Hole in the Black
by PD

ARCHIVAL:  Gossamer, no thanks. Stories will be housed at 
my site only. If you'd like to link, I'd love it, but 
please drop me note with a heads up.

DISCLAIMER:  Can I borrow the keys to the franchise, Chris? 
I won't go to any FBI balls, I promise to make a full stop 
at most clichés‚ and I will try not to dangle my 
participles at the nice couple in the unremarkable house.

CLASSIFICATION: SRA, MSR, IWTB, TMI, ASAP

RATING:  R

SPOILERS:  Through The X Files: I Want To Believe

SUMMARY:  "I wasn't in the group, Mr. Mulder. I was a 
tangential part of the project - in league with those few 
who were adamant on the subject of developing an antidote 
and a vaccine. He was our man on the inside, but we were 
not on the side of complicity with the colonists and that 
meant we were on the outside. Fringe element. We were not 
highly regarded. We weren't even invited to the group 
barbecues." He caught himself and smiled. "Ah. No pun 
intended."


~ Chapter 5 ~
 
8:45 pm
Mulder's and Scully's House
Rural Virginia

Neither of them could eat. They sat. They spoke of 
trivialities and occasionally of earth shattering events, 
but mostly they sat in silence staring at Mulder's phone on 
the coffee table in front of them. Earlier, Scully had 
averted possible disaster when she'd wordlessly retrieved 
the charger for his phone and plugged it in.

Mulder peered over at the clock on the wall. 8:47. He hoped 
the man was punctual. He felt Scully next to him, her hip 
to his. Except for her posture - perched on the very edge 
of the couch - she was deceptively stoic. He was fairly 
certain that her head was exploding in as many directions 
as his was, you would just never know it to look at her. 

He touched her knee with a finger and she jumped. "Sorry," 
he said. "I want you to put your special agent hat on, 
Scully. Get in the mindset. No matter what he says, don't 
become the tormented parent, okay?"

Had she been less of a tormented parent at that moment, she 
might have taken offense. He was absolutely right, though. 
Remember the mindset. She'd not had occasion or inclination 
to think like an agent for more than five years, but she 
was still the same person. Surely, she could slip back into 
it again under dire circumstances - which is what these 
were.

Okay. He's an informant, possibly a criminal, possibly a 
government agent. Her sense of irony, tucked away in 
another part of her brain, missed the joke as she moved on. 
He had information on a missing boy. Her boy. In body only. 
Another mother was desperately missing her son. 
Desperately.

Mulder's phone began vibrating, and with one hand on 
Scully's knee for balance, he pressed the connect button. 
Speaker on, they both heard the connection click. A 
whooshing, static-y background and a man's voice broke the 
silence before Mulder did. It sounded like a payphone next 
to a freeway. Or it could just be a bad connection.

"Hello?"

"Yes," Mulder said. "I'm here."

"Good. I'm going to assume that Dr. Scully is there, as 
well."

"Yes, I'm here," Scully said, her voice slightly hoarse 
with stress.

"That's fine. I'll be brief. It is not my intention, here, 
to lead you a merry chase or agitate you needlessly. Your 
son has some obvious abilities beyond the normal six - 
seven year old boy which, I imagine, contributes to how he 
managed to leave Wyoming and cross Utah from top to bottom 
by himself."

"Oh, my God," Scully muttered under her breath.

"Yes," the man said, "I thought the same thing. However, he 
didn't levitate here, Dr. Scully. I think he took a 
Greyhound. And as it is not unheard of for small children 
to travel alone, particularly if they are intelligent and 
resourceful, he was not stopped until I found him. Rather 
he found me."

"Why would he come to you?" Mulder asked.

"Good question, Mr. Mulder. Coincidence? Fate? Nature or 
nurture. Maybe he can tell you."

They heard a muffled sound, and both of them, as if the 
room had slowly tilted on a gimbal, leaned toward the 
phone.

"Hi," they heard a small voice say.

Scully covered her mouth with her hand, her eyes suddenly 
filling with tears.

"Um - are you my other mom and dad?" the boy asked. He had 
a small voice, but it wasn't weak or broken with tears. It 
was just young.

"Will -" Mulder started and cleared his throat. "William?"

"Yeah, I'm William. Are you - um - Fox?"

Mulder chuckled, eyes brimming. "Uh, yeah."

"Is she there, too?"

Trying to pull it together, Scully nodded at the phone. 

"He can't see that," Mulder said gently to her.

"I'm here," she said suddenly. "I'm here, William."

"It's Dana?" he asked.

"Yeah," she managed.

"'kay," he said. And after a few moments of interminable 
silence, he added, "I remember you."

They heard muffled sounds once again as the phone was 
passed between hands.

"Okay," the man said as he came back on the line.

"Wait! Is he okay? William? Is he all right?"

"He's fine, Mr. Mulder. You heard him yourself."

"Yes, but -" Mulder started.

"Meet us, Mr. Mulder. Let's not do this over the phone. 
Come to Kayenta, Arizona. Kayenta. It's about 150 miles 
north of Flagstaff. There's a Holiday Inn there. I suggest 
you call ahead and make reservations. When you arrive, 
check in and I'll leave a number at the desk where I can be 
contacted, and we'll arrange to meet. Until then, you won't 
hear from me."

And the connection terminated. They sat, once again, 
stunned and silent. After several long minutes, Scully got 
up and went outside. She walked down their long driveway in 
the dark and locked the gate.

~:~:~

Mulder packed for them while Scully called the hotel and 
went online for plane tickets. They talked little until 
they fell into bed around 2 am, exhausted - more from 
stress than exertion. 

Surprisingly, she'd felt herself slipping back into her 
investigative mode of thinking without any more prompting, 
but with a caveat. Cases involving children always did push 
her instinct-over-intellect war into overdrive. She was 
always assaulted with her own maternal instincts, 
personally involving herself until it was difficult to 
separate the FBI agent from the woman who wanted children 
of her own someday. 

If it was difficult to balance then, it was nearly 
impossible now, so she didn't try, but the warring feelings 
were the same, familiar and disquieting, and they kept her 
on her toes.

They lay next to each other, each staring at the ceiling. 
Her thoughts, she knew, were twisting and twining around 
his to become a single-minded idea. 

"How many, Mulder?" she said quietly into the darkness. She 
felt him processing, running back the tape on the hours 
after the phone call.

"Scenarios," he finally concluded and she nodded even 
though he wasn't looking at her. "A few - including one 
starting with 'Daddy, why'd you run out on Mommy.'" Mulder 
cringed. That left a bitter taste in his mouth, and he 
reached out his hand to take hers. She squeezed it and took 
the opportunity to pull him toward her. He turned onto his 
belly, his arm draped over her, his head resting on the 
pillow next to hers. His breath puffed below her ear.

"Mostly," he said, "I'm thinking about what the hell I'm 
going to say to his - father when we take him back."

She nodded and sighed, and against all odds, they both 
closed their eyes and managed to sleep.