Found

By: Innisfree
katclar73@yahoo.com


CLASSIFICATION:  SRA

RATING: R (language, sexual situations)

KEYWORDS: MSR, Post-Series

SPOILERS: Through The Truth.

ARCHIVE: Yes -- just e-mail me.

DISCLAIMERS: They're not mine, I'm not making any
money, and there is no intent to infringe any lawful
copyrights or trademarks.

SUMMARY: The trailer for the new film started me
thinking about what might cause two people who are
clearly meant to be together to part ways... at least
for a while. Heavy angst throughout but I do like
things to end well and hope Chris Carter feels the
same way.
__________________________________________


Found
by Innisfree


I used to think that I knew what it meant to be alone.

Fifteen years ago, I spent every day by myself in a
cluttered basement office at the Hoover Building.
There were no windows. No one stopped by. Hell, no one
even walked by. I could have dropped dead of an
aneurysm while pouring over reports of recent crop
circle sightings and I doubt anyone would have noticed
my absence until someone from the cleaning crew
tripped over my body.

Fifteen years ago, I went home every night to a
slightly musty apartment. I fed my fish, ate my cheap
take-out food, and fell asleep on my couch in the
flickering light cast by the television and whatever
bad porn movie I'd found on pay-per-view. I didn't
even own a bed, much less have someone in my life to
share one with me.  

If I'm being honest, I was almost alright with being
alone back then. Not happy, maybe, but alright. I had
my work. I had the memory of my sister. I believed
that I was right, and everyone who didn't understand
that my cause was noble and necessary could bite me. I
could handle being alone just fine, and eventually my
aloneness came to define me... like some strange badge
of valor in my solitary quest for the truth.

I see everything more clearly now. Now I see that
locking yourself in a basement and hiding in an empty
apartment has nothing to do with being alone. I chose
to cut myself off from everyone else so that I could
wallow, uninterrupted, in the glorious conviction that
I was misunderstood. That's not alone. It's a
political statement. It doesn't cut to the bone.

Alone is what you are when the person you love, the
person who puts up with you when you're an ass and
smiles at you on the rare occasions you do something
right, the person you'd die for without a doubt or a
second thought... walks out of your life.  Alone is
what I've been since the day Scully said goodbye.

* * *

May 5, 2006

I remember it was a Friday because Scully had a
graveyard double shift at the morgue from midnight
Thursday to late Friday afternoon. I thought I'd be
able to slip away for a few hours without her being
any the wiser.
 
Scully and I had been fugitives for nearly four years.
We'd lived in a dozen different places, always trying
to stay under the radar and one step ahead of the
super-soldiers and their apparently large cadre of
government collaborators. We lived in a constant state
of alert, and sometimes outright fear. Needless to
say, we never met the neighbors.

It seemed as though every time we started to think
that we might be okay - that maybe the Knowle Rohrers
of the world had forgotten about us or decided we no
longer posed a threat to their plans - Skinner would
find a way to get us a message: They're getting close
again. Time to go. Sometimes we could last somewhere
for five months before Skinner reached out to us. A
couple of times, we were gone again in less than two
weeks.

I was always the one who decided where we'd set up
shop next. It was an easy rhythm for the two of us to
fall into. After all, I had dragged her with me to
every backwater town and third-rate roadside motel
from the Gulf Coast to the Canadian border during the
seven years we were together on the X-Files. In the
beginning, when I was annoyed that she'd been assigned
to the X-Files to spy on me, I figured I could shake
her if the travel itinerary was sufficiently
unappealing. In the end, I couldn't have imagined
being in any of those places without her. But she was
always there, all along, right next to me.

So when we went on the run, I picked the destinations
right from the start. Neither of us ever stopped to
wonder who the hell put me in charge again this time
around.

Arlington, Massachusetts. Barstow, California.
Seattle. Barbados. Ottawa. Some town in the middle of
nowhere, Texas. Scully would usually ask me why I
wanted to go wherever I told her we were going and
she'd get some answer that probably wasn't any more
convincing than "evidence of ritual sacrifice" or "six
exsanguinated cows" had been when we were back in the
basement looking at slides. But whether she nodded, or
rolled her eyes, or sighed with exasperation and
stormed off to the bedroom, she always packed her
bags. She always climbed into the car with me for the
next stop on what must have felt to her like the "I
Wish I'd Listened to My Brother Bill" World Tour. Some
things didn't change.

In May 2006, we'd been in Denver for three months. I'd
read once that Northern Colorado had as many sunny
days in a year as Southern California, so I figured it
wouldn't be the worst place to spend a winter.  Or at
least that's what I'd told Scully.

I didn't tell Scully that I'd been trying to track
down our son. William. She didn't know that I'd spent
hundreds of hours trying to find the child that was
never supposed to be found by anyone who knew his real
name. I think I may have been a little hard on Chesty
Short during his budgetary review of the X-Files for
the FBI's Accounting Department. Turns out you can
search for a lot of things while sitting at a desk.
From the internet, to chat rooms, to a handful of
well-placed phone calls to people with certain
sympathy for a father whose child had been given up
for adoption without his knowledge, I had finally come
up with a solid lead. William had been adopted by a
family living somewhere in Wyoming.

It was always easier for Scully to find work as a
pathologist in larger cities, and Denver was less than
a hundred miles from the Wyoming border. I figured I
could do some legwork in the southern part of the
state, and the next time we had to relocate, we could
head to Salt Lake City or Helena, Montana and I could
cover ground in the northern and western counties.
Wyoming may not have a lot of people but it's a big
ass state when you're trying to drive it.

So that's where I was on the morning of May 5, 2006.
Driving around Laramie, Wyoming, searching the faces
of children who looked to be five or six years old, on
their way into daycare or running around in
playgrounds and parks. Stopping by the county records
office to look at birth certificates, hoping to figure
out which families had definitively given birth to
their own children and cross them off the list. I left
Denver around 5 a.m. and gave myself about four hours
to do my work, just as I'd done each Friday for the
past nine weeks. I knew I had to get on the road again
by 1 p.m. so that I'd be back at the house well before
Scully returned from her double shift.

She wasn't supposed to be home when I walked in the
door. She wasn't supposed to see me carrying a satchel
full of photocopied birth certificates and my digital
camera bag with enough room for the long telephoto
lens. She wasn't supposed to take one look at me and
know for certain that I'd been lying to her for years.

* * *

"Uh... hey, Scully." I froze even as the words were
coming out of my mouth, my hand still on the doorknob
and the bitter cold air rushing into the house behind
me.

She was sitting directly opposite from me in a
tattered armchair pushed up against the far wall.
Perfect posture, head held high, legs crossed. The
house where we were living at that moment faced east,
so the front room was full of soft shadows cast by the
late afternoon light. It was a little hard to see her
face clearly from where I stood, but I didn't need to
see Scully to feel that something wasn't right. I know
her better than I know myself.

"Shut the door, Mulder." Her voice was quiet. Tired.
And sad. Sad always scared me.

"Sure, sure... sorry." I turned to close the door behind
me, wrestling just a little with the wind that, in
that part of the country, seemed to push against
everything that had any give to it. As I wheeled back
around to face her again, I tried to let my satchel
and camera bag slide quietly off my shoulder and fall
to the floor where they would be slightly less
obvious. I could almost feel her eyes following them
as they dropped.

You know those times when you'd come home as a kid and
your mother would be waiting for you with a look that
told you she knew you'd stolen a few beers out of the
back room? Or that you hadn't really been at your best
friend's house like you'd promised you would be? When
you knew with absolute certainty that you were busted,
but you still tried to start up some innocuous
conversation like everything was right with the world?
Yeah.

"Home from work kind of early, aren't you, Scully? I
was at the library doing some research for my article.
I figured I'd have time to get back here and start
dinner before you got here. But hey, here you are!
Even better."  

I gave Scully the most charming smile I owned and then
hesitated for half a second. Should I walk over and
kiss her like I usually did when she came home, or
head directly to the kitchen like a man who had truly
been planning to chop some vegetables? Stick with the
routine, Mulder. Just a little too carefully and a
step too slowly, I moved toward the chair. As I did,
the shadows in the room seemed to shift and a soft ray
of light passed across her face. She'd been crying.
Shit.

"Hey... hey now..." I squatted down at her feet and put my
right hand on her knee. Carefully. "What's going on?"

"Oh, just stop it, Mulder. I know where you were. And
I know what you were doing."

Wait a second. I knew I was in trouble. I knew that
she'd figured out I was up to something. And I knew
that she'd be pissed that I'd gone anywhere without
calling her or leaving her a note. We'd both agreed
early on that it was dangerous for either of us to go
off on our own somewhere without telling the other
one. But there's no way she could have known where I
was and what I was doing.

"Scully, I was at the library. I'm working on that
freelance piece I told you about and I needed to look
at their newspaper archives on microfilm. I'm sorry I
didn't leave a note, but I thought for sure I'd be
back a couple of hours before you came home."

"Yeah. I bet you did." She practically spat the words
at me as she pushed my hand off her knee, hard enough
that I lost my balance and fell backward. And there I
was, sitting on my ass and my elbows and looking
sufficiently confused that she must have taken pity on
me.

"I took your cell phone with me by mistake last night,
Mulder. I was in a rush, and yours was next to mine on
the counter, and I guess I wasn't paying attention."

Without thinking, I reached into my front pocket and
pulled out the phone I found there. Hers was silver.
Mine was more like charcoal gray. Huh. I guess I
didn't notice either when I shoved a silver phone into
my jeans on my way out that morning. But I still
wasn't following how any of this...

Oh. I remembered leaving my cell number for a guy at
the county records department in Laramie earlier that
day. He'd been out to lunch when I got there, so I
left a note asking him to call me about whether it
would be possible to get copies of birth certificates
for male children born in 2001. I never heard from
him.

"I got a call a couple of hours ago from someone named
Steve at the Albany County Vital Records Office. I
didn't even realize I had your cell until I picked it
up to answer and the guy said he was trying to reach
Steven Byers." My latest false name.

Scully paused for a few seconds to let it all sink in.
I would have appreciated the gesture more if I hadn't
already put the puzzle together myself.

"Good news," she said with a coldness that suddenly
reminded me of lying with my face against the ice in
Antarctica all those years ago. "They can get you
copies of birth certificates for boys born in 2001,
but it'll take five weeks and they need a money order
for $500 to put toward the copying costs. He says you
can call him on Monday to work out the details."

A ragged breath slipped out through my lips. I hadn't
even realized that I'd stopped taking in air while I
was listening to her. Even though nothing in the room
was moving, it felt as though the world had been
running around me at the speed of sound and then came
to an abrupt and complete stop.

"You promised me, Mulder. You held my hand, and you
looked me in the eye, and you swore that you would
leave this alone."

* * *

She was right, of course. I did promise.

I started looking for him not long after we set out on
this new life together. This hard life of changing
names and running and always looking over our
shoulders. When I told her I was trying to find him, I
had been completely caught off guard by her reaction.

I couldn't search for him, she said. I would be
putting him in danger. He had parents who loved him
and a life somewhere far away from all of the death
and horrors of our world. It was because she loved him
so much, she said, that she had given him up. She had
to save him from our fate.

She had left everyone in her life behind to be with me
and she'd done it gladly, she told me. But in this new
life, where we had no one but each other and our
stubborn will to stay alive long enough to find a way
to stop the coming colonization, she was haunted by
all that had been lost. And when she faltered... when
she felt as though she didn't have the strength to
spend the rest of her life as prey... what kept her
going was the knowledge that our son was safe. That he
was playing with toys in a quiet corner of the same
home where he would grow to be a teenager and then a
young man, or falling asleep to the sound of a quiet
lullaby sung by a woman she imagined to be very kind.
He wasn't being dragged from motel room to rented
house to dingy apartment with parents who cried more
than they should. The best possible life she could
give William was the one where he would never know her
and never know me. And she couldn't allow me to take
that perfect life away from him.

So she demanded a promise that I wouldn't try to find
him. I told her I couldn't make a promise like that.

I remember she stared, considering me for a moment.
And then she took my face in her hands, her palms
pressing hard against me as she crushed her mouth
against mine. When she finally pulled back from that
kiss, I could hardly catch my breath. I was almost
panting from the force of it.

That was when she looked at me and told me she knew
how much I missed him. Whispered that she missed him
terribly. She told me she loved me more than I could
ever know, and that she'd rather die than be separated
from me ever again. But William's safe and happy life
would be destroyed if we were to touch it, and if I
couldn't promise to let him be, she would leave.

Well, when you put it that way, Scully...

You know, I wasn't lying when I told her I would stop
looking for him. Because William was already gone, and
I knew that Scully meant every word she said, and I
couldn't imagine losing her too. In my mind at that
time, everything she said reduced to the simplest of
equations. Stop or she'll leave. So I stopped.

But of course I couldn't let it go, anymore than I
could let Samantha go during all the years I searched
for her. I kept thinking of that little boy who had
Scully's eyes and my smile. I found myself doubting
that he could ever be safe separated from the only
people who had some idea of how to protect him from
the forces that might mean to harm him. And I found
myself dreaming, as I had once before, that I was
sitting on a beach and watching a little guy with
sandy hair trying to build a sandcastle. But this
time, when the boy told me that I was supposed to help
him, he called me "Daddy."

And I broke my promise.

* * *

"How long has this been going on, Mulder? How long
have you been lying to me?"

I sat there on the floor in front of her, thinking I
should be dreading this scene that was about to play
out. Thinking that I should say something to calm her
down; to make an attempt at minimizing how long I'd
been searching and how much work I'd put into the
effort. Thinking that she would leave me forever this
time and that I needed to say something that would
make her stay. So I was surprised to feel the anger
rising from somewhere deep inside me. It must have
surprised her as well, judging by the look on her face
when I pulled myself to my feet and started to speak.

"How long? You want to know how long I've been looking
for William?" I think I might actually have been
snarling. "Years. I've spent years looking for our son
because I don't believe for a minute that he's safe
out there with some sweet couple who probably don't
even lock their doors, never mind know how to defend
themselves - and him - if a couple of super soldiers
sweep in some day. I don't believe he's safe because
I'm probably the only person interested in finding him
who can't easily break into his sealed adoption
records. They can find him if they want to find him,
Scully. And he's out there in the middle of God-knows-
where with people who have no idea how much danger he
could be in. I mean, for chrissakes, Scully... for all
we know, they've already found him."

I heard Scully suck in her breath. "Don't say that.
Don't even think that. He's fine." The fear in her
voice was palpable.

"How can you know that? How can you possibly know
that?"

The anger was taking hold of me. I could feel it
forming words in my mind... words that I'd always kept
buried because I knew they would hurt her. But
somehow, this time around, I couldn't stop myself from
giving them voice.

"And what made you think you could hide him when
they've infiltrated every corridor of every
bureaucratic machine that exists in this country?
There is nothing that they don't have access to. It
doesn't even make sense, Scully, after everything that
you've seen! You need to believe he's safe but,
somewhere inside you, you have to know better than
that. He needs us!"

My voice had become louder and louder with every word.
I suddenly realized that I had been shouting at her.
Scully, for her part, had moved past her shock at my
unexpectedly defiant reaction to being caught red-
handed. She rose from the chair where she'd been
sitting since I had entered the room and I could see
that she was more than ready to go a few rounds.

"You cannot begin to imagine how hard it was for me to
give him away. After everything we went through to
bring him into this world. But you weren't there! You
could have been dead again for all I knew. Because you
decided - unilaterally as usual - that the only way to
keep me and William safe was for you to go into
hiding. Which didn't make a hell of a lot of sense
either, Mulder. But no, you had made up your mind. So
I went along with it and I let you go. And every time
someone came for William... every time someone kidnapped
him, or tried to kidnap him, or shot him up with some
mystery vaccine because they were convinced he was the
alien messiah or the savior of mankind or whatever... I
imagined that the next time would be the time when
they took him away forever or killed him where he lay
in his crib."

Scully turned away from me and moved slowly toward the
corner of the room, her shoulders sagging just enough
to make me realize how painful all of this was for
her.

"I didn't know what to do, Mulder. I wanted to talk
through it with you like we talked through everything
else, but you weren't there. Monica and Agent Doggett
meant well and they did everything they could to help
me keep William safe, but I didn't believe that they
could save him like I believed that you could save
him. And I think maybe I just broke one day from the
strain of trying to protect him on my own. That year
of losing you, and trying to find you... and then you
were dead, and then you were alive, and then knowing
they wanted to kill my baby before it was even born...
it was too much."

"Scully, listen..."

"And then it just hit me that William didn't have to
have that life. Didn't have to be in danger every day.
That it was my life - our life - that put him in
jeopardy." She folded her arms tightly across her
chest. "Maybe I was wrong. I've asked myself that
every day for the past four years. But I believed that
I was doing what was best for our son."

A small sob punctuated her last words, and I could
feel most of the rage in me draining away as the sound
registered. I never could stand to see Scully cry.  At
that moment, I wanted to stop what I had started and
pull her into my arms and feel as though I could
protect her from everything bad in the world.

"Our son, Mulder!" She seemed to lunge at me from
where she had been pacing in the corner, her eyes wild
with this desperate need to make me understand what
she must have been carrying inside her for too long.
"I have to live every day knowing that I couldn't
protect my own son. Your son." Another hitch in her
breath. "Our son."

"Scully..." I found myself taking her hands in mine, and
without even thinking, I fell to one knee in front of
her. It might have looked a lot like worship to
someone peering in from outside, but it felt like I
was both asking for forgiveness and begging her to
admit that I'd been right all along. "I never should
have left you alone with the responsibility of taking
care of him and keeping him safe. I was wrong. And I
understand why you did what you did, but giving him
away was a mistake. It's a mistake we can fix. He
belongs with us, Scully. Together, you and I could
keep him safe."

Scully gazed down at me with the expression of someone
who's hopelessly lost. Defeated.

"No, we can't. We can't fix it. It's done. He's almost
five years old now and he doesn't even know who we
are, Mulder."

"He has no one else to protect him, Scully!"

"Maybe you were right before. What you said." Her
voice was becoming flat, the sound seeming to die away
almost before the words left her mouth. The quietness
of her voice sent a chill through me. "Maybe he's
already been taken by the super soldiers, or maybe
he's dead. And if that's true, then God forgive me for
what I've done." Her eyes fixed on mine. "But if they
haven't come for him yet, then I don't think they ever
will. And trying to find him or take him away from the
only home he remembers is only going to hurt him."

I knew that everything she was saying was probably
true. But I didn't really care. I'm a selfish man
sometimes. Not exactly a newsflash to either of us.

"He's five, Scully. I don't even remember being five.
He'll forget these people, whoever they are!" It may
not have been my most compelling rationalization, but
it worked for me. "I need to see him, Scully. I never
even had a chance to say goodbye."

She just shook her head back and forth, slowly and
sadly. "No, Mulder."

I rose quickly from where I was kneeling and let her
hands fall from my grip.

"He's mine too, and I would never have given him away.
No matter what!" I was seething. "I refuse to accept
that we have to live the rest of our lives without
him!"

"Do you hear yourself, Mulder? This is not about you
and what you need. This is about what's best for..." Her
voice caught on William's name as she fought back more
tears. She raised her right arm and pointed her index
finger at me, though even in this threatening pose,
she looked like she might be afraid of me. Like the
time she'd become inexplicably paranoid and held a gun
on me at her mother's home because she thought I had
betrayed her. Ferocious and terrified at the same
time. "I am not... NOT going to let you turn him into
another quest where you have to find what you're
looking for no matter who gets hurt along the way!"  

At that moment, I actually thought I felt something
sharp slice directly into my heart.

* * *

No matter who gets hurt along the way. It probably
hurt Scully to say those words almost as much as it
hurt me to hear them.

There are so many things we think and don't say.
Things that sit in the very back of our minds like
nuclear missiles we could fire at any time. We have
them there, these pre-formed words that we've
considered often through the years, because someone
did something to hurt us.

They usually stay buried in our dark places because
we're afraid of what would happen if we brought them
into the light. Maybe we're not absolutely sure that
someone meant to cause us as much pain as they did. Or
maybe we hold them responsible but can't stand the
thought of losing them if we ever shared our worst
thoughts. Because we know that the damage can never be
undone once a missile finds its target. So most of us,
most of the time, walk through our lives hanging onto
words we know we should never say to the people we
love.  

I knew I carried them. In a certain corner of my mind,
in the place where I kept everything I was too
terrified to look at too closely, I hated Scully a
little for giving up my son.

I didn't even want to think of him as mine when I
first learned she was expecting a child. I was
literally back from the dead; re-born into a world
that seemed to have moved on without me. No one was
certain whether or not I was the father because I
always referred to "Scully's baby" and "her child." Of
course I knew he was mine. She didn't have to tell me
for me to know it, and I didn't have to ask.

But as Scully and I found each other again, in our
typically slow and careful way, I couldn't deny the
connection I felt to the child she was carrying. On
the first night I shared her bed again after my
release from the hospital, my hand drifted to rest on
her stomach and was met with a kick, as though he knew
I was there. And when he was born and I held him in my
arms for the first time, I was overwhelmed by all of
the feelings that I imagine every new father feels.
Mine, I thought. I'll never let anything happen to
him, I swore. He'll grow up happy and secure and
strong on my watch.

I shouldn't have left him. Shouldn't have left her.
Even though I was convinced it was necessary to keep
them safe.

In my rational moments, I understood that I had no
right to be angry when I finally made my way back to
her and found that William was gone. In giving him
away, she was only acting on the same instincts that
made me put so much distance between myself and the
two of them. But the things we think and don't say
aren't usually born from our rational thoughts. A part
of me could not get past the fact that she gave him
away and I never had the chance to stop her.

On that day in May, Scully reminded me that I wasn't
the only one leaving things unspoken. I already hated
myself for dragging her along on my journey when it
had cost her nearly everything and everyone that she'd
loved. But I suppose I also wanted to believe that she
didn't really hold me responsible for the things that
happened to her. When she told me that she wouldn't
let me turn William into my next Pyrrhic mission, I
realized that it was always folly to think that she
didn't hate me just a little too. For the cancer. For
her murdered sister. For the ruined FBI career. For
the years she thought she would never have children.
For the months she spent without me and the months she
thought I was dead.

All of the hard truths had finally come into the
light. The ones we'd always feared would destroy us.

But knowing that I hated her a little? Knowing that
she hated me a little? That's not what did it. She and
I already knew each other's darkest secrets like they
were our own. What we felt for each other wasn't some
starry-eyed infatuation that faded at the first sign
of bad times. We were imperfect people who knew each
other's every flaw and failing long before we finally
figured out that we were meant to be more than
friends.

No, it wasn't the truth that made her walk away. It
was the lie. Trust was what bound us together all
those years. And trust is what I'd broken.

* * *

I leaned over, my head halfway to the floor and my
hands bracing on my thighs as though I'd had the wind
knocked out of me. It wasn't for effect. After what
Scully had said, I was finding it hard to take the
next breath.

"Mulder... that didn't come out... I didn't mean..."

I pushed myself back up to face her. "Yeah. You did.
It's alright. I always knew."

The room was almost fully covered in shadow now. The
sun was gradually sinking behind the mountains just as
it did every evening, and yet I couldn't help but feel
that something else was slipping away with the light
on that day. Time. My time with her.

"I don't know what to say, Scully. I wish I could make
everything right. Take away all the bad things that
happened. Not for my sake, but for yours."

"You know I don't blame you for the things that
happened, Mulder." Scully's voice softened
considerably. "I really don't. You could never stop,
never give up. I told you that's what made me follow
you. Why I'd do it all over again."

She closed the short distance between us and stood
with her face only inches from mine. She was close
enough now that I could see the tears flooding down
her face.

"But you promised you'd let William go. I believed you
when you gave me your word. And now, knowing that you
broke that promise years ago... it makes me feel like a
fool, Mulder."

"Scully, you know me. You know me." I struggled to
find the right words. "You must have known that I
couldn't not try to find him."

She was silent for a moment, her eyes locked with
mine. "Yes, I suppose I did. I suppose I knew. That's
what makes this so much harder."

She closed her eyes and turned to walk away. I found
that I couldn't move. Couldn't speak. Couldn't think.
It was as though time had slowed down and kept me
frozen exactly where I was standing, knowing what was
happening and knowing that I couldn't stop it.

* * *

Scully knew that she was the only thing left in my
life I was still afraid to lose. As much as she might
love me, I loved her more. Needed her more. We both
knew that if I'd been the one to find her corpse in
the woods and stand with a flag next to her coffin, I
would have put a gun in my mouth soon after. I
couldn't have gone on without her the way she was
forced to go on without me.

That's why she had threatened to leave if I went after
William. She must have known that nothing less than
the thought of losing her would have any chance at all
of stopping me.

It wasn't that I didn't believe she would go. It
wasn't that I was choosing him over her. It was
hubris. Arrogance. Believing that I was right and that
I'd be able to prove that to her when I brought him
home.

Men who tilt at windmills will always tilt at
windmills. And it will always be their undoing in the
end.

* * *
Scully stood in front of the old oak bureau where she
kept most of her things, slowly and methodically
moving pieces of jewelry and clothing into a suitcase
that lay open on our bed a few inches away. She had
not bothered to turn on either of the small table
lamps in the room. I guess her eyes adjusted well to
darkness.

The floorboards at the threshold creaked as I crossed
them. It was an old house and everything in it seemed
to creak or groan as though the whole structure could
fall apart if you took one wrong step.

She heard the noise and glanced briefly over her
shoulder. The look I saw fleetingly on her face was
enough to stop me in my tracks just inside the
doorway.

"Please don't do this, Scully."

Was that my voice? I sounded... what was the word?
Distraught? Desperate? Hysterical?

"Please forgive me. I'm... I am begging you to forgive
me."

She didn't turn to look at me. She just kept filling
the suitcase.

"Tell me what I can do. What I can say. I'll do
anything. Please don't... please don't leave me. I won't
make it without you. I don't even want to try." God, I
sounded pathetic.

She slammed the top drawer shut. The echo of wood
against wood filled the silence for a few seconds
before she wheeled around.

"Dammit, Mulder! I told you what you could do! I told
you that I would stay with you through all of this and
never regret a thing, even if we have to keep running
for the rest of our lives. All I asked was that you
honor one request. And you couldn't do it! And you
sneak around behind my back doing the one thing I
begged you not to do. What does that say about you,
Mulder? What does it say about us?"

"You asked me to choose between you and our son,
Scully. Call it what you want but that's what you
wanted me to do. And I tried, I really did. But I
thought if I could just find him, maybe I could change
your mind."

"God, I can't do this anymore." She ran her fingers
through the auburn hair that she had allowed to grow
long until it fell lightly around her shoulders. "I
know you're sorry. You're sorry that you got caught,
you're sorry that I'm upset, you're sorry that I'm
packing my bags, but you're not really sorry that you
did what you did. You think I was wrong to ask you not
to search for William, and that somehow justifies your
lying to me. Well, I'm sorry too, Mulder. I'm sorry
that you've put me in a position where I don't have
any choice but to walk away."

"That's bullshit, Scully. You don't have to go
anywhere. We can fix this!"

"No, Mulder! We can't. Know why? Because even if your
word to me doesn't mean anything, I made you a
promise. I told you what I'd do if you interfered with
William's new life."

She turned back to open the drawer where she kept her
lingerie and started tossing things into the suitcase
carelessly. I realized I probably had one more shot at
getting through to her. I walked cautiously around the
bed to where she was standing until I was only a few
inches away from her. Close enough to touch.

"He's in Wyoming."

Her hands stilled and braced along the edges of the
drawer she had been diligently clearing out. I heard
her draw a short, quick breath - much like the kind
she practiced when she was preparing for William's
birth. Carefully, I reached for her rather slight
waist... the one she'd worked so hard to make trim and
taut again after carrying a child for nine months. I
moved forward to close the few inches between us so
that her back lay just against the outline of my
chest. Bringing her near to me while leaving her the
opportunity to push me away if that's what she wanted.
To my surprise, she allowed me to hold her like that,
and I even thought I felt her settling back against my
chest and thighs in the same comfortable way she
always did. I found myself leaning down to catch the
scent of her hair and lowering my voice to a whisper.

"He was adopted by a couple living in Wyoming. People
who owned a farm or a small ranch."

Scully took in one or two more quick breaths. I could
feel her shaking almost imperceptibly where I held
her, and I knew she was trying to calm herself and
slow a heart that was probably beating faster than it
should. When she finally spoke again, her voice had
the quality of someone whose mind was somewhere far
away.

"How do you know?"

"It's a long story," I whispered. "But it's good
information. There are less than half a million people
in the state and most of them are concentrated in a
few cities. I think I can find him."

"And then what are you going to do?" The question was
matter-of-fact rather than argumentative. She was
genuinely interested in knowing what I planned to do
if I found that little boy who ran through my
unconscious mind every night. But of course I hadn't
ironed out that part of my plan yet. I'd been too
focused for too long on simply locating William to
decide what I would do if I actually found him.

"Well... I'm not sure. I guess I'll figure that out once
I know where he is."

"You don't even know what you're going to do when you
find him." She laughed softly as she said it, a laugh
filled with fatigue and resignation. It was a laugh
I'd heard so many times over the years and, for a
moment, it gave me hope that she could forgive me this
time as she had so many times before. That was the
laugh she let slip when she was frustrated, amused,
charmed, and disappointed by me and how well she knew
me.

She reached for my hands holding her at the place
where her hips met her waist and she moved them
forward until they surrounded her. This time there was
no question that she was settling firmly against me.

"Scully, I only want what's best for him." I lowered
my head to whisper the words in her ear. "And I never
meant to hurt you."

"I believe you," she sighed. "Maybe this is all meant
to be."

"What... signs along the way?"

"Perhaps. Maybe I needed to see things for the way
they really are. So I could see what's best for both
of us."

I didn't understand what she meant. But before I had
the chance to consider it or ask her what she was
trying to say, she twisted herself around to face me.
It was such a graceful motion that my fingers never
even lost contact with her. I studied her eyes as if I
could read the thoughts that lay behind them. As if I
didn't already know that part of Scully would always
be hidden from my view... like a mystery that wasn't
meant to be solved.

And then, with a suddenness and force that startled
me, she came alive in my arms. With one hand grasping
the back of my neck and the other sliding upward
through my hair, she pulled my head toward hers and
pressed her lips against mine.  She could kiss me like
that every day for the next century and I'd never get
tired of it or start to feel like it was routine.
Every kiss from her still surprised me. Still caused a
jolt to run through my body like it did the very first
time.

In the beginning, I was always the one who initiated
any kiss. I'd lean toward her and she'd sort of
acquiesce and let me follow through on the action. I
noticed that she didn't even move to meet me halfway,
though it was always clear that she was kissing me
back.

Then, not too long after we started seeing a whole lot
more of each other outside of the office, we were
walking to the car after a late movie she'd dragged me
to see. The Crazy Homicidal Mr. Ripley or whatever it
was.  We were laughing about something and she dropped
her car keys on the asphalt, which was still wet from
the rain that must have fallen while we were in the
theater. I leaned down to pick them up for her, and
seeing that they were a bit dirty from having been on
the damp ground, I wiped them against my jacket pocket
before handing them back to her. As she took them from
me, she gave me this gentle little smile that always
made my heart skip. And then she kissed me. That Mr.
Ripley movie instantly became my favorite movie of all
time next to Plan Nine from Outer Space.

On that unseasonably cold night in Denver, though, she
wasn't gentle. Her mouth and her body moved with a
similar sense of urgency as she pulled at my lower lip
with her teeth and her hands slipped under my sweater
to roam freely over my stomach and chest.  I broke
away from her kiss.

"Scully, I want to talk about this. I want to
explain..."

"Shhhhhhh."  She was nipping at my ear, even as she
spoke. "I don't want to talk," she whispered.

Her fingers slid across my pectorals and then down,
slowly, until I heard her fumbling with my belt. She
was pulling at the buckle... yanking at the leather...
sliding the zipper down far enough to where she could
push her hand through the opening. When I felt her
hand grasping me, stroking me... I was lost, just as I
always was. Even after the years we'd been together,
the idea of Scully touching me that way still amazed
me. The idea that she wanted me at all amazed me. For
all the porn I'd watched during my time alone, you'd
think that nothing real would turn me on anymore. That
nothing real would be erotic enough. But what I felt
for Scully had always been so powerful that it often
took all my concentration to hold back my release in
the first seconds after I felt her hand or her mouth
on me.

She used her body to push me down on the bed as her
right hand pushed my sweater up and away from my body.
Taking the hint, I pulled it off and tossed it to the
floor. She ripped at the buttons of the blouse she
wore and I found the zipper at the back of her skirt,
quickly working it off her.

"Mulder..." I had always loved the way she said my name.
Even when she said it in anger, it made me feel
strangely safe.

The rest of our clothes were gone so quickly it was as
though we'd never had them at all. Skin against skin.
Scully's body always seemed to fit perfectly against
my own. Like we were two halves of a form that had
once been perfectly whole.

"Scully..." I choked out her name one more time. "I'm
sorry." I reached for her head and turned it toward me
so that I could see her eyes. Eyes that were dark with
sadness and desire.

"I know, Mulder," she whispered. "I'm sorry too." She
tried to smile as she said it, but the smile faded
even as it was born. And then she took hold of me and
guided herself to where I throbbed, waiting to be
taken inside her.  As I felt myself enter her, I
marveled at the way it always felt as though she was
entering me. And then the sensation of her sliding up...
and down... in... and out... silenced any further words I
might have wanted to say.

* * *

I woke the next morning at first light. Just like
every other morning, I instinctively rolled over to
fold my body around hers and tuck my hand beneath the
heft of her breasts where I could feel her heart
beating.

But there was no one there.

I don't know why I was so shocked. Perhaps it was
because, at first, I couldn't recall the last time
she'd made love to me with that kind of hunger. Hours
of hunger seemingly reaching out for me. Consuming me.
I wasn't sure that we'd ever had sex that was quite so
intense. And then I remembered.

The night before I'd left for Oregon with Skinner six
years earlier, we'd gone at it in my bedroom at the
old apartment like two people who had just discovered
sex and were never going to have it again for the rest
of their lives. I remember lying awake afterward and
trying to process it as I watched her sleep. It was as
though she's been trying to bind me to her, and I
decided that, subconsciously, she was hoping to
convince me not to go.

Later, as I was pinned down on the alien ship like
some kind of frog waiting to be dissected in a high
school biology class, I tried to remember every touch
and sound from that last night. Tried to distract
myself from the pain by remembering how her mouth felt
on my skin, and the way she'd moved above me as her
thighs tightened around my hips, and the way it felt
to hold her in my arms while her breathing was still
fast and heavy and she had not yet drifted off to
sleep. And the more I relived those moments, the more
I came to understand that she had loved me with such
desperation and undisguised need because she was
afraid I would never come back.

She once told me that I didn't seem to listen when she
most needed me to hear her. I guess she was right. On
that night in May 2006, I thought our pounding and
thrusting against one another felt like an affirmation
that we were mated until one of us went six feet
underground and stayed there... and that even death
itself might not be strong enough to tear us apart. I
thought she was giving an outlet to her anger and then
letting it go.
 
But I hadn't understood why she'd never closed her
eyes, even for a few seconds... or why she'd seemed to
follow my every move and touch... or why she'd boldly
watched the changing expressions on my face when she
had always been shy about the rather frenzied way I
responded to her.  I didn't consider that she might be
trying to burn those hours into her memory. To sear me
into her skin and her mind because she thought it
might be the last time.

No, the whole of what she had been trying to tell me
with her body didn't become clear until I read the
note she left on the table next to our front door. I
found it just next to where I'd left the satchel and
camera bag filled with the collected evidence of my
efforts to find William:

MULDER,
 
I LOVE YOU. I'M YOURS. BUT I CAN'T BE WITH YOU RIGHT
NOW.

SKINNER WILL KNOW HOW TO REACH ME IN AN EMERGENCY.
SHORT OF THAT, PLEASE DON'T TRY TO FIND ME. LET ME GO,
AND MAYBE I'LL FIND MY WAY BACK TO YOU.

SCULLY

I felt my legs giving way beneath me and I braced
myself against the door.  She said she was sorry, I
thought with an overwhelming sense of confusion and
desperation. But not sorry about the things she'd said
when she'd found out that I'd been searching for
William. Sorry because she couldn't stay with a man
she couldn't trust.

I needed ten stitches for my hand after I slammed it
through the glass in the front door.

* * *

I emailed Skinner a few times right after she left,
asking him if Scully was okay and if she needed
anything.  He would reply with a message that she was
"alright" and he was making sure she had what she
needed.  He surprised me once by asking what had
happened between us.  I assumed that she had told him,
but then I often forgot what a private person Scully
was. How difficult it was for her to open up to other
people about certain things.

I told Skinner that I'd fucked up and left it at that.
He emailed back to say he assumed that I'd fucked up
and, therefore, I hadn't really answered his question.
That one almost made me smile. So I told him that I'd
gone looking for someone she'd asked me not to look
for, and I knew that he'd understand what I meant. His
reply moved me, both because of what he said and
because he must have felt badly enough for me to
depart from his usual discretion and break a
confidence:

I'D PROBABLY HAVE DONE THE SAME. DON'T GIVE UP ON HER.
SHE MISSES YOU.

Man... next to Scully, that guy is probably the best
friend I ever had.  I'm not ashamed to admit I printed
that email and carried it around with me in my wallet.

A couple of weeks later, I emailed Skinner to tell him
I wouldn't ask about her anymore because I knew he'd
tell me if there was something I could do. And I
begged him for one small favor:

I DON'T MEAN TO PUT YOU IN A DIFFICULT POSITION. BUT
IF YOU'LL PASS ONE MESSAGE TO HER, I WON'T ASK AGAIN.  
PLEASE TELL HER THE ONLY REASON I'M NOT BANGING ON HER
DOOR RIGHT NOW IS THAT SHE ASKED ME NOT TO. TELL HER
I'LL ALWAYS BE WAITING FOR HER.  ALWAYS.

After a few days, Skinner sent a one word reply:

DONE.

And we didn't speak of it again.

Not until early October, when I sent him a message
marked "urgent" from a public terminal at a county
library in Casper, Wyoming. As always, I avoided names
and relied on Skinner and Scully to read between lines
that were designed to be meaningless to anyone who
might intercept the communication:

FOUND WHAT I WAS LOOKING FOR.  NOT IN THE PLACE OR
CONDITION WE HAD HOPED.  NEED TO SEE HER AS SOON AS
POSSIBLE.  I'LL BE IN THE TOWN WHERE WE SAW MR. AND
MRS. SMITH, OUT IN FRONT OF THE COURT WHERE SHE
THOUGHT I SPENT TOO MUCH TIME. 11:30 P.M. ON OCTOBER
18.  I'LL UNDERSTAND IF SHE CAN'T STAY BUT SHE NEEDS
TO KNOW WHAT I'VE LEARNED. REGRETS ONLY.

I clicked on the "send" button, hoping that I wasn't
the only one who would know what the hell I was
talking about.

* * *


October 18, 2006
11:30 p.m.

I've been sitting on a planter in front of the
Downtown Seattle YMCA for nearly an hour. Alone.
There's not a lot of foot traffic here at this time of
night, but each of the few people who've passed by has
given me the same odd look. The look that says, why is
that weird-looking guy sitting outside the Y by
himself on a Wednesday night? If I had someone with
me, I bet no one would have looked at us twice.  But
with no one else there, I suddenly seem strange.  I
guess that's what started me thinking about what it
really means to be alone.

I check my watch again for the hundredth time. I'm
more and more afraid that Scully didn't have the
correct decoder ring for my super secret clever
message. I chose Seattle because I liked it here and I
was even more pissed off than usual when we had to
leave. I had hoped that she would remember seeing that
movie with Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie in Seattle
because we'd joked for nearly two hours afterwards
during dinner at The Crab Pot on Pier 57 about how the
plot was clearly inspired by our lives and how we
should consider coming out of hiding to sue for the
royalties.  I remember saying that the only difference
was we'd never been hired to kill each other, and she
laughed and said there were a few times when she'd
thought about killing me for free.  I also hoped that
she would remember complaining about how much time I
spent at the Y playing pick-up basketball and
recognize what kind of "court" I was referring to. 

Then, just as I've pretty much convinced myself that
I'm an asshole who can't craft a decent coded message,
she steps out of a shadow and through the narrow swath
of light cast by the street lamp. And I hear part of
that old Stones song playing in my head.

YOU KNOW I CAN'T LET YOU SLIDE THROUGH MY HANDS
WILD HORSES COULDN'T DRAG ME AWAY
WILD, WILD HORSES, COULDN'T DRAG ME AWAY

Scully. I feel like I might cry. I want to grab her in
my arms and twirl her around like we're shooting the
happy ending of a movie about ourselves, but the look
on her face stops that thought in its tracks.  She
seems guarded. Wary. Her arms are crossed and she
holds herself a couple of feet away from where I've
stood to greet her.  But even in poor light, I can see
an array of emotions playing across her eyes and among
them I find what looks like joy. Joy which she is
otherwise trying fairly hard to conceal from me.

"Hi," I mumble as I manage a lopsided grin.

"Hi." Scully immediately looks down at her feet.
Because I don't think I'll get through this if I can't
adopt at least a mildly positive attitude, I decide
it's because she's afraid she's going to smile back at
me.

"I appreciate your coming on short notice," I start.
"I didn't know if you'd understand my email but I was
hoping you'd understand that it was important."

"I take it you didn't stop looking for William."  She
was still staring down at the ground, nervously
tapping her fingers against her arm.

"Well... no."  Was I supposed to stop? Was I supposed
to stop because not looking might bring her back? "I
figured if looking for him made you leave me, then I
might as well find him so I had something to show for
losing you."

"Mulder..." She lets out a sigh of frustration. "You
know why I left."

"Yeah," I say softly. "I do know. You left because you
didn't think you could trust me anymore."

Scully raises her head so that I can see the
frustration on her face as well as hear it in her
voice.
 
"I've always trusted you. I trust you now. Even when
you hid things from me, like when you neglected to
tell me that you'd found my ova in some government
lab, it never made me stop trusting you. Because I
know that you always think you have my best interest
at heart even when we don't agree about what that is.
I mean, to be honest, if I ever stopped trusting you,
I'm not sure I could make much sense out of my life
since I met you."

I can't think of a response to that. It's true that
everything I do that involves her, everything I've
ever done, is in the name of what I think is best for
her. Even if she didn't know about it, or objected to
it, or flat out made me promise not to do it as she
did with William. It's amazingly arrogant, I know. But
I've always thought that love like I feel for her is
inherently arrogant. Isn't it arrogant to think that
you're better for someone than anyone else on the
planet could be? To think that you're meant to be with
a particular person and that she's meant to be with
you? That you actually found your one in five billion?
The whole thing is arrogance and I wouldn't change it
for anything in the world.

"Mulder, I left because I asked you for a promise and
you gave it to me. The most important promise I've
ever asked you to make. And you broke that promise. 
The fact that you broke it with the best of intentions
doesn't change anything."

"Like I said, you don't trust me."

"Honestly, Mulder! What did I just say a minute ago?
This isn't about trust. I trust you on a level that
has nothing to do with promises or... or oaths... or
any other words. This is about you understanding that
you need to be honest with me. It's about you honoring
my wishes when I ask you for something and I flag it
for you as really, really, really important to me.
It's about not keeping secrets from me because you
think it's in my best interest! In short, it's about
respect." Scully looks rather exhausted after saying
all that.

"Oh. I see."

Scully throws her hands up beside her. "God, Mulder, I
don't know if you do. And that's the whole problem."

"Well, I'm starting to see. That's why it's good that
we're talking about it, right? I mean, I'm learning
that I've had it wrong for the last five months and
maybe now I can start understanding, right?" That tone
of pathetic desperation has crept into my voice again.
I guess I've never been good at playing hard to get.

"Well, I didn't come here to talk about it. I'm still
not sure I'm ready to talk about it. I came because
your email indicated that something's wrong with
William, whom I guess you've found even though I asked
you to leave him alone and let him have a quiet life
with parents who aren't fugitives."

Back to reality.

"That's just it, Scully. He doesn't have any parents."

A rare expression of uncertainty crosses Scully's
beautiful face and her eyebrows raise with alarm.

"What do you mean he doesn't have any parents?"

I sit back down on the planter and lean toward her. I
run my fingers through my hair once or twice, and
finally place a hand next to me, asking her to join
me. Somewhat to my surprise, she does.

"I wasn't going to bother him, Scully. I just wanted
to know where he was and that he was with people who
were treating him right. That's all."

She nods a little stiffly, as if to acknowledge my
very small effort toward respecting her wishes.

"And one day, while I was up in Casper looking at
birth certificates and trying to bribe some guy to let
me see a few adoption records, I was just driving by a
playground and this little guy runs right in front of
my car chasing a basketball. I nearly hit him."

Scully now looks absolutely horrified. Not only am I
searching for William, I almost ran him over.

"He looked at me and he smiled and I swear to God, it
was like I was looking at you. If you were a five-
year-old boy."

Scully lets out an amused huff, seemingly in spite of
herself.

"So I started looking for a place to park, just so
that I could see him again. From a distance. That's
when I saw the sign in front of the building next to
the playground.  Department of Family Services, Kroner
Group Home."

"What?" Scully's voice barely registers as a whisper.
"I don't understand."

I can't seem to stop myself from reaching out to take
her hand in mine. I squeeze her fingers and hold them
tightly in my own. Again I'm pleasantly surprised that
she does not pull away.

"The couple who adopted him were killed in an accident
on a rural road when he was around two years old."

Scully's hand squeezes mine with such force that it
almost hurts me. The mask of composure she's been
wearing rapidly dissolves into a trembling visage and
she looks as though she's struggling not to cry out.

"From what I've been able to gather, he was in the car
when it happened but he survived without much more
than a scratch. There are a couple of newspaper
articles that describe it as miraculous. There was no
extended family and so he was placed with family
services."

"No one took him in? Not even a foster family?" The
tears Scully has been trying valiantly to hold in
begin to slip away from the edges of her eyes.

"I spoke with someone at DFS about him. He was placed
with several foster families over the past three years
but, apparently, he can be difficult. They told me
he's very bright but very independent. Stubborn. Won't
do what he's told." I can't help laughing softly.
Scully's eyes meet mine and I see the barest hint of a
smile at the corners of her mouth.

"I don't think I even need to comment on that,
Mulder."

"Yup," I say, almost playfully. "He's mine alright."

My shoulders square and my chest juts out a bit as I
experience a wave of pride passing through me. But my
shoulders fall again as I think of my son growing up
alone in a place where everyone thinks he's difficult,
and disobedient, and more trouble than he's worth. No
toys to call his own. No one to read him a bedtime
story before he falls asleep at night. No one to love
him.

And before I even realize it's coming, I'm doubled
over, wracked with anguish, my entire body heaving
from the sobs I can't seem to control. All I can see
in my mind is that little boy smiling at me through
the dashboard window, like he doesn't even know how
many people he's lost in his short life. Still too
young to feel the sadness that follows him. The memory
of him smiling at me like that makes me feel terribly
small.

I feel Scully's arms surrounding me, grasping at my
shoulders in order to pull me close to her body. Like
she's trying to shelter me. As she does, the quiet
sobs that are wrenching through her seem to join with
mine in a unison of grief.

We remain like that for some time, locked together. We
are trying to comfort one another. And we do. Scully
has long been my only comfort and I am suddenly
overwhelmed by the realization of how much I have
missed this. Comfort. Shelter. Love. All the things I
lost on that cold morning in May.

At last, our breathing slows again and we experience
the odd sensation of calm that follows the worst kind
of crying, when the body releases endorphins to
relieve its stress. I feel Scully's grip begin to
loosen and her body slowly beginning to pull away from
mine.  A perfectly natural thing for her to do, but at
the first hint of her withdrawing, I shift and pull
her roughly into my arms.

"I love you, Scully," I say with a broken voice and a
broken heart. "Sometimes I don't think anyone has ever
loved anyone else like I love you."

A few seconds pass in silence until I feel Scully
press her lips against my temple, just beside my ear,
for a long moment.  The way she had kissed me so many
times before. "You'd be wrong, Mulder," she whispers
in a voice that sounds both steady and fierce.  "I
know at least one other person who loves someone like
that."

My heart suddenly feels a few sizes bigger than it had
been a moment before. I tighten my hold on her in
response and then slowly release her. I let her go
because I finally believe that she'll come back. As if
to prove me right, Scully presses her forehead to
mine.

"What do we do now?" she sighs.

"Well," I begin with a matter-of-fact tone to my
voice. "I've given some thought to that." I pull back
from her so that I can see her eyes as I speak and
gauge her reaction to what I'm suggesting.

"We could find out if your brother Bill and his wife
would be willing to take him. They have a stable home
and he'd have a couple of siblings. And he could grow
up knowing something about you and your family." The
last statement causes Scully to tear up again.

"Of course, if the kid's as much like me as I'm afraid
he is, and knowing how Bill feels about me..."

"You foresee problems."

"Yes," I admit. "I mean, it's miles better than
growing up in a foster home or an orphanage but I
can't say it's my first choice for him."

Scully nods. "Go on."

"The other possibility is... I don't know if Skinner
ever said anything to you, but he told me in an email
that Doggett and Reyes have been doing the nasty for
awhile now." Scully rolls her eyes. "That's not
exactly what he said, but you get what I mean. She
left the FBI. They're living together now, I guess."

"Mmmmmmm," Scully smiles. "I saw that coming a mile
away."

"Must be something in the water down there in the
basement at HQ."

"They were good friends to us," Scully says, serious
for a moment. "I'm happy for them."

"Yeah, he turned out alright, I guess. And she's a
little kooky for my taste, but you know, Godspeed to
both of them." Admitting that Doggett wasn't such a
bad guy after all still causes me to feel a sharp
shooting pain in my side. "Anyway, I know he lost his
son, and I know this would be a huge thing for them to
take on, but I figure they already know William and
they know us well enough to tell him something about
his parents."

Scully is quiet. I can see her lower lip trembling.
"Or?" she asks hesitantly.

I remain silent. I need it to be Scully who asks the
question. Scully who puts our thoughts into words.
Scully who acknowledges the possibility that William
could come to us. As hard as it is to watch her
waiting for me to speak, and as much as I know she
wants me to take responsibility for this, I can't do
it.

She's the one who feared that he could never be happy
or safe with us. She's the one who needed to imagine
him living a life that didn't require constantly
moving from one place to the next, adopting new names
and new identities, and fearing that a nearly
unstoppable killer could be waiting for you behind
every seemingly friendly face you see.

I don't want any of that for him anymore than she
does. But he's my son. And he belongs with us. Up
until last May, Scully and I managed to eke out a
little bit of happiness together in an otherwise hard
life. And I've learned that the right kind of
happiness, even when it's fleeting, can make up for
some of the worst things you can imagine. That's the
kind of happiness she brings me, and I want him to be
a part of it.

Scully is watching me, cautiously. Studying me. As
though she's searching for words she doesn't really
want to say.
 
"You're going to make me ask, aren't you?" she asks
with a hint of annoyance.

"Ask what?" I respond innocently.

"Should he be with us." Her tone turns the question
into a kind of statement.

I think for a moment about what to say.

"I'm a selfish man, Scully. I'd want him with us under
pretty much any circumstances. Because he's ours and
that's how it's supposed to be. But I don't know if I
can tell you anything to make you feel less afraid for
him. It would probably be confusing and destabilizing
for him to move around with us all the time. Maybe
we'd have to change his name like we've been changing
our own. He'd probably sense how scared we are a lot
of the time and that would scare him too.  It would
never be easy."

She turns her head away, staring off into the
distance. I imagine she's remembering all of the
things that happened to us over the years - that still
happen to us - and doubting whether it's any kind of
world for a child to share.

"I am afraid for him, Mulder. And I'm afraid that we
could never give him enough to make up for all of it.
And I'm afraid that he'll end up hating us for that."

I gently brush the back of my hand against her cheek.

"Awww, Scully... he's going to hate us sometime no
matter what. That's normal."

"You know what I mean. This is different."

"Maybe," I acknowledge. "But no matter what he ends up
thinking of us, I'm pretty sure he'll know we love
him."

I hesitate for a moment.

"And really, it's not that different from you. I don't
think I could ever give you enough to make up for what
I've put you through. Everything that's been taken
from you. If you'd never met me, if you hadn't stayed
with me, then you wouldn't have lost what you've lost. 
But I think you stayed as long as you did because you
know I'd do anything for you."

Scully turns back toward me and looks into my eyes.

"I told you once that I followed you because I knew
you'd never stop looking for the truth. But I stayed
because I realized that I belonged with you. I'm not
even sure I can explain how I knew that. I just did.
When I was with you, it was like being home."

A bitter laugh, filled with longing and regret, slips
away from me. "Was..."

Scully gives me a look full of wonder as to whether
I'll always be hopelessly dense. "Was. Is." She tilts
her head a bit and fixes her eyes on mine with such
intensity that I couldn't look away if I tried.
"Always."

I smile. "Always." I say it carefully, as though there
is something fragile in the word. She gives me a
fleeting smile in return before she turns serious once
again.

"He could have a good life with Bill. Be happy with
John and Monica. He could be normal."

"That might be true." I concede. "But no matter how
much they love him, they could never love him as much
as we will."

Scully suddenly stands and walks a few feet away. I
see her bring her hands to cover her face and I hear
that her breathing has become ragged.

"Scully?"

The sound of my voice seems to bring her back to the
moment and she looks at me like she did when she told
me we couldn't get him back again. Like she's lost.

"I don't know what to do, Mulder! I never wanted to
make this choice again!"

I rise and walk over to her. "Okay..." I say gently.
"What does your heart tell you?"

"My heart? My heart tells me what it's told me from
the beginning. I want my son with me. But that's what
I want, Mulder. It's not necessarily what's right."

She winces.

"Just like my heart told me not to leave you. But I
knew I had to do it. I knew it was the right thing.
And now... now I know that if I tell you he'd be
better off away from us, you won't be able to live
with that. Won't be able to live with me."

"Scully, whatever you think, I came here so that we
could make a decision about how to handle this.
Together. I didn't come here to force you to make one
choice over another. Why do you think I didn't just
take him myself?"

"And what if I tell you I think he should go live
another life? Without us?"

Now I am the one who winces and, almost involuntarily,
I look away to hide my disappointment.

"Then, to be honest, I'd think you were wrong. But if
that's what you really want... if you really believe
he'll be happier and that it'll be easier for him to
grow up that way... then, for once, I won't try to
convince you otherwise."

Scully looks genuinely surprised and perhaps just a
little skeptical.

"But you won't be able to forgive me," she says with
regret in her voice

I shake my head. "I want William with me just like you
do. But this time - here together - I can accept it if
you tell me that's not what's best for him. And I can
live with it, knowing he's with people we trust. And
every time they send us a picture of him at his first
baseball game, or dressed up for his first dance, or
getting behind the wheel of his first car, I will die
a little... but I'll see that he's happy and he's safe
and I'll think about the day when it's safe for all of
us to see each other again." I bring both of my hands
to her face and press my fingers against its edges,
almost a little too forcefully.

"But I don't think you get it, Scully. I don't just
want you. I need you. I want to do what's best for you
and send you away forever and tell you to go live your
life and send me some happy pictures, because that's
what I should want for the woman I love. What I should
have done years ago. But I can't. I could never leave
you. Never let you go. Never again."

My fingers are wet with her tears. I see love in her
eyes, and sadness, and longing.  And fear. She has
always been a little afraid of this thing that
connects us to each other. Afraid of its power and its
hold on her. Afraid, I think, that I might swallow her
whole into my madness and obsessions until there was
nothing left of Dana Katherine Scully.

"Mulder... I... it scares me when you say that."

"I know it scares you. It scares the hell out of me
most of the time. But I need you to understand how
deep that need goes. And I need you to know that I'll
agree to whatever choice you make. Because whatever
you choose, I'll love you. And we'll be alright." I
pull her head to where it rests against my shoulder,
cradled in my arms.

"I want him so bad," she cries. "We've missed so much
already. All the things we can't get back..."

"I know," I reply softly.

"I don't think I can let him go again, Mulder.  I'm
almost sure it's not the right choice, but I don't
think I have the strength to do the right thing this
time."

"Maybe it's not the right choice," I say. "But he'll
never know, Scully. All he'll know is that his parents
came to find him so that he could be with them. And
he'll know that he's not alone anymore."

I feel Scully nodding against my shoulder.

"You must be tired," I say finally. "Why don't we get
a hotel room somewhere and get some rest."

Scully looks up at me, a bit sheepishly. "We don't
need a room, Mulder. I've been here in Seattle. I have
a place near where we lived before." She laughs in the
ragged way people do when they're exhausted and tired
of crying. "I was pretty amused that you picked this
as a rendezvous."

I smile. "Yeah, we did like it here, didn't we? Well,
let me take you home then."

Scully reaches for my hand and I feel her fingers
closing protectively around mine.

"I'm already home."

* * *

February 26, 2007

Skinner and Doggett arranged to get us the paperwork
we needed to present ourselves as suitable candidates
to adopt a child, and made sure the background checks
on two people who don't actually exist came up clear.
It helps to have friends in high places. The process
took a little longer than I had hoped, but it gave us
a chance to get more settled in Seattle and prepare a
room for a boy nearly six years old. 

I'd met with William several times before today, but
when Scully came with me to do the interview with DFS,
William had been on a special field trip with some of
the other kids to a ranch near Cody. The government
workers who ran the group home were so pleased to have
a couple with a clean criminal record and good
references interested in a child they couldn't seem to
place anywhere for more than a few weeks, they didn't
even seem concerned that William had only met the
prospective father.

After finalizing the adoption papers this morning,
we're waiting for them to bring William out to the
room where we've been cooling our heels for nearly an
hour. Scully is surprisingly nervous about finally
seeing him, getting up every few minutes to pace the
room and endlessly fixing her hair. My own nerves come
from the fact that we are so exposed right now, here
together, and I keep a constant eye on the glass door
for any Billy Miles or Agent Crane or other sign of
trouble.

"Do I look alright?" Scully asks, and I turn my head
away from the door for a second.

"I don't know... what look were you going for?"

She scowls at me.

"I'm kidding. You look hot."

"I'm not really going for hot, Mulder."

"Well, too bad for you then," I say as I turn back
toward the door. That's when he comes into view.

He's grown about an inch since I last saw him. He's
wearing a blue sweatshirt that seems a little big on
him, well-worn jeans, and standard-issue sneakers for
the kindergarten set. Over his shoulders he carries a
backpack that looks heavy enough to topple him, but he
bears the weight well, holding himself up straight and
tall the way that Scully does. In his left hand he
drags a winter jacket that looks old enough to have
been in style when I was a kid. A young woman in her
late twenties holds his right hand as she gently pulls
him into the room with us.

"William," she says as she gestures toward me, "you
remember Mr. Byers."

"Hey, man," I say as I reach out my hand to him. He
smiles a little shyly as he grabs it and I see that a
couple of his front teeth are missing. Visions of
dentist bills dance in my head.

"Hey," he replies.

"William, what have I told you about 'hey'?" the young
woman asks.

"Hey is for horses and hi is for people," he answers
while rolling his eyes dramatically. "He said it
first." I like this kid so much.

"Well, I'd like you to be polite to your new parents."
She looks at me and then cocks her head in Scully's
direction as if to tell me I should take over from
here. I turn and see that Scully is doing her best to
keep it together but has already lost the battle with
several tears that run in faint lines down her face.

"William, c'mere. I'd like you to meet someone." I
hold out my hand toward him again and sweep it forward
in a friendly gesture toward Scully before bringing it
back to take his little fingers in mine. It suddenly
seems very far from where we are to where she's
standing as I contemplate this moment that I never
imagined would actually happen.

Before I have a chance to consider how to introduce
him to Scully when all I want is to tell him our real
names, he pulls his hand out of mine and extends it to
her.

"I'm William. Nice to meet you." He says it
thoughtfully - even kindly - and I look at his face
and wonder if it's possible that he's seen her crying
and wants to make her feel better. He must take after
me that way.

Scully kneels down to his eye level and shakes his
hand solemnly. "It's nice to meet you too, William."

He grins. "You remind me of somebody."

"Do I?" Scully's voice is very soft.

"Yup," he replies assuredly.
 
"Who's that?"

"Somebody. I don't know."

Scully looks as though she's about to lose what
composure she has left and so I jump back into the
conversation to let her collect herself again.

"Well, you remind me of somebody too, buddy," I tell
him as I place my hand on his shoulder.

"Yeah, who?" he asks with interest as he gazes up at
me.

"I'll tell you later, okay? We should probably get
going if we're going to make our plane. Have you ever
been on a plane, William?"

"No," he says seriously. "I've never been anywhere."

"Well, you're going to go lots of places with us,
buddy."

"When am I coming back?"

Scully looks pained for a moment, but the look fades
gradually into a careful smile.

"Well, William, we were hoping that you'd like to stay
with us from now on." She rubs the side of his arm.
Soothingly. Like a mother does. "Do you think that
would be okay?"

William looks at her, then at me. He squints at us as
though he's weighing the offer, and again, I see a
flash of something so familiar in his eyes. And I
realize he looks skeptical but also like he wants to
trust us just a little bit. It reminds me of when I
first met Scully.

"Yeah, I guess that'd be okay," he finally offers.

Scully's smile broadens until it seems to have taken
over most of her face. "I'm glad. Thank you."

"Welcome," he says lightly as he bounds off to hug the
young woman who brought him in. "Bye, Ms. Skinner."

Scully and I exchange looks. Skinner? What a weird
world.

"Bye, William. You take care of yourself, alright? And
you be nice to these people. Best behavior."

More eye rolling from the little troublemaker. Man,
it's weird to see a little kid doing the things you
always do and realize how annoying you must actually
be.

"Yup," he agrees and bounds off again to open the
door. "Are you guys ready?"

He looks at Scully and me, and I'm stuck by the fact
that he's not sorry for himself, not sad or bitter
because he hasn't grown up with a family the way kids
are supposed to. Just ready for an adventure. And I
suddenly have hope that he might be just the right kid
to share this strange life that Scully and I have. But
then, of course he would be, I think.

I help Scully to her feet and wrap my arm around her
as we walk to the door that William is politely
holding for us. As we pass through, he reaches out for
her hand and stares up at me.

"I can show her the way out," he informs me.

"Oh, sure. You got this," I respond with a serious
voice that is no doubt betrayed by the amusement in my
eyes. Scully laughs and I hear a lightness in the lilt
of her voice that I don't think I've heard in years.
"I'll just follow you two, then. Maybe I could carry
your backpack for you."

"That's okay. I can do it," he says confidently. Yeah,
he's going to be a challenge alright. And no one is
going to have any trouble believing that he's ours.

Williams leads Scully down the hallway ahead of us,
and she looks over her shoulder at me with an
apologetic shrug and a warm smile. And as I watch him
happily dragging her along, as she follows with her
hand securely holding his, I am reminded of us when we
were so much younger. Reminded of myself, fresh-faced
and barely thirty, dragging her along in my quest for
the truth and reminded of her following because she
knew I couldn't do it alone.  Before we lost so many
people we loved... before abductions and
experiments... before cancer... before death, and
resurrections, and separations, and running endlessly
so we could live to fight another day. When life was
just possibilities and the excitement of discovering
something new and the thrill of finding someone who
didn't mind sharing it all with you. 

I remember how it felt to realize that I didn't have
to be alone anymore. How it feels when someone finds
you. And as I watch her walking with our son, I see
that she has given that gift again. Scully stops
William just before they come to the door that leads
outside, and she reaches back for me.

"Coming, Mulder?"

"Wild horses, Scully."

I close the distance between us and take her hand.
Lean my head toward hers until our lips meet in a kiss
that is brief and yet seemingly without end. Our
little boy giggles and shoots me another eye roll as
he pulls us forward with a single-mindedness that I
recognize instinctively. And everything old is new
again. Like I've found it for the first time.

END