Iunctio ut Redimio - Book One - Part 2
by Kay

Feedback: kay101342@gmail.com
Spoilers: IWTB
Time Span: Post IWTB; February 2008
Disclaimer: Characters that are not mine do not belong to me.


Saturday, 1:00 p.m. 

As soon as Scully and Mulder picked up their luggage in D.C., a
man with long, grey hair accosted them. "Dr. Scully? Dr. Carter sent
me to pick up you and Mr. Mulder. She said to tell you that I'm here for
the bullfrog."

Scully felt a little better about the man after hearing the pass phrase. It
was one of several she and Monica and Kate had used when trading off
William duty as a baby. They wouldn't let each other in unless one of the
pass phrases was uttered. Maybe it wasn't great protection, but it made
them all feel better at the time. Thinking back, Scully realized how much
she had relied on them during those months. Her mother had been so
critical of her lifestyle and job that she had eventually tried to avoid
asking her to help out unless she volunteered. Monica and Kate were
pretty much the only help she had.

The man leaned towards her. "She also said for some strange
reason that you may feel better if I show you my neck?" It was spoken
as half question, half statement. Shrugging, he turned his back
towards them and lifted the ponytail.

Both Mulder and Scully looked relieved at the absence of any
bony protrusions. The man took Scully's bag from her hand and led
them outside. He put them in the backseat of a waiting car and got
up front with the driver. They drove out of town to a small
airstrip, where the man hopped out and ushered them towards a small
business class jet.

In ten minutes, they were flying south, the same man from the
airport acting as pilot. After they reached cruising altitude, Mulder
asked the man, "Where are we headed?" 

The man shook his head. "I'm not at liberty to say, sir. We will be
arriving soon, however."

Mulder watched as they flew south, almost parallel to the
coastline. After a while, the plane began to descend, coming to rest in a
small area. Another man came forward and opened the door to let them
out. The pilot hopped out, handing the craft over to the other man to
deal with. He led them to a car and began to drive. Finally, he spoke.
"We may speak freely now, Dr. Scully. Do you know where you are?"

"Are we on Hilton Head?" The man nodded. "Mulder, I was here with
Kate once. Her family has a house here, on the beach. We brought
William here for a long weekend."

Mulder nodded. He had seen the pictures in the album of Scully walking
with William in front of the surf. She was facing away from the camera in
one photo, but William was looking back over her shoulder. The sun
was setting, casting a strange light over the whole scene. It was a
hauntingly beautiful picture. Mulder figured it had been taken just before
the adoption because William was so big.

They turned onto a secluded drive and stopped in front a large
house. Mulder whistled. "Whoa. Cute little beach bungalow, huh?"

Scully hopped out of the car as soon as it came to a stop, her
heart beating loudly in her chest. She was nervous. Why had Kate
brought her here, so far from DC? She approached the house slowly,
memories of her last time here making her feel weak. She heard the
driver tell Mulder to have Dr. Carter call him if they needed anything.

As they reached the top of the steps, Monica Reyes answered the
door. She gave Scully a quick hug, then threw her arms around
Mulder. "Look at you!"

He hugged her back. "So...where's the partay?"

She led them through the house and out the back door, which opened
onto a large stone patio and then stepped down directly into the sand.
Kate was standing in the sand, halfway between the water and the
patio. She was bent down looking into what looked like a pit. She
glanced up and waved to Scully. "Hey!" she yelled. 

A little dog came tearing out of the hole about that time and ran straight
for Mulder, grabbing his pants leg. "What the..." He looked down and
tried to shake the dog off.

A little head popped out of the hole in the sand. The boy's
eyes widened. He climbed out of the pit and went barreling towards
the patio. 

When Scully saw the face pop up and out of the sand, her knees went
weak. "William?" she whispered.

The little boy ran straight for her, yelling over his shoulder, "They're here.
They're here. Just like you said!" he hollered. "Claire! Come see.
They're here!" He hit Scully at almost full speed, wrapping his wiry arms
around her waist. She took a step back to try to keep her balance. 

The little boy buried his face in her stomach, then looked up at her. The
tears in her eyes stopped him cold. "What's wrong? It's me...William the
Bullfrog! Why are you crying? Aren't you happy to see me?"

She knelt down to look at his sand streaked face. "Oh, my
God...William. Of course I'm happy to see you. I just...I didn't know
you were here." She ran her hands over his head, down his arms, feeling
the warm little body she had missed for so long. 

He gave her a grin that rivaled Mulder's. "I surprised you, then, huh? I'm
really good at surprises."

She looked at his bright eyes. "You are VERY good at surprises. I don't
think I've been this surprised ever in my life," she said huskily.
He beamed brighter at the compliment. "William...how do you...do you
even know who I am?"

He gave her a perplexed look. "Of course I know who you are. You're
my first mom."

She looked at him strangely. "But...you were just a baby when I last saw
you. How can you remember that?"

He laughed and touched her nose with his pointer finger, almost like she
was the child. "You're silly. I would never forget you. You used to sing
me the bullfrog song. And you took me to the zoo. And when I was tiny
and scared, you would pat my hands and say, ‘Everything's going to be
all right. Go back to sleep now, sweet William.' And, and... " He was so
wiggly that she couldn't keep him in her arms; he managed to pull away
from her as his attention shifted, and he looked down at the dog. "Stop,
Togy. Bad dog." The dog let go of Mulder's leg and sat looking at the
boy adoringly. William looked up at Mulder kind of shyly. "Togy's a
wire-haired Jack Russell. He's a really smart dog.  I got him when I was
three cause our Border Collie died. He was just a puppy underneath the
Christmas tree. Only, he chewed up Mama's house shoes that first
morning and Mama said a swear. But now he doesn't chew up anything
but his own toys. And sometimes moles." He took a deep breath and
stuck out his hand to Mulder. "You were away when I was a baby. Do
you remember me? I remember you."

Mulder looked into his eyes and smiled the happiest smile Scully
thought she'd ever seen on his face. He took the small hand into his own
and shook it, impressed by the grip and solidity. "Of course I
remember you. I carried your picture in my wallet all these years." 

William looked at him, not sure he believed him. "No way."

Mulder nodded and pulled out his wallet, squatting down to be at
eye level with the child.  He showed the little boy the worn picture. "See.
There you are. You were only one day old."

William laughed at the picture. "Why didn't I have any hair?"

Mulder gave a pretend scowl and looked up at Scully. "I wondered that
same thing the first time I really looked at you." He reached out and
ruffled William's brown, wavy hair. "You don't have that problem
anymore, though." 

William kicked at the stone beneath his feet, then asked Mulder if he
could go dig again. When Mulder stood up and told him sure, he ran
back out to the sand pit he was digging and dove in, the dog following
close behind. He stuck his head back out for a second and waved to
Scully.

On the patio, Scully dragged her eyes away from William long enough to
look at Kate and Monica. "How did you get him?"

Kate and Monica pieced the story together for them and told them
all about Gibson. Then they told them about the girl that had been
with Gibson.  Scully looked around. "Where is she?" 

Reyes pointed to the upstairs window. There was a small face peering
down at them. Mulder waved to her. She didn't wave back but looked
away quickly.  "So...she says she was raised at a facility in San Diego? 
The same facility Skinner and Doggett are investigating as we speak?"

Kate shrugged. "Presumably."

Scully took a deep breath. "Okay. Let me get this straight. Gibson was
first led to rescue this girl. Then the two of them were led to the Van de
Kamp's, where William just happened to be waiting outside at night in
the freezing cold, with a dog, a backpack, and a stuffed animal. Gibson
also claimed that Claire and William were somehow psychically
connected to both him and each other." 

Kate nodded. "Well, yeah. In a nutshell." She took the raised eyebrows
and petulant look on her friend's face to be pure Scully skepticism. The
kind that made you want to slap the hell out of her.  "You're kidding me,
right? You don't think stranger things than this have happened through
the years?"

Scully thought back through all the times she'd been certain something
could not be true in the last fifteen years, only to have to eat her words
later. "Well...I guess you have a point." She just wanted her child to be
safe, happy, and normal. Of course, he was Mulder's, too...so maybe
she could be content with the first two.

Mulder looked up at the window. The face there was gone. "Does
she have parents who are looking for her?"

Kate shook her head. "She says no. She says she never had parents.
Look. I'm going to get her down here. You guys are the trained
investigators.  You can pull all of this out of her. She seems okay to have
been locked away all of her life."

Mulder asked Monica more questions while Kate was gone to get the
girl. Reyes shook her head. "Mulder. I witnessed the connection
between that little girl and William. They behave like they've known each
other their whole lives instead of forty-eight hours. It is uncanny. It's like
they talk silently."

Mulder shrugged. "Maybe they do."

Scully stuck her tongue to her top lip. "Mulder..." She cautioned.

After all these years, Scully was still afraid of what she couldn't explain.
Mulder, of course, was still as fascinated by it as he had been that night
he'd sprayed the big "X" on the road in Oregon. They glanced up to see
Kate coming back out the door. Claire hid behind her, peeking around
timidly.

Mulder leaned around to speak to her. "Hi. My name is Fox Mulder.
And this is Dana Scully. You must be Claire. We heard you
helped bring William safely to us. Thank you for that. You've helped us
a lot. Maybe we could help you now."

Finally, the girl spoke. "Please don't let them come and get me. I think
they were going to kill me. They didn't think I was a very
successful experiment."

Slowly, Mulder won a tiny bit of her trust - enough so that she stepped
out from behind Kate and began to answer his questions. Scully simply
watched her for a while, trying to judge her age - probably somewhere
around twelve. She was very thin, very pale, and had very long, wavy,
reddish brown hair. Her eyes were a deep green, possibly hazel. It was
hard to tell from a distance.

In time, they dragged enough of the story out of her. The little girl talked
more openly. "There were a bunch of us at the facility. Some had been
there all along, but some were new. There were little kids who were
taken out of their homes. They were the only ones who cried a lot.
There hadn't been any new babies brought to the facility in a long time,
though. They stopped coming several years ago. Until then, we used to
get a couple a year. I'm good with little kids, so they let them sleep in my
bunkroom usually."

"Did they hurt you?"

She shook her head. "Not really. Sometimes their tests would hurt.  And
nobody liked having blood drawn every couple of days, but you get
used to it. And they weren't really intentionally mean. Some were nicer
than others. One lab lady used to bring treats for the younger kids and
extra books for us older kids to read."

"What kind of tests did they do?"

She shrugged. "Stupid tests. Like to see if you could read minds. Or if
you could move objects with your mind. Or what would happen to you
if they spun you around like an astronaut or put you in an
anti-gravity chamber. I always liked that one, but it made some kids
puke. And there were medical tests. They looked at your brain and
hooked you up to other machines. And we had school. People came
and taught us, but mostly we taught ourselves. The older kids taught the
little kids. At night, everyone went home except the guards.
After lockdown, the guards would watch us on video camera in
our bunkrooms."

Mulder looked at her closely. "Do you remember your parents?"

She shook her head. "Most of us didn't have parents. We were at the
facility since right after we were born. We had a host mother, though.
That's what it was called. Someone who grew us in their womb while
they hibernated. There was a room of host mothers at the facility for a
while. But then they weren't there anymore. And then the babies
stopped coming at all."

A chill went through Mulder. Host mothers. Like at that nursing home.
"What happened right before Gibson rescued you?"

She looked very sad. "Well. A group of people stormed the facility and
said it was time to move. They rounded up all of my friends, even the
little kids, and took them away. They didn't take me, though. One man
started to, but another stopped him and said, ‘No. Not that one. The
order said to leave that one.' Before everyone else could clear out,
faceless men showed up and burned the rest of the scientists and the
guards. But they walked right past me. After that, I ran outside and
Gibson was there." No one said anything for a long time. Then the little
girl turned her eyes to Scully. "I can tell you're afraid of me."

About that time, William came stomping back up to them. He tugged
on Scully's sleeve, but her eyes were locked on Claire's. He
tugged harder. "Mom." That got her attention. "I want Claire to help
me dig now. She promised." He turned his eyes to Claire.
"You promised."

Claire looked down and nodded at him. "I'm coming." She looked sadly
at Scully for a moment.  "You were my egg donor, you know. I read all
about you in my file. I used to lie awake at night and dream about finding
you. Because I thought being my egg donor made you my mother. Now
I know it doesn't.  What makes a person your mother is when she looks
at you the way you look at William. That's not something they taught us
in the lab."

Scully's mouth dropped open a little as the girl walked away. Egg donor.
Emily. She had always worried there were others. Did this one have
green blood, too? She shivered in the cool wind. The sun was going
down, and the temperature was dropping.  She was having trouble
processing the entire situation.

Mulder put his hand on her shoulder. She shrugged it away. "I'm fine,
Mulder. Can you call Skinner and Doggett and see what they turned up
out in San Diego?" She turned to Monica. "How long has he been
digging that hole?"

Monica looked down at the beach. "Since early this morning. We had to
bribe him to even get him to eat lunch." They watched as sand came
flying out of the pit every so often. "He's amazing, Dana."

"Do you think he really remembers us?"

Monica looked at her with a half smile. "Dana, no offense, but I don't
think any of us ever imagined William would be ‘normal' except for
you. He was a true miracle, right? I think you need to start learning to
expect the unexpected with him." She patted her friend's shoulder and
thought to herself - this poor woman is in for some good times.

Scully walked back down to the hole where the kids were
digging, content just to watch William as much as possible.

Kate walked up to Monica, her hands in her pockets. "So...did you tell
her about how he can pour his own milk with no hands?"

Monica gave her a look. "Hell no. She's had enough excitement for one
day. She can figure that one out for herself."


Saturday, 6:30 p.m.

Mulder stood over the giant hole. "William. You have to come out
of there. It's dark and time for dinner."

He looked up with those sharp blue eyes. "I'm not finished yet."

"You can dig more tomorrow, William. It's too dark and too cold."

"I'm not cold. I never get cold. And Togy can see well in the dark."

Kate yelled from the back door, "Pizza's here."

William hopped up to his feet.  "Pizza? I love pizza. I only had it twice in
my life when we went into town for something." He crawled out of the
hole, barreled towards the back door, and ran to the kitchen. Scully
snagged him by the waist. "Hold it. You have to wash your hands and
face first."

He sighed loudly. "Okay." He came back with half of the sand removed
from his face and plenty still stuck to his knees.

Kate waved her hand at Scully's look. "He's fine. This furniture has been
around since I was a kid. He's not the first sandy kid in those chairs."
She set a plate with a slice of pizza in front of the boy. Scully watched as
he bowed his head, said a blessing, and made quick work of the pizza
before anyone else had even joined him at the table. Mulder slapped
another piece on his plate. 

Claire, who had never had pizza, savored every bite of hers and was too
shy to take another piece until Monica made her. When she finished, she
washed her own plate and cup and sat back down beside William.

After three pieces of pizza, William's eyes were droopy. Scully took him
upstairs to put him in the bath.  Once he was settled in a bubble bath,
happily making soap mustaches and beards, he assured Scully that he
took his own baths all the time and she went down the hall to talk to
Mulder. Mulder was putting the phone away when she walked in.
"Skinner and Doggett said the facility was basically empty. No files,
nothing incriminating left. Surfaces were wiped clean, too. Whole place
smelled like ammonia."

She sighed. "So another dead end. Of course. Mulder, I don't
understand this. Why did they kill the adults and let Claire and William
go?"

He shook his head. "I don't know.  But I have a theory."

She cocked an eyebrow. Of course he did. "Let's hear it."

"I think the faceless men - the rebels, whatever - I think they killed the
adults to protect Claire and William. I think someone or something was
coming for them, and the rebels knew that they had to give them a
chance to escape."

Scully shook her head. "That doesn't make sense in William's case. The
Van de Kamps' would have tried to protect him from whoever was
coming." 

Mulder shook his head again. "No, see, I don't think they understand
things like we do. I think they knew Gibson was on his way there and
that they had to clear the way for William to leave with him."

"So...who was coming for them then?"

He shrugged. "That's what I don't know. The aliens, or the government,
or someone else. I don't know. But Scully, I think this connection those
two share may be key to unraveling the whole plan for colonization. I
don't know how, and I don't know why, but I think William was sent
back to us now for a reason. The time has come for him to play his part
in this." He saw her eyes cloud. "And you have to let him, Scully."

She sat for a long time after Mulder left the room. She looked up when
she heard Claire shriek. "William! Why is that dog in the bath with you?"

"He was sandy, too. And I don't want him to get sand in my bed
tonight." Scully started back towards the bathroom. When she got there,
William was out and wrapped in a towel, writing on the fogged up
mirrors with his finger. Claire was bathing Togy.

She looked up as Scully came in. "I'll clean up the soap and water. I'll
clean out the bathtub, too."

Scully looked down at her. "Claire. It's okay. You don't have to take
care of William or clean up after him. That's my job."

The girl lifted the dog out of the draining tub. "I like taking care
of younger kids."

Scully scooped William up into her arms. "Oof. You are heavier
than you look, kid."

He giggled as she put him down in a bedroom. "Kate had someone bring
me clothes here. They're in those bags. I like the shirt with the frogs on
it. Can I wear that?"

Once he was dressed in pajama pants and the frog shirt, he snagged the
stuffed frog and climbed up on the bed beside Scully. "Will you sing
to me?"

She looked at him uncertainly. "William, I am NOT a good singer..."

He gave her puppy dog eyes. "Sing the bullfrog song."

She looked at the door to make sure no one was nearby. "Okay.
No laughing, though." She tickled him as he scooted down beside
her. "William was a bullfrog. He was a good friend of mine..."

She finished the verse and heard from the doorway, "Chorus."
Mulder was leaning against the doorway with his arms crossed over his
chest, smiling at the pair on the bed.

William nodded vigorously. "Chorus."

Scully gave Mulder a shy look but finally continued. "Joy...to the
world...all the boys and girls....joy to the fishes in the deep blue sea...and
joy to you and me."

William beamed up at her. "You sing great, Mommy."

She rolled her eyes. "You are probably the only one in the whole world
who thinks so, kid. I love you, William."

He opened his now droopy eyes. "More than all the stars in the sky?"

She nodded. "Yes."

He shook his head. "No. You're supposed to say ‘and the fishes in the
sea.'"

"Sorry. I didn't know my line. I'll do better tomorrow." She stroked the
little cheek and watched as the dog hopped on the bed and laid its head
on William's chest. Scully scratched the dog's head.  "Sweet dreams,
you two."

Mulder came over to say goodnight after that. William was asleep
before they even turned out the light. Scully stayed at the doorway
looking at him for a long time. Finally, she pulled the door almost shut
and went back downstairs. She found Kate giving Claire a haircut. "Are
you sure you know how to do that?"

Kate gave her a dirty look. "She's going to be very fashionable. You are
going to want me to cut yours next." Scully snorted her disbelief.  Kate
left the hair fairly long since she didn't know how curly it would be with
the excess weight removed and layered the ends a little. She couldn't
believe the difference it made on the girl's face. "Look at that. You look
much older now. We're going to be beating boys off with a stick soon.
When was the last time you had a haircut?"

Claire shook her head back and forth, amazed at how light it felt. "This is
my first one ever! I'd never had a bubble bath before either. All we had
at the facility were showers." 

All three women raised their eyebrows. "Well," Kate promised her,
"when things settle down, I'll take you into my salon for the entire
package, okay? It'll be my treat. I didn't want to cut it too short right
now, but you can decide how you want to wear it then." Kate took the
towel off of the girl's shoulders. "If you go upstairs into my bathroom,
you can use my hair creams and blow dryer."

The girl wrinkled her slightly freckled nose. "I don't know how..."

Monica stepped up. "I'll give you a lesson. Come on."

Kate cleaned up the hair and then sat down to talk with her friend for the
first time that day. "Surely you know she's your biological daughter.
I can see you in her."

Scully chewed on her lip. "I'm so scared about her. What if...what if
something's really wrong with her...like Emily?"

Kate leaned her head back and looked at the ceiling. "Tomorrow, we
can take blood samples and do all the necessary things...but Dana - you
thought you would never have children. Now you're sitting here with two
wonderful kids upstairs and another on the way. Sometimes, you just
have to let go and enjoy life when you can. Neither of those kids seems
like they need therapy - yet - and that in itself is a miracle after what
they've been through. I don't know how they are so resilient but just
enjoy it."

Scully smiled at her friend. "I hate when you're right. So...tomorrow we'll
test Claire?"

"Yeah. I think we should also test William." She saw the look on Scully's
face. "JUST as a precaution and so we have a blood sample, okay? We
all know that's your baby up there. And if anyone had doubts about who
his biological father was back then, all they have to do is look at him
now."

"He does look a lot like Mulder, doesn't he?" She rubbed the back of
her neck. "Mulder said Skinner and Doggett were coming here in the
morning to start sorting through legalities and custody issues."

Kate rolled her eyes. "Can't wait for that. Walter's been a real pain. I've
avoided his calls all day."

Scully gave her a look. "What was up with Nic at your apartment?"

"Skinner sent him to ‘protect' me."

"Well...he wouldn't have been my first choice given the
histories involved."

Kate nodded. "No kidding. Walter is clueless sometimes. And I don't
think there was ever any real danger to me."

Scully shrugged. "I think Skinner knows you're probably the biggest
danger to yourself. After all, you managed to drug your bodyguard, ditch
him, and turn up 600 miles away...oh, and you stole his case right out
of from under him. Gee, you don't think there was a need for him
to worry?"

Kate threw a small pillow at her. "Hey."

Scully laughed.  "Seriously, though. He was probably panicked. At least
he cares."

Kate snorted. "Funny way of showing it. Throw my ex-husband in my
house overnight, whom I have actively avoided for almost ten years?
Yes. A real Hallmark moment."

Scully laughed. "Any chance of you and Nic reconciling?"

Kate was suddenly serious. "Dana - it physically hurts me to look at Nic
- that's how much I loved him fifteen years ago.  It's like a wound that
won't heal. Seeing him doesn't make it better. It just rips it open all over
again. No matter what I do, I can't get past losing Emma. I don't hate
him, and I honestly don't blame him for her disappearance, but I don't
even want to try to get past it. It doesn't seem possible."

Scully nodded. "I guess I can understand that. What about you
and Skinner?"

Kate looked rueful. "Dana. If we didn't move forward in ten years, I
doubt we're likely to now."

She shrugged. "Maybe he wants to move forward."

"I don't think so. The idea of commitment scared the poor man
to death."

Scully shook her head. "No, Kate. I think the idea of fatherhood terrified
him. Not the idea of you."

Kate wrinkled her eyebrows. "Why are we even talking about this? You
can barely keep your eyes open, and I can't even feel my feet anymore
they're so tired. Oh, yeah. I have your two remaining patients covered at
the hospital until Wednesday, but I will probably go back myself
Monday or Tuesday."

"Thanks. You really are a good friend, Kate. And I'll let you off the
hook about Skinner for now because I can see you're struggling
emotionally right now whether you want to admit it or not. But soon you
and I are going to really talk about how you feel about him, Kate, and
what made you hide your relationship for so long. That's not normal."

Kate's mouth dropped open. "I'm not normal? Dana Scully. You hid a
MAN in your house for four YEARS. That is so like the pot calling the
kettle black."

Scully argued with her as they went upstairs. "Yeah, but at least I did
come clean with you on my own."

Kate looked at her. "Only because you were PREGNANT."

"All right. You win that point. I am as emotionally inept as you."


Saturday, 9:15 p.m. 

Mulder lay in the darkened room, listening to the faint sound of
the ocean. Scully was sleeping soundly. He traced his fingertip along her
side, thinking about the changes that had occurred in the
past twenty-four hours. He propped up when he heard the door to the
room squeak and begin to open. A little figure came to stand at the
end of the bed.

"William? What's wrong, man?" He sat up.

The little boy was staring at him in the dark, clutching his stuffed frog
tightly. "I have a lot on my mind."

Mulder hid a smile at the adult-like phrase. "I bet you do. You've had a
lot happening these last few days. Would you like to climb up here so
we can talk about it?" William crawled quickly onto the bed and
squirmed his way to sit between Mulder and Scully.  "So, tell me what's
on your mind."

William fiddled with the frog. "Are my other mom and dad dead?"

Mulder swallowed hard and nodded. "Yes, William, they are."

The little boy nodded and a tear rolled down his cheek. "That's what I
thought." He looked down for a long time. "When you die, you go
through the starlight all the way to heaven. They'll be happy there."

Mulder wiped the tear. "And you'll be sad because you can't see
them anymore."

William looked at him with wide eyes. "I'm so sad it hurts my throat. But
I'm glad at the same time to see you and my first mom. Is that okay?"
There was a worried expression on his face.

Mulder nodded. "Of course it's okay. That's exactly how you're
supposed to feel right now." He hugged the little boy close. "You know,
William, when my mother died, I was so sad that -

"Didn't you have another one?" the little boy cut him off.

"No. I only had one mother."

"I'm luckier than you were, then."

Mulder gave a little laugh. "Yes, you are. So anyway, when she died, I
was so sad I almost couldn't stand it. But your mom..."

William interrupted, "This mom?" He patted Scully's sleeping form.

"Yes, that mom. I never knew your second mother."

"I called her Mama. I'm gonna call this one Mom, so they don't think I
get them confused."

Scully was awake now but stayed still to listen to them. Mulder nodded.
"That's a good plan. So anyway, when my mom died, your mom listened
while I told her about my favorite times with my mom. I was still sad for
a long time after that, but I felt better knowing I could talk to someone
when I wanted to talk about my mom.  Would you like to tell me
something about your mama?"

William nodded and thought for a minute. "Well, she was very pretty.
And she made all kinds of things fun, even chores because she turned
them into a game. And she taught me to cook. And when we would be
cooking in the kitchen, she would tell me funny stories about when I was
a baby. And she used to tell me that she asked God for so long to send
her a baby and that I was her miracle. I think my favorite story
about her, though, is the day that my Papa - that's what I called my
second dad - went to an auction and I stayed home to help Mama with
the chores. So anyway, that day Mama and I went out to feed
our chickens, but she left the house door open, and when we went back
to the house, there was one of our goats inside and standing ON
our table eating Mama's apple pie. She said a swear that day, too,
just like the day Togy ate her shoes. And when she tried to chase
the goat outside, it got mad and head-butted her. And Mama got
really mad then, but the goat didn't know what was good for it, Papa
said later, because it STILL wouldn't leave the house. So Mama
lassoed that goat with a rope. Isn't that funny, Dad? I didn't even
know Mama could lasso. And she dragged the goat outside, but not
before it grabbed hold of our curtains and ripped them down and
started eating them!" He giggled, amused by his own story.

Mulder laughed hard, while Scully tried not to so she wouldn't interrupt
their time together. "That is one of the best stories I've ever heard,
William. What a great Mama she must have been."

William nodded. "Oh, she was, Dad. Do you think I'm a good
storyteller?"

"You're a great storyteller, man. Say, why don't we trade stories? Since
you told me your story about your Mama, I could tell you a story about
this mom here."

William sat up on his knees. "Yeah! Tell me a story, Dad."

Mulder thought for a minute. William wasn't really old enough yet for a
lot of his favorite Scully stories. Finally, Mulder said, "Okay. How about
I tell you a story I remember from when you were growing inside your
mom's tummy?"

William practically bounced. "YES. Please tell me."

"Only if you lie down here and snuggle down so you can go back to
sleep soon." William scooted under the covers between them and
waited. "Okay. Well, I remember this one time your mom was pregnant
with you, her belly was so big that she could hardly move anywhere
without knocking things over. So, we were coming back from a class,
and I took your mom to lunch. At the restaurant, she knocked over her
drink, then she knocked over the chair behind her, and when I laughed,
she burst into tears and poured my drink all over me. So I'm standing
there soaking wet from the tea she poured on me, and she's standing
there crying - because pregnant women sometimes cry for no real
reason - and then suddenly we both started laughing. Well, eventually
she was laughing so hard, that you started kicking from inside her
tummy. She was still mad at me for laughing at her, but she let me put my
hand on her tummy. That was the first time I felt you kick." Scully
reached over and pinched him hard, not caring much for Mulder's
portrayal of her. "Ow."

William yawned. "No way! I used to see pregnant women at church
sometimes and I bet that's why everyone was always rubbing on their
stomachs. Dad?"

"Yes?"

"Am I going to be able to go back to my house in Wyoming?"

"I'm afraid not, William. You'll have to live somewhere else now." 

William nodded. "I figured that. But am I going to be able to go back
and get my stuff? I need to get my myna bird. He'll be lonely."

"I think we'll be able to get some of your stuff, William. And we have
someone taking care of your bird until we can get it, okay, big guy?"

"Okay." William snuggled down and threw an arm over Scully. Togy,
who had been waiting patiently on the floor by the bed, hopped up and
laid his head on William.

Scully smiled as she closed her eyes again. She patted the little arm lying
across her. This was the first night she'd gone to sleep not dreading the
morning in a very long time.


Sunday, 8:30 a.m.

Scully woke to the sound of the ocean. Oddly, she didn't hear any noise
in the house. Knowing Mulder would watch William, she showered and
dressed. Downstairs, she found Claire helping Kate make bread.  Scully
knew she should try to talk more with Claire, but she just couldn't think
of anything to say yet. "Where's everybody else?"

Kate nodded towards the beach. "Mulder's out there watching William.
Monica went for a run."

Scully looked out the back doors. "Is he digging again?"

Claire looked up at her with flour on her nose. "Since six o'clock this
morning."

Scully swiped the flour off with her palm. "You got a little something on
your nose there, sweetie. And your hair looks gorgeous, by the way."

Claire beamed. "We made pancakes earlier. I saved you some. They're
in the microwave."

Scully poured a glass of orange juice. "Thanks. Homemade bread?
Wow."

She walked out back and stopped in her tracks. William wasn't digging
anymore. He had taken all of the sand he had dug out of the pit and was
making what she first thought was a giant sand castle. Mulder was sitting
near the beach grass, his knees drawn up just watching William work.
The hair on the back of her neck stood up.

"Mulder..."

He put his finger to his lips. "Shhh...Scully." He pulled her down beside
him. "This was my vision, Scully. When you were in Africa? And I was
out of my mind? I had this vision - a little boy building that same
spacecraft out of sand. But it wasn't just any little boy, Scully. It was
William - just like he is at this moment."

She spoke hesitantly. "Mulder, that's impossible. William didn't even
exist then. There was no way for you to foresee this."

Mulder shook his head. "No, Scully. William just wasn't conceived yet. I
think he was always meant to be. I know; I'm not making much sense. I
didn't know what it meant then. I thought it symbolized, I don't
know...my search for the truth and not giving up. But it didn't. The same
thing happened this morning that happened in my vision. He kept
messing up and started to tear it apart. But then I told him I would help
him, just start over and keep trying, and eventually he was mesmerized
again."

Scully stared at the spacecraft in the sand - so realistic that it looked like
an artist had sculpted it there. It didn't seem like the same child who had
drawn the stick figures she'd seen in Wyoming could have done this. As
William began to put on his final touches, tears sprang to her eyes. She
recognized the writing he was etching into some places. "Mulder. I don't
like this. I'm going to make him stop." 

Mulder grabbed her arm and stopped her.  "Scully. You can't. Leave
him alone." She pulled away and ran back to the house.

Monica came back down the beach then. "Oh, my God.
That's incredible," she said to Mulder. 

He nodded. "I know."

"What do you think it means?"

He shrugged. "That I don't know. But I have a feeling we're going to find
out in the next few years.  I can't explain it, Monica, but I have a
suspicion that William's going to change the fate of the world. I'm as
certain of it as I've ever been about anything. But Scully is..."

She put her hand around his upper arm. "Give her time, Mulder. She's
just going to need more time."

An hour later, they were all outside. The weather was amazing for late
February - one of those rare days in the southeast when the temperature
makes you think that it's mid spring instead of still winter. Monica, Kate,
and Claire were combing the beach for things that washed ashore during
the night. Mulder was helping William again. And Scully was sitting
mutely in a deck chair, staring at her son with looks that oscillated
between infinite sadness and immobilizing fear.

Suddenly, William spoke to her for the first time that morning. "Look,
Mommy. Look what I made." He beamed at Scully, a look of utter
satisfaction on his face. 

Scully recognized the look. It was the way she felt when a patient who
shouldn't have lived did. She couldn't help herself - the innocence on his
sweet little face brought a smile to her lips and kicked her body into
motion again. She stood up and went to stand beside him. "It's amazing,
William.  Why'd you build it?"

He shrugged. "I had to see if it worked."

Scully wrinkled her brow. "Well. Does it?"

He stuck his little tongue between his lips and stared hard at the
triangular sand sculpture. The strangest thing happened at that moment.
The ground beneath them shook a little and a loud rumble could be
heard. Everyone stopped and looked around at the cloudless sky.
Scully looked in every direction and couldn't find the source of
the disturbance. She heard Mulder say in an awestruck voice,
"Scully. Look."

She spun around to see the entire sand sculpture rising from the ground,
as if it were made of something solid rather than damp sand. William
was staring at it intently, a serious expression on his face. When it
reached his eye level, William put out a hand and pushed its corner
gently. Slowly, the craft began to spin, as if willed to do so by the little
twirling motion he was now making with his outstretched hand.

Kate and Monica were standing about twenty feet away, mouths
open. Claire didn't look all that impressed. William turned to Scully with
a big grin. "It works." He looked back at his creation, which shot off
above the water and came to a stop about a hundred yards out. It
hovered there for about thirty seconds then disintegrated, sand falling
into the water beneath it with a series of plops.

No one moved for what seemed like forever. William broke the
spell when he looked up at Mulder and said knowingly, "The real one
will have to be much bigger."

Kate and Monica exchanged a look. "Whoa," Kate said finally.

"No kidding," Monica replied.

William ran over to Claire and started begging her to help him look for
shells, as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened.

Scully looked like she'd been punched in the gut. Mulder turned towards
her slowly. "Hey. It's going to be okay."

She backed away from him and then turned and ran through the house
and out the front. As she slung open the front door, she ran straight into
Doggett. He grabbed her by the arms. "Dana? What's wrong?"

She pulled away from him. "I gotta get out of here." She took off down
the driveway quickly. Skinner and Doggett watched as she slowed to a
walk a little further down. They walked through the house, Doggett
calling out, "Anybody home?" He stuck his head through the back door,
which was still open and looked at the adults all still standing
there silently. "Hey," he called out. "You three look like you just saw
a UFO or something."

Kate finally walked towards him. "Yeah. Or something." She gave him a
quick hug. "Hi, John."

He hugged her back. "What's wrong with Scully? She flew out the door
past us without even saying hi."

Mulder looked at Kate, who sighed. "I'll go after her. You deal with
them," she nodded towards the two other men.

As she walked by Skinner, he snagged her by the arm. "Aren't you going
to say hello, Kate?"

She smiled coyly. "Hello, Walter. Welcome to Hilton Head. I do hope
you enjoy your stay. If you need anything, feel free to ask someone
else." She unclamped his hand from her arm and continued walking. 

He closed his eyes, willing himself not to lose his temper. "Very mature,"
he muttered under his breath.

"I heard that, and I wasn't aiming for mature," she warned over
her shoulder. "Don't pick a fight today, Walter. I'm in no mood to let you
win."

Kate found Scully down the road a little ways, walking beside the sand
dunes. She caught up and fell in step beside her. They walked in silence
a little ways. Finally, Scully spoke. "Aren't you going to tell me I'm
overreacting and that everything will be fine?"

Kate shook her head. "Nope."

Scully stopped and stared at her. "Why not?"

The other woman shrugged. "Well, let's see. Your son, whom you
haven't seen in six years, just made a spaceship that he built entirely out
of sand fly without even touching it. I'd say your reaction was just about
on par with what any mother's would be."

"So that's it? No words of advice? What kind of friend are you?" Scully
gave her a suspicious look.

"The kind who under normal circumstances would buy you a stiff
drink at a time like this but is currently at a loss as to how to handle the
situation because you've gotten yourself knocked up again."
Kate nudged Scully's arm with her elbow.

Scully bit back a laugh and blew out a breath. "What am I going to do,
Kate?"

"Well...the way I see it, it's all about your mindset. Whatever he is, and
however he came to be - none of that really matters. You can't change
that he's different, but you can shape what he does with his abilities - just
like any other parent of any other child."

"Can I really? He's not even seven years old and already seems to have
an agenda all his own. What if..." she trailed off, unable to say the
words.

Kate picked up where Scully left off. "What if it's not the same agenda
as you and Mulder fought for? Dana. That child is not evil. I can look
into his eyes and see the light behind them. Maybe he WAS born with a
purpose, a course already charted for him. Maybe we all were. Who the
hell knows? Don't waste your energy fighting what you can't change."

"It's just...I always thought whatever Spender gave him made him
normal; or maybe that's what I hoped. I don't know." She tucked the
hair that had escaped her ponytail behind an ear.

"Dana. I don't think that's something we'll ever know. Maybe it just
tamped his powers down for a while. I think you're going to have to
take things one day at a time - I know I keep saying that, but for
now, maybe you need to start teaching him when it's okay to
use his...powers...and when it's not. He's old enough to be taught
to control them and why it's necessary to. I mean, the last thing we need
is for toys to start flying off of shelves and into his hands in public."

Scully closed her eyes. "God. I hadn't even thought that far ahead.
Thanks for bringing it to my attention," she muttered dryly.

Kate shrugged. "On the other hand, you'll never have to worry about
putting away things on your top shelf or getting locked out of your car or
house as long as William's with you."

"Okay. You can stop now, Kate. You're not helping anymore. "

Back at the house, Skinner had set up a command center of sorts in the
downstairs office. As Scully and Kate walked through the front door,
Reyes was coming out of the office. "Kate, Skinner wants to debrief you
now." She leaned in close. "He's in a great mood, too. I don't think I've
been chastised that hard since I worked on the x-files."

Kate gave her a look. "Oh, brother. I'm not going in there."

Skinner came to the doorway. "Kate, can I talk to you?"

Scully patted her on the back. "Just get it over with." Kate scowled as
she reluctantly went into the office. Skinner closed the door behind her. 

"I see you've made yourself at home." She nodded at the computer and
papers strewn across the desk.

He stuffed his hands into his pockets. She leaned against the oversized
desk and crossed her arms. Neither wanted to be the first to start
the conversation. Finally, Skinner spoke. "Do you care to tell me exactly
what kind of drugs you gave Agent Cruz?"

Kate shook her head. "Nothing that would hurt him or compromise a
Bureau drug test. Probably left him with a bad hangover, though." She
picked up a glass paperweight and turned it over in her hand.

"What were you thinking, Kate? Don't you think I ordered Cruz to stay
with you for a reason? You could have been killed. You had no idea
what was lying in wait for you when you ditched Cruz." He spoke with
his jaw clenched, the way he did when he was trying hard to keep his
temper in check.

"I haven't figured out why you ordered him to stay with me,
unless there's something you're not telling me. There was no reason
for that. And it's not like I ditched him and went alone. I called Monica
because I knew I shouldn't go alone and because she was the only one I
could think of in town at the time that Gibson would trust."

He gave her a long look. "You need to learn to follow orders,
Kate. And Monica shouldn't have gone along with you."

She stood up straight and stared at him, bright green eyes flashing, her
voice escalating with every word. "I don't take orders from you, Walter.
I don't work for you. I never have, and I never will. You know
damn well you have no business even thinking you can give me orders.
Your bluster doesn't scare me. I'm not one of your agents you can rein
in at your discretion."

For a moment, he thought she was going to throw the paperweight
at him. "Listen to me, Kate. You don't realize what you've
gotten yourself into. You had no business taking custody of that little girl
out there. You don't know the kind of people who are looking for her
and the lengths they would go to in order to get her back if for nothing
more than just to silence her about their operation."

Even though the hair on the back of her neck was standing up, she stood
her ground. "I knew when I walked into this that there were risks,
Walter. I saw those risks as acceptable. I still do. And just what do you
propose I do? Abandon that little girl, whose probably Dana's daughter?
Give me a break, Walter. You know none of us is going to go for that,
least of all me. What I can't figure out is why you seem to know more
about her than you're telling. Why do I feel like you're taking orders
from somewhere else?"

He took her by her arms. "Kate. You know that there are pressures
from above and outside the Bureau that fall on me. I have to walk a fine
line with all of this. You only see one side in all of this - Scully's side. I
am forced to see it from different sides."

She jerked away from him. "Well, why don't you get out of the Bureau if
they expect you to keep up this charade?"

"Kate, the truth is that they would probably kill me if I left the Bureau.
At least this way, I can still be of some use to Mulder and Scully."

She rolled her eyes. "How much help are you if you keep hiding things
from everyone?"

"The politics behind this are just too big. And to be honest with you, I
already worry that some of us here today aren't going to live through this
when it all finally hits the fan."

She shrugged. "Well, according to Mulder, maybe none of us is going to
live through the next several years, so we may as well keep doing what
we're doing, right?" She started to leave.

He grabbed her arm. "Kate! Don't walk away from me when I'm trying
to talk to you. Regardless of what all has happened between us, we
have always respected each other."

She wheeled around. "Respect? You want to talk about respect? If you
respected me, you wouldn't have thrown my ex-husband, whom I have
avoided the past ten years, back into my life without even asking."

He looked at her closely. "You obviously still have feelings for him or
you wouldn't have an issue with it."

Kate ran her fingers through her hair, agitated. "Of course I still have
feelings for him, Walter. He was my husband and the father of my child.
That doesn't mean I want him in my home."  She paused and looked at
him. "You were married for over seventeen years. Are you telling me
you don't still have feelings for her?"

Skinner looked at her with narrowed eyes. "That's different and you
know it. I haven't actively avoided her for the past ten years."

She raised an eyebrow. "Oh really? How is Sharon these days?"

Exasperated, he replied, "How would I know? You know I haven't
spoken to her since the divorce."

She glared at him. "See? My point exactly. What made you think I
would welcome having Nic thrown into my home and life any more than
you would welcome having Sharon thrown back into yours
unexpectedly?"

A nerve ticked in his jaw. "I'm not still in love with Sharon, so I don't
think it would have bothered me at all, Kate."

Kate rolled her eyes at him. "I'm not still in love with Nic, either, Walter.
I just don't care to have him in my personal space. And I'm pissed at
you for putting me in that position."

He glared at her. "Well, according to Agent Cruz, you seemed more
than happy to have him in your personal space the other night before
drugging him."

Kate put her hands on her hips. "See now that's a lie. I drugged him first.
I only seduced him because the drugs weren't working fast enough." 

Skinner looked away, not sure how to respond to that. He tipped his
head back. "Look, I don't even know why we're arguing about all of
this. I just want you to get out of this case and stay out of it, Kate.
Please. That was my only goal when I asked Cruz to watch you - to
keep you out of this as much as possible and to keep you safe. You're
making it personal when it wasn't meant to be."

She sighed, rubbing her temples. "We both know I'm not going to
turn my back on this situation or that little girl out there, Walter. Let's just
try to move past this."

He exhaled slowly. "I can't, Kate. I'm having trouble staying focused on
my job knowing you're putting yourself in danger."

"Now who's making it personal, Walter?" She watched as he stared
at the ground.

"I can't help the way I feel about this, Kate. You aren't a trained agent. I
don't want you in the middle of this."

Kate wanted him focused on Scully, William, and Claire - not on
her. Stepping towards him, she put her hand on his arm. "Okay,
listen...you promise me you'll do everything you can to keep everyone
else safe - especially those two kids and their mother - and I promise to
stay out of it as much as possible when we get back home. If you can
keep them safe, I'll step back and let you guys figure it all out."
She looked into his eyes. "Is that good enough?"

Uncomfortable with her proximity, he stepped back and turned
away from her. "I guess it'll have to be."

Kate stood staring at his back for a minute before walking out of
the office and closing the door behind her. She looked up to see
Scully staring at her. "What?"

"You slept with Nic?" Scully looked at her in disbelief. "Didn't you just
finish telling me that it hurt too much to even be around him?"

Kate rolled her eyes. "I didn't have sex with him, Dana. I only pretended
like I was going to so I could get him to bed and drug him. And how did
you hear that from out here?"

"You were yelling half the time. And if you didn't really sleep with him,
then why'd you let Skinner believe you did?"

Kate shrugged her shoulders. "What difference does it make?
He doesn't care who I sleep with."

Scully crossed her arms over her chest. "I think he cares a lot, and I
think you know it."

"I don't really think he does, Dana. And besides, he should know
me better than to believe I would fall in bed with Nic again that quickly."

Reyes walked back into the room at that exact moment. "I thought
you said you were perfectly willing to put out that night if you'd had to."
She popped a grape into her mouth.

Kate glared at her. "Thank you, Monica, for your perfectly timed input."

Scully raised her eyebrows. "So which is it, Kate?"

"Dana, please just get off my case, all right? I'm having enough trouble
coping with everything without you nagging at me. You're supposed to
be my friend. Why are you on his side?"

"Kate, I'm not. I just think you're reading this situation all wrong." To
Scully's dismay, Kate's eyes filled with tears. In all the years she
had known her, she had never seen Kate cry.

"Dana, I know it may be hard to see from the outside, but I am
barely holding it all together here lately," her voice broke. "I
had everything shoved neatly into its own little compartment and
now things are getting all jumbled together. Please just leave me
alone about it for now, okay? I'll work through it all in my own
time." She pulled herself together, just managing to keep the tears
from falling.

Skinner opened the door to the office, hanging up his phone. "Scully?
Can you and Reyes get Mulder and Doggett and come in here so we
can sort through all of this?" He looked up to see the tears pooled in
Kate's eyes. "What's wrong with you?"

She turned away from him as Scully and Reyes headed in opposite
directions to find the others. "Nothing. I'm fine."

He sighed deeply. "You don't look fine." He walked over to her and put
his hands on her shoulders. "Tell me, Kate."

She took a deep breath. "Walter, you knew there were parts of me that
just never healed from all those years ago. I thought you understood that
about me because you never pushed me about any of that. But then, you
throw me together with a man I have spent ten years running away from,
as if you don't know me at all."

"You SAID you were okay about seeing him again, Kate...that it
didn't bother you." He forced her to turn around so he could see her
face.

Instead, Kate put her face in her hands, letting her hair fall forward. She
didn't say anything at all.

"Kate, this is a dangerous time. And I need you to trust me when I ask
you to do something. If the...past...is getting in the way, we need to
work through it." She ignored him. "Kate?" Still no response.  It wasn't
until he tried to force her hands away from her face that he realized she
was crying - really crying. Oh, shit. Now he was terrified. He had only
seen her cry once. Way back when they were looking for Emma, she
had lost it and cried in a car with him for over ten minutes. After she
pulled herself together, they had never talked about. And aside from the
occasional misty eyes, which she always blinked away, he never saw her
cry again. At a loss, he put his arms around her. "Kate, please. Talk to
me. I don't know what to do."

"That's just it," she mumbled against his chest. "You never do."

"Now, Kate, that is really not fair. Normally, you don't seem to need or
want anything from me other than an occasional foot rub and sex a
couple of times a week." As soon as it was out of his mouth, he
regretted it. It had not come out the way he meant it. On the other hand,
it stopped her crying almost immediately. Instinctively, he distanced
himself from her, but not before her fist connected with his solar plexus.

He wasn't expecting it, so it knocked the wind out of him. She gave him
a really dirty look. "I can't even believe you just said that," she said
loudly.

Skinner had always been amazed the way women could go from
one emotional extreme to another in a split second. He was bent
over, trying to breathe regularly. "Kate. What the hell is wrong
with you?" He finally righted himself, holding his midsection. "Maybe
it wasn't worded well, but you know it's true or it wouldn't have
made you so mad."

She stomped a foot impatiently. "It is NOT true. You don't have a clue.
You don't know what I wanted or needed because you never
even asked. My God, Walter, we slept together for over eight years
and never took a vacation together, never even spent a holiday
together. I invited you to spend Christmas with me here once, do you
remember? You said you didn't think that was a good idea. So I wasn't
under the impression I was allowed to ask for more. And I never did
ask you for anything. I didn't ask you for anything last year, either.  And
I certainly didn't ask you to insult me by asking me to marry you after
you'd..."

She was talking very loudly, and he knew that she had one of
those voices that really carried. He cut her off quickly and loudly. "Kate!
Please lower your voice. The whole damn island can hear you."

She looked at him with a hurt expression, but she did drop her voice
several notches. "See. All you care about is what other people think."

Scully stuck her head into the room. "Listen, you two, I know I shouldn't
interrupt...but you're really loud. Maybe you should take a walk or
something." 

Finally, Kate looked at Scully. "It's okay.  We're finished here, anyway."
She pushed past Scully and out the back door of the house.

Skinner just stood there looking dumbfounded. "I have no idea what that
woman wants from me."

Scully patted his arm. "I don't think she even knows."

From the doorway, Mulder deadpanned, "Now THAT's what I call
entertainment."

Skinner gave him a look that would make most people cringe. "Don't
make me kick your ass, Mulder. Just get Doggett and Reyes and get in
here."  He stalked back into the office, still rubbing his gut. "Women," he
muttered under his breath.


Sunday, 12:00 p.m.

Scully and Reyes finally re-emerged from the office. Kate had
been playing Frisbee with William, Claire, and yes, even Togy for
about the last hour, but she had just brought the kids back inside to
make lunch. William was icing a cake that Kate had baked earlier,
his little tongue stuck between his lips as he concentrated on covering the
entire concoction with cream cheese frosting. About every third spoonful
went to his tongue before going to the cake. Kate looked up and
laughed at the frosting stuck to the tip of his nose. "William, if the others
saw you licking that spatula, no one would eat any of your cake."

He smiled at her sheepishly. "That would mean more for me, then."

Scully came into the kitchen and kissed his sticky little cheek. She
swiped the tip of his nose with a napkin.

"Mo-om, I was saving that for later." He stuck his tongue out and licked
the tip of his own nose.

"Oh, William, that's disgusting, honey. Stop doing that."

Claire laughed. "I can do that, too! Thee?" She stuck her tongue to
her nose to show Scully. "Can you do it?"

Scully stuck out her tongue, angling it upwards towards her nose. "Not
quite."

Monica stuck her finger in William's frosting bowl and licked it. "Good
stuff, big guy. What do you say we forget the cake and just eat the
frosting?" She poked her other pointer finger into his side, making him
squirm and giggle. 

He nodded at her. "YEAH!"

Scully shook her head. "No, way."

He whined, "Aw, Mom, you're no fun at all."

She dipped her own finger into the bowl and wiped it on William's nose.
"That's all you get for now, kid. Put the rest on the cake."

He smiled up at her adoringly and stuck his tongue to his nose
again, licking a little of the frosting.

Scully looked at Claire. "What are you chopping there?"

The little girl smiled shyly at Scully. "Vegetables for the salad."

Scully snagged a cucumber and popped it into her mouth. "Looks
good. Listen, you two. Before we have lunch, I need you to let Kate
draw some blood. She's going to take some from me, too. Will you guys
do that? It will only take a few minutes."

Claire nodded reluctantly, looking dejected. William looked at
his mother strangely. "Why do you need to do that?"

"Well, we just need to make sure we're all well and everything."

Claire shook her head. "That's not true. You want to check to see if
you're really my egg donor." The little girl turned to William. "She doesn't
believe we're really related." She looked sadly at Scully and then turned
to Kate, who already had her medical bag on the table. "Which arm
do you want?" 

Scully didn't realize she had been holding her breath until she felt the
relief at seeing the red blood pour out of the little girl's arm. After Kate
finished with Claire and Scully, she turned to William. "Your turn,
Champ."

He shook his head. "No."

Scully looked at him, surprised. "It will only take a minute, William. Your
dad's going to do this, too."

William shook his head again. "I'm not doing it. I don't want my blood
taken out of me."

Kate looked at his blue eyes. "William, it's just like when you go to the
doctor. It only hurts for a second."

He kept shaking his head. "I've never been to the doctor because I've
never been sick."

Scully raised her eyebrows as she pushed her sleeves back down.
Mulder and Doggett had come into the kitchen at that point. "Of course
you've been to the doctor, William. Maybe you just don't remember it. I
can remember a doctor taking your blood when you were a baby."

"Then find that doctor and get that blood back from her. Besides, it's
dumb for you to test all of us. There's nothing wrong with me or Claire.
And I'm telling you that you're my mom, he's my dad, and Claire is my
sister. Just like the baby growing in your tummy right now is gonna be
my sister."

All movement in the kitchen stopped. Startled, Scully opened her mouth
to speak but nothing came out. Mulder recovered first. "How do you
know that, William? How do you know there's a baby in Mom's
tummy? Did you hear us talking about it?" Mulder knew they hadn't said
anything about it around him.

William shook his head. "No. I can hear the baby, Dad. I can feel her
heart beating." He put his hand to his forehead. "I can hear her in here."
He then moved his hand to a spot on his chest. "And I can feel her here.
Just like I can hear Claire and feel Claire. That's how I always knew
about Claire. We talk without words."

They stared at Claire, who looked scared. "I don't know what he's
talking about."

William looked at her accusingly. "Yes, you do. Stop telling fibs, Claire.
You're just scared to tell them because you're afraid for anyone to
know." He went and stood in front of Scully, putting his ear to her
abdomen. "She's little, but she's growing. Right now she's sleeping. But
she was awake a few minutes ago."

Scully put her hand on the little boy's head. "William, you're scaring
Mommy."

He looked up at her. "Don't be scared. I scared my other Mama at first,
too. She didn't like it much when I used my moving powers, either. Papa
said God made me perfect just the way I am, though. But he also told
me not to scare Mama with my powers when he wasn't home and never
when anyone who wasn't family was around."

Scully nodded at him. "William, why'd you move your spacecraft in front
of everyone this morning, then, if you knew better?"

He looked at Kate and Monica. "They're family, aren't they? They've
been around since I was in your tummy. And I only feel good things
about them. I thought it was okay. Was I bad?" He looked scared.

Mulder scooped him up. "No, William. You weren't bad." He
hugged the little boy close to him. "Can Claire move things, too?"

William shook his head. "No. But she can do things I can't."

Mulder let it go for now. "Well. Are you going to let Kate take that
blood? I'm getting awfully hungry."

William looked at his godmother hesitantly. "I don't know."

She leaned across the table and whispered something in his
ear. "Well....all right." He stuck out his arm and squeezed his eyes tightly
shut.

Thirty seconds later, he opened his eyes. "That didn't hurt at all. When
will I get my surprise?"

Kate tweaked his nose. "It will be here later this afternoon." She packed
the samples and swabbings up, making sure she kept a second sample
of everything. Mulder and Scully were adamant that the samples not go
to any of the Bureau labs. They were planning to send them to the
private lab that Kate used for her office.

They all had lunch out on the patio. Scully seemed better now that they
had hatched a plan and had some direction. And William was
pure sunshine. He enjoyed the attention from the adults and
was completely comfortable talking to them. After completing his
sand sculpture that morning, he was in a silly, carefree mood,
making everyone laugh with his antics. Scully seemed delighted by this
side of her son. Mulder couldn't take his eyes off of her as she
played with William; it was as if the last fifteen years had fallen
away from her in the last fifteen minutes. Her eyes sparkled in a way
he honestly hadn't seen very often since that first time she had
walked into his basement office. He was glad Kate had been taking
pictures. He couldn't wait to have one for his desk. As Scully stretched
out in the sand beside William, making the equivalent of a snow
angel, Mulder laughed out loud. He could watch her like this all day.

Reyes was staring down the beach where Doggett was throwing a
stick for Togy. Kate caught her watching him. "He looks like he's
lost some weight since the last time I saw him. And he didn't need
to lose any weight."

Reyes kept watching as William jumped up from the sand and ran down
the beach towards Doggett and the pup. Scully dusted herself off and
made her way towards the other two women. She dropped into a chair
in time to hear Reyes say, "I always told him he was a dog person."

Scully looked at her. "So what happened to you guys, Monica? Last I
heard you guys were doing well."

The dark haired woman finally dragged her eyes away from the man,
boy, and dog. "I wanted to talk about having a baby. He couldn't
even discuss it."

Scully nodded. "Ah."

"He just clammed up. Wouldn't talk about it at all. He grew more and
more distant with each day. I never said I wouldn't be okay without
children. He never gave me a chance to say anything. He came home
one night and told me he had requested a transfer and that he wanted me
to move on with my life."

Kate looked up at her. "I can understand why, you know. When
you've lost a child, the idea of bringing another one into the world
is terrifying - almost emotionally paralyzing. Believe me."

Monica looked at her sadly. "Right now, I'd just be happy to have him
back in my life."

Scully glanced between Doggett and Reyes. "Well, Monica...maybe you
need to make him understand that."

They watched as William held onto Doggett's arm, laughing as he
slung him around in a circle, the dog running around chasing
William's feet. "Just look how good he is with that little boy. I know
he'll never get over losing Luke, but I really think he looks happiest
at moments like these," Monica said sadly.

Scully looked at Claire, who was hanging back from everyone else.  The
biggest problem they seemed to be facing right now was that Claire just
didn't seem to exist. Skinner and Doggett hadn't been able to locate a
record of her birth anywhere so far. Claire had told Doggett earlier that
she was born in July of 1994. Scully was adamant that there was no
way she could be the girl's biological mother if that were the case. Claire
was able to give Skinner and Doggett the name of her "host" mother, so
they hoped to eventually find a record of her live birth. The problem was
that it was Sunday and not a lot of business was really able to be done.
Labs and records offices were closed everywhere. Everything would
just have to wait until tomorrow.

Scully was just about to go over to the girl when she saw Kate walk up
to her. The two started walking down the beach together, picking up
shells every so often. Scully watched as the little girl slipped a hand into
Kate's.

Claire looked up at Kate, feeling shy after taking her hand. She started
to pull away, but Kate closed her fingers tighter and swung their hands
between them. "So, what's on your mind, kid?"

"Kate, if I don't live with William and his parents, do you think I could
maybe stay with you? I'm not any trouble. I can take care of myself."

Kate smiled at the girl. "I have no doubt that you can take care of
yourself, Claire. But why wouldn't you live with them?"

Claire shrugged. "Well, I don't know.  Maybe they don't want a kid they
barely know. Maybe the government people aren't going to let me."

Kate stopped and put an arm around the little girl. She wasn't about to
tell her that if the government people didn't let her live with Mulder and
Scully, it was likely they weren't going to let her live with Kate either.
"Sweetie, if for some reason you couldn't live with them, I would
definitely love to have you if they would let me. Who wouldn't want you,
Claire?" She hugged the child tightly, suddenly realizing that Emma
would've been only a little younger than Claire.

Claire shrugged. "Well, Dana doesn't seem to like me that much."

Kate took the little girl's face in her hands, pushing the reddish gold hair
back off of the forehead. "It's not that she doesn't like you, Claire. It's
that she doesn't know you well yet.  And she's afraid."

Tears formed in Claire's eyes, "Of me?"

Kate shook her head. "Well, no, not exactly. I can't say for sure, but
I think she's afraid to let herself care about you until she's sure you're
hers to love. Does that make sense?"

Claire shook her head. "Not really."

"Okay. It's like this, Claire. Dana has been my friend for a long time. She
doesn't let a lot of people get close to her. I think she's scared to get too
close to you until she knows she can keep you. I bet it's scary to learn
you have a daughter you never knew about."

Claire nodded, her eyes still teary. "I guess."

Kate hugged her again. "But I bet it's also scary to meet your
biological mother for the first time when you're thirteen."

Claire nodded harder, tears spilling onto her cheeks. "I just really
wanted her to like me."

"She does, sweetie. I promise."

Skinner brooded as he watched Kate with the little girl down the beach.
He shook his head slightly. He really didn't want to see this end badly.
Maybe if he did everything perfect, the little girl could be left alone. He
looked up to see William standing beside his chair. "Hi," he said to the
little boy.

"Hello. My mom used to work with you, right? I remember you a little
from when I was a baby."

Skinner nodded. "Yes. Your mom and dad used to work with me."

William nodded. "They don't anymore because there were more
bad people than good people at work."

He shook his head. "I don't think that's true, William. I just think it takes
fewer bad people to make bad things happen than good people to make
good things happen."

The little boy wrinkled his nose and eyebrows. "What happened to all
of your hair? Did you never grow any from when you were a baby?"

Skinner scowled at him. "No, I once had more hair. A lot of it fell out
because your dad and mom gave me so many headaches when they
worked for me."

William laughed. "That's funny."

"Glad you think so."

"Do you want to throw the football with me?"

Skinner looked around for another adult to do it, but they were all busy
or inside. "Okay."

William smiled at him. "Cool. I'll go long." He ran in the direction of Kate
and Claire. 

Skinner tossed him the ball, but it went over the little boy's head. William
turned and chased it. He snagged the ball, ran half the distance back
to Skinner and threw a somewhat wobbly spiral. After a few
passes, Skinner walked up to the little boy and repositioned his hands on
the ball. Scully, watching from the patio, smiled at such an
unexpected sight.

Kate was watching, too, as she approached from behind. When she
was close enough, she ran between William and the football,
intercepting it neatly. "Hey!" he yelled. She laughed and threw a perfect
spiral back to Skinner. 

"Where'd you learn to throw a football?" William demanded.

She laughed and ruffled his hair. "I used to play with the boys here every
summer."

William laughed up at her, then called to the other adults. "Mom, Dad!
Monica, John! Come and play." 

They split into two teams. Scully couldn't play at all, although she was a
quick runner. It always surprised Mulder that she had grown up with
two brothers and a military dad but had never even played the typical
male sports. Monica was a pretty good receiver. Claire showed natural
athletic ability, although she had never really played any games
before. William ran the ball most of the time since the whole game was
for him anyway. They all cracked up when the little boy, trying to
dodge Doggett, ducked down and ran between his legs, scoring a
touchdown.  Skinner looked pretty uncomfortable with the whole game,
but he ended up playing with them anyway. Finally, the game wound
down as clouds moved in. Scully, in a completely out of character show
of affection, wrapped both of her arms around Mulder's neck, pulling
his head down close to hers. "Kiss me," she whispered against his lips.

For some reason, he was bashful, knowing everyone else was
nearby. "Scully, everyone's watching."

She put her lips against his, licking his bottom lip gently. "I don't care,
Mulder. I want to remember this day as perfect. Just kiss me."

He dropped his hands to her bottom and lifted her up, urging her
to wrap her legs around him. He walked to the nearby railing and sat her
on top of it, so that she was eye level with him. Her legs were still
wrapped around him, her feet pressing into the backs of his knees.
Leaning forward slowly, he kissed her for what seemed like forever.
Finally, he drew back to look at her again. Her lips were swollen, her
hair was slipping out of her ponytail, and the happiness radiating from
her blue eyes was infectious. He smiled back. "I adore you like this,
Scully."

She tipped her up and laughed; she had spent so many years listening to
him crack one-liners when he was pushed emotionally that this side of
him always caught her off guard. He nipped the soft skin of her neck.
"You're supposed to adore me all the time, Mulder." She sighed happily.

Scully looked over when she heard William say loudly, "Why is
Dad licking Mom's neck?" Skinner was discreetly ignoring them
while Doggett was talking quietly to Monica, but everyone looked up at
his question.

Kate scooped William over her shoulder and spun him around. "She
must have some leftover frosting there that she can't reach herself. Let's
go see if that surprise is here yet, kid." She looked up and met Scully's
eyes.

"Thank you," Scully mouthed at her. 

Kate gave her a dry look. "Yeah, you owe me." She wheeled
William around once more and then headed into the house with him.


Sunday, 5:00 p.m.

When Skinner's phone rang, he took it into the office and closed
the door. Fifteen minutes later, he called Mulder and Doggett into
the office as well. Twenty minutes after that, Mulder and Skinner left the
house together, leaving Doggett behind.

Doggett walked into the kitchen an hour later, where Kate and
Monica were making margaritas in a blender. Both women lifted their
eyes at him. "So...what are we doing for dinner?" He nodded at the
steaks on the counter. "Want me to light the grill?" No one said anything
to him. They both just continued to look at him. "Ladies?"

Kate spoke first. "Want a beer, John?"

He nodded. "Sure."

She handed him a Dos Equis. "Tell us where Mulder and Skinner went."

Doggett took a long swallow. "I don't know where they went."

Monica threw him a look. "I know you're lying, John. I can see that little
twitchy thing your ear does when you lie."

He touched his ear. "Huh?"

"Come on, John. We deserve to know if there's a possibility those two
are up to something dangerous." 

Scully walked into the kitchen, having just put William in the tub. "Who?"
She looked around. "Ah, you have to be kidding me. Where'd they go,
John?"

He shook his head, holding his hands up in the air. "Really, I don't know.
Skinner got a call about meeting a guy who had information for him."

Kate tipped her head to the side. "How does anyone even know where
we are?"

Doggett could see the panic in all three faces. "Whoa. Hold on. They
took a helicopter. The person they're meeting won't know exactly where
they're coming from."

Monica crossed her arms. "But how do we know the intention wasn't to
lure them out of house because someone already knew where we
were?"

Doggett looked at the three women. "You guys are really paranoid." The
power went out at that exact moment, plunging the entire house into total
darkness. Two screams came from upstairs. 

Scully and Kate bolted for the stairs to get to the kids, while Doggett
and Reyes ran to make sure the bottom floor was secure, both of their
weapons drawn.  

Just as Doggett and Reyes finished checking the doors and windows, a
loud crash from the foyer grabbed their attention. The front door
was lying on the ground and a man was stepping through. The next
couple of minutes passed in a blur. Both Doggett and Reyes fired
several rounds straight at the man, but he never stopped. Scully
came halfway down the stairs in time to see the man walk straight
towards Doggett and sling him out of the way.

"Monica, shoot the back of his neck!" 

"I already tried. It's not working!"

Upstairs, Kate was trying to get the kids out a window and down
a trellis. She sent Claire out first, but William was fighting against her for
some reason, refusing to go out the window. "William, you have to go.
Your mom wants you to. Come on." Finally, she just shoved him through
the window and went out after him. He grabbed the trellis on his own
and then did something she couldn't believe. He let go and dropped from
about twenty-five feet up.  Kate looked down to see him miraculously
get to his feet. Inside, the man headed straight to the stairs and grabbed
Scully, picking her up by her shoulders.  Several things happened
simultaneously.

Outside, Kate yelled out, "William, no! Don't go back to the
house. Claire, grab him!" She jumped down from the trellis from halfway
up, her ankle twisting a little beneath her. "Damn it. Never mind, Claire,
run the other way. Don't you go after him, Claire. Run. I'll get him." Kate
chased William just as Monica burst out the back door and around the
corner of the house, having heard Kate scream. "Monica, get Claire out
of here."

William was already at the broken down front door. Kate lunged for him
just as headlights shone in the driveway. The little boy evaded her grip
and ran inside. He stopped and looked at the man holding Scully. "Don't
you hurt my mommy." Kate dragged herself up out of the broken glass
from the door and snagged William by his shoulders. The super soldier,
or whatever he was, did something that truly shocked them: he released
Scully and started backing towards the back door and out into the night.

Kate was holding a still struggling William by the shoulders. Thinking he
was trying to get to Scully, she let him go. He lit out towards the back
door. Kate and Scully both chased after him. "William, no!" Scully yelled
as she saw him streaking after the super soldier. It seemed like they
weren't gaining on him at all because of the sand. 

They heard his little voice carry back to them.  "He's going to kill Claire,
Mom. I have to stop him."

Mulder rounded the corner from the front just in time and
grabbed William. "Dad. Let me go. You don't understand. I can stop
him.  He'll kill her. He'll kill her and Monica, too, if he gets to
them." Skinner ran past them, trying to get to Reyes and Claire before
the man did.

The child was screaming, punching, kicking, crying, and scratching.
Mulder was having trouble even keeping a grip on him. "Tell
them, Kate. You saw him. He's scared of me. Let me go, Dad. I can
stop him."

Kate looked at Mulder for a long moment, sent up a little prayer that she
was right, and then nodded slowly. Mulder released the child and began
following him down the beach. Scully screamed as only a mother who
believes her child to be in mortal danger can. "How could you? He's just
a little boy!" 

Kate grabbed Scully by the arm. "Come on." They started after Mulder
and William.

Miraculously, William was gaining on the man, who was quickly
gaining on Reyes and Claire, even though he wasn't even running. Out
of nowhere, a large piece of driftwood flew into the man's
head, temporarily slowing him down. William lunged for the man,
jumping onto his back. "You. Leave. My. Family. Alone." William put
his hands on either side of the man's head. The man's blood
started bubbling up, veins popping out everywhere. Then, the
man just...imploded, shooting off into the air above the water.

Scully reached William and dropped to her knees. "Are you okay,
baby?" He was lying in the sand on his back.

He spit out a mouthful of sand. "Blech. Tuuh." He smiled his megawatt
smile at Scully, struggling to sit up. "I'm fine, Mom." She picked him up
and held him tightly.

Everyone else, including Mulder, was standing there awestruck. Monica
suddenly remembered Doggett lying on the floor of the living room
bleeding. "John!" she yelled and started running back. Claire and Kate
ran behind her.

William was wiggling in Scully's arms. "Mom, I can walk. Put me down." 
He took off after the others.

When they arrived at the living room, Monica was pressing her hands to
John's head, which looked like it had been cracked open by the tile or
whatever he had struck when the super soldier threw him out of the way.
There was a huge pool of blood around him. Claire threw herself down
beside them. "Move," she told Monica. "I can help him." She pried
the woman's hands off of Doggett's head and replaced them with her
own.  Closing her eyes tightly, tears began to fall down her
cheeks. "Please be all right; please be all right," she chanted. She put
her forehead against Doggett's. Finally, the little girl removed her blood
soaked hands from his head and inspected the wound. "I can't get it to
close up all the way, but I think it's stopped bleeding."

Doggett opened his eyes slowly. "What's everyone staring at? What'd I
miss?"

Reyes leaned over and kissed his forehead. "You cryin', Monica?
What's wrong?" He struggled to sit up. "Whoa! Who's bleeding?"

Claire shook her head. "I can't do anything about his confusion." She
looked down at her hands. "Eeew. I hate blood. Come on, William.
Let's go get cleaned up."


Sunday, 9:00 p.m.

Finally, the house was cleaned up and quiet. Kate had called the same
man who piloted the plane and had him deliver and install a new front
door, no questions asked. Skinner wondered vaguely why he couldn't
get agents to follow orders so efficiently. He also learned something
about Kate at that moment: she was accustomed to giving orders, albeit
kindly ones...and he knew that people used to giving orders rarely took
orders well. That explained a lot about her.

Mulder had just finished tucking both kids into bed. Reyes had managed
to get both herself and Doggett showered and changed. Kate was
currently super gluing the gash that remained on John's head shut.
Mulder looked over at Scully, who was sitting on the sofa with an almost
empty glass of red wine in her hand. "Is she supposed to be drinking
that?" He directed his question to Kate.

Kate glanced at him incredulously. "You're kidding me, right? After what
she went through tonight, you think one glass of red wine is going to hurt
her?"

Scully gave them both a dirty look. "Hello? I can hear you talking about
me."

Mulder sat down beside her, putting a hand on the back of her head.
"Are you all right?"

She looked up at him with those baby blues. "You know, Mulder...I
really think I am. I keep waiting for the anxiety to hit...but it just doesn't.
It's like I feel better knowing the super soldiers can't hurt William."
Mulder nodded. He knew what she meant.

Skinner paced the living room. "What can I do?"

Kate looked up at him. "I don't know about everyone else, but I'm
starving. I fed the kids a quick sandwich while everyone else was
showering. Can you throw the meat on the grill? I put it back in the
fridge."

Skinner looked at her and gave a short laugh. "Nothing stops you
from eating, does it?"

Kate gave him a wry look. "You know me. I'm fine as long as my
stomach's full."

He looked at the cuts on her face, knees, and hands. "Why don't you go
get cleaned up now?"

She looked down at herself for the first time, taking in her own cuts and
bruises. "Oh. Right."

Skinner went out back and lit the grill. Kate looked over at Mulder. "So,
I was wondering....how did William KNOW he could kill the super
soldier?"

Mulder looked up at her. "If you can believe it, he said that this was the
third one he'd seen. He said two others had come to his house in the
past couple of years."

Reyes shook her head. "Wow."

Scully looked at Mulder. "What about Claire?"

Mulder reached over and took her empty wine glass, setting it on the
end table. "Well, she said she had hidden her powers from everyone,
even the scientists. She doesn't think anyone from the facility knows
what she can do."

Doggett rubbed his forehead. "Then why did the super soldier come
after her?"

Monica answered. "That's easy. I think they're worried about what she
can tell us about what all went on with the kids in that facility. They don't
want her for what she can do...they want her for what she knows the
other kids can do."

Scully spoke up. "How will we ever keep her safe?"

Mulder took her hand and brought it to his lips. "We do the best we
can, one day at a time. That's all we can do. She told me tonight
that these days have been the best two of her life. I think she's
just happy to be with William...and with you, Scully. Besides, I think
she and William are going to do a pretty good job taking care
of themselves over the next few years."

Kate went upstairs to take a shower. After dinner was ready, she still
hadn't come back down. "You guys eat," Skinner told the others. "I'll go
check on her."

He knocked on the door to her room. "Kate? I'm coming in." He pushed
the door to the room open. She was blow drying her hair, standing there
in a towel.

She turned the blow dryer off. "Sorry. I didn't hear you."

He looked at her legs and the smooth skin of her shoulders and arms.
"Dinner's ready."

She nodded, going over to the dresser to drag out some of the clothes
she left there year round. She stopped him before he closed the door.
"Walter?"

He stuck his head back in. "Yeah?"

"I'm sorry I aired out all of our dirty laundry earlier," she said without
turning around. "I don't know what's wrong with me. My emotions are
all over the place these days." She threw the towel over a hook outside
the bathroom. He swallowed hard.  She had never been shy about being
naked around him, even after they had stopped sleeping together. She
slipped on a pair of exercise pants and a sweatshirt and walked over to
the door where he was standing. 

He nodded. "It's okay. I just...I had no idea you had all that pent
up inside. I guess I didn't realize how hurt you were. I'm not a
mind reader."

She gave him a sardonic look. "No kidding?"

He looked at the bruises on her face, reaching out a thumb to touch the
worst one gently. "Come have dinner."

She nodded. "Okay." He followed her back down the hallway. On
the way past the doorway where the two kids slept, she stopped and
pushed the door open a little, slipping inside. The moonlight lit both
of the children's faces. Kate leaned over Claire's bed, tucking
covers around her. Then, she leaned over William's bed, feeling his
cool little forehead. She petted the dog lying on top of him before turning
to go.

Skinner watched the look on her face as she kissed her fingers and
pressed them to the little girl's cheek on her way back out the door. He
felt like she had punched him in the gut for the second time that day. She
should be home tucking her own child into bed. Maybe she could have
been if he hadn't caused her so much heartache back in the early days of
that pregnancy...or if he had actually found her daughter all those years
ago. She had lost the chance to do this kind of thing with not one but
two children over the past ten years. When Kate walked by him at the
door, she noticed the sad look on his face. Linking her hand with his, she
tugged him after her down the stairs.  At the bottom of the stairs, she
stopped and put her arms around his neck. "Not everything is your
fault, Walter." She held him tightly, rubbing the back of his neck with
one hand, but he remained rigid against her.

They ate in the kitchen, conversation finding its way to lighter topics.
Monica managed to salvage the margaritas from earlier and Scully ate
like she really was eating for two, which made Mulder happy. Skinner
ate and excused himself to the office to work.

Scully looked up at Kate. "I don't think he's quite gotten over that upper
cut to the gut you gave him earlier. Or maybe he's still brooding because
you let him think you slept with Nic."

Kate made a face at her. "Whatever." She turned to Reyes. "Monica,
you know John probably has a concussion, right?"

The dark headed woman nodded. "I'll watch him through the night, and
we'll take care of the dishes."

Mulder pulled Scully up out of the chair, where she was already looking
sleepy.

Kate stopped by the office on her way upstairs. "Walter? I'm going to
bed. Please don't sleep on the sofa in here. There's an extra bedroom
down the hall."

He stopped her. "Kate?"

She turned around. "Yeah?"

A muscle clenched in his jaw as he considered what he wanted to
say. "Nothing. Sleep well."

Kate gave him a quick grin. "Don't I always?"


Sunday, 11:21 p.m. 

Kate turned over in bed, feeling like something was wrong. Sitting up,
she clutched the bedcovers to her chest. A voice startled her from the
other side of the room. "I don't want to scare you." Of course, that's
exactly what it did - scared the hell out of her. When she realized who it
was, she lay back down.

"Christ. Don't do that, Walter. What are you doing in here?"

He was sitting forward in the arm chair where she liked to read when
she was here. "Watching you sleep."

She rolled over towards him, putting her hands under her cheek. "Well,
that sounds about as much fun as watching someone eat."

He didn't say anything for a while. "I really like it here. This house, the
ocean. It's soothing."

She nodded. "I've been all over the world, but this is probably
my favorite place. I don't get down here often enough, though. Only
a few times a year." She yawned and stretched. "I spent every
summer that I can remember here as a kid. Of course, I spent most of
them here with nannies, hoping my father would make it for even a
long weekend."

He knew her father had founded a pharmaceutical company and had
grown it into a global corporation. "How old were you when your
mother died?"

"I was only four, so I barely even remember her. Funny how my
father spent all of his time looking for cures to other people's
weird illnesses, then his own wife killed herself." She noticed
the sympathetic look on his face. "Walter, that was over thirty-five years
ago. I'm really okay about it." For a long time, neither one said anything.
She knew his father had died when he was a teenager and that his
mother was still alive, although Kate had never met her.

"Kate...I wanted to tell you something. When you asked me to
come here with you for Christmas all those years ago, it's not that
I didn't want to. It's that I wasn't comfortable coming here with you and
meeting your father."

She gave a dry laugh. "I can assure you that my father wasn't here. I
usually flew to wherever he was on Christmas morning."

Her father had died a few years back, and he wondered who she
spent holidays with now and why it had not ever occurred to him to
ask. Seeing the look on his face in the moonlight, she spoke up.
"Our pilot, Godfrey, the one who came to install the door tonight,
he's always taken care of me. Nannies have come and gone, but
Godfrey has been here for as long as I can remember. Don't look so
sad, Walter. I had a good life. It was just a quiet life."

He nodded. The same was true for his. His mother was never the same
after his father died. He stood up and put his hands in his pockets.
"Kate...do you want to take a walk?"

She looked at him as if he'd lost his mind. "Walter, that's really not a
good idea..."

He shook his head. "Never mind. I'm sorry."

Kate sat up, still clutching the covers. "It's not that I don't want to.
It's....do you hear that wind? We wouldn't be able to even see. The
wind would blow sand all in our eyes, even if we went out towards the
main road."

"Oh. Well, go back to sleep then. Maybe we could walk and
talk tomorrow?"

She sat there for a second, her heart beating loudly in her chest. Now
this was a different side to Walter Skinner. "That would be nice."

"Well...good night."

She bit her lip, hesitating for only a moment. "Walter...just come to bed."

He shook his head. "I can't tonight, Kate. I can't just get into bed with
you and go to sleep and pretend like everything's okay."

"So...don't pretend or sleep, just come to bed. I'm not asking for you.
I'm asking for me."

He looked down at the outline of her body beneath the covers. "I don't
have any pajamas here with me."

She threw the covers back. "That's okay. Neither do I."

For a moment, he just stood there. He had been imagining her lying there
in her flannels and Georgetown t-shirt, winter socks on her feet. Instead,
she was wearing nothing at all. "Kate..."

She propped herself up on an elbow. "Walter. I didn't sleep with Nic."

"Then why did you let me think you did?"

Kate looked down, then up to meet his eyes. "Maybe I wanted to see if
you even cared."

He traced a finger down her shoulder. "And what did you decide?"

She shrugged. "I couldn't tell."

He stripped out of his shirt, pants, and socks, then slid into bed beside
her. "Are you sure about this? It feels like we always end up in bed, no
matter what we try to talk about."

She laughed as she rolled onto her back, pulling him over towards her.
"There are worse ruts to be in, Walter."


Monday, 6:15 a.m.

Skinner was on his way downstairs to make coffee. When he opened
the door to the bedroom, he saw William coming out of another room.
"Why did you sleep in Kate's room?" The little boy asked
him. Uncomfortable, he looked up and saw Scully rubbing her eyes,
closing the door to the other bedroom.

"William. Come on, I'll get you breakfast. "

Downstairs, Scully made William a bowl of cereal and sat at the
table with him, watching Skinner make two cups of coffee. He was
already showered and dressed. "So...is Kate awake?"

Skinner turned a little red. "Yeah. She's getting dressed."

"Ah."

"Uh, do you want coffee?"

She shook her head and poured herself juice instead. Kate came into the
kitchen then. "Morning, you guys." She leaned down and gave William a
quick kiss on the top of the head.

Skinner handed her a cup of coffee. "Thanks."

He watched her as she toasted a couple of bagels. Leaning against the
counter, he marveled at how comfortable she seemed. He felt
sick wondering what to even say to her. She put cream cheese on his
bagel and handed it to him. "Dana? You want one?" Scully shook her
head. Kate added cream cheese and jelly to her own bagel.

Scully noted their familiarity with each other's preferences and habits.
How bizarre. Kate hopped up on the counter to eat her bagel, but
Skinner ate his standing and then finished his coffee. When he turned to
face Kate, she fixed the collar on the back of his golf shirt. "You're
dressed casually. Are you not heading back today?"

He shook his head. "I'm going to stay here another day and try to sort
through the reports with Doggett. Are you leaving today?"

Kate nodded. "Yeah. I need to get back. I asked Godfrey to be ready
to fly out at ten. He'll fly you guys out whenever you're ready, though. It
will take forever to get back commercially from here, believe me, so just
accept the offer and say thank you."

He smiled at her. "Thank you."

He was close enough that she was able to hook one leg around the back
of his. "So...you want to take that walk now? The wind has died down."

Skinner looked uncomfortable. "Well..."

Kate let her leg drop. "It's really okay.  I have a lot to take care of
before I leave, anyway."

He braced himself by putting one hand on the counter beside her hip. "I
just need to make a few calls, Kate. Can you give me a half hour?"

She nodded. When he walked away, Scully came to stand beside her.
"So...I've been trying to figure out exactly which one of you
is dysfunctional." Kate rolled her eyes at her redheaded friend. William
opened the back door and ran out with Togy. "And I've decided you
both are. Who initiated this?"

"I did. I invited him to bed."

Scully sighed. "Kate, why? I thought you were confused... and weren't
you the one who wanted the split to begin with?"

Getting angry, Kate hopped off the counter. "Dana, to answer your
second question first, I am confused, but the split was mutual. Besides, I
hardly consider it a split when we were never really together. And as far
as why I slept with him last night...for a lot of reasons, the primary one
being that I hadn't had sex in over a year and he was there...and because
we're both adults...but also because I do care about him...because I am
attracted to him...because I wanted a memory of him here, in a place
that I love. I know he and I will never work, Dana, not in the long run.
But I just wasn't ready to leave things like we did last winter. We left a
lot of things unsaid, and I only recently realized that I walked away last
year really hurt. We tried to shove everything else away and salvage our
friendship. This seemed like a better ending than the door slamming of
last year."

Scully shook her head, "Kate...you aren't supposed to use sex to say
goodbye."

Kate glared at her. "Don't act like you've never had sex without
commitment, Dana."

"Monogamous sex for eight years IS a commitment, whether you
realize it or not. He asked you to marry him for God's sake. And you
shot him down."

"He didn't WANT to get married. He just thought I expected it. And I
didn't. And I don't want to get married again, Dana. It's an antiquated
arrangement, and to be quite honest, I sucked at it the first time." Kate
walked out of the kitchen, and Scully knew she was upset.

Scully called her back for a second. "Kate...to you, it's an antiquated
arrangement. But Skinner is old-fashioned - military. He doesn't know
any other way to say, hey, I'm committed to you or to us if you'll have
me.  You don't know how much trouble he had letting his first marriage
go. He married young and stuck with it for a whole lot longer than he
should have."

Kate shook her head. "Dana...that's just it. Walter and I come at life
from two very different directions. I don't want to be with someone who
feels obligated to me." She escaped upstairs to gather the rest of the
things that she needed to take back with her.

Skinner stuck his head back into the kitchen. "I'd really rather, Scully, if
you wouldn't try to defend me to her."

Scully looked at him, embarrassed. "I didn't realize you heard all of that."

He shrugged. "Well, I only heard the end."

"She's my friend. I just want to see her happy...and settled."

"I'm not sure those two things can ever really exist in Kate's
life simultaneously."

Scully put a hand on his arm. "I think you're wrong."

He looked down at her hand. "I know you're probably her best friend,
but I think I know her better than you. Kate doesn't do well when she
feels tied down, Dana. It's nothing for me to call her on a Friday night
and have her say she's on a plane headed for Boulder for the weekend,
no warning or anything...even if I just left her house that morning."

Scully tilted her head to the side. "Yeah, but why couldn't you be on that
plane with her...or be waiting at home for her when she gets back?"

He looked at her somewhat sadly. "You know real life doesn't work that
way." He thought for a minute. "Some mornings I used to wake up to
find her doing yoga at four a.m. And sometimes, Dana, she'd walk
around naked for half an hour, talking on the phone or whatever, after a
shower, not thinking anything of it. Once, I woke up at three a.m. to find
her painting a mural on the bedroom wall. She will sing karaoke, for
God's sake. You never know what she'll do."

Scully laughed. "That's what makes her Kate, Walter. But you always
know she's going to go to work each day and come home at night...well,
most of the time. She's one of the most dependable people I know. You
can always count on Kate to do what she promises."

"You don't get it, Dana. I don't fit with that kind of spontaneity. I only
hold her back. I don't want her making promises to me that she really
doesn't want to make."

Scully shook her head. "Maybe you just...tether her to earth...kind
of like I do Mulder." She saw the skeptical look on his face. "Just think
about it, Walter."

Kate came back downstairs a few minutes later, her laptop backpack
on her shoulder. She dropped it by the front foyer. Skinner opened the
back door. "You ready?"

She nodded, kicking off her shoes and rolling her pants up. "You have to
take off your shoes or the sand will bog you down."

He grimaced and took them off.

"You also have to roll up your pants or the damp sand will get the cuffs
wet."

He drew the line there. "I don't care if the cuffs get wet."

Kate shrugged. "Suit yourself."

For a long time, they walked in silence, side by side. She stopped every
so often to inspect a shell or crab hole. Finally, he spoke. "So...are we
just going to walk or are we going to talk, too?"

Kate pulled hair away from her mouth where the wind had blown it. "I
guess we should talk, Walter."

Still, she didn't initiate the conversation. Finally, he asked her, "What
would make you happy, Kate?"

She didn't think he'd ever asked her that before, or that anyone had for
that matter. Reaching out a hand and snagging his pinky finger with hers,
she told him, "I'm pretty happy right at this moment."

He curled his finger around hers. "Well, what would make you happy for
a sustained period of time?"

She laughed softly at his choice of words. "I honestly don't know. Let
me ask you something. Were you happy with the way things were
before I got pregnant?"

He hesitated.  He never considered himself a coward until it came
to emotional talks. "Well, I wasn't unhappy. Were you unhappy?"

She shook her head, "You know, I've thought a lot about it, and I
really wasn't. I didn't feel like I needed something more until there
was the idea that there suddenly was something more. Does that
make sense?"

"But we can't go back now to the way things were before." Even
he knew that wouldn't work. Something had shifted between them and
they couldn't go back to being friends who slept together twice a week.

"No, I guess we can't."

He stopped and looked into her eyes. "Tell me what you want."

She sighed deeply. "I don't know anymore what I want, Walter. And I'm
afraid that a lot of the things I want, you couldn't - or wouldn't - give
me."

That hurt his feelings. "I could try, Kate. I don't like the idea of being
away from you."

She stopped him, afraid to hear the rest. "Just hang on a second,
all right? Let me try to say this. My whole life, I've spent chasing after
the things I thought I wanted. When I was twenty-one, I set my sights on
Nic and had to have him. When Emma came along, I wanted to be the
perfect mother, and I thought that meant I had to be the perfect wife,
too. I wanted to be the top of my med school class at Stanford. I
wanted to be the most accomplished thirty year-old in my field. And the
list just goes on from there. But, Walter, not once during all of this did I
ever stop to consider what I NEEDED. I think the time has come in my
life to think about what I need instead of just what I want."

He let out a breath.  "So...what do you need?"

She bit her lip. "You're not going to like this...but I think I need to be
alone for a while. I need to stand on my own - I know that sounds crazy
because I have spent most of the past decade alone - and sort through
all of my feelings - about Emma, about Nic, about you, and about the
baby I lost last year. Walter, I want to be your friend, and I will
always be there for you if you need me, but maybe it's best for now if
I just try to sort through this. I'm having trouble moving on. And since
we never really dated, just slept together, I haven't really been able to
get a handle on how I'm supposed to feel or what I'm supposed to be
doing when I'm still seeing you in every other way besides the physical."

He swallowed hard, rubbing her arms, not liking where this conversation
was heading. "Kate. That's not really accurate. You know you mean
more to me than just someone I sometimes slept with."

She nodded. "Of course I know that."

He looked down at her red toenails in the sand. "Okay. So now
we're not going to be seeing each other at all?" The idea of not
seeing her even for lunch really bothered him, a lot more than he
ever thought it would.

She closed her eyes. "Just for now. Please understand. I didn't even
realize how many walled up emotions I still had about Nic, either, until I
saw him. There's so much going on inside me right now that I can't make
any progress."

He finally made eye contact with her, confused about the previous night
they had spent together, but wanting to end this conversation as
expeditiously as possible. "Kate, it's fine. I just want you to be happy,
and I want you to be safe. If this is what you need, I understand.
But please stay out of this mess with Mulder and Scully right now as
much as possible. Let me and Doggett do our jobs and try to settle
this without anyone getting killed." Since they had just had a year
away from the physical part of their relationship, he didn't think
more time apart was going to bring her closer to his reach. He only
hoped that over time they could at least be friends again. She
was probably the best friend he'd ever had. Glancing around, he
realized they were almost back at her house.

She knew she had hurt him; she could see it in his eyes. "Walter, please
take care of yourself." Kate looked over to see Doggett and Reyes
sitting out on the back step. "You coming in?"

He shook his head. "I think I'm going to walk the other way for a while."

"You know, maybe without taking me to lunch once or twice a
week, you can find time to go on a real date. Maybe you can figure
out what you need in your life." He did not comment, and she watched
as he began walking away. When he was twenty yards away, he turned
and jogged back towards her. She was back to the patio when he
called her name. "Yeah?" She stopped at the top step, wrinkling her
brow.

He came right up to her, putting one hand behind her head and the other
around her waist. With him standing in the sand, and her on the step, she
was almost his height. She stared into his brown eyes. "What is it?"

Dipping his head, he kissed her for a long moment. She pulled away and
looked at him. "What was that all about?"

"Just in case."

"In case what?" she asked breathlessly.

He whispered to her, "In case part of what you need is to know that I
am capable of not caring what others think. Or in case part of what you
want is being kissed on the beach in the morning when you're on
vacation. Or in case that's the last time I ever get the chance." He pulled
away a little, pleased with the look of surprise in her eyes. "You
pick. You can let me know what you decide."

She stood there with her hands on her hips as he headed back down the
beach. Now she was even more confused. Finally turning around, she
heard Doggett say, "Whoa. Never thought I'd see Skinner do THAT."

Mulder, who was leaning in the doorway, piped up. "Hoped was more
like it." He gave a fake shiver, then leered at Kate. "So...where's MY
good morning kiss, Kate?"

Kate didn't smile. "That was not a good morning kiss. That was
a goodbye kiss." She looked down at her watch. "And I need to hurry."

Inside, she said her goodbyes, promising William and Claire she would
visit them both soon.  Kate was surprised when the little boy wrapped
his arms around her waist and hugged her tightly. "Can we come back
and visit here when it's warm enough to swim?" She'd seen him eyeing
the empty swimming pool the day before.

Kate nodded as she tousled his hair. "Sure we can. And your
parents can bring you here for vacation any time, whether I'm here or
not."  She kissed the tip of his nose.

Claire looked at her accusingly. "You're leaving?"

Kate hugged her tightly. "I'll see you later this week, okay? I
promise everything's going to be all right, Claire. Just give it time." Scully
walked her to the front door. "Don't worry about cleaning anything when
you guys leave. The caretaker will handle it. Honestly, don't bother.
She'll just redo everything you try to do anyhow. I'll call you when I get
DNA results, okay?"

Scully hugged her at the front door. "Thanks for everything. I can't tell
you how different I feel than I did just a few days ago."

Kate nodded and smiled. "A lot can happen in forty-eight hours, huh?"
She flipped her hair out of her coat collar. "Dana? You'll make sure
Walter's all right, won't you?"

Scully sighed. "Sure, Kate."


Thursday, 6:30 p.m.

Kate stopped at the beginning of the driveway, happy to see that Mulder
had finally installed an intercom and automatic gate. Once she was
buzzed in, she made her way down the drive, waving to William when he
came out onto the porch. 

"Hi, big guy," she said as she scooped him up for a hug. "Where's your
mom?"

He giggled. "She's inside."

Kate had a big bag in her hand. "I brought you a surprise."

He tried to peek into the bag as she made her way into the
house. "Here. Have at it." She handed him the bag.

Scully and Claire came down the hallway. "What's that?" 

"A gift I brought for William." She handed the smaller bag to Claire.
"This one's for you."

Fifteen minutes later, the kids were tucked away upstairs with their new
purchases - a robotics set for William and an iPod for Claire. Kate
followed Scully into the kitchen, where Mulder was making dinner. She
had a folder with her. "You guys ready for this?" She spread out on the
counter. "You are definitely Claire's biological mother, Dana."

Scully shook her head. "How can that be? Skinner said he's found
evidence that she really was born in 1994."

Kate shrugged. "I ran the tests three different times. I'm just stating the
facts." She glanced up at Scully. "Here's the part that's really going to
freak you out."

Mulder and Scully both looked at her expectantly. "I ran her DNA
against William's, and it was such a close match that I ran it against
yours, Mulder."

Scully shook her head. "No way."

Kate looked down at the reports. "I'm just telling you what I found. I
can't explain how it came to be. You're that little girl's parents. Both of
you."

Scully covered her mouth. "That's crazy. She would have been
conceived....almost before we met. I mean, surely we would have
known if someone had harvested...eggs and sperm...I mean, Jesus."

Mulder looked as shocked as Scully. "Had to have happened while we
slept, right? I mean, we didn't have any episodes of missing time
before... " he trailed off, making eye contact with Scully.

Scully looked at him, realization dawning on her as well. "No way," she
said again.

Mulder nodded, pinching his bottom lip. "Think about it, Scully. Maybe
nine minutes was all it took."

The implications were terrifying. Scully shivered.  What other hidden
truths had yet to find their way to them?


Thursday, 10:13 p.m.

Mulder slid into bed beside Scully and wrapped himself around her from
behind. "I think both of them are finally asleep," he said quietly.

She turned her head to look at him. "They were pretty wound up
after dinner."

He traced his fingers along her forehead and eyebrows. "I can't get over
it, Scully. They're ours."

She nodded. "I know. It's unbelievable."

They lay in silence for a long time before she rolled onto her back to
look at him. "What are you thinking, Mulder?"

He cupped her breast with his hand. "I was thinking...if I had known
we already had a child out there, I wouldn't have waited seven years
to get you naked."

She laughed - that breathless, throaty little laugh that made his insides
weak. "Mulder, even after seven years, it was ME who finally got YOU
naked. If I had waited for you to make the first move..."

"Hey. I kissed you first."

She propped herself up on her elbow. "Only under the guise of New
Year's 2000." Suddenly serious, she stared into his eyes. "What will we
do?"

He shook his head. "I don't know. We'll figure it out, Scully." He threw
one leg over hers. "Do you remember that first night on the run six years
ago? What we talked about? I am certain now that there is hope."

She leaned forward, nuzzling his face with her nose. "Mulder. All those
years, when I wouldn't believe, when I was afraid to believe the things
we saw...there was one thing I always believed in."

He fingered her necklace, as he had so many times through the
years. "What's that?"

"I always believed in you." She kissed him gently.  "You kept me going.
You still do. We will win, Mulder. We can't lose."

He dipped down and kissed her stomach before finding her lips with his.
As he ran his hands along her body, she arched into him. He stopped
suddenly as the bedroom door creaked open.  He looked up to see the
small child silhouetted in the doorway.

"I can't sleep, Dad." William stood there clutching his stuffed frog. 

Mulder sighed, fixing the straps on Scully's nightgown. "Why not, sport?"

William stood there. "I don't know. I just can't."

Scully sat up. "Want to sleep with us, baby?"

William broke into a smile and climbed into the bed from the foot.
He wriggled down between them, tucking his frog in with him. "Will
you sing the bullfrog song, Mom?"

Scully dropped a kiss on his warm little forehead. "Sure. William was a
bullfrog..." She looked over the top of her son and met Mulder's eyes as
she sang.  He waggled his eyebrows at her. She smiled and linked her
fingers with his as he reached across William.

"Chorus," William muttered sleepily.

The End