believe him capable of pathos.  “Oh, such high hopes I had for that child.  Do you have any idea, Fox, now that you are a father yourself, strange though that circumstance may be, what it is like to hope so many things for your son...only to have those hopes dashed by harsh reality?”  He was met with stony silence.  Neither of them would ever again show surprise that the Smoking Man knew the things that they had tried to keep from him.  He would most assuredly have heard of their child by now.
Cancerman’s voice had turned callous.  “Well, the harsh reality of the situation is that your brother Jeffrey was a milksop, a pansy who wasn’t fit to occupy space in the office you had distinguished with your unrelenting determination.”  He actually sounded proud of Mulder!  “I made the mistake of putting him there when they were reopened, before you could take them back, for you had come far too close to the reason for which we had used you for so long.  But he could never measure up to your legacy.  Nor was he fit to be given a second chance, but he had that anyway and wasted it.  Once I knew that all my hopes were in vain in that regard I sent him on a suicide mission of sorts, but he failed in even that simplest of assignments--to get himself killed.”  
His voice seemed to fill with regret.  “No, Fox, the main mistake that young Agent Spender made was in choosing the wrong side out of some weak sense of Justice, or out of an even weaker attempt to score one over on his old man.  He was reactive and childish.  No hint of real action in the boy.  And in the end he chose the wrong road, dishonored his father, and that I couldn’t allow.  He was too blind to see enough of his own part in things to honour his father's path.”  The voice became hard again, settling on the latest inhalation like steel.  “The truth he chose, your Truth, is the truth that would damn the world.  It takes a harder man than Jeffrey could ever have been to chose the Truth we had made, constructed, and maintained for all those years, the Truth that would save one small portion of humanity--the hardest, the bravest, the most sensible, the best--from the executioner’s block.  He was not fit to be included in the portion of the Saved…and unfortunately he was deemed unsatisfactory even for the tests where we send most of the unusable.”  The dry lever of his voice seemed to go flat with disdain.  “Not even genetically could he measure up.  And so he had to be done away with.”  The cold calculation in the old monster’s words nearly made the both of them dry-heave with horror.  
“The boy was always a disappointment to me.”  Spender was dismissed, and their nemesis’ eyes came back to settle on the two agents he had formed and prodded, his voice filled with something near pride.   “You, though, Fox; you never were, and that is what I loved about you.  Don’t look so surprised, my dear boy; I do know the meaning of the word.  But very well.  Admired, if you are more comfortable with that word.  You are my son now, despite the fact that you would not join me.  My only wish is that you will see reason and honour me as your half-brother could not, before your futile cause robs you of both my favour and both your lives.”
Mulder started forward, stopping only at a warning look from the clone standing guard near the door.  His eyes flickered back to the hated man bound before him.  “I am no such thing, you bastard!  I will never be your son, and your...‘favour’ means exactly jack-shit to me!  Not only are you no longer in a position to help either of us remain alive anymore, but you know nothing of what we are trying to do!”  He turned to Scully, his face suddenly blank with contained rage.  “Let’s get out of here, Scully.  There’s nothing for us to learn here.  He just wanted to survey the wreckage of his work, let us know that he thinks he still controls us.”
“You think I do not?  You see only edges, Mulder,” the ailing man called after him, halting them both in their tracks.  “We, I made sure of it.  Enough for you to gather them together, enough to lead you from one kernel to the next.  But that is a laborious process to be sure.  You cannot have the entire story in one bite, because no one with whom you’ve come in contact has the whole picture, save perhaps a chosen few.  That was the only way, for then only that chosen few could ever expose enough to destroy the Project.  All they could expose was their own small part.  Like Michael Kritschgau.  Like the Gregors.  And alone, how could that small part be believed?  But I, I am the last to have that entire picture ready to lay out before you, Fox.  Do you not wonder what I could tell you?”
Mulder was standing in the doorway, stymied by indecision.  They knew far more than they ever had before, but what the Devil offered them now was the kind of lure that her partner would have a very difficult time turning down.  He stood stiff, immobile, not wanting to give the old bastard the satisfaction of turning back for what would likely amount to crumbs.  They knew enough. 
It was Scully who turned back to the divine puppet-master that had once contained every move they had ever made, surprising herself even as her movement surprised the man with whom she now trusted her soul.  She needed to satisfy a curiosity once and for all...and judging by the old bastard’s medical condition, this would very likely be her last chance.  “Why,” she asked softly, “if you had already given up any chance of cooperating with the Resistance, did you and Diana Fowley betray the rest of the Syndicate to the Rebels, there at the end?  For survival?”  The more she could understand about Diana Fowley, the more she could understand...why.  For once and all, she needed to get that off of her mind.
She had given him what he wanted, that was for sure.  The old man grinned once again and all to knowingly, face stretching into that grandfatherly smile that she at once feared and despised, overjoyed that his lure had sunk into one of them.  “Survival of the fittest, yes.  As my colleagues would have said, that is the highest ideology.”  The smile faded slightly, and the hands twitched as if he felt a desperate need for a cigarette.  It was the only sign that they had seen so far that the old horror they had once feared felt any remorse, any worry, anything but divine assurance in his own truth.  “But by that time my colleagues were too old and set in their ways to recognise that the time had come to change the methods by which they had hoped to attain survival--to play another side, follow another path.  They simply could not readjust their thinking.  But once I had recognised the danger, I prepared a framework, a way to buy more time, even as Bill Mulder had, and would have done again had he the opportunity.”
“You were working with the Rebels all the time!  Even while you continued to further your work on the Project!”  Mulder had turned around in spite of himself, unable to leave while useful information was being spilled.
“And even while I negotiated with the Colonists for Their undoing, and counseled my companions to pass off the chance as foolhardy.  They were always too single-minded for such delicate work; the game within a game was too subtle for them.  Once again, I would save their Project for them even when they did not know how close they had come to ultimate destruction.  And though he followed my lead, even that little fool Alex didn’t know that I was aware of the Rebels’ approach long before they arrived and had made the necessary precautions.  Luckily for him, the boy was smart enough to recognise main chance when it came to him, and he was quick to play another new facet of the programme.  He was quite the mercenary, my boy Alex.  One of the best, but terribly self-indulgent.  That was his undoing, in the end.”  
At the twinned looks of disbelief and shock before him the Smoking Man laughed uproariously, throwing his head back with it.  The laughter ended in a painful wheeze that seemed to damage more than it helped.  He continued, racked still by small tremors of the first genuine mirth that they had ever seen from the old bastard.  “Oh no, Dana, Fox; don’t jump to any hasty conclusions.  I doubt that I had anything to do with Alex Krycek in a family way, though I knew his mother quite well, dear woman.  Alexandra Arntzen.  Terribly afraid of being deported after all the threats to her father: you knew that young Alex’s grandparents were Soviet defectors, didn’t you?  He was half-raised by his grandfather.  But in the wake of my earliest disappointments with Jeffrey...and you, Fox, he fit the bill.  I needed a protégé, a flunky.  I spent a great deal of time and effort grooming that boy, only to have him fail in his first assignment, making himself useless to us.  I gave him many chances afterward...until he became a liability.”  He smiled that strange smile, his genial face egging Mulder on.  “Having lost your sister, my dear Samantha...” He ignored Mulder's doubled fists, “to whatever agency took her from our tender ministrations, and knowing that as the years went by you were becoming more and more the agent of Bill Mulder's will than of my own and not responding to my subtle grooming of you as you decided, foolishly, to honour your father’s ambivalence in a way that did him one better--for you lacked his indecisive weakness my boy!  Yes, Fox, I have hated you for that even as I loved you.  For being stronger, perhaps, even than I.”
He sighed, a deadly sound in the chill room.  “Yes, in the wake of all that I chose a promising young candidate whose parents I had a handle on from the Cold War days when I had saved them from the perils of McCarthyism at its most wasteful and its most useful…and I began to groom this bright young boy to replace the sons that I had lost, an operative that could insinuate himself into your trust, become the new partner to guide you in your appointed task...for the future.  For our Project.  To do what Agent Scully had not done.  I knew he could not be won over as she had been; he was far too cynical for that.  Our Dana had become a problem, had grown too close to your crusade...” his eyes glittered suavely on Scully’s face, “and even separated from you she stood between Krycek and his appointment.  So it was that she had to be ‘removed’.”  
He gave a melancholy little sigh and hitched another strained breath.  “But unfortunately, young Alex exposed himself in the process.  Very clumsy.  And after I had furnished all my teachings upon him, hoping that he would measure up, would even persevere despite my own need to see him fail and you succeed...”  His sagging face went stern with disappointment.  “In the end, perhaps sensing the return loyalty I withheld, he betrayed me.  I think poor Alex may have been a bit jealous of you, my boy.  He may have been a protégé, but he always knew that you were the one I wanted, and he hated you for that.  I think in the end that is why he turned against me.”
“Well, that and you tried to kill him,” Mulder replied flatly.
The Smoking Man continued as if Mulder had never spoken.  “And such a loss, too.”  He sighed.  “Like Diana, that boy had so many talents put to waste, and he could have learned so much from me had I allowed him.  But I saw his fatal flaw; he would change his place in the Game at any moment should it suit his self-interest.  Self-interest was the one flaw that you did not have though, Fox, and knew that I had to have you.  That made him very angry, to know that I refused him the chance to become my son in truth.  He hated you for that more than anything, I believe; felt that you had usurped his rightful place once he had taken the helm of the position that you had denied and abandoned, at my side.”
“I wanted so badly for you to join me, Fox, and continue my work.  My own son was a disappointment, Alex was too greedy and played all sides to the detriment of our association.”  He issued a small smile of depreciating sadness as he continued in the pleasant voice of a patriarch denied proper respect by his dynasty.  “Ah, Alex.  Unacknowledged son, or poorly-treated protégé?  One wonders what he believed.  He betrayed the Russians too, betrayed everybody, betrayed me...”  Air whistled in through the thin metal bracing of the trach, a death-rattle on hold.  “And my dear Diana, the daughter I never had even as your sister was the daughter I raised...Diana, in the end and unbelievably, betrayed me as well.  She still hoped against hope, I think; still believed that you would succeed.”  He sighed, a melancholy sound to issue from such an insufferably debonair visage, and as melodramatic as anything he had ever uttered in a way that belied any real emotion he might have been feeling on the subject.  “In the end, that is what turned her.  The traitorous human emotions as I said, to be avoided at all costs...and now you have allowed them to cloud your judgment on this matter.”  His eyes suddenly razor-sharp in that sanguine countenance, all sham affability and charm dropping in an instant as he leaned forward as far as his bonds permitted, face suddenly urgent, voice forthright and authoritative.  “You must give the boy up, Fox.  Its the only way to save us all; the Chosen few.”
Scully opened her mouth and stepped forward instinctively, ready to defend her child to the death, but the old man seemed to laugh to himself as he continued without pause.  “It is only right.  I have a vain hope that you two might, still, come up with the correct answer...even after all this fumbling around.”  His eyes pinned them both, flickered to Mulder.  “I must say of my seven children-Diana, Samantha, Jeffrey, Alex--you two were the ones that I would have never thought would survive.  The one to win out, Mulder, considering the path you had chosen, so diametrically opposed to my own righteous cause.  Young Alex seemed much more the type; out for himself, a survivor, like a cockroach or a rat…indestructible.  But he didn’t have any more of what it took than Jeffrey did.”  He grinned like a corpse.  “Perhaps you survived because unlike our haughty Kryeck you are nothing like me, and unlike that fatuous ass Jeffrey you felt no need to curry favour to please me.”  
His tone turned reflective, philosophical.  “And now of my many children only you two remain--the one that will never acknowledge me, and the one that will not betray his ideal to join me; the ultimate irony, don’t you think?  Of the two that were willing, one was a pushover and the other a rebel too fractious to harness…and the one with the dedication and worthiness to carry on my mantle is my archenemy.  And the thing is, I would love and admire so much the less if you would come to me.  For now even though I shall lose you I will always have in my mind the picture of the perfect son…the son I gave away to Bill Mulder whom I knew would raise him well, far better than I ever could...and the son that would destroy the world rather than see his ideal fall to the Truth of necessity."  He sighed mournfully.  "What I admired about you, Fox, is that you are so dedicated, so devoted…yes, that’s it.  I admire your devotion to your Truth…for it rivals even mine.  You would ride your truth into destruction and take your new family and your new unaccustomed happiness with you for the sake of a pure ideal.”  He smiled and moved on past the mention of their son.  “Even I was not so dedicated to our 'Project', and left the ship I had built when it began to sink.  For survival.  Perhaps in the end you will win simply because you do not care if you survive.  How selfless of you, Fox, and how foolish.
“And so my record is a poor one, I fear: one son weak, one misguided though strong, and one traitorous to his own end.  One daughter too weak to do her duty, one too emotional...and one tied by loyalty to the one that would never see the requirements of the job.  All profligate and self-destructive, galloping headlong toward destruction on their own fools’ errands.”  He turned then to Scully, standing as if forgotten to one side of Mulder who had heretofore been the focus of the interview.  “Ah, but I never regret the day I sent this lovely lady to you.  Dana, Dana Scully; what a stroke of genius that was on my part.”  Ignoring her flatly angry look, his eyes flickered back to Mulder.  “A gift, my son, to reward and to punish you for your patient, dogged intransigence.    Though I often had cause to regret doing so, now see!  I have a grandson to carry on my work!  Isn’t it grand?”  His face seemed to ooze devilish charm, and at this fourth threatening mention of their progeny Scully felt something snap inside her.  She leapt to her child’s defense before Mulder could swing to bear on the devil before them.
“You.  Will.  Not.  Touch.  My.  Son.  Do you hear me?  You do not even get to speak of him, you cigarette-smoking bastard!  He has nothing to do with you, and you have nothing to do with him!  You never will!”  To her surprise it was Mulder who put a hand to her arm.  She looked up in time to see eyes that had gone from rage to a quiet, liquid sorrow.
“It’s not worth it, Scully,” he murmured, then raised his voice enough for their nemesis to mark his words.  “All he has now are broken delusions of grandeur.  He is nothing, and our son is All.  We can rest assured that he can never harm us or William again.  He is broken beyond repair, and our son is the future that he would never have allowed, had he survived his own machinations.”
“Do you really think so, Fox?”  The Smoking Man’s voice rose up behind them with a tone of such jovial, smug amusement that Scully wanted to rip his eyes out with her fingernails.   “Why should you either of you believe that I had nothing to do with him, that I should not feel more than a little proprietary pride in his existence?  That boy is more than the sum of my entire life’s work, more than a hybrid, more than a replacement, more than human; more than anything I had ever dared hope.”  They did not turn to him, and as if desperate for their attention, the man’s voice became almost sprightly with a sort of knowing glee.  “Actually I should like to congratulate you, my boy, and you, Dana!  How marvelous!  I’m delighted!  May I be the last to offer you my wholehearted felicitations on your unexpected condition and successful birth?  To have survived such an ordeal and brought to term such an amazing child...”  Out of the corner of her eye, Scully saw his slightly avid look.  “I suppose he is outside.  May I see the boy?  You must understand I have a certain proprietary interest in the grandson both of myself and, in a way I suppose, the grandson of my once closest friend.   The summation of everything that I have worked for...and the last piece of the puzzle I gave my life to solve.”
“I will see you in hell before you see our son,” Mulder ground out flatly without turning, and grasped Scully’s arm to guide them both out the door.  The Smoking Man’s voice chased them, echoing from behind, mocking them dolefully in his wheezing voice.  He seemed a trifle hurt-sounding on that paper-thin exhalation.
“But can you not even thank me?  I made you both as you are now.  I put you together, I stalled for time for you both, while you consistently put pressure on the Project and threatened us with exposure even as you furthered our aims.  I’ve held your lives in my hand countless times, I’ve netted you, reined you in and let you go...and brought you to where you are today.  I convinced my associates that this dear lady was more useful to us as a leak via the chip than as a continued test subject.  Your son might never exist if I had not placed you where you might meet and do the work you both so capably did--if I had not allowed you to see enough each time to become reinvested; Dana after your small side-trip to my Antarctic installation, and you Mulder, so many times.  If I had not spared your lives?  My companions in the Project thought that one man alone could not do what you did, Mulder, but I knew that you were not alone.  Three times I had given back to you a champion the likes of which you had never seen nor expected; I gave you both a reason to go on.   Do I not deserve some credit for that?”
“Why did you want to see us, old man?”  Scully had never heard Mulder’s voice so cold.  “You’ve accomplished nothing today but solidify our determination to save our son from the mad career you spawned with your selfishness.  If you were trying to maneuver us into actually taking this rash action that you seem to fear, then you have succeeded.”
Cancerman’s face was sedate above the ruin of his throat as he nodded cheerfully.  “Merely testing your resolve, my dear boy, and of course to see how you were doing.  My favourite experiments, and succeeding beyond my wildest dreams.  To see what your intentions are, something that I believe my hosts here would like to know as much as I...if only for the record.  And, yes, I will admit that I wanted to see my grandson as well.  I do wish you would consent to a small visitation; you have brought him, haven’t you?”  His mellifluous, cultured voice dripped with greed beneath the false sincerity and sham concern, and Scully’s stomach seemed to curdle with fear as the realization hit them both.  Their smug nemesis continued to speak with amiable joviality.  “The cadre here will no doubt fail to support you without concrete proof that their case holds water before their so-called galactic Senate.  Yes, Dana, Fox; I know what you and these dreamers hope for; fools all, living on a fool’s hope.  Dreamers like the two of you, who for some reason will not give up this vain, childish hope that you will wake up one morning and things will be all right again, that ‘justice’ will win out, that there is some fairness in life.”  His voice went from affable to hard in a split second.  “Believe me; that is the first thing that one must let go if one is to survive.  Hope kills, for it leaves us weak and open to attack.  As does caring, and love.”
They both glanced back at him then; a withered and dying man tied to a rickety wooden chair in a hovel held by despised enemies.  The only thing that still seemed alive about him were his burning eyes, almost fevered over the sagging remains of his throat.  “There is no justice in a one-sided situation, my children.  If you had allowed yourself to realize that when I offered you each a place by my side, you would be saved by now.  If you had accepted it years ago, Fox, I would even have taken our dear Dana under my wing as well, if only because I knew that you would never turn your back on her due to this foolish sentimentality you two share.  Like Bill Mulder, like the Englishman who betrayed the Project for the sake of children now all dead in retaliation, you fail to realize that all attachments are dangerous; that anything that holds us back from survival is a sin against a god that meant us to survive by the law of fitness, even as dear old Darwin proscribed it.”  Dramatically, he sighed again through his sagging tracheotomy.  “But now it is too late.  The end-times are here, and we are out of options.”
“You spent all of our options and doomed your own grandson years ago, you sonofabitch,” Mulder was suddenly incensed again, “but you couldn’t stomach burying fifty years of your ‘work’ and admitting that you were wrong, could you?  Because you feared to hope.  Don’t waste our time trying to make us believe you brought us here out of some altruistic need to impart sage advice.”  His voice had gone from red-hot to icy with disdain in the course of that declaration.
“But it is a necessary insight that I share, my boy, and one that I would hope you’d take to heart.”  His voice hardened in an instant, and the look in his eyes was suddenly that of a man looking into a blank pit from which there was no escape.  “Hope is death.  I had a chance to join them, yes, back when my colleagues were destroyed, but I chose the much more realistic option than blind hope.  To play the Game.  That is a lesson that you have never learned, have you my children?”
Mulder shook his head, face blank and body vibrating with zeal.  “I don’t play a game where I don’t like the odds, and certainly not if it’s rigged.  If you were such a student of human nature you would have stopped banking on me long ago, old man.  I colour outside the lines, and I make my own rules.  Always have.  Reprogramming the Kobayashi Maru always gets much better results than trying to beat the house.”
“Ah, and so you believe that you are a Man of Destiny, then, do you Fox?  The lone James T. Kirk of the FBI?”  His tone had never been more mocking.
Mulder felt Scully squeeze his hand, felt strength of will flood into him through their link and douse his own doubts in a flood of iron determination.  When he spoke, it was with the dismissal of a man releasing, finally, the monkey on his back that had hounded him for years, the demons that harried him and the devils that chivvied his heels.  He had relegated the Smoking Man to a non-entity.  “No, not a Man of Destiny,” he answered plainly.  “A man of Free Will.”
At that moment the door swung open to reveal the cold light of pale predawn, and the low husky voice of Marita Covarrubias washed over them like a voice from the outer world.  “If you three are about finished sniping at each other, the Leader wants to see you both.”  She glanced up at the two clones that accompanied her.  “Watch him.”  The clones nodded grimly and took up stations on either side of the door.  She nodded at the clone that had stood guard during that entire tete a tete, and he turned on his heel with almost military precision to let himself out behind her.  She then focused her attention to the two former agents and inclined her head with an elegance that seemed out of place in her present condition.  
“He is broken, and wants only to be heard, to have someone say that he was in the right.  He begins to know now that he was wrong, too terribly wrong for too long.  It is conscience that eats at him now, if he even has one.”  Her voice and eyes seemed to bear a sympathy for them as she looked on Mulder’s set face and Scully’s pale one...but they glittered with despite when she spoke of the man that had once ruled her.  “Do not feel sorry for him.  He will reap what he has sown.”
“Then there is Justice after all.”  Scully looked up at Mulder and slid her hand into his once more.  “Let’s go Mulder.  He is the past, and the past is dead.  We have to go see about saving our Future.” 
Behind them in the darkened room where the devil sat, chained, that familiar, chillingly jovial voice rang out after them, still smug and unconcerned.  “So it’s begun, then.”  They left that voice in silence...and in the past, for good.  
xxx
Marita continued to talk under her breath as they followed her out of the door and into that tiny, weed-covered area before the door barely large enough for the portal to swing to.  “He has become a lonely and needy old man, demanding attention from all who knew him then; people who remember the power he once wielded...for there is no power when there is no one to see it, and kowtow to its aims.”  Her mouth thinned.  “He understands nothing of what is happening here because he understands nothing of the hope that we are all clinging to.  If it makes us fools, at least we are not already dead as he is; for he died the day he sold his soul away for a place on the summit, near the sun.”  Her voice was grim as a judge at a life sentencing.  “The first day he tortured a child with anemia and death to discover just exactly what level of iron would be tolerated in an alien chimera.  The first day he paid another to sell his soul and do the dirtywork he would not or could not do himself.”  Her voice had a small tremor in it, as if she had a more personal stake in this than she ought, and Scully glanced at Mulder.  From the look on his face they were both wondering exactly what that personal stake might be.  What was Marita hiding?
The blond woman had looked away, lips pressed into a flat line as if suddenly uncomfortable with the line her commentary was taking.  Mulder looked about ready to take up the thread of conversation, obviously wanting to keep Marita talking and see what drifted up in the course of small talk.  As the Smoking Man had intimated, there had to be more reason than their meeting with him to justify their being taken to this remote locale to see the encampment within which they were now isolated.  Scully only hoped that their old nemesis had been wrong--that this cadre’s goodwill did not rest on their interest in seeing her son...or this entire venture might come to naught.  She glanced at Mulder, and took over the trailing edge of the conversation from him as smoothly as he had picked it up.  “You’re awfully chatty, Ms. Covarrubias,” she pointed out bluntly.  “While you’re making small talk, maybe you can tell us why you brought us all the way here to see a man that you yourself say no longer has any involvement worth speaking of.  Surely it wasn’t just to renew old acquaintances.”  Her voice was like steel.  
The former SRSG nodded solemnly.  “We need the information he holds, in order to prepare our next move.  His price for that information was to have you brought here.  We agreed because our leader hoped to see your child even as he did.”  She looked down.  “The Leader should be here shortly.  While we’re waiting I thought we might make polite conversation.”
“Alright then,” Mulder broke in, taking the ball before Scully could pass it.  “Satisfy my curiousity, while you’re feeling chatty.  Why aren’t there any ‘supersoldiers’ out here with you folks?  They seem to be the only division of the Rebels not represented in these enclaves.”
Marita almost smiled, her sharp-featured face looking for a moment almost as hollow-cheeked as Krycek’s clone had done.  “Our method of self-preservation precludes our use of the newest biotechnology, Agents.”  She looked down, her expression almost grim.  “It would be helpful if we could have a few of those replicants on our side, but even if they would join us--and machines made for a purpose have no such motivation-they would...disapprove of our camping so close to the magnetite outcropping.”  She pointed to the hill on their left to where the depolarizing metal lay ostensibly hidden in a rising swell of trees as it continued to climb upward in a large sweep above the camp.  “Any imbalance in their iron-content destroys them, as I’m sure you’ve ascertained for yourselves by now; magnetite for all intents and purposes de-polarizes their delicate balance, dissolves into their entire structure the iron in their bodies that is for the most part concentrated in their bones to keep it away from the alien parts of their anatomy.  Stainless steel instead of marrow; the Teflon alien.  Around here, they’d just fly apart like leaves.”  She smiled mercilessly, as if enjoying the mental picture that produced.  “We manage to catch a few before the change, but...  Luckily the clones can join us; iron is present in lower amounts in hybrids specifically because of the alien intolerance for the element, and it is present in more areas of the body.”
She turned to Scully then.  “Have you any idea why the big problem with iron, Agent Scully?  As a scientist?  Why should something so simple have been so hard to overcome?”
Scully restrained a sigh and decided to play along.  Beside her, Mulder seemed torn halfway between rigid impatience, leftover rage, and growing interest.  “I’d assumed that it was some kind of species adaptation to a virtually iron-free environment.”
“Something like that.  Let me ask you this.  What are some of the effects of prolonged weightlessness proceeding from extended travel in outer space?”
Scully felt Mulder jerk as he made the same connection she did and in the same instant.  “Loss of bone mass, lowered resistance to light radiation.  Fluid in the head, severe loss of muscle mass in the legs.  Reduced lymphocytes.  A reduction in red blood cells...and an overproduction of white.  Anemia, coupled with a very strong immune system...if a person was fully adapted to the environment.  Such a being would have a hard time surviving in that form on a planet with gravity like ours, and would be more comfortable...”
Marita nodded.  “Reduced to a liquid form that could take on an adapted host body to do what needs doing.  Which would have startling effects on that same immune system as the reactivity with iron rages out of control when imbalanced inside a hema-based body type...producing a spiraling into anemic death, intolerance for atmospheric pressures,” in her mind’s eye Scully saw again the look of terrified agony in her daughter’s face as they had frantically worked to get Emily out of the pressure chamber in the hospital, “and an overproduction of the alien ichor which overwhelms the balance in the chimera and grows into every neural pathway, absorbing all available oxygen in an attempt to grow; to survive.  Like a plant.  Like a graft.  A graft that can survive without environmental oxygen when necessary, in space and under water...but a graft whose balance they never got quite right.  But when it is present in exactly the right amounts from conception to birth...”
Mulder gave up staring through the trees at the lightening sky to turn his incisive gaze on the former UN representative.  “The child’s blood would retain enough red blood cells in balance to remain human-like, if a bit low on iron; hence their ability to slip relatively undetected through the system in foster families until they could be shepherded by Project scientists.”  Scully glanced at Mulder, but he was avoiding looking at her, as if the guilt over Emily was his to claim.  “And the neural pathways would be adapted without resorting to artificial means.  Until the balance was upset and the chimera grew out of control, the only overt sign that these children were different would be the anemia.  Because only the full aliens in human bodies have the green ichor moving throughout their entire bodies rather than just in those neural pathways.”  
“So, They have been a space-faring race for long enough to change the very chemical make-up of their blood?”  Scully’s murmur was so low that Marita would likely have to strain to hear it.  She tried desperately not to think of her sweet William, a state away now and so beloved, so fragile and yet so powerful.  And so needed.
“Or perhaps they were born in space, Ms. Scully; we have no way of knowing.  But from what I gather, that is why they abandoned Mars and gang-colonised Earth in the first place.  Most of the iron here,” she nodded down at the ground beneath them, “remains safely locked away under a fertile soil capable of sustaining the plants that feed the hybrid diet...what little they need to survive.  A supplement if you will, that could be fed to certain vectoring organisms who might then carry it and cross-pollinate it with Terran plant species...”
Scully let her own lips flatten slightly.  “Like bees.”  She looked up.  “But if the balance is less precarious in a hybrid...”
Marita smiled at her slightly as if praising her for being an attentive student.  “In theory, that hybrid could withstand the kind of additives that would in effect upset the balance and...turn off the adapted strands of DNA before they could evolve into the full twelve-element DNA helix...rendering the hybrid in question largely a carrier once again, and no longer useful to the Colonists.  In a less well-adapted hybrid, an artificial...it would simply tear the two constituent elements apart, touching off the kind of disintegration that killed your biological daughter.”  At Scully’s stricken look her eyes became solemn with meaning.  She looked into the other woman’s pale face, voice measured.  
“There is something you ought to know, Agent Scully.  The Rebels were about to do that to your William, to neutralize him.  You were just in time in leaving Washington to join your lover before They could complete the experiment.  It would have taken but a simple injection.”  At Scully’s shocked look, she raised her eyes to regard her former pawn and back again.  “And then we wouldn’t even have the choice we have before us.  To hope.”  She smiled again, then, a small vindictive smile.  “Of course, They were working on the assumption that Their experiments had been successful, that your son was actually a result of their selective breeding program; that he was a ‘supersoldier’.  They weren’t counting on him being what he is; They were actually hoping against hope that the Colonists were wrong and the thing would not have been successful anyway.”
“But if he had been an organic replicant...”
“The injection would have killed him.  Yes, Agent Scully; They would rather risk destroying a prototype on the off-chance that They were right than take the greater risk of allowing him to survive if They were wrong.”  She smiled softly.  “For my part I doubt that it would have had the effect that they had wished anyway.  Your son seems to be able to metabolize that small amount of iron without lasting ill effect...though I wouldn’t go giving him iron supplements in his daily vitimins.”  She pinned Scully with her unnervingly penetrating gaze.  “Your child is a miracle; fully adapted, he has complete control over his iron-chimera ratio, and can handle these little imbalances and restore order without any real strain on the system...just as he can handle full yellow sunlight, and exist at sea-level pressures and at one full gravity without any physical discomfort.  You might have noticed that our alien friends favour mountainous areas when possible, or at least higher altitudes, where the air is thinner.  Remember the farm in Alberta, Agent Mulder?”  Her eyes actually glittered.  “In essence, he is perfect; the best of both worlds.  Artificial hybrids don’t have that control.  The Rebels had only tested the procedure on captive clones taken from the old Project facilities before they were going to try it on him.  They only hoped that it would succeed.”
At that moment, a gaggle of dark-jumpsuit-clad figures seemed to materialize from the thick, tent-studded undergrowth ahead.  A very tall, scarred-face alien strode in the lead, and didn’t bother to shapeshift as they drew nearer.  Now that she saw one up close without the fear-stimulus required of running for her life, Scully could see that under all the scarring it had the same features as their old friend the alien Bounty Hunter.  She had to squash down an ingrained flight response as the thing approached them with its cluster of sycophants.  Among them was the clone of the Well-Dressed Man, his austere countenance even more so in the steely light of dawn.  Beside him, talking earnestly as if trying to make a fervent point, strode their somewhat newer acquaintance, the Driving Man.
“He gets around,” Scully commented in an aside to Mulder.  In the distance, heads began popping up from the small clearings and tents beyond the perimeter as the denizens of this enclave stood up to see the show as the party drew up before them in the tiny cleared space before the door.
“Why did you not bring the child?” the Leader demanded by way of greeting.  Its mutilated face was austere with some indefinable, impotent frustration.  “Were you not so instructed?”  It glanced at Marita and the English clone in turn, the second glance withering, as one would proffer upon a misbehaving dog.  The English clone turned an angry gaze back on the Leader, but the scarred alien had already turned back to the two agents as if demanding an explanation.
Mulder glanced at Marita himself.  Her eyes were hard and her skin was chalky, and she seemed to have shrunk in on herself at the aliens’ approach.  “We were,” he answered flatly after an assessing glance.  “We don’t exactly feel comfortable dragging him to meetings with people we have no reason to trust will not ambush us and take him for their own ends.  Forgivable, I think, considering the recent threats that have been made against him.”
If it were human, the alien would have frowned.  As it was, its scars twitched slightly.  “Were you not given assurance?”  It was eerie carrying on a conversation with a being that should not be able to see, hear, or smell them.  Scully tried not to think about it too much.
“We need something a little more,” Mulder had countered quickly.  “Like maybe a show of solidarity about what exactly you’re planning to do about this little invasion that’s supposed to start in May.  Your scattered enclaves are like matches against a high wind; you can’t stand on your own forever.  You’ll be blown out without a fight.  You have to build a bonfire!”
The alien stared at them for a moment without even the limited expression of which its mutilated face was capable.  “What you ask,” it said finally, “is impossible.  Not at this time.  We cannot decide such a thing alone for every cadre, not especially when we are divided on the matter within this very enclave.  To make a pronouncement in such a momentous manner without due process.”  It drew itself up firmly.  “We must first see the child.”
Mulder seemed to hum as the impotent rage that had been burning inside him since they had first set eyes on the Smoking Man jumped back into full conflagration and he lost his patience entirely.  He held in the explosion with a tight control that was on the edge of collapse.  Scully would have put out an arm to restrain him...but she felt much the same way herself.  “Even if you saw him, you people wouldn’t make a damned decision,” he growled fiercely.  “Even if you spent a year with him as we have, two...you wouldn’t make up your damned minds!”  His voice rose in condemnation.  “You claim to despise our Smoking friend in there, him and his associates, for aiding and abetting a moral crime against the nature of the universe, but you’re all just as bad.  At least they made a decision, fell down on one side or another and then stuck with it.  You, you’re as bad as that Consortium your friends destroyed, as bad as your waffling Elders back on your ‘Home System’.  The time for ambivalence and saving face that has come and gone long since.”
His voice suddenly became low, cajoling, as if he’d flipped a switch somewhere.  He nodded once sharply at the Driving Man, where he stood at the leader’s right hand.  “The Driving Man there, your inter-cadre liaison, is right.  You’re a bunch of political reactives, waiting always to see what the other guy will do before you’ll make a move.”  His tone changed again, this time blatantly challenging.  “Have you ever thought of taking direct action of your own for a change?  A preemptive strike?  Well, this would be it, boys.  Take it or leave it, ‘cause it’s all you’ve got.”
He’d thrown down the gauntlets; both of them.  Now he looked up into their emotionless faces, and saw them twist in anger; the first real emotion they had ever seen in the alien countenance.  After a long pause, the cadre leader spoke.  Its voice seemed under control, but its face was still twisted.  “You make a valid point, human.  We will discuss this amongst ourselves and bring it to the other enclave leaders.  We will see if the nearby cadres wish to take the risk.  We will send an ambassador to contact your cadre when we have sufficient support to arrange a viewing of the child.”  It turned away as if they no longer existed, and its escort of clones and aliens trailed after it like sheep after the shepherd.  The Driving Man stayed behind, moving to stand beside them in the slowly brightening gloom.  He didn’t speak for a while, but when he did it was in a tone of grudging admiration that sounded a very great deal like the voice of their long-ago lost friend, Deep Throat.
“That was dangerous, Mr. Mulder...quite a desperate card to play.  I hope that you did not play it too early.”  The Driving Man spoke quietly, standing beside them with his hands in his pockets; but there was something almost rueful in his voice as he looked out over the minuscule clearing and the forty or fifty tents.  They lay scattered over foreshortened vista in isolation splendid, dotting the thick underbrush that choked the front of the cabin from the small space before the door out into the forest as if it had the woods had never ended.  “We don’t much like being called on our cowardice; not to our faces anyway.”  He sounded almost thoughtful.
“I just call ‘em like I see ‘em,” Mulder grunted shortly.  “You people have had years to figure this all out.  We’re playing with only half the cards and no warning while your guys have been playing fast and loose with our lives for decades.”  His tone turned jocular, demanding some positive action.  “How much longer do you need?  There isn’t a whole lot of time left for us to save our best moves.”
“Ah, yes, but you humans are terribly adaptable creatures, Mr. Mulder.  We cannot think on our feet so quickly; our processes are too ingrained.  You have no idea how much gall it takes just to be here, as we are and in such numbers.”
“Well, you had better start working on your quick thinking.  ‘Cause this is all gonna end in about six months.”
“That is not to be debated, Mr. Mulder, Ms. Scully.  But I think you have done all here that you are able to do, and you should quickly return to your most important offspring.  He is, as you say, that trump card.  It is by luck only that as of now we are the only ones to recognise that.”
Scully had turned away from the choked vista to stare at the alien in a sort of icy inquisition.  “What’s your stake in this?  How do you always seem to end up where we’re going?”
“Ah, yes.”  The alien actually smiled.  “My business, as you may have guessed, takes me from enclave to enclave.  You might call me a frequent flier, but as I told you when we met, I represent certain neutral interests...”
“You’re an ambassador!
“Ambassador, spy.  It comes to much the same.  The Galactic Council if one wishes to call it by such a trite-sounding name, wanted to hear a neutral voice on the subject.  I wonder that they will accept my testimony once it is found out that I have...gone native, so to speak.  But I was once a much-admired agent of the Senate, and my word should still carry considerable weight.  One hopes.”
The alien shook his head then, turning to them with a look so solemn that Scully wanted to take a step back.  “What you have made for us is not common, Ms. Scully, Mr. Mulder.  As you can imagine it is seldom that two carriers are in the same place at the same time, two sets of regressive genes combining perfectly…”  His eyes glittered at them as if he wished to bedevil them, but he only nodded once, sharply in Scully’s direction.  “As I have already said, Ms. Scully, it’s very Mendelian.  If you had been, ah...sharing relations with Mr. Mulder or anyone else after that chip had been replaced in your neck, Doctor, you would possibly have become pregnant, for it had begun repairing your ovaries and reinstating the development of ovum even then.  Its very task is regeneration on a cellular level, whether of cells damaged by radiation, or excised.  Ovum are cells like any other.  But by the time sufficient quantity had been restored to stimulate ovulation, you had already given up the ghost; Mr. Mulder had informed you that your ova had been rendered inviable--very canny of you, Mr. Mulder, to have made that discovery.
“And of course when you went to the fertility treatment clinic listed in your Federal Provider booklet, they were made aware who was coming to see them and were instructed not to make you aware of your, ah, increased fertility in turn, but to allow you to go along with the tests.  You did not become pregnant simply because they were not trying...they were harvesting your ova for trials, certainly, amazed at how well they thought their Chloramine project had succeeded with you, making fertile what was once a barren woman.  It never occurred to them to blame the chip until your old friend from the cabin in there decided to investigate further...and by then it was too late.  You had begun your, ah...revised association with your partner and ...voila!  We have a prototype human hybrid...as we would call it of course.  Wonderful concatenation of events, unprecedented in its timing; one-of-a-kind.  You can imagine that we do not have time for it to happen again on its own, or to, ah...encourage another such couple to make the attempt even if we could locate two carriers of the requisite matching signature; and even then the child would not be old enough in time.  And so your son is priceless...if those that I represent and those with whom I struggle for understanding would just see the necessity.”  
Marita had reappeared at their backs as if summoned by a jannaiya.  “Come on.  We have a long drive to get you back to Philly.”
“Marita, you have to work on aligning your cadre,” Mulder said fiercely, grabbing her elbow.  “We don’t have enough time for all this petty dinking around.”
Marita looked up at him, startled, and pulled her arm out of his grasp.  “How?  I’m a human; a refugee falling on their goodwill for safety and protection.  I have no pull with the leaders, no...”
“Then start at a grassroots level, with the clones.  They’re the most numerous group, and they have to know you were a victim of the Project, same as they were.  You can play upon their sympathies and their need for revenge; their need to stick it to those bastards that created them to be tools.”
Marita stared back.  “You ask a very great deal.”
“I ask that you do your damndest to survive.”
The blond woman continued to look at him for a long moment as if wondering what rock he had crawled out from under, then turned suddenly.  “I’ll think about it.  God knows I don’t have a whole lot to lose anymore.  Now come on; we need to get to the car.  And before you notice that your troupe is a bit light, your alien escort has apparently chosen to stay a while and do some reconnoitering.  Your friend with the black hair there,” she pointed to a clone they remembered as having been the one that had come with them last night, “will return with you so that you are, ah...suitably protected.”
They were joined in the small clearing beside the car by their Renegade escort and the driver that had brought them here.  The greater part of the long drive back was spent in silence except for the moment in which Marita chose, apparently, to murmur a clue.  Or at least something interesting.
“It makes one wonder, doesn’t it, what exactly the authors of the texts meant by their highly stylized timetables.”  Her voice was soft, speculative, remote...almost as if she were thinking out loud.  Almost.  “They keep mentioning the same numbers, and they were awfully fond of sevens.  God makes the world in seven days, and then unmakes it in the same span of time.  It’s rather poetic.”  She glanced back at them from her seat at shotgun.  “But of course the entire thing is, in any religion...and all of them have equal claim in their origins.  They ought to be heralded as the goldmines of information that they are.  The Hindu Vedas, for example.  A cycle turning around again to a seventh extinction; the last great monsoon...just as biology teaches us, right Agent Scully?”  She glanced at the former agent shrewdly through the rearview mirror, but Scully did not respond, and after a moment Marita went on.  “The Book of Revelation, of course.  Seven seals, the first and second already come to pass.  White horse, red bow; a conqueror taking away peace with pestilence and the sword.  Scales; a balance to be rectified.  Wars in the Holy Land where the two trees sprouting of Israel will fall, distracting the faithful from the true fight.”  Her pale green eyes in the mirror now flickered to Mulder.  “Occasionally helped along with a bit of careful nudging from certain members of a Conspiracy that delighted in distracting the public with such fire-building; for they had plenty of operatives in the area to see that the job was done whenever a decoy was needed.”  She knew about Diana, then.  Neither Mulder nor Scully would put it past Marita to know everything of a political nature that the Consortium had been involved in for decades.  She’d certainly had the security clearance to know.
“Always there are hotspots to watch when the people need distracting...and then the world begins to turn aside from the leadership of a country too convinced of its own superiority to be trusted.  The merchants, turning aside from the whore, denouncing Babylon; and only they shall mourn her.”  Her glittering eyes turned full on them for the first time since they had left the clearing.  “What do you think it means, Agents?”
“I always thought that the US was the whore of Babylon,” Mulder cracked blandly, “but then my opinions are usually in the minority.”  He glanced at Scully, and apparently found something in her gaze that made him turn them back to their informant...but it was Scully who spoke.
“You’re saying that we can look in holy texts for answers on what They’re going to do?”
Marita turned her unnervingly pale eyes on them, face hollow and yet hard with meaning.  “People in the know have been trying to parse out the meanings behind those passages for sixty years now.  Remember that our friends do not like change.  Perhaps despite recent setbacks to Their plans there is still something in there that can give us an indication of Their next move.”  She looked away then, out the now rain-swept window, watching the flylines of moisture roll along the pane in the gray light as they came off the mountain and descended to the valleys.  “Remember to pay attention to your sources, Agents.  They may be all that will save you when you have nowhere else to look for new truths.  The old truths still hold some value in such times.”  She smiled, a hard, cold smile.  “And it will give you something to do while waiting.”
Mulder gave a mock-suffering groan.  “Great.  And I stopped going to Sunday school when I was ten.”  He ignored the wilting looks the two women sent him.  “Any clues to which ones we should concentrate on?  There are a lot of holy texts.”
Marita shook her head, avoiding both his burning gaze and Scully’s curious one.  “I just give the tips.  Its up to you two to figure out how to use them.”  In that moment she sounded remarkably like her predecessor, Mr. X.  She fell silent then, and refused to speak further.
xxx
The remainder of the hours-long ride was spent in thoughtful silence for them all.  They reached the outskirts of Philly as the sun began its long descent back to earth, and were deposited on the same street where they had first encountered the Well-Dressed Clone and the former SRSG a few nights before.  Apparently their hosts were not interested in giving away William’s location to anyone that might be following.  Scully and Mulder got out of the car followed by their ubiquitous guardian, and Mulder leaned down as he prepared to shut the door.  “Remember what I said, Marita.  We need your guys on our side if this is going to work.”
Marita stared at him for a moment, pale face half obscured behind dark metal and tinted glass.  “If you will remember what I said, Agent Mulder.”  She sounded like the self assured Special Representative that she once had been...but the scars of her recent ill-usage were obviously still close to the surface, and that self-confidence was a mere suit worn over a very frightened soul.  Marita closed her mouth without elaborating and scurried back into the cab like a hunted deer, pulling the door shut as Mulder released it reluctantly.  The car pulled away with a quiet whirring and shushed onto the damp streets, tires whisking aside standing pools of water like a giant’s foot.
Behind them, their clone escort inclined his head with sharp impatience.  “We need to get back.  I need to tell our guys what they’re up to.”  They were the first words they had heard the man speak in nearly a full twenty-four hours.  “The recent meeting, if I’m not mistaken, has bought you some time, but you must be ready to leave by tonight.  We can’t protect you all for longer than that.”
Scully smiled a bit ruefully and took Mulder’s trenchcoat-clad hand as they fell in behind the dark-haired clone.  “I’m glad we have that long.  I don’t know about you, but I could use some sleep.”
Mulder looked down on her hair, imagining it to be red as it once was.  He missed that.  He was smiling fondly if a bit sadly as he answered.  “I don’t think I’ll sleep till this is over.”
She looked up at him with tolerant affection.  “You will if I knock you over the head.  You need sleep; and I know exactly where to hit a person to render them unconscious.  It’s a doctor thing.”  They walked the wet streets in silence, watching the cars swish by in the early afternoon sunlight, and reached Grayson’s hotel in a few blocks.  They let themselves in past the blockade at the doors without comment, leaving their guard behind for his debriefing.  Scully felt suddenly wrung out, ready to collapse.  It had been a stressful forty-eight hours, all told.  She hoped they could let themselves in without a modicum of fuss.
Such might not have been the case, had it not been for Maggie.  As they knocked on the hotel room door and were let in by Langly, they came face to face with an expectant hush and a ring of faces.  Skinner, Byers, and Frohike all waiting for an immediate report.  “Well?”  Skinner’s voice bore the exact same tone as it once had when they had been two erring agents making reports in his office all those years, and he obviously expected a similar debriefing to the one their guard was getting below.
“Well, we went, and they want to see William.”  Mulder shouldered through the crush, keeping his grip on Scully’s hand.  His voice sounded as suddenly weary as she felt.  “Oh, and Smokey’s still alive.  They have him as a hostage.”  They took advantage of the shock that statement brought to sink to the small couch against the half-wall between the ‘living area’ and the bedroom.  Mulder dropped his head back against the thin partition and eyed their former superior grimly.  “And they’re still too scared shitless by their own daring to do anything but sit and wait to see what happens.”
Skinner seemed to shake off his paralysis.  “And what do you intend we should do about that?” he demanded sharply.  He may consider them his generals...but the habit of command was ingrained in his soul.
Mulder lifted his head from the back of the sofa to stare at the man.  “I intend to see my son.  I intend to watch his mother hold him, and then I intend to get some sleep, in that order.”  His chin was shadowed with several hours’ growth of facial hair, and his eyes seemed ready to close on their own.  Any other time his sleepy expression would have been sexy, but now he simply seemed exhausted.  “I understand that you’ve all been waiting on edge...but we’ve been up for about twenty-eight hours now.”  His hand tightened in Scully's.  She was about to add her own estimation of the situation to his summary when her mother stepped out of the corner where she had been standing silently, holding William.  She came gracefully over and handed the small boy over to his mother, face a study of understanding as she took in their fatigue.
“Walter, leave the children alone.  Surely you can wait to question them until they’ve had a few hours of peace.”  Skinner had the grace to look abashed.  Langly looked ready to shuffle his feet.
“Have a pleasant evening,” Byers said in quiet embarassment, and slipped away to seat himself at the obviously recently vacated laptop.  Frohike glanced at Scully, then scuttled quickly off after his compatriot, leaving Langly to follow indecisively.  Langly loved to acquire information even more than the rest.
Scully buried her face in her son’s tiny red- and blue-striped t-shirt, taking in his little-boy smell with relief akin to pain.  What were they going to do?  She raised her head in time to see both Mulder and the baby looking at her with identical expressions of concern--Mulder’s understanding, William’s curious and gentle.  She felt that fist close around her heart again.  Her poor, overly-enlightened little boy.
Mulder took him from her decisively.  “How was your day, Champ?”
“S’okay, Dadda.”  The small face was solemn as he gazed on his father.  “Nana wants me to kiss you goo’nite an’ let you sleep.  I’m glad you an’ Mama got back.  I kep’ tellin’ ‘em you were ok, but they didn’ believe me.  They don’t unnerstan’ I can hear you.”
Scully exchanged glances with her partner, then reached out to brush her son’s round cheek with one finger.  “You’re a very wise little boy, William.  We weren’t too far away for you to listen to us all this time?”
“Naw.  I know how to fin’ you.”  The little boy swung himself off of his father’s lap and stood clinging to his knees.  He tilted his face up for his goodnight kiss.  “Nana wants you to go to s’eep,” he repeated, obviously waiting.  Scully couldn’t help it.  She felt her willpower falter, and despite her resolve to let him have his space and self-determination as Gibson had encouraged them to do, she lifted him up to hold him to her.  Her precious, precious little boy.  She felt tears come to her eyes, and blinked them shut angrily.  William allowed her to hold him for a long moment before pushing her away with both hands on her chest...not in denial, but a reassertion of his personal space.  His quiet dignity declared him his own person, if a small one, and his face was set determinedly.  “I love you Mama.  Now go to s’eep.”
“Okay, Slugger, we’re going.”  Mulder squeezed her hand softly in understanding before he stood, wearily.  “We’ll see you in a few hours.”
“’Kay.”  The little boy slid back off of his mother’s lap and wandered over where the Gunmen stood clumped around the computer.  Frohike picked him up absently so that he could see the screen, and he was immediately absorbed in whatever they were discussing in quiet tones.  He was obviously able to follow what was on the computer by listening in on their minds.  An eighteen month old child that could follow hacker-speak and understand technology.  If Scully had had any energy left to be frightened with, she would have been.  Instead, she simply watched her small son with that same ache in her chest.  He was so much older than his years.  
She raised her eyes to her mother then, and stood absently brushing at her trousers with one hand before joining Mulder where he waited expectantly about halfway to the adjoining door.  Maggie smiled a soft, sad smile.  “Get some sleep, Dana.  We have another day ahead of us.”  
Yes.  Another day...and one in which this short idyll would end with a difficult goodbye.  The thought of going back to their self-imposed isolation after this brief interlude seemed like voluntarily walking into a claustrophobic chamber and shutting the door.  And it had to be done.  She allowed herself to be embraced.
“Goodnight Mom.”  She followed Mulder into the next room without another word.
xxx
Scully woke in the angled light of sunset to find Mulder standing gilded and half-obscuring the light of the small window as he leaned to look absently out, one arm up against the pane.  She knew what he had to be thinking about.  Not William, and not the Quest.  He had tossed and turned for most of their prescribed sleep time, planning their next moves, turning each consideration over and over in his mind, and he would continue to think about the coming maneuvers for days.  His mind was like that, going directly to the next action.  But now, when he thought he was alone with his thoughts...  Seeing the Smoking Man again could not but bring back to him that pain he had thought was long put aside, the half-healed scar he had once carried under his skin so close to the surface...and one he had thought was well-healed, now.
He knew she was awake in the same way that they both could tell if the other was in the room.  He spoke softly, contemplatively...but she could hear the thread of self-doubt underlying that thoughtful tone as he spoke of the relationship he had with the man he had called father.  “I still wonder sometimes if he chose Samantha to save her when he found out that I wasn’t his.  Or maybe we were both Spenders…”  His murmur was self-denigrating in that strange mid-afternoon twilight.
Without a thought Scully thrust aside the blankets and approached to place a hand on his arm, forestalling that line of thought.  “Mulder, stop.  You’ll drive yourself crazy thinking about it.”
He glanced at her sharply...but then his face collapsed into that familiar look of dry humour.  “I’ve been crazy for years.  You of all people should know that.”  He was only half-joking.
Before she could make a comment dry enough to jostle him back out of the land of self-pity, William came flying in, the door rebounding with a crash behind him.  “Mama!  Dadda!  You’re awake!”
Scully caught their little boy in a defensive reflex as he launched himself at them.  “Now we are, sweetie.  How are you this evening, William?”
“’M okay.  Hi Dadda.”
Mulder rallied quickly, turning to ruffle the small mahogany mop of hair in a playful gesture.  “Hi Slugger.  What’s for breakfast?”
The little boy wrinkled his tiny snub of a nose.  He had an ink smudge on one round cheek, his hair was sticking out on one side and flattened on the other, and his small hands were very sticky.  Obviously it had already been a busy afternoon.  “’S not really breakfas’ time, so there’s only O’anges an’ stuff.  An’ some curly bread.”  Apparently not his idea of a balanced meal.
Scully inhaled as if her son had been discussing ambrosia.  “Croissants.”  She kissed the sticky cheek and handed the child off to his father’s hip.  “In a minute.”  She made a beeline for the small bathroom.  Behind her, Mulder shared a conspiratorial grin with his son.
“You think I can eat ‘em all before she gets out there?”
“You can try...but Mama can beat you up ‘f you make her mad, Dadda.”
“Oh, I know she can, Will.  I’m counting on it.”  Mulder’s tone was wry as he turned for the connecting door.
Their contact among their Renegade escort popped her head in a bit later to remind them that the entire group had to be out of Grayson’s Hotel by midnight, and they passed the remainder of that last day in the kind of bittersweet joy of people that knew they would soon be separated...and for no one knew how long.  Mulder spent a lot of that time talking intensely with Skinner and the Boys, more than likely getting everyone’s story straight and making sure they all had their instructions.  Scully sat in on some of that discussion...but she already knew what needed to be done, and she wanted to spend as much time as possible with her mother.  William divided his attentions impartially among the group...but as sunset faded into the indigo light of late evening and the bags had been packed he gravitated back to his grandmother, and they sat in silence awaiting the coming of the final hour when they would separate--Skinner and company to return to DC, the former agents back into hiding amongst the motley crew with whom they had pinned all their hopes.
In the end, the time came when they could not put off the necessary any longer.  Skinner nodded one last sharp nod and held out a hand.  “Well, Mulder...good luck.  We’ll see you on the other side.”
“Thanks Walter.  I hope so.”
“Mulder.”  The Gunmen gathered around their patron.  Byers extended a hand, eyes full of respect, while Langly nodded with his customary reserve before Frohike pulled the younger man into a quick, rough back-pounding embrace.  He seemed to be trying to hide his emotions.  “Take care of yourself, okay?”
“We will, Melvin.  We’ll see you guys when it’s time.”
“You need anything...” Frohike began.
“We’ve got you covered,” Langly finished. 
“Until we meet again,” Byers smiled softly.  They all turned expectantly toward the small loveseat.  “Agent Scully?”
“Well, Dana,” Maggie said softly.  Her eyes were liquid with emotion from where she sat beside her daughter on the ugly sofa, arms wrapped possessively around her grandson.  “It looks like its time for you to leave us.”
Scully looked at her mother through eyes that were equally misty at this now more painful separation.  She tried to imprint the picture on her mind; her son lying trustingly against his grandmother’s bosom, small loving face completely at peace for the last time in she had no idea how long, her mother’s beloved countenance bent as she laid her cheek against the toddler’s silken baby curls.  The lamplight glistened off of Maggie’s dark curtain of elegantly coiffed hair and glanced in turn from William’s mahogany head and pearly cheeks.  She drew a breath to steady her voice, harden it to that of the capable Dana Scully that everyone saw on the outside; the one who didn’t let emotions faze her.  How long had she had to keep up this facade?  And how many people beside Mulder knew how much effort it took her, sometimes, to maintain it in the face of the rigours of their lives?
“Are you going to be alright Mom?”
Maggie looked up with a slightly sad smile.  “Oh, don’t worry Dana.  I consider myself to be a fairly capable woman in my own right, but even if I’ve gotten in a bit over my head with this, I’ve got Walter to keep me safe now.”  She smiled softly at her daughter.  “He’s a good man...just as your Fox is a good man.  Very different men, but both of them have, I think, something that we need.”  She glanced up then as Mulder approached them, leaving behind the gaggle at the door as he prepared to usher his family out into the night.  Her smile became gentle as she released her grandson to reach out and take first her daughter’s hand and then her son-in-law’s.  William smiled secretively to himself from his spot on his Nana’s lap, and he looked knowingly up at the three adults that had been central to his life so far, as if awaiting something.
Maggie had that felt-wrapped steel back in her gaze, and though her voice remained soft, her face had taken on what Scully privately termed her ‘Mom look’.  “Dana, Fox.”  It was an acknowledgement, and a tribute.  Her eyes shifted quickly to her grandson where he sat looking up trustingly from her lap, then back to the two who had given her this scion.  “When you come back, my dears, we’ll be waiting for you.”  She shifted her gaze to take them both in.  “We’ll all be waiting.  Whatever you need, even if it’s to keep William safe for you while you go to do whatever it is that you must do, we’ll be there.”  She smiled, eyes flickering to Skinner before they came back to rest, full of some indefinable emotion, on her daughter.  “Make sure you get back in one piece.”
Skinner chipped in from the door, eyeglasses glinting in the lamplight.  “That’s an order, Agents.”
The two former agents glanced up to behold the Assistant Director.  Scully’s response was so engrained that she did not question it.  “Yes Sir.”
Skinner nodded as if satisfied.  Mulder leaned over the back of the couch and kissed Maggie on the cheek in a strangely courtly gesture.  Maggie smiled up at him fondly.  “Goodbye, Fox.”  She leaned over and lifted her grandson to his short, sturdy little legs.  “Goodbye for now, my little Liam.  Take care of your parents for me.”
The baby regarded her solemnly.  “I will, Nana.”  He kept his gaze on his grandmother as he lifted his arms to his father almost absently.  Mulder picked the toddler up and nodded at Scully.
As she rose to leave, Maggie came to her feet as well, and pulled her daughter gently into her arms.  “Take care of each other, Dana.  I want to see that little boy safe and happy, and I want to see the both of you walk into my door in a few months looking like nothing happened.”
“We’ll come back, Mom.”  Scully’s voice was thick.  She had no idea if she could keep that promise...but she feared very much that it was an impossible pledge.  If this were the last time she could see her mother...it had almost been easier before they had met, here.  Almost.  But her determination to make the impossible a reality was as strong as it had been when Mulder had been away.  She clung to that for reassurance.  The last gamble had worked out.  So would this one, dammit!
“May the road rise up to meet you, Dana, and may the wind be always at your back.”  
“And until we meet again, may God hold you in the hollow of His hand.”  The traditional Irish blessing took on new meaning in the light of this parting, and Scully heart was a bit lighter as she picked up her son.  She smiled as she kissed Skinner goodbye, pecked Frohike on the cheek, and shook hands with Byers and Langly.  There were a few more handshakes, and they departed the small suite as their friends began to gather up their own bags prior to departure.
Outside the hotel, the coterie of clones and assorted renegades seemed to close around them.  “Your belongings have been moved from your last safe-house to a new location,” their leader intoned quietly, and made as if to herd them to a car that sat waiting at the curb.
	“Wait,” Mulder stopped them with a sharp gesture.  “Will our friends make it out of the city safely?”
“They are being escorted, though they will not know this fact,” the alien assented.  “They are required.  We do not waste potentially useful resources.”
Mulder nodded, seeming a little relieved.  His hand dropped to Scully’s lower back as she bent to maneuver herself and William into the car.  “Good to know,” he murmured to her as he followed her into the vehicle.
She hoped as strongly as he that the assurance would prove reliable.  She would hate to have nothing left to go home to.
X   X   X
 
(Amor Fati, pt.55: “Brother”)

Various locations in the Delaware/New Jersey area
December 2002 to March 2003

	And then it was back to waiting.  They passed Christmas without family...and the New Year--though they did share a kiss of one part memory and two parts hope--dancing with William to soft music from the radio and eating un-American, unbuttered popcorn.  Then Valentine’s day, awkward as only such a day could be, which Mulder celebrated in typical fashion by presenting her with yet another Sports Illustrated bloopers tape ‘for your collection’.  It was another endless waiting period, with William’s sometimes frightening gifts continuing to surface.  And as before, Gibson had not yet explained the training regimen he had adopted, so they had no real idea what he was teaching their son.  He still came, of course; every month, right on the nose, and he began to show up periodically out of nowhere between those ‘official’ visits as time got short.  Lately, he sometimes showed up twice a month...and always he took William aside and had those little telepathic discussions, for lack of a better phrase, that left them politely out of the loop.
His work with Gibson was not the only training William received during this interim period.  Though it was a bit early, Gibson commented that he was most likely ahead of the game, and they had begun his toilet training.  True to advertising, the small wunderkind whipped through the necessary adjustments almost as if he had simply been awaiting his parents’ go-ahead.  He had always stared at the ceiling with a kind of calm pragmatism when Scully or anyone else had changed him; the practicality of one who knew there was another way, but for the nonce did not question the way things were.  His small body simply had not caught up to his brain, which had raced ahead at a pace unparalleled, and so he accepted the necessity of their assistance in the matter until he could take care of it himself.  Once they began the toilet training routine, though, he most likely caught on to what they wanted from their thoughts on the matter, for it took him perhaps three days to become fully independent at the task...which left Mulder throwing up his hands in mock annoyance that they had been changing the child for months when he more than likely could have learned the skill much earlier...and left Scully wondering exactly how early he might have learned it had they tried.  One thing was certain; their son did not follow the usual milestones.  It was almost as if he were humouring them, going along with their conceptions and expectations for the sake of their own piece of mind.
There were other signs that his ‘talents’ were developing rapidly, though Scully was sure that there was a lot he was capable of that they would not see until some stressful event brought them to the surface.  They spent a great deal of time discussing the possibilities, but until they had something concrete there was little they could do but wait.  Meanwhile, William continued to wear his small facade of unremarkable childhood around others, whether by instinct or because Gibson had told him to do so.  He was growing up very quickly as one regards mental maturity, and he only showed his peculiarities to those he knew were comfortable with them, now.  He seldom anymore did anything in public that might give them away.  It both saddened and relieved his mother to see him so rigidly discipline his gifts and circumscribe his small life...but it was necessary.  She hoped that the experience would not block his access to his talents as Mulder feared, or scar him emotionally.
They continued to do their best to keep their own fears from interfering with his peace of mind, but he persisted in echoing their worries and Mulder’s nightmares with nightmares of his own until her anxiety for him became almost unbearable.  Gibson, she knew, was teaching their small boy to shield himself from such emotions, and William seemed to get the hang of that trick about midway through January.  His nightmares tapered off rapidly after that.
Mulder’s nightmares did not stop appreciably.  If anything, they sped up.
In early March their cadre’s leader came unexpectedly to the door of their most recent accommodation accompanied by three companions; the leaders of the New York cadre and representatives from what they gathered were two other enclaves, come finally to some sort of consensus and wanting to see if their investment was worth the risk they were taking.  Or so they said.  “It grows warm,” the familiar voice of the Driving Man had murmured to them from the sidewall where he had leaned while watching the proceedings.  “They are getting nervous.”  However nervous they were becoming, they left after a very short visit, seemingly yet undecided.  Mulder and Scully had attempted to glean from the Driving Man any information they could about the happenings in the nexus of DC before he had gone.  Colonist movements, Rebel preparations, Renegade negotiations...even small things like what Kersh and Senator Matheson and other choice individuals might actually be up to--but his response had been singularly unenlightening.
“There are those, my friends, who must wait until your child has been accepted by the Senate before they can fall on any one side.  In many ways, such people reside in much higher councils than those whose superiors have aided you in the past.”  His eyes had clouded fitfully.  “Each of us has to make his own way in this affair, Ms. Scully, Mr. Mulder.”  And with that very Mr. X-ian comment, he had excused himself to follow the cadre leaders departing outside the motel.  Scully had watched, full to the throat with bitter worry as Mulder paced the small room, grinding his teeth in impotent rage at their what-iffing.
Gibson, however, had a very interesting observation at his next visit.  “They know they have to decide soon,” he’d said, eerie gray gaze penetrating their own.  “Whether they’re ready or not.  They probably won’t ever be ready, but the hotter it gets, the faster the virus will take hold, and the quicker the...fetuses will develop.”  His unearthly gaze turned away, and his face went still, distant.  “The heat isn’t required, you understand...but it would be helpful for the Colonists, considering the fact that They are now no longer in power.  Before, it did not matter, but They, like the Renegades, need every advantage can get, anymore.”
“Gibson,” Scully murmured thoughtfully to him, “do they tell you all of this, or do you...”  She made a small vague gesture with one had, as if grasping something out of the air.  Mulder’s eyes narrowed as he followed her gaze to the young psychic.
His eyes were knowing, even understanding.  “I’m on my own, Agent Scully,” he informed them.  “I pick up what I need to know.  I had a lot of practice, first when the Smoking Man took me for the operation, and then after...in Arizona, and on the Res.  They’re...not really used to shielding around humans.  It’s the only way I’d know anything.”
“The Res?”  Mulder’s gaze had taken on that incisive look that said he was on a mental tightrope from one fact to another, following seemingly unrelated facts to a central idea.
“In New Mexico and in Arizona.  Where they took me after they helped me to escape your ‘safe-house’.  I stayed with them for about a year.  There’s an enclave on nearly every Reservation in the country, but here in the East they’ve had to make do with out of the way places.”  His eyes seemed to darken slightly, with sardonic amusement or anger, neither could tell.  “There aren’t many Reserves out this way for some reason.”  He raised his gaze back to meet theirs.  “I was moved to the enclave in Dixie about four months before you got there.”  The gray eyes went distant again, looking off into some remote vista.  “No matter how this ends up, I’ll most likely head back West.  It’s safer there; there’s more open space.”  His round face had twisted into a grimace of distaste.  “And less people.  The people on the Res...they give me my space.”
They had discussed the possibilities inherent in that option briefly after he left them, but in the end, they knew that should they fail, there would be nowhere for them to hide.  They were too involved for that.
As she read Moby Dick to their son that night, Mulder pacing at her side where he would normally show at least a pretense of being involved in the story, Scully’s mind tended to wander to the same places that she knew her partner’s was wont to go.  It was no real failing, as she knew the story by heart and could read it nearly from memory while her mind dwelt elsewhere.  She found it difficult to focus her thoughts, as if, knowing that these might be the final days of life as they knew it, her mind was trying to seek a way out of a trap that had no visible exits.  
The crux of the matter was, neither of them had any idea what would happen next, or how to initiate change.  The operative they knew as the Driving Man had told them to leave it in his hands...but his reassurances didn’t seem overwhelmingly reassuring in the face of this nonspecific waiting.
"'And perhaps, at mid-day, in the fairest weather, with one half-throttled shriek you drop through that transparent air into the summer sea, no more to rise for ever. Heed it well, ye Pantheists!'"  She read the end of 'The Mast-Head' softly, mind on the problems of the future.
“Pantheists're people that believe in...in...its something about Gods, right?” Will asked ingeniously.
Scully snapped back to the story with a start.  As she had several times before, she wondered fleetingly exactly how high was her son’s IQ...but she rapidly dismissed the thought.  It wasn’t important enough to subject the poor child to tests to satisfy her own curiousity...and she would not use her own child as evidence any more than she would allow Mulder to do so.  Angry at herself for her grim ruminations, she pushed them firmly to the back of her mind and replied to her son’s question as she would to any child, no matter his special circumstances.
“Ah...yes, Sweet William.  They believe that there are more than one.  It was common in the Classical period; Greece, and Rome.  That's a case of ‘allusion’.”    
“’Kay, that's what I thought.”  The toddler wriggled his rear deeper into the pillows at the head of the motel bed and listened attentively as she continued to read the philosophical melancholy of a sailor’s folly.
Behind them at the window where Mulder now habitually stood each evening, looking out like a caged animal awaiting the evening feeding or the call to perform, her partner in life turned away from the blanket of lights that marked this suburb of Delaware’s capitol.  His eyes seemed to glitter in the dim pink glow of the motel’s marquee, and she knew his mind was turning over the same questions...but Mulder’s mind would tend toward implications where hers turned toward possible consequences.  He had changed enough to care about the lives they might save as she did where once he had only included in his calculations larger ideals such as the Truth...but he was still the Mulder she had known for years.  Later that night she tried to head off the discussion before it could get underway.  “I know what you’re thinking, Mulder, but Quest or no, he’s still just a baby.”
“I know.”  His eyes were serious as he glanced over at their sleeping child where he lay on the turned-down sheets of the motel bed.  “But he is the way he is for a reason.”
Scully regarded him softly for a moment.  She didn’t want to sound accusatory...but she did need him to think.  “He may be a bargaining chip to the ones we support...but he’s still a child.  Don’t make our son a tool, Mulder, to advance your own ends...or you’ll be no better than the Smoking Man, guiding Will’s fate as he did yours.”  She saw his quickly concealed start as she put their actions in that light, and she laid her hand on his arm to show that she wasn’t angry...only thoughtful.  “Let him choose his own destiny.”  That had indeed struck home.  Knowing that their lives had been guided for so many years was one of his core buttons.  Mulder’s eyes flashed with a quiet anger, flickering first at her hand on his arm, and then back to their son.  She took his hand, closing up the contact to draw his attention back, and softened her voice to a low, understanding murmur.  “A child cannot always be the summation of his parents lives...and William will have other goals than those set before him now.  He may choose to follow in his father’s paths...or he may choose a path that we cannot foresee.  We have to give him that option.  You had far less choice in your fate.  I know you would not want that for our son.”
Mulder nodded, looking away as if reassessing a previously held paradigm.  “Point taken.”  His eyes returned to pin hers with a hawk-like stare.  “But he can honour it, Scully.  That is his destiny...to follow in our work...just as honouring my father’s was mine.  Some things we can’t escape.”
“But we can hope for him, Mulder.  We can hope.”
xxx
St. Fatima’s Hospital
North Baltimore, MD.
March 26, 2003 
11:21am

They were still unsure of why they had been rousted out of bed and dragged off to join this small gathering.  Their clone contacts from the cadre that shielded them had burst into their motel room in Delaware earlier that morning to shake them roughly awake with urgent hands, eyes tight with some undefined tension.  “Come with us.  It will all be decided today,” the one with the black hair had said sharply, and reached out to grab Scully’s arm peremptorily.
“Hey, get your hands off her!” Mulder had responded immediately, grabbing the clone’s wrist and thrusting it away.  The clone had looked at them darkly.
“Then hurry.  We don’t have much time.”
Behind them, the blonde woman that had challenged them at the doors of Grayson’s Hotel in Philly glared at them challengingly.  “It’s time for you to go back.”
Now jammed into another nondescript gray sedan with four clones and their son, they forged patiently and stubbornly through the strangely ever-increasing traffic as they neared Baltimore, struggling up the 2 and past the familiar waterfront streets of Patapsco Bay.  Their guides seemed to falter for no particular reason in the North End of the city, in the suburb of Towson.  Neither Mulder nor Scully could figure out why they stopped suddenly amidst that unceasing flow...directly in front of a small private hospital called, of all things, St. Fatima’s.  It was there that they began to see the wreckage unfolding before their very eyes.
The streets in the immediate vicinity of the small hospital were involved in a sort of thinly-controlled chaos.  Several ambulances were jammed cheek by jowl in the emergency parking area, clogging the bays, and there were quite a few cars stopped topsy-turvy and turned every which way in the overloaded parking lots surrounding the mid-sized edifice.  The two agents looked at their guides questioningly.
“There is a ‘lighthouse’ nearby, at the Reservoir,” the blonde female clone filled them in tersely from the passenger seat.  “Loch Raven, I think it’s called.  Like your lighthouse in Bellefleur Oregon.  The lighthouses are where it’s supposed to start, the focal points of the seeding of ‘Purity’, and where They had set up pick-up points from which they could collect all of the hybrids before seeding could commence.”
Her voice went discordant with some undefined anger.  “There was a test.  The most extensive one yet, and it got out of hand.  Luckily we found out a few hours ago, and we were able to have an operative infiltrating the group that had been...‘called’ to participate.”  Her face, hard and angry, seemed to gainsay her words.  She at least was not happy about this turn of events.
All around them as they made use of the chaos to slip into the small hospital, they saw signs that this had been a much larger test than the one they had seen in Natchez.  People were dodging in and out of the ER in a sort of thinly-controlled panic, and the available air was thick with slowly-building confusion, and with a capable and quiet anger.  Medical technicians barked orders in that harsh staccato that said that training and emergency experience were all that kept them from gibbering in horror at the sheer volume of casualties flowing in through the big double doors.  Scully took it all in with a clinical air, eyes dark and hard as diamonds as she resisted her first instinct to jump in and give a hand.  “Where do you need us?” she murmured to the blonde woman.
“This way.  They’ve been unable to stabilize anybody...but one.  Ours.  The overflow has gone to ICU.  That’s where he’ll be.”  Her lips closed sharply on the reply as if she wanted to bite off the offending words.  “Luckily, it’s still too cold on this seaboard for it to be anything more.  The longer the hosts remain out on their mountaintops and forests before being found, the slower the development of the fetus.  Most of the patients are being treated,” her face went bleak, “for hypothermia as well as varying stages of anaphylactic shock.”  She turned her eyes full on Scully’s, the message there one of almost demoralized helplessness.  “They’ll put the test subjects in warm baths...and the newest strain will be born knowing its full racial memory as soon as the primitive ‘baby’ stage over and they’re done killing off half of the city.”  She shrugged.  “Spare no expense when it comes to making sure of one’s advantages.”
“Seems to have kind of taken it personally, eh?” Mulder murmured in her ear.  He shifted their son on his hip absently as Scully shot him an annoyed glance...and her eyes settled on William, who was watching all the uproar and the dashing around with a sort of sad resignation registering on his small face.  He did not seem to be allowing the terror and emotional overload of the place to faze him.  Yay for Gibson Praise and his psychic boot-camp.
After dodging around in the teeming corridors for a while, following the general flow of stretchers on their way to the designated ‘overflow wards’, they reached the ICU and stopped for a quick status check.  “How do you plan to get in?” Mulder asked cheerfully.  The blonde woman, seemingly the leader of this little excursion, gave him a venomous look and turned away abruptly to consult in sharp tones with her three sidekicks.  Two of the three male clones peeled off to accost an exhausted, nervous-looking man in a brown suit and nametag who stood near the doors to one of the administrative stations outside the ICU.  There was  a short conversation, replete with the entire gamut of protesting hand-gestures and determined-looking head-shakings...but in the end their hospital contact seemed to deflate.  “Okay, okay.  Just...just don’t blow my thing here, okay?  I need this job.”  The pencil-pusher sounded aggrieved, but he cut off at the look of cold fury on the face of the blonde woman and shouldered past the two clones and marched up to the ICU doors, punching in the access code with the short, sharp jabs of a man forced into an intolerable situation.  Their expressions unchanging, the blonde clone and her companion thrust past him as the electronic gates opened, obviously expecting the two agents and their preternaturally silent child to follow.
A harried-looking nurse bustled up to halt them at the door.  “Can I help you?”  Her soft brown hair was wisping around her sweating forehead, and her eyes were haunted.  “You can’t be here right now.  Joey!”  Behind her, a similarly harried-looking orderly glanced up from a motionless stretcher-bound patient waiting attention in the hall.  He seemed to be having trouble focusing his eyes.  -Shock-- Scully noted professionally.  --Poor kid has no idea what’s hit them today--
Before the situation could get out of hand, their nervous brown-suited insurance rep at the door nodded once, curtly.  “It’s okay, Angelina.  They...they have permission to see one of your patients.”
“Are you out of your mind, Chuck?” the nurse snapped grimly.  “This is a contaminated ward!  We've already begun full quarantine procedures!”
Their contact sighed heavily.  “Just let them in, Angie.  They won’t get in your way, right folks?”
“You won’t even know we’re here,” the blonde clone muttered shortly, and thrust her way past the concerned nurse as if she no longer existed.  “This way.”  They left ‘Chuck’ behind to excuse himself with alacrity from ‘Angie’s frosty stare and strode swiftly through the regiments of trotting doctors and orderlies to a room near the far end of the ward.  “Here.  He’s in this one.”  Their guide stopped with her hand on the jamb and let her escort precede her into the room, seeming to suddenly lose her steam when faced with some kind of grim reality.  No doubt this was a situation none of them would ever want to wish on any of their number, as any one of them might be the next to be ‘volunteered’ for a test.
xxx
The three beds in the room were occupied with pale, barely breathing bodies, each of them progressing rapidly through the stages of viral infection that would result in their playing host to an alien colonist in a few hours.  “I don’t suppose anybody’s come up with the brilliant idea of putting the victims on ice,” Mulder commented a bit grimly as they took in the scene.
“The Rebel cabal will be initiating that procedure fairly soon,” said the black-haired clone that had accompanied them from the enclave back to Philly.  He moved from the doorway to stand by the low gurney near the window where their compatriot lay.  “As soon as they manage to infiltrate the hospital.”  He looked up as his companion joined him from the hall.
“We must finish our business here before they arrive,” he agreed, and looked pointedly at the two former agents.
Mulder was staring at their companions with an incredulous expression on his face.  “They’re on their way, and you bring our son right to where they can just pick him up and...”
The impatient blonde woman shot him a withering look.  “Calm yourself, Mr. Mulder.  We have a few hours before the government stirs itself to move in and clean up the situation.  We are aware of their movements.  We can get out before the situation becomes untenable.  Now, Ms. Scully; if you will.”
Scully flicked her eyes away from the clones to take in their friend on the gurney, forcing herself into the task at hand, focusing her mind into doctor-mode.   The patient was staring out the window to his right, ginger hair damp and skin very pale, marked with a few fading red stings.  Signs of prolonged fever, now broken.  Tissue appeared to be recovering from multiple insect stings.  Colouring was not exactly prime, but unlike his bedfellows he didn’t have that horrible waxy hue that would mean he would soon turn transparent and etumaceous like the corpse in Parkersburg, and his abdomen did not appear distended as  yet.  Not that that symptom had yet appeared in the others, though.  As the patient turned his head fitfully, sweating profusely, the exhausted face caught a stray beam of watery late winter sun as it skipped around the side of the building, and Scully took a small step back as she recognised that face in sharp relief.
“Kurt Crawford!”  Behind her, Mulder started forward sharply, hand on her upper arm.  Even William was leaning forward, caught up in his parents’ surprise.
“You knew the model that went by that name,” their blonde contact voiced neutrally from the doorway.  “This is the only one left.”  Her voice seemed to crack with polar ice as she grated out that condemnation, but her eyes were soft with worry as she moved forward to lay one long-fingered hand against the sick clone’s cheek.  “Kyle.  Wake up; we’ve brought them.”  There was no trace of a sneer there now.  In response to that strangely tender tone, the clone’s eyelids flickered.
“Christiana.”  He closed his eyes briefly, and when he reopened them, they were clear.  “Wh...”  He cleared his throat and tried again.  “Where?”
The uptight female clone seemed to relax imperceptibly.  Her hard, angry face became if possible a tiny bit gentle as she murmured her reply.  “At the hospital in Towson.  We’re intercepting.”  The sick man on the gurney nodded once, and his eyes moved around the blonde to take in the tableau behind her.  As if that were a signal, ‘Christiana’s face went stony again.  “Well, Doctor Scully?” she challenged stiffly.  “Are you going to give us your diagnosis or what?”
Scully glanced once at Mulder, taking strength from the sheer belief she saw in his comforting green gaze.  She nodded once, briskly, turning away to regard the patient a bit grimly.  “I’ll need gloves.”
One of the attendant clones bracketing the gurney wordlessly held out a pair of the thin latex coverings, and she took them without comment and slid them on decisively.  Mulder watched as she slipped on her competent bedside manner like a second skin and strode over to shoulder the blonde woman aside briskly.  “How long have you been fighting it off?” she asked without preamble.
The clone that could be William’s brother coughed rackingly, just once.  “Ab...about five hours.  Since They dropped the bees on us at the lighthouse.”
Scully reached in with one gloved hand and took his pulse.  “Do you feel any alterations in the area of your spine or around the back of your neck?”
The clone regarded her with a patronising look.  “If I’d gotten off-balance, I’d already be dead.  Let...”  He coughed again.  “Let’s just move along, shall we?”
“Fine.”  Scully began her exam cursorily, peeling back an eyelid to remark upon the clarity of the orb within.  “No signs of viral presence in the ocular orbit,” she reported crisply, and raised her eyes briefly to her partner.  “No Black Oil.”  He nodded infinitesimally, and she turned back to gently chafe the skin of the sick man’s arm.  “Normal colouring resuming.  Blood flow appears to be returning to normal.”  She moved to palpate his abdomen...and stopped suddenly with a wordless exclamation and raised the sick man’s cotton johnny.  Beneath that flimsy covering was a long, livid line of stitches like an incongruous c-section.  They looked very fresh, the incision still bloodless at the edges.  “When...”
“You are here to tell us if you believe the surgery was successful in removing all traces of threat,” the blonde leader informed her quietly.  Her voice had a note of almost querulous worry in it, as if she were relying on them for reassurance.
Scully regarded their escort for a moment as that remarkable statement sunk in before she turned back to the patient, hands moving with professional tenderness over the new scar.  Her explorations were gentle even as her eyes betrayed her distaste for such an unorthodox procedure.  “Does this hurt more than the scarring would warrant?”
The clone winced, his pinched features tightening slightly.  “Not enough to mean what you fear it means,” he muttered defensively.  He made a face as if he were trying to convince himself.  “They told me they got it all.”
She let that pass, nodding at the head of his bed.  “They get a chance to do any bloodwork on you?”
“I was one of the first ones in,” he began, but his blonde rescuer stepped in swiftly.
“They stopped taking samples after the first ten or so,” she volunteered harshly.  She sounded as if she was biting off each word.  “They didn’t feel they needed any more once they’d had enough to go by.  I’m pretty sure they feel like they have the symptoms nailed down by now.”  Cynical didn’t even cover it.
Scully reached out and took the chart off the hook.  “Condition is listed as stable.  You’d think they’d be all over him, wanting to know how one man of dozens came back immune.”  She shook her head.  “Cellular deterioration seems to have stalled shortly after you were brought in.  When did they do the operation?”  She seemed to be struggling to keep her voice bland.  Beside her, the blonde had stiffened visibly.
The clone coughed again, his eyes haunted.  “At about ten.  I was a little distracted at the time.”
Scully’s face went stark with shock.  “Your ‘surgeons’ didn’t offer this man any anesthesia?” she demanded of their escort in tones of outrage.
“Look at us, Doctor,” the blonde woman retorted sharply.  “You’ve seen our resources.  Does it look like we keep that kind of thing in our pockets?”  Her face seemed to soften again.  “He had a local.  It was all we could manage on short notice.”  Her face hardened once more.  “Your prognosis Doctor?”  Her voice had gone flat, emotionless.
Scully straightened slowly.  “Unless I were to see the procedure, have a look at the blood work...”
“Look, there’s no outward evidence of the virus, and you said yourself that his system seems to be resuming normal function.  We’re not asking you to commit to anything, just to make an informed guess.  Does he seem to be holding his ground?”
Scully shook her head.  “At this particular juncture,” she glanced back down at her patient, “he seems to have fought the virus to a standstill.  The progress of the cellular breakdown has stalled in him as it had in your other...subject...back in Parkersburg.  If you’ve indeed successfully removed the developing organism, he might just be able to keep the virus at bay until his system flushes it out.  Overproduction of white blood cells seems in this case to be a boon.  If he makes it, he’ll be carrying his own built-in vaccine.”  She turned her head to regard their escort soberly.  “Can a hybrid genetic make-up keep the ‘rider’ alien out the same way a vaccinated host evicts them?”
“Our altered DNA makes us unfavourable hosts for that kind of possession,” the black-haired clone volunteered quietly.  “Just as with the viral stage, we seem to be able to wage a kind of constant struggle that may in the end unseat the invading organism.”
Scully glanced briefly at Mulder, who stood a few feet away at the edge of the next bed, face impassive.  “Well, I’d say you’re fairly safe, then.”  She tried to keep her voice level.  “And the chip is supposed to have the same effect?”
Surprisingly, it was the convalescent that answered, clearing his throat from the small bed.  There was a small sneer in his voice.  “If you have it turned on, you probably won’t catch the thing at all.”  He coughed again.  “Chris,” he murmured, “when can you get me out of here?  I don’t really wanna be dumped in a tub of cold water or turned into a pile of green ooze when the government gets here.”
The blonde woman looked down on him gently, her face suddenly beautiful as she smiled softly.  “We’ll get you out, Kyle,” she assured him.  She lifted her head to regard her brunette cronies.  “One of you go find that idiot insurance rep and tell him to pull a few more strings,” she ordered brusquely.  “We need to get Kyle and these three out of here before the Rebels nab them, or there won’t be any point.”  The third clone nodded and turned on his heel to leave the room without another word.
While their companion was gone, the black-haired clone who had escorted them back from the mountain cadre a few months ago drew them aside, leaving ‘Christiana’ and ‘Kyle’ to renew their acquaintance with a little more privacy.  He gave them a short summary in a low voice while the faltering breaths and bleeps of life-support machinery went on in the stillness from the other beds.  “We would have liked to give him time to recover from the fight,” their guide murmured quietly, “but there simply wasn’t time.  Usually we give them a day or so before we move our people in to do the surgery.  That’s easier to do in private hospitals, where the government gets the heads-up a little later than they would at a federally subsidized establishment, but...they heard about this one too early, before we could get a toe-hold in here.”  His smile was a little grim.  “Fairly good news for us, though.  It appears that when your DNA is fairly well adjusted, the procedure works like a charm.  We’ve seen it now several times, and it usually only takes three days to be out of the woods.”
“That’s reassuring,” Mulder agreed softly.  “Have you been monitoring the subjects to make sure there aren’t any relapses?”
The clone shrugged a bit fatalistically at that.  “What will be will be.  This is better than we’d hoped for.”  He glanced over to take in the scene at the gurney behind them.  “I hope Kyle makes it.  We depend on Chris--she’s kind of the leader of the clone segment of our enclave.  If he dies, she’ll fold like a house of cards.  They’ve been together since they escaped the facility at Fort Marlene, and she nearly lost it when he volunteered for the Seeding.”  He sounded very human at the moment, and his eyes were soft as he took in the pair of survivors quietly murmuring to each other in the sunny corner of the room.
In the silence that followed, William, sitting forgotten on Mulder’s hip and listening to the conversation, leaned out to stretch his small arms toward the recuperating clone.  Mystified, Mulder glanced quickly at Scully, who raised one shoulder as if to say, ‘I have no idea, Mulder.’  Mulder nodded and took a step toward the gurney.  As he approached, both Christiana and Kyle glanced up in time to see Will looming above them, a thoughtful and determined, almost rapt look on his small round face.  Almost as if directed by his son’s will, Mulder lifted the toddler from his hip and held him at about waist-level.  The child reached out one hand and laid it on the sick man’s stomach, then moved up to the shoulder.  He patted lightly as if in reassurance, then wriggled a little in his father’s grip to lean out and place one small hand on the ginger temple of the victim.
“Better,” he notified them sagely, in tones of deep satisfaction.  “You ‘kay, Kyle.  No more growin’.”  His serious little voice rang with certainty in the sudden sterile quiet of the room, and Scully could not help a small flutter of pride at his quiet conviction...and his compassionate bedside manner.  Her little diagnostician.  Both Christiana and Kyle were staring at the toddler, stunned at the surety of his announcement.  They of all people were aware of his abilities.
Better to be safe than sorry, though.  Mulder lifted the toddler up and looked into his small hazel eyes.  “How do you know, Champ?”
William regarded his father solemnly for a moment, then thrust three of his small fingers into his mouth and smiled.  He patted his father’s cheek firmly with his free hand.  “Silly, Dadda,” he informed the former agent, then removed his hand from his mouth to stretch out both arms to his mother.  “Mama, da man’s okay.  Will wants ta go away from here.”  His piping voice was decisive.  “Bad men coming.”  He made a face.  “An’ it’s loud.”
The blonde clone swept the doorway with a startled look.  “Well, I guess that answers that.  What the hell happened to Andy?” she muttered, and stood up to leave the gurney with a last squeeze of the convalescent’s hand.  “We have to get you and the kid out of here.”
“I’ll go look for a back way,” their black-haired friend spoke crisply, and quickly dodged out of the room.
“Our friend the insurance rep probably bailed the minute the feds got here,” Christiana muttered grimly.  If they’ve captured Andy, that means there’s only Chad and I to get you three and Kyle out of here.”  She gave them an annoyed look.  “If I let you get caught, I might as well not go back to our encampment.  There’ll be a price on my head.”
Scully stared at the woman in surprise.  “Your cadre leader didn’t know you’d picked us up?”
Christiana returned stare for stare.  “He knew you would want to confirm, and that your opinion would be helpful.  He didn’t precisely say that this particular situation was the safest.  We’re fairly close to DC, here.”
Mulder opened his mouth to comment on that, but at that moment, ‘Chad’ the black-haired clone bounded back into the room with an urgent expression.  “Chris, we must have lost track of them.  There’re about thirty HazMat guys down in the ER, and a few are on their way up.  The National Guard, if that’s what they really are, have blocked the front entrance and the main ambulance bay.  It looks like we have about five minutes to get the hell out.”
Suddenly the blonde woman was all business.  “The damned Guard is completely infiltrated,” she informed their two guests.  “'Supersoldiers' up the wahzoo.”  Her eyes were like iron on her dark-haired follower.  “Andy?”
Chad shook his head once in negation, and her mouth went flatline.  “They got him.  They know we’re here.”
Apparently they couldn’t waste time mourning for the fallen.  “Grab a wheelchair for Kyle,” the blond woman snapped angrily, then turned back to the small family near the window.  “Time to run, Agents.  That is, if you want to keep your son, there.  We should be able to slip out in the confusion.”  Neither of them bothered to argue.  Scully snapped to action, nodding to Mulder as she swung in behind the two clones.  
xxx
Mulder reached out to grab their son from her as they emerged into the hallway.  “You gotta stay quiet now, Slugger,” he muttered to the boy, who nodded silently, eyes wide at the sudden change in atmosphere.  The main hall of the ICU outside had taken on an air of surprised relief as word floated up the grapevine that help had arrived, and the nurses’ station was bustling with chaos of a different kind from that they had seen when they had entered the secure wing.  The nurse that had challenged them on the way in took one look at their wheelchair-bearing entourage and came bustling toward them, full of righteous wrath. 
	“Where are you taking that patient?” she demanded.
	Christiana did not bother to stop.  “We’re removing him from your care, Angie,” she threw over her shoulder.  She never broke stride as she moved to the far end of the ward and a small side-door there.  Two orderlies, coming in as they moved out, stared in surprise as first the two clones passed, Chad pushing a sagging Kyle in his chair, then Scully, and Mulder and William in the rearguard, strode through the electronic door.
	“Hey, have you signed him out?”
	“I’m all good, man,” Kyle muttered to them as they whisked by, and left the orderlies standing nonplussed in the doorway.
	Surprisingly, they made it to the elevator bank and out of the rear of the hospital with only a few more quick stoppages.  One, unfortunately, required a preemptive action by Chad, who clubbed a security guard across the face without halting.  The confusion had added to the ease of their escape...but it seemed that they were just in time.  Exactly as they emptied out into the rear parking area and rounded the corner of the building, a detachment of eerily blank-faced ‘National Guardsmen’ marched around the other end of the small hospital and left two guards on the back door.  “Go in and make sure we have everybody,” their leader intoned, and the remainder of the unit disappeared inside.
	“They’ll probably search the parking lots when they hear about our absconding with Kyle here,” Chad commented blandly as they shoved the wheelchair along.  He nodded to their leader, who resolutely began to jog.  “Hey, man; I hate to do this to you...”
	“No time.  Put it in high gear.”  Kyle was already panting.  He was really not ready to be jolted around like this, and Scully could see him blanching already.  In her mind’s eye, she could already see the spots of blood that would start to show up on his paper smock at any moment.
	“If we start vibrating around on this asphalt like bats out of hell, that man’s wound is going to reopen, and he could very possibly lapse back into shock,” Scully burst out angrily.  He may not exactly be her responsibility...but once she’d had her hands on someone, that person was her patient, and she would not just stand by and let them be a detriment to his recovery.
	“If we don’t get out of here, Doctor,” Chad grunted shortly, “he’ll have a very pretty stiletto decorating his neck before an hour has passed.”
	And that was that.
	They had parked on one side of the complex, luckily.  If they managed to escape before the entire parking lot was cordoned off, they might still manage to get out in one piece.  That hope got them exactly as far as the car before they saw a white HazMat van with its yellow and orange warning symbols pull in to block the exit.  “In the car!” Christiana barked.  Scully dove in and took William as Mulder handed him off to assist in manhandling the injured man into the backseat.  They ended up with Kyle sort of crawfished into the cab, and he lay with his head in her lap next to William, sweating and grunting in pain with small spots of blood on his shift just as she had feared.  Mulder jumped in right behind him, lifting the wounded man’s legs to slide into the seat just as the two clones slammed the front doors.  The car was already moving as Chad shut his, and Christiana gunned the engine and peeled out of their spot to head straight for the exit, HazMat team or no.
“What are you doing?” Scully demanded in horror.
The blond clone did not even slow.  “We’re getting out of here before they send over a jeep full of bullyboys, Doctor.  The decon team is less likely to have guns.  Or at least anything more than sidearms.  Chad!” she snapped, and her compatriot ducked and reached under the seat.  He came up with a .45 in his hand.
“Oh, God,” Scully groaned, and drew her own gun from the waistband of her slacks.  She slid down a bit, adjusting Kyle’s sweating head, racking her slide one-handed even as Will slid off of her lap to sit cross-legged on the floor.  “That’s good, Sweetie.  Stay down there by Mama’s feet.”  William looked up soberly but did not say a word, and she felt a dart of pain in her heart at the solemn manner in which their son seemed to accept danger and fear as a recognized part of his small life.  She glanced over at Mulder where he had his own gun out of it’s ankle holster and ready for action.  His eyes met hers briefly over the sick man, and their beloved green was as worried as her own.  He nodded.  --Ready?--
She nodded back, once...and then the car was careening over the intervening few yards to run up over the low concrete planter that separated the parking lot from the street.  To the right, at the exit, the HazMat guys came pouring out of their van.  There were shouts to halt, to pull over...and Christiana noticed not a one as the car lurched heart-stoppingly over the winter-bare hedges of the barrier and crunched to the roadway below.  There was a sickening screech as a red SUV only barely missed them, and then they had swung into traffic even as the air was filled with a sudden loud pepper of bullets coming from the so-called HazMat team.  By the time the disguised officials had brought their weapons to bear, however, their quarry had disappeared into the teeming North Baltimore streets.
“So it is a success,” Chad breathed as if nothing had happened, and straightened up to lay his gun in his lap where it would be easily accessible.  “Thirty taken this time.  Sixteen had chips.  The Rebels got their test...and so did we.  Three of us in the last three tests.  If the operation is viable in all of us...”  He glanced back at their son as the small boy clambered back into his mother’s lap, carefully patting the injured man’s forehead in passing.
“There were people in that batch with activated chips?” Mulder demanded before Scully could.  There would be no point if the chips were on standby as Cassandra Spender's had been, and all the others in that conflagration on Skyland Mountain, at Ruskin Dam.  
“The ones with chips will be removed very quickly, and they will most likely only be in danger for one day if that,” Christiana answered grimly.  “They will, of course, be under observation for much longer.”  She glanced over at Chad, and then back at Kyle as she wove expertly through the traffic.  “This is all we needed.  Kyle is our proof to the enclave leaders...to show we have merit as a new subset of the species.”  Her eyes betrayed her concern despite her harsh countenance.  “How...how’s he doing?”
Scully already had her hand on the sick man’s brow.  Kyle had collapsed into a feverish muttering, but he was still conscious, if only barely.  “He’ll live,” she said, voice bleak with condemnation, “at least for today.  Whether he’ll recover all the necessary balances...”
“We don’t even know if the people with activated chips will recovered from the hormone imbalances and deficiencies,” Christiana broke in angrily.  “There are no givens in this race, agents.  Only hopes, and desperate ones at that.”  Her voice was harsh once again, and her eyes glittered with an impotent rage as she glanced back at her friend where he lay reflected in the rearview mirror.
“It has begun.”  It was Kyle’s voice, weak and debilitated but still alert.  “The moment it’s...” he coughed weakly, “warm enough...the nearest holiday.  Easter...” he stopped, breathed, “or Cinco de Mayo if its n...not warm enough before that.”  He subsided, gasping, on Scully’s lap.  “You...two want to make...” he coughed one more time, “getting Agent Scully’s chip tuned up your...first priority.  After the kid, of course.  You’re...”  He seemed to slump against her thigh.
“Kyle!”  Christiana looked over her shoulder in panic as the clone lapsed in midsentence.  Scully laid a professional hand against the weakening clone’s damp brow.
“Good.  He’s unconscious.  That’s not usually anything to crow about, but his vitals are alright, he’s breathing is clear and his pulse is fairly steady.  He’s been overexerting himself.  The body knows what to do.”  She looked up from the patient in time to see the blonde woman’s face twist somewhere between fear and relief.  She opened her mouth...and Mulder beat her to the punch.
“How do we get Scully’s chip turned up to full charge or whatever?” he asked bluntly.  “One of your enclaves ought to have somebody who knows how to...”
“We don’t have that capability, Mr. Mulder,” Chad interrupted flatly.  "It requires an instrument that resides in the DARPA facilities, in the Rebels’ possession.  In order to get her immunity assured, you’ll have to convince them to join in our possibility.”
“Great.”  Mulder’s voice was doubtful...and his dear face was apprehensive.  Scully knew that Mulder feared losing her in the face of her immune deficiency almost as much as he feared losing the entire battle, if not more.  Since her near-fatal brush with cancer, Scully no longer feared death.  But to leave Mulder alone with William...not that she didn’t trust her partner to take care of their son, but she knew that Mulder did not trust himself with the task.  Not alone.
There was the crux, then.  She could face her own death without fear, but she could not leave her son alone.  And so she must get that damned chip turned on...for all their sakes.  “And the only way we’ll get the Rebels on our side is if they see a full show of support for our son from every enclave, is that it?”
Christiana glanced back at them once more.  “That is something we must consider, isn’t it?” she asked rhetorically.  “I think it’s about time our illustrious leaders realize we only have a month or two left at best before this entire thing goes up in smoke.”
“We don’t have much time,” Mulder grunted discouragedly.  “I’ve been saying that for a year.”
“And our leaders would like to waffle till the end.  Agreed, Mr. Mulder,” Christiana nodded.  They pulled up in the town of Westminster, just northwest of Baltimore and drove directly to a particular small motel.  “We’ll be in touch,” Christiana murmured as they turned to go.  Her face, usually so dour, seemed now to be softer.  It made her look vulnerable and even pretty in the afternoon light.  “We have Kyle now, and we’ve seen what your son can do.  We’ll keep working on them.”  She grimaced a little caustically.  “We may be 'only clones', but we’re better than nothing.”
They had to content themselves with that.  As the agents settled into their newest room and prepared to wait out the delivery of their personal effects from the last motel, Mulder went to stand by the window.  Scully watched him looking out into the night, wondering as he did, how on earth they would survive the coming holocaust.
xxx
April 18, 2003
Good Friday

	They had been watching all day for any signs that it might be that weekend; canvassing the TV stations for signs that it might have begun.  It was certainly warm enough.  Nothing would be broadcast, of course, but they should be able to pinpoint any signs of cover up in the breaking reports before the masters of the universe could pop in and put a noose around the media.  After all their years of investigating, waiting, suspicion, and cocooned disbelief, it was almost surreal to have the holding pattern broken by that long-feared actuality that had hovered over their consciousness for so long.  It was definitely surreal to see the pandemonium on the five o’clock news as all the local stations broke in at once with reports of sudden terror and chaos at various hospitals at an unexplained something that was downing people like crazy...and one lone, seemingly unconnected report of strange early swarms of bees...
Nightmare.  A nightmare come to life, and one they had hoped they would never have to see as all their fears came horribly true.
There was really no way to prepare, Scully realized, for the inevitable.  They had been fighting this thing for a decade, even before she had believed in it...but mentally, she realized, even now that sheBbelieved, she was not prepared for the reality of the situation as it unfolded.  She was certainly no more prepared than Mulder was to have to sit and wait on the edges while the world disintegrated around their ears.  There was nothing they could do.  It was over.  The hope had come too late, stalled too long.  When there was nothing left to lose...that was when the Fight became truly bloody.
Consequently, they were relatively unsurprised and in fact desperate to do something, engage in some action however useless, by the time they were brought back into the Fight.   The evening twilight seemed to file into their Chestertown Delaware motel room with the unannounced visitors who invaded them at around six PM on that first day of Easter weekend.  They did not recognise most of the shadowy figures as they filtered quickly into the room the moment the door was opened, save one vaguely familiar face...a clone that Scully seemed to remember from that day in the forests of Dixie last year.
	“Come with us, quickly.  It has started.”  The harsh voice of the clone seemed to grate with a sort of angry helplessness.  
	The two agents moved quickly into alert status, glancing around a room filled with tall shadows as they moved to gather up the things they might need.  Beside them on the single chair, William was wide-awake and staring.  He did not seem particularly welcoming...but he did not seem exactly afraid either...and no wonder if he were unsettled.  His parents had been so for days now, and he had quite obviously picked up on the strain.
“Where are we going?” Scully asked first, and lifted the small child protectively.  William may not have been giving an alarm, but something seemed definitely wrong with this picture.  Her epinephrine was already kicking in, despite the last few helplessly sleepless nights.  Beside her, Mulder had already blinked himself into full alertness and moved to stand.  His bare feet made a soft padding sound on the carpet as he strode wordlessly over to snag their guns off of the dresser.  It stood to reason that if these were not their friends, they would not allow the two former agents to carry their weapons.  No one stood in his way as he picked them up, however, and the spokesman that had spoken first to them simply grunted a short reply.
“Bethesda Naval Hospital.  It’s crawling with Rebels, so it should be safe from Colonial depredations.  It’s far too late for the government infiltrators to attempt to harm your child, and it’s definitely too late for us to hedge our bets.”
“Now you realize that,” Mulder grunted, and moved to pass Scully her gun as she stood to receive it.  He glanced up at their guides, none of whom they readily recognised in the dim evening light.  “Why would you take us right to the centre of this?  As you say, the Rebels will be all over the place, and I for one don’t want to just take your word for it that they won’t harm our son.”  He glanced at Scully and the toddler.  “This seems like a really convenient method of handing them another chance at it.  And whether They’ve begun already or not, it still wouldn’t hurt the Colonists’ plan to just pick him up and skip town.  Then They’d really have everything that they need.”
“I’ve told you, it’s too late for that,” the clone grunted, looking impatiently out the window at the parking lot filled with nondescript sedans.  “Removing your child would make little difference.  The Invasion has already begun; the Process has been initiated.  Those Belial-inspired Colonial bastards have released Purity with or without his DNA.  They have their Replacements.  They’ve obviously decided that they don’t need anything more to start off with.”  There was an inordinate amount of bitterness in that statement, almost as if the speaker felt trapped.
Scully glanced at Mulder with worried eyes as she took her gun from him and tucked it into the waistband of her pants.  “I don’t recognise any of you,” she noted quietly.
“We’ve been brought up from the enclave in this crisis.  There are many of us you did not meet.”
Mulder’s eyes were filled with an ambivalence halfway between morbid eagerness to see the proof of his years of sacrifice...and the suspicion that things weren’t quite right.  On the other hand, however, they had put themselves in these Renegades’ hands.  What else could they do?  “I don’t suppose you want to give us any assurances that you’re going to be able to keep him safe?” he asked quietly.
The clone turned away from the window to stare back at them in the twilight.  “The only assurance you have is that there is nothing more we can do, now,” he said.  “We must hurry, or it will be too late when we get there.”
“Too late to do what?” Scully inquired as they were hustled to the door, but their guides did not answer.
xxx
They reflected, as they were shoved into one of several dark vehicles with their son, that this shouldn’t have been such a great surprise.  The unseasonably snowy cold front that had locked the East Coast up for most of the winter had dispersed with unnerving rapidity in the last few days, almost as if in open invitation to the Colonists to begin their true offensive.  The development of the fetuses in all the previous tests, their escorts informed them as they drove, had been stunted by the cold weather in which all the hosts had lain in for hours at the ‘lighthouses’ before their recovery...but in this terrifyingly spring-like weather, Easter weekend had loomed like a marquee on the horizon of immanent invasion.
There was nothing patient in the way they dodged through the panicked traffic of Annapolis this time, moving north on the Fifty toward DC.  They honked and whizzed past the familiar streets of Bethesda, traveled so many times in similar chaos of heart and mind, though on those nights the streets had flowed by in their regular rounds of traffic and without the absolute bedlam that now marked them.  It was almost incongruent to be so close to home now, only to find it almost unrecognisable in the current madness.
Their guides decided early on to go nowhere near the Beltway, as it was by now an impassible turmoil of car accidents and the terror of confused motorists all striving it seemed to get as far from the north end of the city as possible.  DC was emptying out even as they drove deeper into the warren that marked the outside borders of the land they called home...a place so changed from that which they had left that Scully felt jarred by the two pictures.  One look at Mulder’s face in the flaring of lights and pandemonium of sounds showed her that he felt the same.  His expression bore the same lost look that she had seen in him when he had had to leave her and William--the look of someone that had lost something very precious.
She knew her own face was as horrified as they passed once-familiar streets now cluttered with a horror-stricken pastiche of mad honking and open panic...a panic that seemed to increase by the moment as the citizens of the US capitol began to realize that they had only a minimum of time to get out before the city was quarantined and marshal law was declared.  Caught up in the escalating drama and with the sick feeling of knowing making them shudder back from the evidence of their eyes, the blows sunk deeper and deeper into their hearts the nearer they came to the streets they knew.
In the vicinity of the familiar hospital, the wreckage was very nearly absolute.  There were several-car pile-ups clogging the streets in the immediate vicinity of the great research institute, and the many approaches were littered with dead bees, their message delivered like a bloodborn plague, scattered amongst the rigid bodies of the stung victims lying on the sidewalks surrounded by nervous crowds.  Each jumbled group of pedestrians, onlooker and stricken alike, stood surrounded by HazMat teams in their white Level Four decontamination suits, and every entrance to the hospital grounds was blocked by a large white van or the covered trucks of the military.  They had come home to a war zone, and there was nothing even remotely controlled about the scene.
It was as if their encounter at St. Fatima’s had been simply a rehearsal for this true test.  Whatever the localized fear that had surrounded that small edifice, it was nothing to the terror and confusion that pervaded the grounds of the naval hospital, and more than likely every other hospital in the city...all cities.  Cars were jammed, and in some cases smashed together in an ecstasy of shocked mayhem at the emergency parking area, and every one of the three ambulance bays was blocked off by National Guard units holding off the terrified and even the infected at gunpoint.  The parking lots were a topsy-turvy mess of broken and trapped vehicles, most of them with concerned families and unconscious patients still inside.  The many glass doors of the edifice were guarded by soldiers in HazMat suits and riot gear, automatic weapons held in dangerously capable hands, and the milling masses of humanity that could not be admitted surged and shouted blankly outside the patrolled areas, unsure of what to do in this breakdown of order.  There was simply no room for most of the victims.
“They dumped it right on the middle of the city,” Mulder commented almost reflectively.  Beside him on his mother’s lap, William made a small sound of distress at the emotional chaos surely battering at his small psyche.  
“Then where are all the bees?” Scully wondered aloud, gauging the mayhem with a practiced eye.  “The only ones left seem to be already dead.”
“This area has already been sufficiently canvassed,” a voice broke in from the front of the car.  “All those who are not stricken have most likely been administered the chip before now, or were somehow missed in the first run.  There were simultaneous attacks in other major cities.  The secondary targets will be Seeded next.”
“Has a State of Emergency already been called in?” Mulder asked in that controlled, focused voice that she knew so well.  It was the voice that said louder than words, ‘This isn’t going to go on as long as I’m alive.’  She felt purpose flooding into her at that well-known, determined note, and she straightened and drew in a steadying breath.  This wasn’t going to go on as long as she was alive, either.
“You can surely see that it has, Mr. Mulder.  The CDC was forced to cede its interests more than an hour ago.  Luckily, it is the Resistance that now occupies most of the governing seats in those bodies.  Even now, the outbreak may be contained by the Resistance elements of your Government.”
“But how did They get it off?  With the Rebels in control, your people said that They didn’t have access anymore, to the crops, to the Oil...”
“In this country, yes, Mr. Mulder...but transgenic crops can be grown anywhere in the world, and much easier in countries where the FDA does not operate.  There are, you are aware, ‘deposits’ of that particular substance you refer to as ‘the Black Cancer’ all over this globe.  All the Colonists needed was one person from within FEMA still loyal to the Project to begin the Process; a smuggler, a button-pusher.”  The clone’s face was cynical as he turned back to look out the windshield of the sedan.  “The framework is still there, even without the tender ministrations of that particular Consortium to keep things running smoothly.  All it needed to set the thing in motion was the flick of a switch.  The sheer size of the outbreak and the vast confusion that it would cause would do the rest of Their work for Them.”
Scully made a face.  “Looks like They found somebody to bribe,” she murmured.  She couldn’t seem to take her eyes off of the chaos outside their windows.  People would think that this was the feared act of biological terrorism; another stroke in an ongoing war for oil.  Most would never know how close they were to the Truth.   
Mulder had sat back as if he’d been slapped.  “Then where the hell are these ‘Elders’ that everyone’s been talking about?  Shouldn’t they be here now, to stop this?”
The clone in the passenger seat glanced back, sounding amused.  “They’ll be along.  The question is, will they be in time.”
For some reason it seemed to be almost poetic, if in a rather hideous way, that this was the same hospital in whose well-guarded, echoing basement morgue they had first encountered this virus before Scully had been stung five years ago.  Now, of course, there would be no possibility of bluffing their way in as they had back then-not with these ‘National Guardsmen’/supersoldiers, and decon teams swarming all over the place.
Luckily, getting near the hospital proved to be a much less difficult task than they had envisioned.  The leader of this small group seemed to have some kind of understanding with whomever happened to be in charge at the moment, for despite the fact that the facility was actually a well-guarded naval base, their party was moved past the crowds and into the building after only a quick discussion with the guards stationed at one of the familiar side-entrances.  This passageway emptied into a much less chaotic side-corridor, where the once-calm and well-ordered interior of Bethesda Naval now rang with shouts and muffled sounds of fear rebounded from the lobby at the other end to echo hollowly in this narrowly packed hall.  Patients and medical personnel were running back and forth from ER to treatment rooms in panic at the other end of the passage, and the corridor itself was littered with gurneys and people simply lying on the floor.  They could see enough of the lobby to tell that there were HazMat doctors and Guardsmen everywhere.  People were milling about aimlessly, coagulating at the many entrances like platelets at the site of a hemorrhage, shoved and cursing as all social order broke down...and everywhere, there was terror.  The constant sharp babble of orders, shouts, cries, the fear thick in the air, the hopelessness in the eyes of the overwhelmed nurses...the unbearable tension of the place seemed to sum up the plight of the world, hitting them with the collective force of a solid wall as they moved into the passageway.  At their side, William let out a small sniffle of upset, and Scully almost instinctively swung him up into her arms, pointlessly covering his tiny ears as though there were anything she could do to stop the cacophony from reaching him.
“We can’t bring him in there,” she said sharply to their escort.  “It could drive him crazy!” 
The man turned to look at her with something indefinable in his eye.  “You’re right, Agent Scully.  Your child shouldn’t be here at all.”
“Well then why...” she began angrily.  At that exact moment there was a wail from one of the terrified people jammed in against the wall.  A dark-haired woman was crying out a name over and over, her voice unnoticed by the overwhelmed medical personnel at the other end of the hall from where she was kneeling on the tile floor.  William was looking at the weeping woman sadly, eyes much too wise for his age.  Scully handed the baby to Mulder and started to move toward the downed victim.  “Get him out of here, Mulder,” she ordered peremptorily.
“You can’t help that man, Agent Scully,” the nearest clone shouted over her head.  She didn’t stop, and in a moment she was kneeling at the victim’s side.
“Ma’am?  Can you tell us what happened?”
“I...I don’t know...” the woman sobbed disjointedly.  “We were bringing my son in, and there were bees...and he said he couldn’t breathe...”  She dissolved into tears again as she looked helplessly down at the comatose teenager on the floor.
Scully felt her heart wrench.  This could be her with William.  The tearing grief she would feel if she lost her son...  That then was her personal stake, even as Mulder had had his own throughout all those years of searching.  She had never understood till now.  It had always been personal with him, no matter how many times he had talked of justice and the swindle of the populace.  It had been about Samantha...and now, as for her, it was about William.  She looked up to meet her partner’s eyes and knew for the first time exactly how such scenes had affected him throughout their years of chasing that unseen ghost that was his sister; and her heart wrenched anew as she took in the pity that lay pooled in his eyes behind the mask of anger, behind the tightly-wound energy of him.  A scene like this could not but bring back to him that same compassion that he felt every time he saw a woman or a girl in distress.  It did always, would always remind him of Samantha, in the same way she had felt an instant empathy with those pregnant women in distress, with new mothers, and with broken children like Emily.  Her son now.  Their son; a new focus for the Search.  But no matter how much healing had taken place, the wound wound that was labeled ‘Samantha’ would always in some part be there for Mulder, if no longer just under the skin as it had once been.  As Emily would be for her.  As William might become, now.
The realization that she had pushed aside since their first discovery of the virus was striking her afresh as she returned her attention to the barely-breathing teen and beheld the horror before her.  “There’s no way we can administer enough vaccine to help all these people, even if we knew how to get it.”  She felt the helpless fury rising in her voice as she tore her eyes away from both her family and the victim to take in the gaggle of clones standing around the hall.  “I don’t suppose you people have any more of those ‘healers’ of yours in here helping out?  Or was Jeremiah right?  Did the Colonists get all of them, too?”  
Silence from the clones.  Scully gave up and returned her gaze to the downed victim and his sobbing attendant.  She patted the mother’s arm absently, trying to inject enough assurance into her voice to soothe the woman.  “We’ll try to get somebody to him,” she promised, but it was obvious that she thought there was little hope.
“What do you mean?” the woman wailed, seizing Scully’s sleeve as if desperate for any assistance at all.  “Where are you going?”  She made another desperate grab, but Scully was already up and coming back to their escort, face frozen with rage.
“I don’t suppose you people would like to tell us what the hell is going on?  Why did you bring us here?  What can you possibly hope to accomplish?”  The terror had translated itself to her as fury, and she was suddenly livid at them for exposing her child to this horror.
“We have already accomplished it, Doctor,” one of the grinning clones murmured from the back.
“What...” she began, when William suddenly let out a cry of relief from his perch on Mulder’s hip, and stretched his arms out.  Scully turned around sharply in time to see Gibson Praise, looking pale and ill, trotting up from the frenetic lobby with the clones Christiana and Chad directly behind him, and about five other people from their Renegade enclave drawing up the rear.
“Agent Scully, what are you doing here?” Gibson was saying on a winded exhalation.  He was wide-eyed with concern as he bent over to catch his breath, and his voice was worried.
“These guys brought us,” Mulder responded, and nodded to the spokesman of their little entourage.  “I don’t suppose any of you could tell us why?”
“What’s wrong with you, Gibson?” Scully broke in softly.
Gibson’s pale eyes took in the fifteen or so anonymous figures behind them, seeming to barely acknowledge the question.  “I got stung,” he told them absently, as if it were of no moment.  “Carriers still have an anaphylactic reaction; we just get over it quicker.  I’ll be alright.  You should be too, if you get stung.”  A look of growing suspicion was dawning on his round face as his eyes, suddenly incisive, swept over their companions.  His expression went blank for a moment as he glanced at their minds...and then it filled with something they had never before seen from him.  Rage.  Before Scully, alarmed at the sudden change in his expression, could ask what was the matter, the blond clone they knew as Christiana broke the silence, eyes flickering from Gibson to William and then to the clone that had led them here.
“This one,” she volunteered grimly as she nodded toward the spokesman, “left us some months ago, after being caught in some suspicious activities.”  Her mouth went flat.  “We don’t know who he had been consorting with, but he took a small following of dissenters with him when he left.” She stared into the other clone’s eyes.  “He seems to have picked up a few more along the way.”
“They went over to the Sons,” Gibson broke in flatly.  “This is a Colonist trap.”
Mulder was already moving away with William securely in one arm, gun out though carefully hidden from the Guardsmen on the other side of the hall.  He backed toward the glass doors, nodding once for Scully to join him.  If they could get past the Guardsmen outside...
The spokesman of the group that had brought them snorted sharply in derision.  “We weren’t going to throw our lives away for your ridiculous scheme,” he said in a suddenly hate-filled voice.  “None of us!  Cooperation is the only option.”  All around him, the deserters from various enclaves shifted, grinning malevolently.  “The only problem is...They needed a token of our loyalty.  Something to prove our usefulness.”
He glared at the opposing group, smile almost regretful.  He had the look of one who had sold his soul and betrayed his only hope for security.  “The Law of One is dead, ladies and gentlemen.  It has been since the Sons annexed Their first System.  You’ve been supporting a lost cause for millennia.  You know it and I know it.  This little skirmish is all about cleaning up the leftovers.”  He transferred his gaze to Mulder and the baby.  “Like him.”  His eyes seemed to glitter as he focused on the preternaturally aware toddler struggling in his father’s arms. 
Scully, looking over Mulder’s shoulder where he was backing toward the door, saw it first.  “Mulder, look out!”
The blow struck the former agent right at the junction of neck and shoulder.  He dropped, trying desperately to roll...and came up empty-handed, face to face with an alien Bounty Hunter.  
From the Bounty Hunter’s steel-like grip, William gave a thin wail of terror, and Mulder’s face went blank with rage.  Still weaving from the blow, he lunged at the alien...who struck him again with as much emotion as a man swatting a fly.  Mulder spun in a half circle before he hit the wall with a sickening thump.
“Dadda!” William cried out, and writhed like a mink in the alien’s grip.
“William!”  Scully started forward...and was knocked back as Gibson Praise lunged past her.  The young man, still pale as a ghost, leaped at the alien that had once come after him in the same way...and staggered with his hand to his scarred head as the alien glared at him.  All remaining colour drained from his gaunt round face as he sagged suddenly.  Scully made a grab for him and missed him as he slumped to the floor, and came up with her arms pinned behind her by one of the sullen clones that had led them so blithely into this trap.
In the confusion, they had forgotten about Chad and Christiana and their small group.  The Bounty Hunter had its eyes on its prey as Gibson slithered, unconscious, to the tiles.  It didn’t see the blonde woman as she dove in, snagged the child from the Colonist’s grip and backed away with him.  She nodded at Chad as the Bounty Hunter started inexorably toward her.  “Get the kid out of here...and anyone else you can save.”  She backed up...and like the dance of some ghastly game of keepaway, she stepped right into the arms of the spitefully grinning clone that had led them into this trap.  The clone’s arms went around her in a hideous parody of a hug, and he whispered something in her ear as one of his party sidled up to strip her gun away from her.  She still held William, who was now staring up over her shoulder at their captor with wide eyes as he tightened his chokehold.
Scully struggled helplessly in her own captor’s iron grip as the confrontation unfolded, watching with ever-increasing horror as the dice continued to spin and dance, knowing that each turn of the tables took them from bad to worse and that she was on her own.  She didn’t even know if Mulder had survived his face-off with the Bounty Hunter that now stood grimly watching the byplay of clone politics with a patient gaze.  Mulder.  Her son.  
“Heard Kyle got ‘tested’, Chris,” the traitor was murmuring into the blonde woman’s ear.  “I heard he actually made it through.”  His arms shifted slightly to reveal the small metal tube he had concealed in his left hand.  The light glinted from the polished sides of the silvery object.  “Too bad you didn’t have very long to celebrate.”  The stiletto flickered out of the tube, and Christiana had the knowledge of her death in her eyes as the traitor loosened his hold and shoved her away to slide the shining point into the back of her neck.  She slumped to the floor even as Scully jerked against her captor’s grip, hoping to take advantage of the distraction to escape the clone’s chokehold and to recapture her son.
She broke the man’s overly strong hold with a head-butt and dodged a clumsy blow to lunge forward...but the traitorous, malicious spokesman had already leaned forward and plucked the child from the rapidly dissolving arms of his former compatriot.  “Hold her!” he barked to his follower.  “Stay back, Agent Scully, or the baby dies.”  
He glanced up at the Bounty Hunter, grimly holding on to the struggling boy.  “We did what you wanted.  Now I want your assurance.”
xxx
The Bounty Hunter stared at the clone as if It had just noticed that the man existed.  When It finally spoke, Its voice was as expressionless as Its face.  “You’ve done well, drone.  You have your assurance; you will not be forgotten.”  It took one step forward...and a stiletto flashed from its own meaty palm to take the traitorous clone in the base of the skull.  The clone’s eyes started from his head in shock as he received his reward and followed his erstwhile companion to his demise.
The Bounty Hunter stepped over the body, ignoring it as if it never existed while it dissolved before their eyes.  Chad made an abortive move to grab William up, eyes full of an impotent rage, and the shocked traitors all around him made no move to halt his progress, all the illusions flooding from their eyes at the sudden death of their leader.  Neither did they make any move to regain possession of Scully as she lurched forward to rescue her son...but the Bounty Hunter was the closest.  
Recaptured, Will stared around him wide-eyed...but the sound that came from his small mouth was not one of fear.  He glared at the steely-eyed alien looming above him, and a sharp wail of anger filled the small hall.  Behind the tableau in the sudden silence there was a rustle as Gibson lifted his head, face deathly pale.  “Agent Scully,” he murmured.  She ignored him, ignored Mulder’s crumpled body where it lay still and motionless against the wall, and although she knew it was hopeless, she moved to lunge forward again, eyes searching desperately for the gun laying somewhere on the floor where her captors had dropped it when their leader had been annihilated before their eyes.
“It is over,” the alien aid flatly.  “You have fought well.  Be content.  Everything dies.”  Its voice seemed to stop her in her tracks as if her feet had sunk into the floor, and she watched helplessly as the It stepped back toward the glass door with William still struggling from one beefy arm and the green-stained stiletto closed and innocuous-looking in the other hand.  William’s hazel eyes, so like Mulder’s, so like her own, seemed to pierce into hers like arrows, helpless and yet so tiny and brave in his captor’s steel grip.  The alien reached the door, began to move through past the Guardsmen that stood grimly and studiously ignored the events taking place within.  William looked directly at her, and his gaze had gone suddenly gray, baby face determined. 
“Mama!” He called.  His small voice was high and clear in the thick air of the hall...and there was no hint of fear there.  His voice seemed to ring in the sudden, deathly silence.  “I love you, Mama.”  And then they were through the doors.
Scully felt something break inside her.  She threw herself at the glass.  The two soldiers on the other side of the portal turned, barring the doors with their guns held across their chests, faces as expressionless as the alien’s had been.
“You let me through this door, you sonsofbitches!” she shouted desperately, and smashed her fists against the glass.  “That’s my baby!”  Her eyes filled with helpless tears of rage, and she slid to her knees, still banging against the door as the immovable replicants stared in at her and traitors and allies alike stood nervously behind her in the hall.  “That’s my son!”  There was no way she would make it through the crush in the lobby to another exit in time to catch up to her child, even if the guards at those doors would let her get out.  William was gone.  Taken.  They’d lost him.  They had failed.
xxx
Gibson regained his feet slowly, moved his hand unsteadily against the wall and pushed himself up so that he could maneuver his way to where Mulder lay crumpled against the wall.  He laid a hand against the other man’s temple, then looked sadly down the hall to where Scully knelt weeping and immobile at the doors.  “He’s just been knocked out, Agent Scully,” he called down the hall.  “He’ll come to in a minute.”  Ahead of him, Scully pushed herself up against the doors, palms flat on the glass and face like a carven wax mask as she stared out of the panes at the chaos into which her son and his captor had disappeared.  She forced herself with everything that she had left to get up, to turn away from that hopeless vista, to turn back and try to put together something, anything...
She felt it all collapse within her once again as the tearing grief and helplessness came crushing back in like a breaking wave.  She wanted to fall back to the floor and wail, to rail against God, to beat down the doors with her bare hands, to scrabble on the floor for her gun and shoot both of those damned guards and run out into the night after her child.  She wished she had been knocked insensate on the floor like Mulder.  He hadn’t had to see that final vision of their son that would forever be seared into her vision.  His brave face.  That final cry.  ‘I love you Mama’...a word that unlike his parents he had never been afraid to say.  A gift...stolen.  Lost.  She had, in the end, been unable to protect him.  She wished she could continue to try...but of those choices, the only one that made sense was to go back and get Mulder and go on, try to find some way to stop this.
Tearing her eyes away, she subsumed her helplessness and shock, her fear and rage, and began the slow process of turning all that back into the kind of cold determination that would save her son.  She needed to be that cold center that she knew she held inside herself if they were to get their son back.  She could feel the icy rage filling her already, and that flat implacability that she knew would serve her best.  She drew in one deep breath and forced herself to turn back to where Mulder lay, knelt beside him against the wall while her fingers moved automatically toward his pulse point.  She ignored Gibson’s anxious eyes on hers as she spoke his name; not a question but a demand.  “Mulder.”
His eyelids flickered...and awareness slowly seeped back.  He blinked himself back to alertness...and then suddenly sat up in a sharp movement that had him groaning with a hand to his head.  “Ow!  Damn!”  He dropped quickly back to his elbow and closed his eyes, face creased with the onslaught of pain before he opened them again to focus on Scully.  He took in in one glance the haunted look in her eyes, and his own face seemed to sag.  “William?”
“The Bounty Hunter.  It killed a couple of clones and got away,” Gibson informed him softly.  “Agent Scully couldn’t get through the doors.  There’re replacements guarding it.”  His large gray eyes, in that moment so similar to their son’s, were veiled with a kind of quiet, sad anger as he stared into a sheer wall of minds gibbering in panic outside the hospital.  “But not all the doors.  Just this one.  The others are regular soldiers.  Their commanders are supersoldiers.  Rebels.  All over the hospital.  I’m amazed They even got in here.”
Mulder nodded.  “At this moment, the government’s no help to us.”  He reached up with one hand to lay his palm against his partner’s cheek, and his eyes sought hers out.  “We’ll get him back, Scully,” he said softly...but there was nothing soft in his voice, and his eyes were grim as he moved to struggle to his feet.  Scully tried to take strength from that...but her entire being was crying out that it was too late.
“I mean it.  We won’t stop till we do.”
She nodded...but she did not trust herself to speak.
They turned back to the lobby.  The remaining members of dissenting clones seemed to melt before them, and the five Renegade clones fell in behind.  Chad remained kneeling for a moment beside the green viscous fluid that was all that remained of Christiana, then stood with a bleak look and followed.  The traitors didn’t move, and were left behind, a headless serpent in a trap as the implacable group left the hall to approach the lobby.
They reached the pandemonium of the main wing walking like a group of siege survivors, and stepped into the chaos like stepping through an invisible wall.  Gibson’s head jerked up from where he had it bowed against the booming tide and the roaring of the mental noise around him.  “The others are here,” he informed them quietly.
The ‘others’ turned out to be members of their own enclave, arrived too late.  The first to round the corner and come face to face with them was Krycek’s clone.  The rest of his contingent seemed to pile up behind him, and the two groups stared at each other suspiciously.  The copy of the man they had once known with such despite, however, ignored the clones gathered around them to stare at the former agents with his finely-drawn mouth slightly open in that perusing gaze.  He contemplated the small ragged group of survivors for a moment, his intelligent, slightly on-edge eyes darting from Mulder’s face to Scully’s to Chad’s and back again.  He took in the entire situation in one glance, and he turned his head sharply, brown hair gleaming in the brash glare of the fluorescents, to speak over his leather-clad shoulder to someone within his group that they could not yet see. 
“We’ve lost him.  It’s all gone to hell.”
xxx