Amazing Grace (5/5)
by manderinne

Email: manderinne@gmail.com
Characters: Mulder/Scully
Category: Post-IWTB, written for xf_bigbang
Author's Note:  Huge thanks to all_shine_on for being an
amazingly helpful beta, without whom I would've quit back in
July, and to flashikins for her awesome art here.

Summary:  Is the temptation of Samantha worth more than the
life they have painstakingly eked out in an unremarkable house
somewhere in Virginia? Scully, fresh out of faith, can't see how
it will be worth it in the end. 


***


A blackbird stalks the cemetery with its bow-legged gait, its
beak wavering like a compass needle as it nears the clutch of
black-clad people around a child-sized hole in the ground.
Scully, standing behind somebody much taller than herself,
tears her gaze away from the hungry bird and stares at the
starched collar of the man in front. She studiously avoids
looking at the miniature white coffin with its glossy, rounded
lid. It reminds her of her daughter. 

The service is mercifully short. The morning sun feels like soap
in Scully's eyes. The priest reads the twenty-third psalm as
Christian's father places a child-sized bunch of baby's breath
on top of his son and tries to hold it together. He grips his
wife's hand and stolidly avoids looking at her face, as though
he can bear his own pain but not hers. His arm goes around her
shoulders and she turns inward, away from her son's body,
away from pitying eyes, and silently shakes out her grief.

A tawny-haired child watches the priest carefully, rocking back
and forth on his heels, holding his mother's hand. The priest
looks down his hooked nose at the boy as his deep, mellifluous
expounds the word of God.

The boy joins the priest in clumsy recitation of the third verse,
and others speak out, and the psalm murmurs across the green
grass as a pair of crickets chirp on a tree branch nearby. *"Yea,
though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will
fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they
comfort me."*

Scully whispers along, sending up an earnest prayer for
Christian's soul, but the words seem meant for her, and for
Mulder, and for William.

*"Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of
my life: and I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever."*

***

The following Monday, Scully returns to work with her
professional face firmly affixed. Her colleagues welcome her
back with varying degrees of affability, and though she makes
up her mind to try and be more accepting of Father Ybarra, he
seems nowhere to be found. When Doctor Elliot tells her that
Ybarra is at a conference in Maryland, the band of worry
cinching Scully's heart eases a little. 

She smiles and comforts and talks with sick children from
within a pliant bubble which bulges with the touch of small,
needy hands, until the day Dr. Butterman greets her outside the
cafeteria and tells her he has a message from his son Wade.
Scully is afforded a view of his shiny bald crown, ringed with
white hair, while he fusses around in his trouser pockets.

"Here we go," he says, unfolding a sheet of paper. He lifts his
nose to read the handwritten message, a fax, Scully realizes.

"Hmm, ask you to pass on a message to Dana Scully... that's
you, Doctor..." He hums his way through the rest of the fax
before folding it neatly and slipping it into the pocket of his lab
coat. The bespectacled doctor clasps his hands together and
looks at her over his glasses, as though she is one of his elderly
patients. Scully waits in patient amusement.

"Now, apparently you met my son while you were on leave.
Tell me, was he behaving himself?"

Scully smiles at the memory. "He seemed like a lovely boy. A
really good person."

"I'm glad to hear it, Doctor Scully, glad to hear it. Sometimes I
wonder if I could have done better by him, worked less after his
mother died..." He flaps his hand. "Ah, never mind me, I'm
growing sentimental in my old age."

"Oh, you're not that old, Doctor."

"Well, thank you, that means something coming from a
beautiful young woman such as yourself. Now," he continues
in the same breath, without giving Scully the chance to slip a
word in, "Wade has asked me to inform you that your dear
friend, Samantha, has passed away, and I would also like to say
how very sorry I am to hear that." He studies her face. "I can
see that she was someone important to you."

Scully blinks a couple of times, though her eyes are free of
tears. "She..."

Dr. Butterman pats her on the arm. "No need to explain. I'm
awfully sorry to be the bearer of bad news."

Scully finds her voice. "It's all right, I'd been expecting it for
some time. She was very sick."

"Doesn't make it any easier on us, though, does it? Knowing?"

Scully is struck by the truth of his words. She thinks back to
her father's heart failure on a cold Christmas eve many years
ago, to the violent death that was meant for her but became
Melissa's, and to the little boy buried under six feet of fresh
earth and the first fall of golden leaves. Was the pain greater in
those instances, because there was no time to straighten things
out and smooth things over before they disappeared forever?
Then her two children come to mind, the girl and the boy.  One
dead, one so lost as to be dead. She thinks of the difference
between a clean, easily healed break and a pulpy mess of bone
chips that cannot be put back together. Dr Butterman offers her
the fax and she reaches out to take it, wondering how much
more tragedy she can handle, even with the shreds of newfound
faith she is doing her damnedest to hold onto.

"The details of the funeral are there, at the bottom. Wade wrote
that he knows Samantha would have liked you and your partner
to be there, seeing as you were two of her closest friends."

Scully doesn't know what to say except "Thank you."

"You're welcome. Now, you'll have to excuse me Doctor
Scully; I have a gall bladder to operate on in twenty minutes
and I need to grab a bite to eat. Were you...?" He gestures to the
cafeteria. Scully rouses herself from her reverie.

"I already ate," she says, "but thank you for asking."

"Not a worry. See you later."

He pushes the door open and a thought occurs to her. "Good
luck," she says.

"Same to you, Dana," he smiles, and the door clicks shut.

"Thank you," she whispers, clutching the sheet of paper,
feeling like a brainless sycophant once again.

***

Mulder tips a handful of peanuts into his mouth and goes to
offer them to Scully, but she is asleep against the window, chin
tucked to her chest, mouth prim even in repose. The sky is a
brilliant blue as the plane flies over a blanket of cloud, scraps
of green country and grey city visible through the gaps. Mulder
peers across her, feeling indescribably energized about being in
an airplane, with a hundred other people, with an actual
destination in sight. His knee bounces against the armrest.
Sunlight lights up the bronze hair across Scully's face and he
reaches over her to pull the shade down. He figures she needs
sleep. Her breath catches in her throat and she turns her head
with a sigh. He touches her hair but she slips back into
dreamland.

He crumples the foil packet and shoves it in the seat pocket,
before surreptitiously wiping his salty fingers on the bottom of
his own seat. A girl of maybe six across the aisle from him
peers over her tray-table at this indiscretion, and he puts a
finger to his lips.  To his amusement, the little girl plays along,
pretending to zip up and throw away the key. Her mother
notices and takes hold of the little girl's chin, fussing over her
mussed hair while she throws Mulder a disapproving look.

Mulder conceals a grin as he pulls out his laptop, which chimes
like a clutch of sleigh bells when he opens the lid.  He pulls up
the usual file and idly considers titles for the monograph  which
has consumed his working hours since last spring. *Parapsychology 
for Dummies? Countdown to the Apocalypse, Part 2: Four Years Left? 
Ruminations of a Paramasturbatory Hermit?* Somehow, he suspects 
that even a great title won't help it make the New York Times 
bestseller list.

Sometime later, the plane banks over the glittering ocean and
begins its descent into North Carolina, and Mulder puts away
the laptop, his thoughts occupied not by monsters or madness
but with his mother. The sudden drop in cabin pressure causes
Scully to wince and crack a heavy eyelid. She raises the shade
and squints into the sun, a bird's nest of hair atop her head, and
Mulder grins at the sight.

"Look, Scully, it's the Jersey Devil," he says, and she somehow
manages to turn the squint into a raised eyebrow as she looks at
him. "Look," he insists, pointing past her to the reflection in
the window. She pushes at her hair and glares at him with her
rumpled face.

"Did you know you died in North Carolina?" she growls.
"Let's not make a repeat of that."

She runs her hand through her hair but it gets snagged on
tangles. She sighs. The seatbelt sign glows overhead and Scully
pulls hers tight across her lap as the plane glides lower and
lower. Mulder tells her to face the window and he combs the
long strands gently with his fingers. They watch the ground
rush up beneath the plane before they hit the tarmac in a
screech of rubber. When the roaring and rattling subsides,
Scully breathes out and relinquishes her grip on his jeaned
knee.

Airport security is as niggling as ever, and Mulder shifts from
foot to foot in the queue to get blood pumping in his legs again. 
Scully yawns at his side, covering her mouth with her sleeve as
she watches a beagle sniff random suitcases. Outside in the
maze-like parking lot, the air is hot and humid and loud with
the rumble of aircraft. They dump their bags into a rented silver
Taurus and join the line of cars leaving Raleigh-Durham
International, before taking the road headed for the city and Mt
Hope Cemetery.

Mulder watches twenty minutes worth of countryside become
littered with more buildings the closer they get to the heart of
Raleigh. The sky is a deep blue and streaked with cobwebby
clouds. Scully holds a hand in front of the air vent, trying to
feel the cold air stuttering forth. After dropping in at a small
florist, Mulder parks the car in a quiet back street and they walk
the short distance to the cemetery entrance. Even after eight
years, Mulder knows where to find his mother's grave.

He stands above the bones of his mother, the bones of her
family lying around them, and holds tight to Scully's hand. The
air is still and warm, huddled close to the earth. 

"We should visit your mother," he says suddenly, and Scully
looks up at him in surprise.

"She'd like that," she replies. Mulder drops her hand and
moves forward to lay paper-wrapped white geraniums on the
weathered headstone. His fingers trace the lettering in the
marble, spelling out his mother's name and beneath that,
*Beloved wife and mother.* The irony of those four words
does not escape him.

"I'd like it, too." Despite it all, he still finds himself missing
her.

It takes two and a bit hours until they cross into Rowan County,
and the funeral begins at three o'clock, leaving them barely
enough time to find a room in a cheap motel and shower and
change into sober black before the service. Samantha is to be
buried at the Brookhill Memorial Gardens, a small cemetery in
comparison to Mt Hope, but just as shady and verdant.

The service is sparsely attended, and as they walk across the
grass toward the coffin, Mulder experiences a chill of panic
that the service is over, that they've missed it, and wonders
why the thought should trouble him so. He conceals it from
Scully when he sees the clergyman standing by the open grave,
head bowed, Bible held in both hands, waiting. The priest
raises his head as they approach, and with an answering nod
from the black-haired college boy to his right, clears his throat
in preparation. Mulder notices the boy gives Scully a little
wave as they take their place opposite him.

Though Mulder is still a little chary of religious dogma in
general and the frankness of the priest's devotion in particular,
he finds some unspeakable peace in the way the man says his
sister's name, commending her soul to heaven, even if the
woman hidden away in the lowering coffin is no relative of his.
Scully holds a battered black book in her hands, her eyes
dipping to the page occasionally as the priest recites the prayer
of committal and lets a handful of soil spatter the coffin lid.
The four mourners do the same.

"The Lord be with you," says the priest with a smile, closing
his book. Mulder wonders why he isn't looking at any of the
others.

"And also with you," comes the response from the other three,
and Mulder too, after half a beat.

The boy circles the grave respectfully after the service, his
black curls slicked back and sweating in his too-big suit, and
shakes both their hands in greeting. Scully introduces him to
Mulder, the two having never met, and Wade gives him a
strange look.

"Are you family?"

"No," says Mulder, declining to elaborate further. Wade turns
to Scully.

"Can you believe her family and friends didn't even come to
say goodbye?" he says, angry on Samantha's behalf.

"How would they know?" asks Scully, crossing her arms.

"It's a small town, Dana. People would know."

Mulder jerks his chin at the two men dressed in grey suits
standing by the graveside. "Who are they?"

The boy twists his head over his shoulder. "That's Sam's old
boss from the office in Salisbury and the funeral home director.
What a turnout, huh." Wade turns back to face them both. "I'm
glad you guys came. She was hoping to see you again before
she passed on, but..."   

"Well, you know how it is," says Mulder uncomfortably, guilt
gnawing at his insides.

"Yeah, I know," says Wade, shoving his hands in his pockets.
"I think she understood. You know what she told me, after I got
to know her a little bit?" he asks, looking at Scully. "She said
that God led you both to her doorstep, and that you were a
blessing in disguise, Dana."

After a long moment's turbulence, Mulder watches her face
settles into a smile. Wade wags a finger at Mulder.

"And apparently, all *your* crazy talk about aliens was His
way of testing her faith." He shakes his head, his mouth
bunched up on one side. "Aliens? Really?"

Mulder shrugs. "Hey, don't question the man upstairs, Wade.
For all you know, I might be *your* blessing in disguise."

"Right," frowns Wade, and Scully clears her throat and flicks
Mulder a look that says desist. Wade smiles at her. "Well, I
guess I'd better change out of this penguin suit and go catch my
flight."

"Leaving already?" asks Mulder in a wounded tone. "But I
haven't tested your faith yet."

Wade laughs and claps Mulder on the arm. "Next time," he
says. "Bye, Dana."

"See you, Wade," Scully says with a smile.

"Dana?" Mulder mutters under his breath. As soon as the
young man is out of earshot, her rounds on Scully. "Just how
well do you know the guy, Scully?"

"You know, I'm sensing some hypocrisy on your part here,"
she says with a little push. "You had no problems with
Samantha calling you by your first name the entire time we
were there."

Mulder flattens a circle of grass with the tip of his dress shoe.
"I don't know, Scully," he says quietly. "It just seemed... right,
coming from her. There's no-one left to call me Fox anymore."

He knows Scully would, in a heartbeat, but that's not what he
wants. Instead, she takes his arm and they go to stand before
the newly carved headstone, the words *Samantha Mulder*
stark against the white granite, as pure as the first snow of
winter.

Mulder visits the grave twice the next day in remembrance of
both women who bore that name, and silently wonders how
such an oddity could have been possible. If Samantha hadn't so
clearly had a soul, that ineffable spark so obviously
illuminating her worn-out body, he'd have suspected she was
just another clone. But Skinner had asked the lab to run the test
three times to be sure, and DNA doesn't lie. So Mulder tells
himself that Samantha was simply a doppelganger and leaves it
at that.   

He fills the in-between with cups of coffee at the local bakery.
The cemetery is quiet and yet strangely alive; birds flit from
tree to tree, diving at creatures inhabiting the thick lawn, and
Mulder spots there is a grist of bees around a hedge. He
sometimes asks for his coffee in a Styrofoam cup and just
wanders through the rows of graves, reading the names of the
dead and figuring they'd be glad to have someone, even a
stranger, think of them. Somehow, he always ends up standing
before Samantha's simple headstone. Scully, meanwhile,
spends her holiday in the musty depths of Rockwell's two
libraries and one historic museum, which, as she informs
Mulder over Chinese that night, once housed the town's second
post office.

"There's a gazebo in the gardens out the back, and down the
road there's a park with a swing set," she says, chewing a piece
of broccoli. "I haven't been on a swing since I was a kid."

Mulder contemplates her over a tangle of noodles on his
chopsticks. "Just how bored are you, exactly?"

She smiles. "I'll actually be glad to get back to work. But if this
Fourth of July thing is as good as you say--"

"It is," he assures her.

"--then I'm happy to stay here for one more day."   

***

The Fourth arrives and it seems the entire town of Rockwell is
on a pilgrimage to Faith; the country roads are humming with
activity, every second car has American flags jammed into the
hood, fluttering regally like the presidential car itself. Mulder
gets in the spirit, blaring the horn at excitable drivers as they
pass. He watches Scully slips on her sunglasses and roll the
windows down, enjoying the sun-warmed seats and the wind
streaming through her hair, and feels a thrill of something he
believes is called contentment. It is a hot, humid day, so the
newscaster tells them delightedly, with a strong chance of
thunderstorms in the early evening.

They park in the elementary school parking lot and stroll across
to the park, where kids crowd around sideshow booths and wait
in line for fairground rides. Mulder stops at a table and asks for
two hotdogs.

"Ketchup, Scully?"

"Of course."

"I wasn't gonna let you say no," he says. "A hotdog without
ketchup is just plain old un-American."

"That's right," says the man at the grill, pointing a long greasy
pair of tongs at them. Mulder raises his hotdog in salute while
Scully merely raises an eyebrow.    

They munch their good old American wieners and at midday
join the flood of revelers traipsing down to the main street for
the mile-and-a-half long parade. Mulder is assaulted with the
noise of floats, flags, streamers, screaming kids, balloons,
whistles, dogs and horses. It's loud and hot and feverish, and
the person behind him keeps cheering in his ear, and a boy
scampers to the front of the crowd and stomps on Scully's toes,
and Mulder feels alive and young again. Scully stands in front
of him, watching the parade go past, and Mulder leans on her
shoulders.

As afternoon sets in, people lay out blankets in the school yard
and eat ice-cream cones and coleslaw from tubs, coolers full of
ice and drinks beside them. Children pick up the ice and run
around in circles, screaming and shoving ice down each other's
t-shirts. Scully links arms with Mulder and licks her drippy
vanilla cone, tastes Mulder's chocolate cone, and he kisses the
melted sweet ice-cream from her lips.

The sun is still high around six-thirty, in stately ignorance of
the blackened thunder clouds huddling ever nearer, when
Scully wanders off to find the cleanest bathroom she can.
Mulder hooks his legs around a fence and sits to watch another
fierce round of sack-racing. Kids huddle in potato sacks at the
start line, bouncing impatiently. The cap-gun goes off with a
bang of smoke and the racers move out. The oldest boys take
giant leaps, little boys knock themselves down like bowling
pins, and one tiny girl jumps up and down on the spot till
someone gives her an encouraging push. 

One young boy catches Mulder's eye, his coppery hair
gleaming in the sunlight, his tongue poking out between his
lips as he concentrates. He moves up in the pack, beside an
older girl, who cuts him off rather than let him pass her. He
trips and falls face-first on the ground, a look of total surprise
on his face. But he wriggles up like a caterpillar and finishes
the race. A man hands each child a watermelon slice and they
run off to their parents. The boy races over to a couple standing
near Mulder at the fence not six feet away.

"That girl cheated!" says the boy, slurping on his watermelon.
A black seed dribbles down his chin. 

"I'm sure it was an accident, Will," says his mother, a rather
dumpy woman with dark brown curls, smoothing
sweat-straggled hair off his forehead. The boy raises an
eyebrow at his mother, a skeptical look on his face, as the first
drop of rain hits Mulder in the face.

"No, Mom, she pushed me over."

It is the boy's expression rather than his words or his name that
triggers recognition in Mulder.  His heart crashes against his
bones like the thunder rolling in the corners of the countryside.
He takes in the boy's long limbs, his pointed chin, the dark
eyelashes surrounding oddly sloped eyes, blue eyes. Mulder
sneaks a look at the parents; the man has brown eyes, the
woman hazel. He suddenly finds it difficult to swallow. He
wants to look forever at the boy. Will. Is that what the woman
said? Could it be possible that of all the days and all the places
and all the people and all the moments in every possible
universe, he should meet his son here, at the sack-race in Faith,
North Carolina, on the Fourth of July?

The boy runs back to the starting line where more kids are
lining up for the last race before the storm, and Mulder edges
closer to the couple, watching them smile as their boy steps
into his potato sack and narrows his eyes at the finish line,
ignoring the rabble around him. Mulder picks himself up and
goes to stand by the boy's father.

"Takes it seriously, doesn't he?" says Mulder by way of
greeting.

The mother laughs.  "He's a competitive child, always has
been."

Mulder can't wait any longer to know. "What's his name?"

"William. But he tells everyone to call him Will."

Mulder watches the boy's intensely focused face and suddenly
can see nothing but Scully in his childish features. He knows it,
feels it like a punch to his gut. That is his son. Something like
father's intuition tells him so. Another second passes and he
can see nothing at all thanks to the tears filming his eyes. He
blinks up at the sky, at the gathering clouds sparking with
lightning.

"Are you all right?" asks the mother, peering at him.

"Just got grass in my eye," Mulder mutters, swiping his sleeve
across his face. He takes a few steps away from the couple and
leans against the fence to watch his son.

The starting gun goes off again and Scully takes that as her sign
to reappear. "Did I miss anything?" she says, taking a seat on
the fence.

He almost laughs at that. He doesn't know what to say, where
to begin. Doesn't know if he should say anything, whether
acknowledging it out loud might make it all disappear. He
wants to tell her more than anything, but he doesn't know if he
can stand the hurt it might cause. His ruminations are made
moot when she notices the boy of her own accord. His heart
clenches as he watches her go through the same thought
process he had. The boy clutches the hem of the potato sack
and crosses the finish line first. He lets the sack fall to his
sneakers, as he turns to his parents and grins. He has dirt on his
knees.

Scully puts her hand to her mouth, and turns to Mulder, her
eyes very, very blue and wide. Mulder crooks a smile and the
hand falls.

"Is it him?" she croaks.

"Is it?" he says in kind, hoping against hope that she feels it
too.

All of a sudden, the heavens roll down curtains of warm
summer rain, and the children squeal in delight at this new
thrill. "William," she whispers. Scully laughs, actually laughs
as the rain rolls off her nose, clings to her eyelashes, drips off
her chin. She clings to him tight enough to break his ribs. He
lifts her chin to kiss her, a long, breathless, rainy kiss. 

"Where is he?" she gasps, pushing him away. William and his
parents have vanished out of the rain.

"How is this possible?" she breathes, looking up at the mottled
sky.

"I--it's..." tries Mulder, blinking rain--is it rain?--out of his
eyes. 

"The odds are astronomical!" she says, the last word erupting
from her luminous face in a burst of breathless laughter. "Oh,
my God.  Oh, my God."

He takes her hand and tries to get somewhere dry, where his
son surely is, but she pulls him back to revel in the purity of the
rain and her unbridled joy. The downpour ends as soon as it
had begun, as though someone up there had twisted a tap off.
The sky begins to clear up within minutes, the grey smeared
with gold and a pinkish blush, and the tiniest of rainbows
torments Mulder out of the corner of his eye. Scully wipes her
face and a muted glow settles over it, and her eyes are smiling.

"We have to find him," says Mulder, feeling an irresistible
need to search the boy's face again.

"We will," says Scully, and takes his hand.

The sun is lingering on the horizon when Mulder sees the boy
again, sleeping in his mother's lap beneath the dripping leaves
of a tree. Spotlights flicker on, illuminating the slick grass and
the filmy curtain of rain cloaking the windless evening. Mulder
edges closer, tugging on Scully's hand, and her smile falters for
a moment, seeing the woman's arm draped over her son. She
turns away from the tree, toward the choir belting out patriotic
hymns from the stage erected over by the school gym, and
Mulder gives her time to rearrange her face to its usual
smoothness. Though he knows he shouldn't stare, Mulder can't
take his eyes off the boy, even when he hears Scully's stifled
little sob.  The boy's father notices Mulder looking in their
direction and waves them over out of the rain.

"Sit down," he says, shaking out an extra blanket. "There's a
tarp overhead keeping us dry."

"Are you sure?" asks Mulder, pushing bedraggled hair out of
his eyes. Scully draws a sleeve across her wet face and
squeezes his other hand with hers.

"Yeah, come on."

They crowd onto the blanket, careful not to disturb the sleeping
William. Now Scully is unable to keep her eyes off his prone
body, sprawled across his mother's lap, his round head resting
on her knee.

His mother notices Scully staring. "He's had a long day," she
says. Scully smiles and touches his leg.

"You guys from around here?" asks Mulder, raising his voice
over the belting of the choir's big finale.

"Nope, made the trip out from Wyoming for the Fourth. We're
staying for the week here in Faith, had the room booked for
months. It's the first time we've been, we figured that Will
would appreciate it now he's a bit older." Applause breaks out
as the music comes to a triumphant end; the conductor turns
and bows at the crowd, rain streaming from the tip of his baton.
Mulder feels that the smile on Scully's face is worth all the
pain of the past month, the pain of Samantha and of Christian.
The drizzle eases up and the sun glows golden at the edge of
the world.

A single male voice echoes across the grass, singing the first
words of a most beloved hymn. *Amazing Grace, how sweet
the sound.* Children careen past the tree, shrieking and
splashing through puddles. A rogue drip splats onto Mulder's
hair and trickles down his neck.

An organ chimes in with the second verse.  The rest of the
choir blares out in a united voice. A teenager shuffles at the
corner of the stage, fingers fumbling over an Irish whistle, its
melody piping sweetly above the rest of the drone.  People sit
and listen, stand and dance. They survey the park from a Ferris
wheel bucket, and chase after their children with gleeful
menace. The couple who have loved their own child hold hands
on the blanket.

     When we've been there ten thousand years
     Bright shining as the sun
     We've no less days to sing God's praise
     Then when we first began.

William sleeps.

Mulder hums.

Scully smiles. 

***

EPILOGUE

A man and a blonde woman sit in a darkened room watching a
computer screen divided into six parts, five of which show
surveillance footage of lit rooms and one dark room in the
upper corner. The man chews his toothpick. 

"Six years," muses the blonde woman. "We did not expect it to
take this long.  The clones are beginning to deteriorate at a
faster rate than before."

"Yes, Mr. Mulder has become cautious in his old age." 

"It's more likely that Dana Scully has been protecting him all
along, and the communications were not being passed on to
him."  

"Possibly," says the man. "It doesn't matter. His recent actions
prove that Mulder can still be tempted with the idea of his
sister, and we must use that to our full advantage between now
and mobilization to ensure our success."

The woman nods. "The success of our continued experiments
with hybridity and cloning is obvious here, wouldn't you say? 
The Chimera experiment has seen a one hundred percent
success rate." She indicates the computer screen and the
surveillance footage of five identical, brown-haired women in
each section. "The ability to marry human genes with alien
genes, changing the organizational structure of the DNA and
having the subject retain its human appearance, has been our
greatest breakthrough in recent years."

The toothpick-chewing man stares at her, his eyes cold.
"Success? Alpha S contracted a terminal disease which ended
up claiming its life."

The blonde woman waves a hand in dismissal. "Success up
until now. May I also remind you, sir, that this batch is now
nearly eight years old? Alpha S died from a biological error
which can and will be rectified with further experimentation.
As a short-term solution, the Chimera clones are unsurpassed."

The man leans back in the chair and crosses his legs, resting his
ankle on his knee. "I will agree that this batch of clones has
proved to be the most sophisticated to date, even if their
immune systems are weak. Their ability to speak, alone, makes
them priceless."

"And the manufactured memories make them that much more
convincing."

"That aspect of the program is still lagging," he says. "The
clones are still unable to recall in any great detail, even with the
more recent batches."

"I believe that works to our advantage, sir," says the woman. 
"Especially in Mulder's case."

"You may be right," says the toothpick-chewing man
thoughtfully. 

"Have you made a decision concerning that operation?"

He blinks. "There is no decision to be made. We have not spent
more than fifty years on genetic and eugenic experimentation,
and developed six Chimera clones of Mr. Mulder's sister only
to exterminate them after one failure."

The blonde woman drops her gaze for a moment.

"The arrangement will continue uninterrupted," says the man.
"Send out another communication to Mr. Mulder at the
appropriate time. Use a Florida postmark. Station an agent at
the Beta S address in Fort Lauderdale."

"You believe he will continue looking for her? Even after--"

"He has shown that he will," he says, in a tone that brooks no
further argument. "We must keep him occupied until we have
found what we need. The time he spends looking for his sister
is time not spent looking for his son. It is imperative we locate
the boy before Mr. Mulder does." He affixes the woman with a
cold, silvery gaze. "The future of the program, and our own
future on this earth, depend upon it."

The man rolls his toothpick between his teeth and reaches for
the opened file on the desk before him. He studies a photograph
of a round-cheeked, fuzzy-haired little boy, drooling joyfully,
one chubby fist raised to point at some unknown photographer,
the other resting beside his tiny ear on a pillow embroidered
with his name.  William. 

*** 

Author's Note:  All the locations are real, and the discovery of
an actual town called Faith in North Carolina, which is indeed
famous for its Fourth of July celebrations, was a happy
coincidence and provided me with the means for ending the
story.  Thank you for reading!  I hope you liked it.  Feedback is
very welcomed here or at manderinne@gmail.com.  Now go
and drool over flashikins' artwork and download the soundtrack
here!