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Title: Wise Voices Summary: Mulder receives encouragement from some unexpected sources. Author's Note: I'm still mining the gap between the birth of Scully's baby and the end of the episode. This story takes place after the events of Falling Upwards, but you don't need to read that story to understand this one. The final scene of *Existence* has not yet come to pass. And, as always, thanks for reading! "Are you sure you don't see anything?" Mulder ducked his head, baring his neck for Scully's inspection. A delicate prickling had plagued him for the past week. It came and went; there had been no apparent sense or rhythm to it. It was a creepy prickly feeling, the one you get when you're sure there's a monster in the closet or beneath the stairs. And it had followed him since the night his son came into this world. Scully rose on toe tips behind him, her light fingers fluttering across his heated skin. "No. It's red like you've been rubbing it, that's all." "No rash?" "No." "Nothing else?" No suspicious lumps of scar tissue? No green pustules? No knobby alien vertebrae rising from beneath his skin? There were many possibilities. "Nothing." Hmm. Mulder rubbed his neck. Caught himself. Stopped. He stuffed both hands into his pockets. "So." Scully shrugged a large tote filled with baby things higher on her shoulder. She bent and carefully lifted a carrier. Their son, nested in soft blankets, guarded by a phalanx of green flannel aliens, slumbered undisturbed by the gentle movement. "Say 'hi' to Bill for me." The entire clan had gathered at Maggie Scully's house, to meet the new addition to the family. Mulder had put in his time, trading loaded glares with Scully's brother Bill. Today Scully would venture out alone with the baby for the first time. "Sure." She moved toward the door, steering the bulky carrier around furniture with great caution. Mulder followed, one hand resting lightly on the strength of Scully's shoulder. His fingers ached for more. "Mixing Mulder blood with Scully blood has been a hard lump for him to digest." A smile passed over Scully's face, settled, then grew to a grin. "He'll get over it." "He'd better." Mulder grinned back at her; he couldn't help it these days. Grins kept plastering themselves across his face when he least expected it. "So," Scully turned, one hand on the door knob. "What are you going to do today?" "I'm going....home. Feed the fish. Get a few things." Home, with a big H, is wherever you are, Scully, he added silently, his eyes lingering over the familiar lines of her face. "Good." And where you are, baby boy, he promised their son, peaceful in sleep, nestled in the carrier. He cleared the emotion from his throat. "Well, have a good time..." "Sure..." She turned the knob, pulled. Mulder held the door for her. "Take care of the little guy..." "Goes without saying," she stepped into the hallway, paused. "Mulder..." "Yeah?" "I'll see you back here tonight?" "Where else would I be?" Mulder closed the door to his apartment, dropping the keys on a nearby table. Already it felt less like home and more like a place he used to store his things. A jumble of empty boxes Campbell's Soup, Friskies Dental Diet, Herbal Essences - fruits of some late night dumpster diving, filled the corner of the room. Grabbing a box, he headed for the kitchen. He opened a cupboard and considered its contents. Kraft Macaroni and Cheese. Comfort food. Three packages. Paul Newman's Tomato and Fresh Basil Sauce. One jar. He shook an old box of pasta, then decided against it. Stale. The box hit the bottom of the trash can with a thump and a rattle. Progresso Soups - Lentil, Minestrone, Lentil, and Minestrone again - four cans. A box of raisins, unopened. A carton of cornbread mix. A box of rice, opened. He lifted the flap, looked inside, shook it. No bugs. Good enough. He positioned the large box below the cupboard and started to fill it. Mulder had tip-toed and side-stepped through his entire relationship with Scully, a tentative dance where neither one of them knew the steps. It was clear the Scully wasn't going to come out and say 'oh sure, Mulder, let's move in together, be a family.' It was clear he wasn't going to step forward and ask her if he could it. So, he decided to go with what worked for them. He would dance his things on over to her house, moving in with her by default. Wedging the pasta sauce in one cardboard corner, he padded the jar with cornbread mix and rice. He groped the raisins off the shelf and added them to the box. The four cans of soup, a can of olives, and a small jar of pimentos followed them in. Every time he came home to "feed the fish," he brought something back to Scully's apartment with him. Something small. Something he could slip under her radar, like kitchen things or books or CDs or small items of clothing. So far, amid the steady stream of visitors and all their fuss, Scully hadn't noticed the growth of her CD collection or the accumulation of new things in kitchen drawers. Or she hadn't mentioned it. A bag of black beans, three tiny bottles with spices inside, and a small canister of tea went into the box. A crumpled bag of disintegrating Oreos went into the trash. Mulder rolled his shoulders, letting the crisp collar of his jacket work up and down against his neck while his hands were busy. Prickles again. They crawled across the back of his neck the way a spider would. Hell and damnation. He found a sponge tucked beneath the sink, held it under the faucet, and swabbed his skin with it. Cool water ran around the sides of his neck and down his chest. After a moment's relief, he dropped the sponge into the sink and leaned into the counter, reaching blindly to the back of the top shelf, praying that he didn't put his hand into something disgusting. "You're wearing a whole new aura these days, Mulder." Mulder sighed, pressing his forehead against the cool wood of the cabinet. He looked beneath one arm to where a pair of sandal clad feet, nails painted electric purple, stood on the linoleum behind him. A riot of purple and red flowers trailed across a skirt where it brushed the tops of her shoes. Melissa Scully. He recognized the voice, even after five years of not hearing it. Mulder sighed again, closing his eyes. There was only one problem with this picture. Melissa Scully was dead. "You can turn around now," she said after a moment. Mulder turned. It was Melissa Scully, just as he remembered her. Younger than Scully - Dana - is now. An electric jolt tore through him, leaving ice in its wake. "Melissa," he shifted his feet, shaking off the chill, "you're looking good for a dead woman." She laughed, from the belly. "I always liked your sense of humor, Mulder." Red hair curled gently to her shoulders and the familiar crystal dangled from a black ribbon at her throat. "I've been to see my nephew. Nice job." Like I can take much credit for it, Mulder thought, considering I was missing or dead for most of Scully's pregnancy then fumbling my way back into our relationship for the rest of it. He tossed an ancient can of baking powder in the trash. Of course, there was the contribution of genetic material to consider. Melissa followed Mulder's hands as they worked back and forth between cupboard and box, filling the remaining space with toothpicks and napkins and an egg timer. "I've got to give it to you, Mulder. It took five years but you finally got your act together." "I am far from together," he insisted. I'm a mess is more like it, he added to himself. "Yeah, but you're working on it. Your heart's in the right place." His cardiac muscle constricted at the sound of its name. He'd lost his heart years ago, when a young FBI agent, red-haired and green as they come, marched into his office and announced she was delighted to be working with him. He lost it again, just a few days ago, when a tiny boy came into this world and stole it away with his first toothless smile. "And where's Dana's heart?" he asked, folding one flap of the box lid under the next, sealing the top. "Mulder, Dana loves you. I was with her many days when you were missing...and buried." "Like this? She saw you?" "She's coming along, dear brother," she let the word - and its meaning - hang in the air between them, "but she's not there yet." Mulder hefted the box in his arms, taking it to the next room, putting it on the floor by the front door. He sensed Melissa's presence at his back as he continued to the bedroom. There, he opened and closed a series of drawers, tossing t-shirts and socks and underwear into a heap on the bed. "She keeps a tight lid on her emotions." "I know. But she's changing. I saw the guilty look on her face when Mom bugged her about it in the hospital the other day. She knows. She wants to change. She just needs some encouragement, some benchmarks for her progress." "You were there?" "Yes. When she needs me, I'm there." Melissa paced to the window, lifted a slat and peered through the blinds. "I went to her in Georgia, stayed for the birth, and we...I...traveled with both of you to the hospital. I was there until I was sure Dana, you, and the baby were OK." Mulder turned, a pile of drawstring pants in his hand, and raised an eyebrow. "I get out a lot," Melissa answered the look in his eyes, touching the crystal at her throat. "Then why didn't I get to do this when I was dead and buried?" Mulder pulled a suitcase from beneath the bed, worked the zipper, and opened it. "Because, dear brother, you weren't fully dead at the time," Melissa sat on the bed, tucking one leg over the other, smoothing her long cotton skirt down over her knees. "That alien metamorphosis thing...whatever...was going on. It tied you to this world." "Barely." "It was your fate that Dana would be there to bring you back." Could the safety net of fate have been there to protect him always? Could his mad rush to the brink always been preordained to fail? Or was it the seemingly chance encounter of one disillusioned FBI agent and one starry-eyed greenhorn that made the difference between his life and death many times over? "You know, Mulder, I wasn't ready to leave the mortal world when I did..." Memory of Melissa's chance encounter with Scully's fate - or was it the reverse - stiffened his fingers; they froze in midair, clutching a pile of briefs. "..but now that I've gotten over the shock of being dead and there's nothing I can do about it, it's not so bad. And, considering that Dana had unfinished business with you, an important loose end in her life..." "Loose end," Mulder considered his description. Maybe it was apt. Melissa ignored him again. "...I'm here to see that it comes together for her." "And me." "For Dana, you're an essential factor in the equation." For me, she's an essential factor like air and water, he thought, tumbling the last of his things into the suitcase, pressing them flat with one hand. "Come on, bro. You love Dana. She loves you. You have a baby together." Melissa ticked off the facts on her fingertips. "Why are you satisfied with taking bread crumbs from the table when you could have the whole loaf?" "But Scully..." "Take the loaf, Mulder. Dana's ready. The baby changes everything for her. It may seem a little weird..." "...try *surreal*..." "Maybe," Melissa shrugged. "Fate is more like it. This is where your journey has taken you...and Dana. There're been a lot of detours, problems, but Fate has guided you back here. To where you both need to be...where you both were meant to be." "I..." "Why can't you tell her how you feel?" Déjà vu all over again. Mulder flashed back to his first grilling at Melissa's hands. Scully lay in a hospital bed, deeply comatose, just a heartbeat away from death. Feeling sorry for himself, he had taken refuge in his darkened apartment where Melissa found him, rooted him out, and gave him his first talking-to. "I've already told her she's my one in five billion. That's rather suggestive...of something, don't you think? I've said she was my touchstone and constant...I nearly came unglued, telling her that. The look in her eyes was so..." He cleared his throat and continued. "I've looked her straight in the eye and said that I loved her. Flat out. I. Love. You." He zipped the suitcase, fastened the strap, and pulled it off the bed. "I don't think she believes one word of it." "Well, duh...if you consider the context. When do you say these things? When you're bandaged and in a hospital bed? After a severe injury when your mental competency...and level of drug usage...could beg the question?" Melissa rose, looking straight into his eyes, squinting as if she were trying to see something clearly at a great distance. "Why not tell her at a time when there would be no doubt?" Why? Mulder knew the answer. Because bread crumbs are better than no bread at all, to use Melissa's metaphor. Because I'm a a fucking coward. "You're not a...coward, Mulder." The suitcase slipped from his fingers and hit the floor with a thump. He gathered gray fog into his consciousness, great handfuls of it, filling his his mind, trying to imagine the inside of a dark cloud while staring at the blank expanse of the ceiling. "That's not going to do any good. You can't think like a blank slate 24 hours a day." Melissa reached behind her neck and fumbled for a moment. "I've been nosing through your thoughts off and on for the past five years. There's nothing there you need to hide from me." Dear God. Petty thoughts, irritations and perversions, his secrets, the good things he'd thought about Scully and the bad, all unspooled like a terrible newsreel. "Yes, all of those things." "Ungh," Mulder pressed his hands against the side of his head, willing the guilty memories to stop. Unfazed, Melissa caught her choker in one hand, carefully twisting the black velvet band around the stone before offering it to Mulder. "Give this to Dana when she's ready." She peeled Mulder's hands away from his head and pressed the necklace into one of them. The crystal warmed his palm. He curled his fingers around it, feeling its strength, before dropping it into his pocket and closing the flap over it. Give it to Scully when she's ready? He could imagine that. He'd say 'Hey Scully, I was shootin' the breeze with Melissa the other day and she....' "She's closer than you think, Mulder." Melissa brushed her lips across his cheek and hugged him briefly. "Welcome to the family. Finally." "Melissa..." he lost track of her, whirled, still couldn't find her, "...where..." "Take the loaf, Mulder. By chance or by fate, it's there for you to take," she reminded him from somewhere. "Melissa, when..." "I'll be around." Faintly. From nowhere. He stood alone in the room. An hour later, Mulder found himself following a cart around the supermarket, struggling against a wobbly wheel that pulled him relentlessly into the shelves. Today the market was an abstract of bright lights, loud noises, odd shapes, and strange colors. All were intrusive. Ordinary things - milk and eggs, diapers, cereal and bread, fresh pasta that would go with the sauce in his car - occasionally resolved from the mess. His hand transferred them to the cart. He moved on. If asked, he couldn't have named one item he'd gathered. He wandered into the surreal landscape of the produce section. Lettuce, tomatoes, and onions grew there in strange heaps. He drifted from display to display, idly raking his nails across the back of his neck. He passed a display of melons stacked neatly against a mound of oranges, jumbled into place. Stopping, he collected oranges that dropped, weightless, into a bag in his other hand. "Excuse me," a voice, nearby. Mulder stepped aside. Something pulled at a thread in his mind. Something familiar. Forcing the market into focus, he flinched fumbling the orange in his hand, catching it again. Not another one. "I didn't know they let people out of Hell on a day pass," Mulder narrowed his eyes at the apparition. "A reward for bad behavior, I presume?" The apparition rooted in his pocket, pulled out a pack of Morleys and shaking one loose, catching it between his lips. "Can't kill me now," he flicked his lighter and the end caught. Closing his eyes, Spender inhaled deeply then exhaled on a long, satisfied sigh. Smoke curled in a thin spiral above the melons. The orange itched against his palm. Why not? Mulder hefted the fruit and without further consideration, acted from the heart. He pitched the thing square at Spender's chest; the orange hit the older man with an audible thunk and bounced off, rolling across the linoleum floor. Spender flinched then pulled on his cigarette. "Excuse me," a voice rose over Mulder's shoulder. A young man wearing the store's uniform extended the damaged orange in Mulder's direction. "You dropped this." Mulder looked from the orange to Spender and back again. "He can't see you?" Spender smiled. "Uh, sir?" The produce clerk pushed the orange at Mulder, backing away. With sticky juice filling his hand, Mulder turned to Spender again. "So I'm standing here in front of the oranges, talking to the melons like a head case?" "People who need to see me, see me," the smoker pulled on his cigarette, blowing odorless smoke into Mulder's face. "But you're solid," Mulder pushed at him, his hand meeting resistance in the air that was Spender's chest. "To you I am." Christ. Mulder worked to massage this twist into his perspective. He glanced around--the produce clerk watched him from behind a redoubt of potatoes, two aisles away. "Congratulations on your son, by the way." Mulder bristled, wanting nothing from this man. "You Son of a..." Spender derailed Mulder's protest. "Just some fatherly advice..." "You. Are. Not. My. Father." Mulder sputtered the words, a small part of his brain - an unworried part - wondering about the legal ramifications of strangling a specter in a supermarket. "You might want to consider," he pulled hard at his cigarette, the smoke twisting into the ether above the melons, "that I've been there for you more than Bill Mulder ever has." "That's right, you've been there," Mulder thought of the lies and deceptions, the times when this man nearly cost him - and Scully - their lives. Then he thought of his father, cold and distant. He scraped the inside of his brain, trying to find one memory, one instance of anything remotely like fatherly support from Bill Mulder. "I may have thrown a log in your path from time to time, but it was my way of protecting you. I deflected you from the truth that would have killed you, sooner or later...one way or the other." The smoker examined the glowing end of his butt. "I think you know that." "You were protecting yourself and your secret agenda." "Maybe so...but I was protecting you at the same time." "Bullshit." He'd heard these lies before. "Think about it. There's no reason for me to lie to you from beyond the grave, as it were." Oh my God, are they all mind readers? Bastard. Fucker. Son of a BITCH. Mulder let his mind fill with the thoughts, watching Spender carefully. Spender didn't seem to notice the slurs. "You need to let it go, move on, or this chance will move past you." Mulder glared at him, not willing to accept the challenge from this man, even if he was right. "You're a lucky man, Mulder. *You* have a second chance," Spender sucked at the cigarette, burnt to the filter. His eyes were dark, sore, when they returned to Mulder. "You have two second chances, in fact. One at life itself and another at finding happiness in your life. You have no idea what a lucky bastard you are to have them." The pain in the older man's voice was palpable. Mulder flashed on his mother and Spender, thinking of the second chance they never had. Alone or together, how different their lives might have been had they been able to undo some of the choices they'd made and make others instead. This man *could* have been his father. He recoiled at the thought, then moved past it. "I *am* lucky." Spender nodded, squinting through a cloud of smoke. He tossed the spent butt on the floor and twisted one glossy loafer back and forth across the charred remains. "I remind myself every day. I just can't stop waiting for the other shoe to fall and mess it all up for me." Better half a loaf - or crumbs - than none at all, Mulder thought. I can be satisfied with that. "I guess that's why I can't reach out and grab it. I'm afraid it will disturb this precarious balance and I'll lose it all." "Carpe diem," the older man's voice was weak, faint. "Take the risk. It's more of a sure thing than you think it is." "Excuse me," a sharp finger in his side interrupted their conversation. "Can you hand me that ripe melon, there, on the stack?" Mulder blinked. A tiny woman pointed a birdlike claw at the top of the display. "That nice ripe one, up there." He followed her finger through the air where Spender had stood, to a particularly plump cantaloupe balanced at the very top of the pile. Scooping it into his palm, Mulder transferred the melon carefully into the old woman's hands then glanced around. No Spender. The potatoes were untended as well. He looked at the floor near his feet, scarping one toe across the linoleum. Clean. No cigarette debris. He touched the pocket of his jacket anxiously, feeling the hard weight of Melissa's crystal against his hand. Mulder exhaled through his teeth, thinking of Scully and fate and his chances with luck. Reversing the cart, he headed for the registers. He'd had enough shopping for one day. The prickling started again when he closed Scully's cupboard door behind the last can of soup. He shook his head, rubbing at the back of his neck, resting his forehead against the cool wooden cabinet. "Jeez. Do you people travel in packs?" He bounced his forehead gently - not again - against the wood. "Is there a group special this we..." he turned to face his new visitor. The words tangled in his throat. He licked dry lips. His fists curled and released. "Jeez. Do you people travel in packs?" He bounced his forehead gently - not again, not again, not again - against the wood of Scully's kitchen cupboard. "Is there a group special this we..." he turned to face his new visitor. The words tangled in his throat. He licked dry lips. His fists curled and released. "No reason to get snippy with me, Fox," his mother settled on the edge of the couch. The cushions bowed slightly beneath her weight as she adjusted the hem of her St. John Knit more suitably around her knees. Mulder leaned back against the dining table, crossed his arms over his chest, and waited. Teena Mulder fussed with the edge of her jacket and looked around the apartment, her eyes skating from the kitchen to the hallway to the living room. She turned sideways to face her son. "I see very little of you here." "That's because I don't live here " yet, he extended his words, hoping that mind reading was strictly a Melissa Scully talent. "You should. There's the baby..." "Yes, I know about the baby" and I know I'm being snotty, he added to himself. Damn it. This is the effect she has on me. Mulder and his mother glared at each other over the back of the sofa. "It's been...a while," his mother offered the olive branch, her eyes softening. Mulder brushed it aside, surprised at the level of emotion she raised in him. Before Samantha's disappearance, his mother had been distant; afterwards, she had been conspicuously absent from his life, an absence that continued past his father's murder into her own death. "How could you do that to me? You were all I had left," he sputtered, thinking of his mother's illness, her suicide; everything she hadn't told him. The mixture was explosive. "Don't you give me that, Fox William Mulder," Teena Mulder leaned forward, a flush rising on her face, softness replaced by stiffness and pain. "I called you. Multiple times. I left messages. I needed to speak with you, to explain, before...." The lapse and its consequences hung in the gulf between them. His mother continued, eyes dark, sunken in her anger-red face. "You never called me back. It was YOU who turned your back on ME...for the last time." "I turned my back on a blank wall," Mulder spoke without accusation, the flash fire of his anger having burned him clean inside. Look at her, feeling her pain, Mulder felt a flicker of compassion for the his mother. Pressure, like a weather front, pushed at him from behind, making his shirt cling on his back. With the dry breath of a Saharan sirocco, it needled his back and urged him forward, toward the living room. Mulder resisted, turning against the force. His sister stood there, looking no different than the last time he'd seen her in the meadow with other lost souls. "Hey, Dude," she punched him in the arm, her eyes twinkling the same way they used to flash at him over the Stratego board. "Samantha," Mulder gathered her against his chest, tucking her head beneath his chin, holding her slight body tightly against his. She felt good to him. "Dude?" "Isn't that what Langly calls you? Dude?" she asked into his shirt. "How do you..." "...know Langly?" Samantha giggled. "I hang around a lot." "And why don't I see you?" Mulder pushed her back with both hands on her shoulders, looking down into her eyes. "You're not looking for me. If you looked, you'd see me." "I wasn't looking just now." "Yeah, but you need me now." I always need you, Samantha, he wanted to say, but didn't. The cold presence of his mother chilled him through his back. "Mom?" holding her big brother, Samantha pulled him in a circle, leading him around the sofa to face their mother. "Samantha, darling!" Teena Mulder opened her arms to her daughter, a smile transforming her face in a way it had never transformed for him. "Mom," Samantha's flew into her mother's arms, her voice muffled by her mother's neck, "I haven't seen you in ages." "I know, sweetie. It was three months ago, on the Vineyard, wasn't it?" Teena Mulder found her son and strafed him her eyes. "Too bad the house is closed up like that. It should be lived in." "That was never our house. It was Dad's house. You never lived there." Mulder protested, hearing the adolescent whine in his voice and not caring how it made him sound. He stood to one side, arms empty, forgotten by both his mother and sister. Well, hell, he sighed. They have the afterlife in common. Two sharp thumps rattled the door in its frame. Teena Mulder crossed the room and opened the door as if it were her own. "Oh. It's you." She turned from the door, leaving it ajar. Two sets of eyes and one shoulder waited for the visitor to come through. Bill Mulder stepped between the door and Teena Mulder, closing it behind him with a neat click. "Fox," he nodded at his son. Mulder bit his lip and glared at his father before stuffing his hands into the back pockets of his jeans and staring pointedly at the floor. "Teena," Bill Mulder acknowledged the back still turned to him. Teena Mulder worried one hand against the other. "Samantha?" Bill Mulder smiled at his daughter, the effort etching deep lines across his face. Samantha turned her face against her brother's chest and said nothing. Bill Mulder turned to the window, lifted a slat in the wooden blind, and studied something outside. Thunderous silence filled the room as each Mulder refused to look at the others. Teena Mulder returned to the couch, sat quietly, and buttoned her jacket with elaborate care. More silence. "Well, well. Nice little Mulder family reunion," Bill Mulder dropped the slat in place with a click. "Should have done this years ago." "Little likelihood of that, since you sent Samantha away. You gave her to those men," Teena hurled her pain at him, gripping the top button of her jacket. "Mom," Samantha went to her mother, touched her shoulder. "I had no choice! I saved the rest of us by giving her up," Bill Mulder's voice slipped into the practiced dialog. "Dad," Samantha moved to his side, trying to catch his eye. Her father glared instead at his late ex-wife on the couch. Mulder stepped away, emotionally, as his family moved through the cold dance of their arguments by reflex rather than reason. "I've told you..." "...it wasn't like that, Teena. Those men played for keeps..." "...your own children, your own blood, your responsibility..." "...but we were *all* at risk..." "...and how could you choose one over the other?" "No," Samantha covered her ears. She turned to her brother, "Fox, please make them stop!" Mulder skipped backward through bad memories the way stone skips across foul water. Shouting. Tears. Anger. Samantha, pleading with him to stop the fighting somehow. From the distance he saw his parents: two people, ill suited, who never should have made children together, who left those children with scars they carried and would carry to their graves. Four people, gravely injured. Three out of the four of them were now dead. The dynamic still hadn't changed. "We're not going to resolve this. I can see it now," Bill Mulder's mouth settled into a hard line. He stepped away, moving toward the door. "I don't know why I came." "We came to show Fox our support. This is a difficult transition for him." Teena Mulder's hands fluttered to the pearls at her neck. "There's our grandson..." Bill Mulder snorted. "It's the least we can do, Bill," she followed him across the room. "What have we, as a family, ever done for Fox, really? He doesn't know how to...we can guide them so that he doesn't make our mistakes." His father twisted the knob, pulling the door into the room. He left the apartment without looking back. "Bill!" Teena Mulder hurried after him. At the door she turned, extending a hand to her son then dropped it, empty, before leaving the apartment. "Fox, I gotta go." Samantha drifted after her parents. Mulder reached for her, his hands meeting in air. "You can't stay for a minute? I've missed you. There's so much I want to share." Samantha shook her head, looking through the empty doorway with worried eyes. "No. There's only so many portals. If they go through this one and it shuts behind them, I'll have to look around for another one and I might get lost and I'm not really good at opening them by myself..." her voice rose through the scale. "The starlight...?" Mulder remembered the last time he'd seen her, in the starlight with the other lost souls. "Actually, it's all connected," she moved into the hallway, stopped. "I have to do it differently in the day. I'll explain it to you next time." Next time? His heart leaped at the thought of seeing Samantha again. "Sam..." "Love you. Say 'hi' to my nephew for me." She leaned back inside. "My big brother's a Daddy. I'm an Auntie. What a trip." The door closed on her giggle. Mulder grabbed the handle and pulled it open. "Wait..." He stood in an empty hallway, listening to the sound of his voice fade away. Mulder closed the door and leaned against it, massaging his throbbing temples. Are those the tools I have to work with? I'm a fool for thinking I can be a life partner to Scully and a father to our child. All I know is for certain is how *not* to do it. The thought and its ramifications hit him like an epiphany. When the door rattled against his back, he turned and snatched it open. Scully stood there fully loaded, a bag of groceries in one hand, the baby carrier in the other, and the bulging tote over her shoulder. Her red hair curled wildly around her head, wisps sticking out at odd angles. A smile made his face ache. "You're home early." Scully groaned, handing him the groceries and coming inside. "I had enough. The Scully clan can really grind a person down." "Yeah, old Bill wears on me like a sheet of sixty grit." Mulder closed the door behind her and followed her into the living room. A flicker of light outside the front window caught his attention. Samantha. She kissed her palm and blew it at him, then waggled her fingers with a big smile. The groceries slipped from his grasp and hit the coffee table with a dull thunk. "Mulder!" Scully dropped the tote and set the carrier gently on the rug, reaching for Mulder. "Are you sick?" Her cool hand tested his forehead. "The baby..." "He's sleeping, he'll be fine. It's you I'm worried about." "No," he brushed her hand away, "I'm fine." "The hell you are," she guided him into the sofa and pressed him into the soft cushions where his mother had been. "You look like you've just seen a ghost." He snorted then recovered, rubbing his nose as if it had bothered him. "Hey. I'm worried about you," she repeated, backing it up with concern in her eyes. He heard fear in her voice, her memory of his death and illness. "You're not getting a cold, are you?" "Aw Scully, I'll be OK." I'm OK wherever you are, he thought then sat back. "How's your neck?" She pressed her cool palm against his heated skin. "Better." Red, hot, but no prickling. He thought of Melissa, Spender, and the Mulder family. Half a loaf. Carpe Diem. Coward. The thoughts and exhortations tumbled through his memory. He touched Melissa's crystal in his pocket. It felt warm to his touch, making his fingers tingle. "Scully, I'd like to...uh..." move in together sounded far too Senior Year for his forty-year-old ears. He tried again. "I'd like to live here with you. And the baby." "I thought you *were* living with me and our baby." He was. "I mean officially. My name on the mailbox. My shoes under the bed." "Mulder, your shoes are already under the bed. And in the living room. And in a pile in the closet." The jewel tones of her laughter warmed his heart. Oh. They were. "If that's OK with you," he rushed to add. "Of course it is. You belong here with us." "Scully, I..." love you, he wanted to say but switched track in mid-sentence, continuing "...I can bring the rest of my stuff over, then?" "We'll have to negotiate what goes where," the baby started to fuss quietly in his carrier, distracting her, "and what goes into storage for now." Scully gathered their son into her arms and returned to the couch with him. Calmed by his mother's arms, he lay quietly, blue baby eyes roving over Mulder and back to Scully again. "I..." love you, Mulder began again, his heart filling with wonder at mother and son, then diverted to "...I can't help but remember eight years ago, when you walked into my office. If anyone told me then that we'd be sitting here now, with a baby, I'd have opened an X-File on them." Scully smiled at him then at their child. "I couldn't imagine you not being in my life, Mulder. It would be too normal." "I..." he paused for a long time on the word...am a coward, he concluded finally. Are you listening, Melissa? He slipped one arm over Scully's shoulder, fitting mother and child neatly to his side. Resting his cheek in the red nest of Scully's hair, Mulder chafed his son's cheek gently with the backs of his fingers. The little boy's eyes flickered and closed on a sigh. Scully relaxed against him. Mulder took her weight, finding her hand and threading his fingers with hers. The words he wanted to say to her rolled safely through his thoughts instead-I love you Scully. -Thank you for pulling me back from the brink. -You've made me part of a family. -I love you, Scully, and I am grateful to be the man you've helped me to be. Mulder relaxed into her and she took his weight, rolling her head back against his shoulder. He watched her lashes fall and felt her breathing slow. "I love you, Scully," he whispered. I'm going to tell you so. I'm getting to it. I'm working on this cowardice thing, he thought, touching the crystal in his pocket, drawing the strength of Melissa's convictions from it. Just not yet. Soon, but not yet. The End
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