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Chapter Text

A Moment in the Sun: Bellefleur

*~*~*~*

He enjoyed being Walter Skinner. Walter Skinner was Sharon's husband, Anna and Walthari's only son, and his late Uncle Sergei's namesake. Walter Skinner had a nice house, a nice car, and a nice boat - though it seldom left the dock. All the other guys in the neighborhood borrowed tools from Walter Skinner. A man's man, people said.

Skinner still had nightmares of the war - the first one: the one foolishly called the war to end all wars. Sometimes, after a bad day, he dreamt of mustard gas rolling across a field as he struggled to get his mask on. At the time, he thought he’d been a man, but these days, to Skinner, teenagers seemed liked children.

He’d killed 89 men: seventy-one as a soldier, seventeen as a U.S. Marshal, and one young Marine who fell asleep after a boxing match in 1918 and never woken up. The last one was the worst, but Skinner reminded himself the name of the game was to be hit and hit back. Now, two decades had passed since he shot a man, and three years since he drew his weapon in the line of duty. Now, he didn't know if killing a man would bother him more or less than twenty years ago. More, he suspected.

Courtesy of his father, Skinner spoke Russian, a useful but politically dangerous skill to have these days. He picked up some Bulgarian from his maternal grandmother and he knew enough French to order a meal, give directions, and - like the other G.I.'s - negotiate with a prostitute.

He missed his mother, even after all these years. He missed the calm, steady tempo of her. He remembered sitting at the kitchen table as she opened her 1922 copy of Emily Post's “Etiquette.” "We will look it up," she'd said in response to his question, using the English phrase. She loved the book and consulted it at every opportunity. It was the correct way to do things, whether it was attending a wedding, dressing for the theater, or meeting the President. It was how to be American. His father would shake his head but listen as she read. If Skinner and Sharon attended a dinner party with more eating utensils on the table than he had hands (his father’s complaint about the fancy restaurant where they'd celebrated their 25th wedding anniversary) Skinner missed having his mother to advise him.

Sharon knew the right thing to do, though, so Skinner watched or asked her. They had met the President - several presidents - and Sharon never let him down.

His brother-in-law (whom Skinner thought of privately as 'The Cape Cod Asshole') used to needle him about having children. Skinner had said he and Sharon would start a family as soon as they decided they had too much sleep, money, spare time, and sex. It had been an outright lie, but it shut Asshole up for a decade.

Not long after, while Skinner worked for the Marshals, there had been a girl. A late-night clerk at the hotel. Young, pretty. A trip to Chicago and a night ending with five men in body bags: three mobsters, one U.S. Marshal, and the crooked politician the Marshals had been sent to protect. Skinner used the lavatory at a filling station to wash his friend's blood off his hands, but checking into the pristine hotel afterward with his suit smelling of gunpowder had seemed surreal. He'd thought he would call Sharon from the phone booth in the lobby. He’d wake her up, tell her he was okay before she saw the story in the morning paper. Hear her voice. He went to the desk to get his room key first though, and the pretty clerk asked him if something was wrong. It had just happened - a coward's excuse, he knew. It had nothing to do with his wife - he'd thought that was true. All Skinner ever told Sharon was he’d decided to go to work for Hoover; all she said was she felt relieved. For a few months, he waited for his telephone at the F.B.I. to ring, worried it would be the desk clerk, knocked up. He'd even decided how he wanted to handle the call, but it never came.

Sharon knew; Skinner felt certain of it.

Five months into working for Hoover, Skinner bought a boat, took three weeks off, and he and Sharon sailed up the East Coast to her family's estate. She summered there, wrote in her letters she missed him, and returned home. Life went on.

Life, in general, was good. Skinner could grill a T-bone, rebuild a transmission, still land a mean right hook, tell if a dress would fit his wife by eyeballing it, and - if push came to shove - iron his own shirts. He'd enjoyed being Walter Sergei Skinner for more than fifty years.

He didn't enjoy being Assistant Director Skinner these days.

Skinner put his back to the diner and stared at the stretch of wet asphalt leading through the one-horse town. The claustrophobic phone booth was cold and smelled of old cigarettes, damp wool, and mud. Outside, heavy clouds masked sunrise and a layer of fog lingered over the gravel parking lot.

"West of Middle-of-Nowhere,” Skinner told his wife over the telephone. “Somewhere in northwest Oregon, I think. The airplane had a mechanical problem and we had to land here."

"Are you all right?" Sharon’s voice was muffled by the long distance line.

"I'm fine. We landed fine. A deputy's going to drive us to Portland. We'll get a flight there and be home tonight. You won't even have time to miss me."

"Of course I will. Take care of yourself."

"Sharon-" He glanced over his shoulder, making sure his agents weren't eavesdropping outside the booth. "It's pretty here. Quiet. Lots of forests, mist, sky. We could build a cabin in the woods."

"Would you wear flannel?"

"I would wear flannel every day," he promised. "I'd stop shaving and spend all my time splitting firewood."

"Is there a Macy's near our cabin?"     

"Don't they have a catalog, City Girl?"

"Hum. I'll think about it." It sounded like she took a sip of coffee. "See you tonight?"

"I'm not joking."  

"You've been saying this for months, Walter."

"I've meant it for months. Hoover's had his twenty-five years out of me. Let's get as far away from Washington as we can." 

He heard a long pause, and a lukewarm, "We can talk about it once you get home."

He agreed, said goodbye, and opened the phone booth door so the cold, damp air rushed in. The bell on the diner door jingle-jangled as he entered, and he slid into the booth as their order arrived. His two agents picked up their forks eagerly, but Skinner looked at the platter of greasy eggs, limp toast, and burnt hash browns warily. He glanced up at the blonde waitress.

"Change your mind, sweetie?"

He wondered what about his demeanor and terse black suit screamed 'pat my ass, pinch my cheek, and call me sweetie.' He shook his head. There wasn't anything but a heart attack on the menu. She cracked her gum and sauntered away, giving his two agents something to look at. 

Once the view ended, the agents dug into their food, discussing the Seattle investigation between mouthfuls and gesturing with their forks to make points, emphasizing their own brilliance.

Bored, restless, Skinner poured cream in his coffee and watched it swirl gray.

"Would you like a fresh cup?" another waitress offered as she passed. "That one looks old."

"How can you have old coffee at seven in the morning?" he asked, looking up at her.

"We work at it," she answered with a hint of a smile. She took his cup and returned a moment later with a steaming mug. "Can I get you gentlemen some coffee?" she asked his agents.

They shook their heads without glancing up.

'Can I get you gentlemen some coffee?' Skinner heard the same voice echo in a corner of his mind. 'You look like you came from the office; can I get you gentlemen some coffee?'

Whatever the memory was, he shook it off and answered, "Thanks..." He checked her name tag. "Laura."

"You're welcome." She hesitated a half-second and walked away with his old mug, clutching it with both hands.

Lacking anything better to do, he watched her with the customers at the counter as she refilled cups and delivered and removed plates. She seemed familiar but he couldn't place her. She’d pulled her mousy brown hair into a low ponytail. She wore black-rimmed glasses and no makeup, making her look like a bookish teenager, though she wasn't. Over her blue uniform, she had on a baggy brown cardigan in an attempt to conceal a shapeless figure. She wasn't eye-catching but Skinner got the sense that was the idea. She didn't look like a beautiful woman, but still gave the impression of one.

"Sir? See something on the menu you like, sir?" one of his agents taunted.

Skinner gave him an icy stare. He’d lay money both the agents were dirty, but they were Hoover's pets. Too many of those worked at the FBI these days: too many men looking to make a name for themselves at the expense of innocent people. In the old days, it was mobsters and murderers and truly bad guys. Now, a man could point a finger and say 'communist' or 'homosexual,' form an investigative committee, look patriotic, and let a career unfold.

Without a word, Skinner got up. He picked up his mug and headed to the counter, bypassing their blonde waitress, who decided to make the rounds with the coffee pot.

"How 'bout a warm up?" He straddled one of the revolving metal stools at the end of the counter.

Laura nodded, turned to pick up the pot, and added half an inch of hot coffee to his cup. The little metal cream pitcher was empty. She brought him another, keeping her head down and seeming uncomfortable.

"I'm sorry. I don't mean to bother you, but do I know you?" he asked, feeling awkward.

"No, I don't think so."

"I'm Walter Skinner," he said, offering his hand. She shook his hand hesitantly. "My wife Sharon and I live in Alexandria. I work for the FBI. I’m responsible for Goofus and Goofus over there. What's your last name?"

Her mouth twitched to say one thing, but answered, "Samuels. Laura Samuels. I can't imagine how you'd know me."

"I can't either. You seem familiar, but obviously, I don't. Again, I'm sorry for bothering you."

At seven-thirty, the local deputy sheriff arrived to pick them up. His agents took their checks to the register. Skinner slid off the stool, still watching Laura at the other end of the counter. Why he would know a truck stop waitress in a no-name town was beyond him, but Skinner couldn't shake the feeling he did.

'A truck stop waitress. The others he nailed like a truck stop waitress,' he kept remembering a voice saying. Agent Dales' voice. 'The other descriptions he nailed like a truck stop waitress. Oh, sorry, sweetie. Sorry, sweetie.'

"Mulder," Skinner mumbled. Dales had been apologizing to Fox Mulder's girlfriend. Fox Mulder, the baseball player. Skinner looked at the waitress again, trying to get the overlay of the woman he remembered to fit her.

The waitress saw him watching, and she vanished to the back of the diner.

"What?" his agents responded in unison.

"Nothing. Go with the deputy and I'll catch up."

Skinner waited until they were outside leaning on the hood of the squad car and smoking cigarettes impatiently. The middle-aged deputy sheriff chewed a toothpick, folded his arms, and waited, looking unhappy.

"Miss Scully?" Skinner caught her in the hallway as she came out of the ladies' room. "You're Dana Scully, aren't you?"

"No, I-I don't know what you're talking about."

She tried to step around him. He blocked her path, putting his body between her and the rest of the restaurant. "Mulder brought me the film. It's safe. You're safe. Your daughter's safe."

She took a shaky breath and repeated, "I don't know-"

"Yes, you do. I know who you are. I'm a friend, Miss Scully."

"I don't know you. I don't know who Dana Scully is," she said forcefully. In a louder voice, she added, "I’m not interested, Mister. I'm trying to do my job, and I'd appreciate it if you'd leave me alone."

He backed away, apologizing. Maybe he was mistaken. He saw Mulder's girlfriend once, a year ago. The only attention he’d paid to Dana Scully was to note she was attractive, in love with Mulder, and to answer he preferred white turkey meat to dark.

Skinner paused in the gravel parking lot, looking through the diner window. She still stood in the hall outside the restroom, watching him. One hand rested on her stomach. She wasn't dumpy, he realized; she was expecting a baby. As soon as the woman saw him watching, she dropped her hand and turned away.

"That didn't take long," one of his agents said snidely as he joined beside the deputy's patrol car.

"Go with the deputy. I'll make arrangements for someone to pick me up later."

The deputy scowled. "That someone's gonna be me. What's the sense in making two trips?"

The agents opened their mouths to protest as well, but Skinner cut them off, saying it was an order. 

Inside the diner, across the street, Laura stood behind the counter again, waiting on the truckers. 

Skinner wasn't mistaken. That was Dana Scully.

*~*~*~*

He'd given the case one glance and decided, 'Dales.'

A famous baseball player's young girlfriend vanished, likely with a purse full of cash and jewelry. The love-struck player started making noise about kidnapping and conspiracies, made calls to some high-placed baseball fans, and the file wound up on Walter Skinner's desk. It was a waste of time and effort eager to devour Bureau resources. 

Special Agent Arthur Dales, please report to Assistant Director Skinner's office.

Three months later, police found the young woman near a railroad switching station in DC, nearly dead after a botched abortion. Dales tossed out a few wild theories but no one listened. Announcing he’d seen an alien lobster creature crawling out of a man's mouth a few years back pretty much blew Dales' credibility with the FBI - which was too bad. Danes had been a good agent, once. The FBI closed the case in April and Skinner hadn't given it another thought.

But by December 1954, Dales had a gleam in his eye foretelling inclement weather better than any barometer.

"Fox Mulder, the baseball player?" Skinner had asked in disbelief. He leaned back in his desk chair, resigning himself. Nothing Dales had to say was ever brief. "The one who was shot? Is he even out of the hospital?"

"No, Fox Mulder the tooth fairy," Dales retorted impatiently. "Of course, Fox Mulder the baseball player. I told him we'd drop by tonight. He has a house in Georgetown."

"Sure. Afterward, we'll drop in on Bigfoot and the Loch Ness Monster and see if they want to look at Bureau files. No," he said forcefully. "Go waste someone else's time."

"It'll take ten minutes." Dales looked like a kid about to be turned loose in a toy store with his birthday money. "You'll get to see Mulder's little honey in the flesh."

"Agent Dales, I can't convey to you the lack of interest I have in seeing Fox Mulder's 'little honey.'"

"It will take ten minutes. Twenty," Dales hedged. "Twenty minutes."

It took two hours.    

*~*~*~*

Skinner could walk to the elementary school but he could walk to everything in Bellefleur, Oregon. It was a typical small town: trusting, friendly. People waved. They left car doors unlocked and a key under the doormat. No one gave a second thought to a tall man in a suit and trench coat standing at the edge of the school playground. At ten-thirty, children filed out of the building zipped into a kaleidoscope of winter coats with their mittens pinned to their sleeves so they wouldn't lose them.

In the end of the line, next to the teacher, he spotted Emily Scully.

*~*~*~*

Hoover kept secret files on everyone of importance but had an especially thick one on Fox Mulder the Baseball Player. After spending the evening at Mulder's house, Skinner went back to the Bureau and read through it. He tried to figure out why a man with such a brilliant forensic mind spent more than a decade playing centerfield for the New York Yankees.

The answer was simple: Mulder had turned the FBI down. Mulder declined, married, and dropped out of graduate school. He moved to New York and, in January 1939, become a father. It wasn't hard to do the math. 

Originally Fuchs Wilhelm Mulder, born in 1915 in Boston to Wilhelm Mulder, a German-born American spy, and Teena Fuchs Mulder, a newly-immigrated German Jew. The couple's origins were mysterious, and handwritten notations in the file in German had been partially blacked out. After the First World War and the defeat of the German empire, their son became Fox William Mulder, probably unaware it wasn't his birth name or he was an American citizen by a few months. A daughter who followed was dubbed the very American Samantha Anna Mulder. A bright young man, Fox Mulder did well in school and got admitted early to Oxford University, where he studied criminal psychology.

Skinner rechecked the file months later, and he found no record of Samantha Mulder's disappearance. The Mulder family was prominent in Boston, and a missing little girl made front page news for weeks in 1929. The articles were easily accessible at the public library, but Hoover's files - available to any G-man with the right security clearance - made no mention of her beyond her birth as Fox Mulder's younger sister.

Mulder's file recorded a stellar baseball career interrupted by a stint in Europe during World War II. Skinner knew Mulder's batting statistics but not that he was awarded virtually every cross, star, and heart the Army had. His military record noted repeatedly he was 'a natural-born soldier,' which meant he'd been very good at killing people while not getting killed himself. Skinner found a notation of Mulder’s and another company taking an old munitions factory outside Munich, but the rest of the page was blacked out.

Hoover had blackmail material, though none particularly scandalous. Mulder went to AA meetings. He was divorced, and his ex-wife was a piece of work. His teenage son got into minor trouble. The file noted a few brushes with the law Mulder called in favors to fix, including getting abortion charges dropped against Dana Scully - which all but admitted he fathered the child she'd aborted.

Tucked between the newspaper clippings and the FBI reports - as if left there by mistake – Skinner found a sheet of paper listing about a dozen women's names, dates, and locations. Skinner recognized a few of the names: Mulder's girlfriend, his ex-wife, and a couple Hollywood starlets. Some women had stars beside their names: Marie-Anne Bernadette Dubois, Ada Eloise Muller, Diana Grace Fowley, Kristen Kilar, and Dana Katherine Scully. No key explained what the stars indicated, though. The list wasn't on FBI letterhead, and the FBI format for such information would have been a narrative: 'March 4, 1937. Informant states Mr. John Mobster continues an extra-marital affair with Miss Jane Strumpet at The Sealbach Hotel. Miss Strumpet is a marijuana user with a history of petty theft and forgery.' That could be useful to know, and expensive and time-consuming information to gather. The paper in Mulder's file was practically useless to the FBI, yet must have taken hundreds of hours to compile. 'Marie-Anne Bernadette Dubois* July 15-17, 1944 Caen, (Allied-Occupied) France'. As if someone collected data.

Initially, Skinner couldn't imagine the list constituted every woman Fox Mulder the Baseball Player had been to bed with. Skinner had protected professional athletes; twelve easy women constituted a busy week, not a lifetime. Regardless, Hoover or someone took an unusual interest in one baseball player's fairly banal love life. If government needed to know so badly, Mulder struck Skinner as the kind of man who - if asked privately to name the women he'd been with and told it was for national security - would answer honestly.

The list made no sense. Eventually, Skinner replaced the sheet of paper and moved on.

Skinner learned Mulder wasn't Emily Scully's father, which surprised him. He’d assumed Mulder and Dana Scully were long-term lovers, though she hadn't struck him as the type of woman cocky, newly-wealthy athletes kept as mistresses. But Mulder wasn't a cocky, newly-wealthy athlete. His background was privileged and he'd have been perfectly happy behind a podium at Oxford, buried in academia and wondering why his lectures were so popular with the undergrad girls.

No homosexuality. No drugs. No prostitutes. No psychiatrists. No illegitimate children. Fox Mulder voted, ate red meat, and was more conservative than Skinner had expected. If the list of women and dates was all-inclusive, except for his time in the Army, Mulder had been faithful to his wife. Except for a few months last spring, he was faithful to his girlfriend, too. Lately, Mulder had taken an interest in Nazi medical research and UFOs, but Skinner saw no evidence of subversive activity. Mulder's girlfriend was his biggest political liability.

Skinner stayed in the office late into the night, reading page after page in dumbfounded wonder. Fox Mulder was, in every respect, an extraordinary man. Extraordinary enough someone - likely someone outside the FBI – kept tabs on who he slept with. The blacked-out sections in the report puzzled Skinner, too, as if secrets existed about Mulder above Skinner's security clearance. Above Walter Skinner was an exclusive group: Hoover, Eisenhower, and God.

Intrigued, Skinner pulled the FBI file on Dana Katherine Scully. Not Agent Dales’ X-file; the FBI’s other file. The file Dales’ didn’t have the security clearance to know existed, let alone review.

Skinner found her file empty except for cross-references to files 1949 DKS-ALK and 1954 DKS-FWM. He recognized two sets of the initials; he suspected the years were birth or conception dates. The code was easy to crack but it didn’t correspond to any government agency Skinner knew. Which left Hoover, Eisenhower, God, and whoever oversaw them.

*~*~*~*

For the first time in his career, Skinner flashed his badge to gain access to something he had no authorization to investigate. The school principal was hesitant but made a few calls - including one to the deputy sheriff's office – relented, and summoned Katie Samuels to the office.

"I can't imagine what the FBI wants with her," the woman protested while they waited. "Katie's new here but she's a bright girl. She's never any trouble."

"I'm sure she isn't," Skinner answered. He spotted the hall monitor returning with Emily. "Thank you. This will only take a few minutes."

Skinner walked to meet Emily halfway. He glanced back. The principal watched him with her arms folded and her lips drawn thin in disapproval. 

Everything in the school seemed undersized, as though he'd stumbled into Munchkin Land. Miniature water fountains and desks and bookshelves: an entire world was eye-level with his waist.

He squatted down. Emily regarded him warily. "I'm not supposed to talk to strangers," she informed him, her forehead creasing.

"I'm not a stranger; I'm Mulder's friend. You told me about Bub, and George's Town, and flashing flashlights, and Mulder and your mommy getting married. Remember? I'm Walter. I'm more than six."

She shook her head and looked around nervously.

"Yes, you do. Emily, I need to ask-"

"That's not my name!"

"Shush," he insisted quietly. "I promise I won't tell anyone. Do you remember who I am?"

She bit her lip and looked past his shoulder, at the principal. 

"Do you remember me coming to your house to talk to Mulder? After he was shot? Your mommy was taking care of him."

"My real Daddy shot Mulder. Then Mulder shot him," the little girl said uncertainly.

He blinked. At no point in Mulder's odd narrative of the events leading up to bringing Skinner the autopsy film did Mulder mention shooting anyone. "Did your Daddy die?" he asked. "Emily, when Mulder shot him, did he die?"

"You're finished," a woman's voice said sharply from behind him, sounding out of breath. "Katie, come here," she ordered. Emily hurried past him.

Skinner glanced back and stood. He found himself eye-to-eye - or rather, eye-to-top-of-her-head - with Dana Scully. Or Laura Samuels. Or whoever she was. The principal must have called her after he asked to speak to Emily.

"You have no right to question my daughter," she said icily, making him glad she didn’t hold a weapon. Skinner had a gut feeling Dana Scully was far more dangerous than Fox Mulder.

*~*~*~*

Walter Skinner was one of the Assistant Directors of the FBI, for God's sake. He'd protected and arrested politicians, mobsters, business tycoons, famous actors, and four-star generals. Not much shocked him and not much impressed him, especially not celebrity.

But the eight-year-old boy inside Skinner wanted to jump up and down and squeal, “It's Fox Mulder, oh my God, it's Fox Mulder!” and ask for an autograph. The man was a legend, not because he was an incredible athlete - though he was - but because he made it look effortless. Mulder made baseball a gentleman's game and every American boy sure they could grow up to be him.

Unfortunately, Fox Mulder the Baseball Player seemed unaware he should be exciting. Larger than life. Oblivious he should have a movie soundtrack playing around him at all times. Something by Sousa. 

"Come in," Mulder had invited when Skinner showed up on his doorstep with a stack of unsolved cases. Mulder wore an old gray flannel shirt and blue jeans, no shoes, and held a half-eaten turkey sandwich. “American Bandstand” blared from both the television and the radio. A handsome, dark-haired teenage boy sprawled on the sofa with the telephone cradled against his ear. "Let's go to the kitchen," Mulder suggested, "It's quieter."

"Daddy-O, I can't hear!" the kid snapped in a British accent.

"I wonder why?" Mulder threw a cushion at his son. "We have a guest. At least take your feet off the sofa, Will."

The boy ignored him and told whoever was on the other end of the telephone line, "No, my father's being square. It's nothing. Where are you keen to go?" Will grinned expectantly. "Of course I have wheels, baby."

Mulder leaned close to Skinner and whispered a request. A school of curious fish formed at one end of the aquarium.

As per his instructions, Skinner furrowed his brow. He whipped out his badge, flashed it at Will, and said tersely, "I'm Assistant Director Walter Skinner with the Federal Bureau of Investigation. I'd like to speak with you about plagiarizing a term paper."

"Oh, bloody hell!" Will dropped the telephone and scrambled up. "It wasn't my idea!"

"Do you realize that's a federal crime in the United States, son?"

"I didn't plagiarize anything," Will insisted. "The girl who did the assignment for me plagiarized."

Behind Skinner, Mulder doubled over laughing with one hand clutching his chest.

His son's mouth hung open. Realizing he'd been tricked, he frowned angrily. "You're not funny! Neither of you!" Will hurled the cushion at his father. "You scared the hell out of me! Bloody hell - it's not funny, Daddy-O!"

"Neither is the little line on your report card changing a D to a B," Mulder said, "That's forgery, right Mr. Skinner?"

Skinner nodded helpfully.

"Is that even a real badge? He’s probably not even with the FBI. I hate you both!" the boy informed them, and stalked off.

"You're good," Mulder told Skinner as they pushed through the kitchen door to the relative silence there. "Usually the Wonder Boy has to know someone for several minutes before he hates them."

"Is it always this exciting around here?" Skinner asked as he opened his briefcase. He waited for the pomp and circumstance, but saw a regular guy - with sock feet, an old shirt, messy hair, a rebellious teenage son, and breadcrumbs on his counter - doing regular guy things. With a Porsche parked out in the driveway costing more than Skinner made in three years. A Yankees cap hung beside the kitchen phone. Skinner had the urge to touch it to see how it felt. He'd sniff it, but that would make him a pervert.

Mulder shrugged his good shoulder. "Dana and Emily will be back in an hour," he said. "They went to the grocery store."

Skinner waited for 'and we're flying to Paris for champagne cocktails.'

"We're having meatloaf," Mulder added, and nodded enthusiastically. 

*~*~*~* 

"Answer me. Does Mulder know where you are?" Skinner followed Dana Scully across the schoolyard and down the sidewalk. Inside the five-and-dime store, customers stopped browsing to watch. This was the dramatic highlight of the winter season in Bellefleur. "He doesn't, does he?"

She ignored him and kept waddling as fast as she could, clutching her daughter's hand. Emily looked back nervously and stumbled as she tried to keep up.

"Does Mulder even know about the baby?"

She whirled around, five feet, two inches of ferociousness. "Leave us alone!"

"Or is it not his baby?" That seemed unlikely, but she wore a wedding band. Perhaps she'd married someone else - a man who let her wait tables in a diner while she was expecting. Nice people found it embarrassing to have a wife working at all, let alone at a diner with a baby on the way. "Is that it?"

"How dare you!" she exploded, making him take a step backward on the snowy sidewalk. "Who do you think you are?"

"I told you. I'm a friend."

"You're not our friend. If you were, you'd leave us alone!"

She turned away again and pulled Emily after her. Emily stumbled, and her mother bent to pick her up. Dana started to stand but gasped and put her daughter down quickly. She put one hand on her belly and awkwardly fell forward onto her hands and knees with her face contorted in pain.

*~*~*~*

Mulder had been recovering from nearly lethal gunshot wounds. His left hand was clumsy. He’d wince if he coughed or laughed. He got tired. Skinner saw Mulder pushing himself to finish reading a file or creating a description of a suspect.

If Skinner had Fox Mulder’s injuries and bank account, he’d have quit the FBI and recuperated in Acapulco.

"Why are you doing this?" Skinner asked one afternoon after hearing Mulder lie to his girlfriend over the phone. Dana called from school, and Mulder assured her he was resting, had taken his pain pill, and eaten the lunch she left. Skinner had been in Mulder’s living room for over an hour, and Mulder had done none of those things. "I'm glad you are. This is groundbreaking forensic science, but-"

The 'but' was 'the FBI won’t give an ex-baseball player credit for solving their cases.' Skinner paid Mulder the Bureau's consulting fee, which Mulder probably used to have someone put a new wax job on the Porsche. It wasn't about money or glory, and Mulder's dissertation involved using solved cases, not being the one doing the solving.

"I-I had a sister." Mulder answered after a long pause and two sips of tea. "We were in the woods behind my parents' summer house, I turned my back, and she vanished. They never found her body. And they never caught whoever took her."

"How old was she?"

"Nine." Mulder cleared his throat and picked up the file again. He sifted through the stark crime scene photos of a half-dozen female victims. "I was thirteen."

"I'm sorry," Skinner said uncomfortably, and meant it.

Instead of giving some pat answer, Mulder leaned forward. He put three crime scene photographs in front of Skinner and pointed out an obscure detail present in all three. Mulder speculated on the killer's MO and acted like his sister had never been mentioned. So Skinner had let him.

*~*~*~*

Just as Skinner felt too large for the Bellefleur Elementary School, Emily seemed too small for the chairs in the hospital hallway. She sat alone. Her feet swung far above the floor, encased in white anklets and little black and white saddle shoes. She wore a plaid wool jumper, and she arranged the pleated skirt neatly so the plaid pattern lined up.

"Your mommy's going to be fine," Skinner said awkwardly, sitting on the chair beside her. "Do you want something to drink? Coffee?  No," he amended, "Hot chocolate. Would you like some hot chocolate?"

She shook her head without looking up.

"Are you hungry?"

Another shake of her head.

"Emily- Katie, your mommy's fine. The doctors are taking good care of her. She had, uh, a bellyache."

Emily looked up at him like she thought he was stupid. "My mommy's going to have a baby. If a mommy and a daddy love each other, from the mommy's tiny egg and the daddy's sperm - it grows into a baby. It's growing in her womb."

"Oh," he said, embarrassed. "Yes, that's right."

Skinner took off his eyeglasses. He wiped them with his handkerchief as he wondered what the hell he was doing. So Mulder - or someone - got his girlfriend pregnant. Again. So, for whatever reason, they parted ways. Again. So Dana wanted to live in Nowhere, Oregon under an assumed name and either marry some loser or pretend she was married. Skinner could be halfway back to D.C., but he sat in a hospital west of Middle-of-Nowhere, interfering with something, unless a crime had been committed, not his business in the first place.

"Is Mulder going to come?" Emily watched the doctor enter her mother's room at the end of the hall.

"Do you think I should call him?"

She shrugged. "He came last time. When Mommy got sick."

"Mulder came to the hospital when your mommy was sick? What happened?"

"They had a fight."

"Who had a fight? Your mommy and Mulder?"

"No, Mulder and Uncle Bill. It was scary. The police made Mulder leave in their car. We weren't supposed to talk to Mulder. But he called Grammy's house one time while Mommy was sleeping." Emily leaned forward, taking him into her confidence. "I talked to him. Mommy doesn't know."

"Oh."

"Grammy said never to tell Mommy, and to never do it again. She said it was Mulder's fault Mommy was sick."

"Oh."

"Bubby says a womb is an elephant fart," Emily added.

"Oh."

*~*~*~*

Skinner had known he was in trouble when they didn't invite him to sit. The men around the conference table let him stand while they finished their cigarettes, as if he were a junior agent. Hoover stayed behind his desk, focused on something outside his office window, and never said a word.

"We have a question about one of your expenditures," the Deputy Director informed him, leafing through a sheaf of papers.

Skinner waited.

"George Hale," he said casually. "The Bureau's contracting with him as a forensic expert?"

Skinner waited. He filed all the paperwork, went through all the channels, and made no attempt to hide who George Hale was. It was a name to go on the reports. Anyone in the FBI could easily crosscheck the files.

"George Hale died in 1938, Assistant Director."

"Yes, he did. It's an alias for Fox Mulder, the baseball player. Surely you recall, sir. You signed off on his background check."

The Deputy Director's cheekbones broadened as he gritted his teeth. "You will cease contact with Mr. Mulder. I will instruct him to return all Bureau materials immediately, and you will refrain from contacting him in the future for any reason. If he contacts you, you will refer him to me."

Skinner put his hands on his hips is disbelief. "May I ask why?"

"It's a matter of national security," another man answered, smoking his cigarette languidly.

"National security? Fox Mulder? If you've read his file, you know the FBI tried to hire him once. After he's a veteran and a national icon, he's a risk to security?" The answer was a puff of smoke from the old man at the far end of the table. "How is he possibly a threat to national security?"

"He's a homosexual," came a response. A pile of glossy photographs slid across the table.

Skinner picked it up the top one and examined it for a few seconds. It was unquestionably Mulder, bare-chested - before he was shot - spooned up in bed to a smaller figure. The person lying in front of him was covered with a sheet from the waist down, and Mulder's arms were around the chest, but the face belonged to a young man. The arms and shoulders, however, looked decidedly feminine.

"His girlfriend wears a little gold cross around her neck." Skinner tossed the photograph back and tapped the base of his throat. "Whoever glued this together, it would be more convincing if he'd take it out of the photograph."

"Then he's a pedophile."

Skinner tilted his head, realizing how this game was played. "I suppose you have incriminating photos of him reading a bedtime story to his son? Why are you doing this? What has he done, aside from help solve some of our toughest cases?"

"Would you like to see his communist party membership card?"

"No, I'd like some answers," he shot back. "I know this man. He's about as far from a security risk as you can get."

"With all due respect, Assistant Director Skinner, if you know him so well, we should look closer at some of your associations."

"Are you threatening me?"

"Let's say we're cautioning you," the smoking man responded.

*~*~*~*

Skinner had nieces and nephews, but his primary experience with small children was having been one himself. He and Sharon had wanted a family and applied themselves wholeheartedly to that end. If effort counted, they should have a dozen children. Months, years, and a decade slipped past. They talked with a doctor, who scratched his head and told them to keep trying; all the plumbing seemed in working order. Eventually, they grew tired of focusing on the plumbing and decided to enjoy the facilities, leaving post-World War II America to boom without them. People stopped asking, and Skinner rarely gave it any thought these days.

If he and Sharon had a baby when they first married - or even if the hotel clerk had gotten in trouble – the baby would be Dana Scully's age. They might be grandparents. Men his age had children with a younger wife, but he could also have a granddaughter Emily Scully's age.

It seemed absurd, but it made Skinner feel far too old for this kind of shenanigans.

Emily accepted a cup of hot chocolate from the vending machine, but wrinkled her nose at the layer of chocolate sludge at the bottom and drank barely half. The nurses offered cookies; she shook her head. She sat quietly, arranging her pleats or watching her feet, and fell asleep with her head on one chair and her backside on another. Skinner covered her with his coat, not sure what else to do. Mulder never shared the details of the girl's illness but Skinner knew it was serious. Possibly terminal. He didn't know if she should have medicine or treatment or if he should call someone. He asked Emily. She mumbled her name was Katie and he should ask Mommy.

"Sir?" the doctor said, coming toward them. 

Skinner left Emily and went to talk to the doctor privately, in case the news was bad, but Emily woke and trailed down the corridor after him. To his surprise, she reached for his hand. He glanced down at her, wondering how so much composure fit into such a small package.

"Mrs. Scully is rundown. We're giving her fluids. We'll monitor her overnight, and she can go home in the morning. She needs to be resting and eating more, though. I'm worried she's under-weight. Do you know how much she weighed before she was expecting?"

"One hundred and fifteen pounds," Skinner answered, remembering from the missing persons report.

"I want her up to one-thirty by the time she comes to term. Don't worry; the weight comes off once the baby comes. Milkshakes, deviled eggs, extra cream in her coffee," the young doctor listed. "A glass or two of wine would help her sleep, since she seems so restless. No relations," he added obliquely. "Not forever - just until she's healthier. A few weeks. Has she ever-" The doctor stopped, glanced at Emily, and asked, "Is there somewhere the girl can wait?"

"No."

The doctor fiddled with his pen. "There's scarring, the kind we see after a complicated miscarriage. When the woman can't or won't get to a hospital. Was that something you were aware of?"

"Yes," Skinner answered curtly. For reasons beyond him - and as if he had a horse in this race - he added, "It was a long time ago."

The doctor nodded, appeased. "She needs to take it easy. Stay off her feet. She's made it this far along. Do what I've recommended, say your prayers, and with luck, your wife and baby should be fine."

"She's not-" But he nodded. "I'm glad."

"She's resting, but you can see her," the doctor said. He held the door to Dana's room open for them. "For a moment."

She lay propped up on pillows with her head tilted to one side as she slept. Under the sheet, her belly was more obvious. Her glasses were gone, as was the brown wig. Her face seemed thinner, more shadowed and hunted. Her auburn hair fell in waves across the pillow, and he saw a series of ugly purple marks on her arm where someone tried unsuccessfully to put an IV in before finding a vein in the back of her hand. A small gold cross hung from her necklace, with an old, filigree engagement ring beside it. Even from a distance, the diamond looked impressive.

He hesitated at the door. Emily went to her mother and stood beside the bed uncertainly for a moment. Dana opened her eyes groggily as Emily sat, making the mattress dip. "Mommy?" she said apprehensively, looking at the IV.

"Are you all right, honey?" Dana turned her head, seeming to struggle to focus on her daughter's face.

In response, Emily lay down beside her mother, resting her head on her shoulder. Dana put one arm around her. She stroked her hair and put her other hand on her belly. She bit her lip, looking at the bare hospital walls as though trying to remember what had happened or where she was.

"She's exhausted," Skinner said from the doorway. "It's after ten o'clock at night, but I wasn't sure where to take her. Is there someone who can keep her tonight?"

"No, there's-" She stopped. "There's-" Dana shook her head slowly, and looked around the room again. Her gaze stopped on him, and she blinked as she tried to place who he was.

"Assistant Director Walter Skinner with the F.B.I. We met last fall at Fox Mulder's home in Georgetown."

She inhaled and started to sit up.

"Don't. You're supposed to rest. I'm here to help. Emily's fine. The baby's fine, but the doctor wants you to rest. Do you want me to call Mulder?"

"He said he should," Emily whispered to her mother, and looked expectantly at the phone on the hospital nightstand.

Dana nodded slowly, but it seemed to be an 'I understand' rather than a 'yes, call Mulder' nod. "Could you give us a minute, Mr. Skinner?"

"Of course," he answered. He backed out of the room and closed the door.

Skinner leaned against the smooth wall beside her door and folded his arms. He needed to call Sharon again. He needed to check in with the Bureau. His stomach growled, reminding him he needed more sustenance than hospital vending machine coffee.

A nurse approached with her shoes squeaking against the floor. "Is Mrs. Scully all right?" she asked, pausing, clipboard in hand.

"She's fine. She wanted some privacy."

"Of course, Mr. Scully," the nurse responded, smiling sweetly before she moved on.

Mr. Scully, he mouthed in tired bemusement. The admitting nurse got what he said turned around and assumed he was Mr. Dana Scully - Dana being his first name, not hers. It didn't seem worth correcting them. The whole day had taken on a surreal tone, and that capped it.

He rested the back of his head against the cool, solid wall, but turned as the door opened. Dana emerged dressed in her waitress uniform and shrugging her winter coat over it. Her auburn hair was pulled back in a ponytail. She pressed a Kleenex over the place on her hand where she’d removed the IV. Emily held onto her mother's skirt, looking both ways to make sure the coast was clear.

"Where are you going Miss Scully?" he asked in disbelief. "You're supposed to be resting."

She responded by walking calmly past him, toward the elevator.

"Miss Scully?" Skinner called, following her. "Where are you going?"

Emily glanced back at him and up at her mother.

"Miss Scully?" he repeated, hands on his hips, as she waited for the elevator. Dana stared straight ahead, and once the doors opened, stepped inside. She turned and pushed a button. Beside her, Emily waved bye-bye as the doors closed.

*~*~*~*

Sharon teased Skinner at heart, he was an overgrown hall monitor with a badge and a big gun. He told her he went to grammar school in a one-room schoolhouse; they didn't have hall monitors - much to his disappointment. He liked order, though: having a clear distinction between right and wrong, duty and dishonor. Follow the rules, protect the public. Still, he knew the world wasn't black and white, but shades of gray. The older he became and the farther he rose in the FBI, the more the moral high ground became a slippery slope. It got hard to tell the heroes from the villains, but he still tried, damn it.

Yes, Agent Dales was out of line in showing Bureau files to a civilian, but Jesus Christ - it was Agent Dales. Bigger fish to fry. Yes, Skinner involved Mulder in cases before Mulder had security clearance, but the background check was a formality. Fox Mulder was a good guy. Not an angel, but on the right side. He wasn't a threat to democracy. Or heterosexuality.

The Deputy Director instructed Mulder to return all Bureau materials, which Mulder had. Dales got suspended for two weeks without pay and returned to his cubbyhole to mutter about aliens and conspiracies.

The morning after Skinner’s conversation with the Deputy Director and the smoking man, Skinner unlocked his desk drawer to find dog-eared paperback novel with two men embracing on the cover. To reinforce the point, a communist party card bearing his name served as a bookmark. It didn't matter he wasn't a communist or the closest he came to being a homosexual was having a second cousin who liked show tunes. Skinner was if They said he was.

He began making noises to Sharon about leaving the FBI.

The Mad Bomber Case made its way to his desk. The bombings plagued New York for more than a decade but were rapidly escalating. Previously, the bomber targeted Consolidated Edison office buildings, but by spring 1954, he began striking libraries, subway stations, stores, and theaters. The bomber wrote to the police, taunting them. In each instance, the area was evacuated and the bomb found, but the entire city feared going out. With each bomb, they got less warning. An hour's notice before a bomb would have exploded in Grand Central Terminal had been the final straw for Skinner. He'd left his agents to scratch their heads, and gone to The Plaza Hotel.

After several un-returned messages, a concierge mentioned they expected Mr. Mulder late that afternoon. Another message went unreturned. Skinner ambushed Mulder and expected Mulder to tell him to kiss his ass, but Mulder hadn't. He told Skinner to watch Emily and, in five minutes, went through the case like he read the bomber's mind. Mulder barely seemed to be paying attention. The hotel buzzed about Fox Mulder and Dana Scully getting married. Emily was chattered, then complained about her stomach, yet Mulder's description of the bomber was dead on.

The FBI arrested George Metesky a month later. He was exactly the man Mulder described.

Skinner began to suspect the FBI's true objection to Mulder. Not that Mulder couldn't help catch the bad guys, but Mulder could. Some bad guys, the FBI didn't want caught.

"Mr. Skinner," he'd heard the smoking man said from behind him, in The Plaza’s lobby. "You're a long way from home." A chill ran down his spine at the unspoken message. 'And your wife's home alone.'

Skinner might have appeared cool on the outside, but inside, the moral mechanisms of his conscience jammed and grated like an over-wound watch. Mulder looked confused and hurt at Skinner's sudden formality. Skinner stammered about Dana and Emily being special before the polished doors closed and the upholstered elevator carried Mulder and Emily upward, to a world above Skinner’s pay grade. Skinner turned, but the smoking man was gone.

Skinner couldn’t get a fast enough flight out of New York, so he borrowed a car and drove back to D.C., ninety miles per hour all night. He found Sharon asleep in their bed with her reading glasses sliding down her nose and her book open in her hand. He stripped nude and curled up behind her, holding her tightly in the darkness.

Mulder had been correct about something else. At the end of the day, she was what made it all worthwhile.

*~*~*~*

Skinner passed the point of common sense without a backward glance and approached the sign for Point of Ludicrous. Even if Fox Mulder killed Emily's 'real Daddy,' Skinner had no jurisdiction. He wasn't Agent Dales; he didn't investigate any crime interesting him. There was protocol. Procedure. It was a local matter, not an FBI investigation.

"Open up or I'll come back with a warrant," Skinner told the door. She was home; light seeped out beneath the door. Skinner doubted he could get a warrant, but she didn't know that.

Dana Scully opened the door, positioning most of her body behind it. The apartment sat atop a bakery, a block off the main road through Bellefleur. A patrol car drove past, its headlights temporarily illuminating the dark street.

"I need to clear something up," Skinner assured her. "That's all. I got your address from the diner. I told you, I'm a friend."

Her old eyes were out of place on her young face. She still wore her waitress uniform but had her hair twisted into a hurried knot on top of her head. "I don't understand what I've done," she said evenly. "Why are you bothering us?"

"I want to talk to you. Please, may I come in?"

Dana looked at him, and over her shoulder. Nice girls didn't invite men into their apartments at night. It wasn't proper, whatever the circumstances.

"Or we could go get a cup of coffee. Or something to eat." The doctor wanted her to eat. "I need to talk to you."

"About what?"

"About Mulder."

"Mommy?" Emily emerged from the back of the apartment. She still wore her school clothes, though it had to be hours past a child's bedtime.

"Do you have shoes on?" Dana asked without looking, and Emily answered she did. "Put your coat on. Please wait a minute, Mr. Skinner," she requested, starting to close the door.

Skinner put his hand on it, keeping it open. She'd managed to vanish from the hospital lobby and the parking lot. She'd been absent from the Greyhound bus station and the Amtrak depot. The town had no taxis, so he had no idea how she got back to Bellefleur, but she did. He wouldn’t give her the opportunity to shimmy out the back window of her apartment and disappear again.

Dana reached for her coat and wrapped it around her shoulders. She took her house key and her daughter's hand. She instructed him to follow her down the old wooden steps and around to the back door of the closed bakery. Shivering, she unlocked a steel door. Skinner followed her through the kitchen to small booth near the front window. The glass display cases were lit, casting an eerie glow behind the register. The air smelled of yeast and sugary icing, and the tiled table felt cool under his fingertips.

Emily slid into the booth and laid her head on the table tiredly.

"If I get you a muffin, will you eat it?" Dana asked. "What about a doughnut?"

Emily nodded, and Dana retrieved one from the case, leaving a nickel beside the register. She put the stale doughnut on a napkin in front of her daughter, where it sat uneaten. Emily put her head on the table again and closed her eyes.

"Please understand I'm not trying to pry into your private life," Skinner assured her awkwardly. "Whatever happened between you and Fox Mulder is your business. My concern is this: I know an attempt was made on his life last year. It was my understanding the man who shot him was never identified. But today, Emily told me her 'real Daddy' shot Mulder, and Mulder had shot him. That's what concerns me. If a crime has been committed. Or if Mulder's shooter can be identified."

"If you think a crime's been committed, why not call the police?"

"Because I'm not sure one has. Or the circumstances involved. I have no proof Mulder shot anyone. There's no body and no missing person's report. The only evidence I have is the word of little girl."

Dana put her hand on her daughter's back, making sure she was asleep. "I don't know who her father is," she said quietly. "Neither does she. There is no 'real Daddy.'"

"You didn't quite answer me, ma'am."

She still hadn't admitted to being Dana Scully or to knowing Mulder. And Skinner didn't understand why this woman had an empty FBI file referring him to another file so top-secret he didn't know of its existence. He did some poking around a few months ago, and she wasn't a spy or secret agent. Dana Scully didn't travel overseas or consort with anyone questionable. She paid her taxes, went to Mass every week, and was held in high regard by the doctors at the hospital and by her professors - which said something for a young woman in medical school. She was a bright, ambitious young Army nurse who had a child out of wedlock. Aside from that and her relationship with Mulder, nothing about her life or her family seemed questionable - or even unusual.

Watching Dana with Emily, Skinner found it out of character for her to have aborted Mulder's child or to conceal this one from him. Or, even if Mulder wasn't interested in this baby, Skinner couldn't see Mulder refusing to support it. The story - a tempestuous romance between a young woman with questionable morals and a wealthy ball player who had his fun and moved on - didn't ring true. It reminded him of a play with poorly cast leads: still an interesting story, but he didn't buy the actors in their roles.

He paused to adjust his glasses, trying to remember all of Dales' nonsensical theories about aliens and experiments and Dana Scully. Skinner hadn't been listening; Dales had so many nonsensical theories they all blended together.

This was the kind of case Skinner would like Fox Mulder's opinion on.

"You're afraid of something," Skinner said, trying to sound trustworthy. "I understand, and I will do everything in my power to protect you and your daughter. And your baby. But I need you to be honest with me. I need to know what's happening. I need to know about the film Mulder brought me. I need to know where he got it. Or, or where you got it," he added, considering the possibility for the first time.

She looked at him with her eyes giving away nothing.

"I can keep you safe, Miss Scully."

The patrol car rolled past the bakery again. She turned her head, watching it with a hand on her belly.

"Do you think so?" she asked evenly, and Skinner swallowed.

Dana slid put of the booth, stood awkwardly, and jostled Emily's shoulder to wake her.

"We aren't finished here," he said in his stern voice.

"I think we are," she answered, managing not to cower in fear.

Emily mumbled for her mother to carry her.

"I can't, honey. Mommy can't. You have to walk." 

"Can't; hurts," Emily muttered. She raised her head sleepily. Two dark red streams trickled from her nose. The trickle become heavier until blood flowed over her mouth and chin.

"Uh-oh." Dana grabbed a paper napkin and pinched her daughter's nose shut. "Tilt your head back."

Emily complied. Not knowing what else to do, Skinner retrieved more napkins. "Is she all right?"

Dana stroked Emily's hair. "Fine. Just sprung a leak, right?" she said gently.

He heard choking sounds. Emily leaned forward, struggling to breathe. She coughed, spraying crimson blood everywhere. She looked to her mother and she started to cry.

"Shush, shush, shush. It’s a nosebleed. A leak. No shots. No more doctors," Dana assured her, and moped up the mess.

"I wan' Mul'er," Emily pleaded nasally. "I wan' my real 'tory. I wan' go home."

"We can't go home. It's not safe." Dana squatted in front of the girl. Dana tried to wipe off the blood, but mostly smeared it. 

Skinner offered another little paper napkin. Remembering the handkerchief in his pocket, he passed it to Dana as well.

"It's stopping. It's stopping," Dana assured Emily, and gave her the clean handkerchief to hold under her nose. "All over. Let's put some ice on it, make it feel better."

She leaned forward to pick up her daughter, but Skinner stopped her. He held out his hands. Dana nodded, so he picked up Emily and followed her mother through the dark bakery and up the frozen stairs to her apartment.

The interior wasn't what he expected. An unwed mother on a waitress's salary - he expected poverty, but saw no sign of it. The apartment looked sparse but comfortable. The radiator kept the rooms warmer than he found comfortable, and warmer than most poor families could afford during the Oregon winter. He noted little amenities: a new toaster, a blender, a radio, and television set. Emily's thick coat and well-made saddle shoes. A basket of oranges in the kitchen in December. Dana Scully afforded the things she wanted, and she wasn't doing it waiting tables in a truck stop.

Maybe Mulder wrote her a big check and told her to get out of town when he found out about the baby – which didn't sound like Mulder. Or she left him – which didn't sound like Dana Scully. Or explain her living on the other side of the country under an assumed name. Or wearing a cheap wedding band on her finger and an expensive engagement ring on her necklace. Or why Mulder hadn’t moved Heaven and Earth to find Dana, her daughter, and his baby. No matter how Skinner did the math, it didn't add up.

His eyes stopped on an open, half-filled suitcase on the bed at the end of the hall. Dana had been packing when he knocked on the door.

"Put her on the sofa," Dana requested, heading for the kitchen. Skinner set Emily down. He heard the freezer door open and close. Water ran, a cabinet door banged, and metal pots clanged. "Ice," Dana said, returning. She passed a cube-filled dishtowel to him. "A washcloth. And a bowl."

"What's the bowl for?" he said as Emily leaned forward, vomiting blood into the metal mixing bowel. She must have swallowed it as she choked. What had been a little going down looked like a lot coming back up. "Is she all right?" he asked.

"Fine." Dana set the bowl aside and wiped her daughter's face with a wet washcloth. "We're fine. Aren't we?" she added, like she tried to convince herself as well.

Emily nodded unconvincingly. Her lower lip trembled.

Dana wiped away the last smears of blood and reached for the ice pack. "It's all over. Close your eyes, honey."

"I wanna go home," Emily pleaded. "I want Mulder and Will."

"Honey, we can't."

"Why can't you?" Skinner asked softly. He spoke the way he reasoned with Sharon if she got upset with herself over burning toast or forgetting to fix a button on his shirt. "Why can't she call him? It's a telephone call."

"You aren't helping," Dana hissed through her teeth, and he stepped back. "We can't call him, honey. You know why. It's too dangerous. Dangerous for us and dangerous for them."

"Grammy?"

"No, we can't call Grammy, either."

Emily's face crumpled, and she started to cry tiredly. Dana sat on the sofa beside her. She put her arms around her daughter. 

Skinner reached for the telephone on the end table. He dialed the FBI switchboard. "This is AD Skinner. I need a secure line out," he told the operator, and handed the receiver to Dana. "Tell her to put you through to whoever you like."

She took the receiver, staring at it.

"It's secure," he assured her. "No one's listening. The call will look like it originated from the FBI in Washington."

Emily stopped crying and watched expectantly.

Dana put the receiver to her ear and said shakily. "New York City, please. The Plaza Hotel." There was a paused, and Dana nodded again. "Fox Mulder, please." She bit her lip. She held the phone with one hand and rubbed Emily's back with her other as she listened. "William Mulder?" Another pause. "No, no message. Thank you," she said softly. She handed the receiver back to Skinner.

"They're not there?"

She shook her head. Emily curled into a ball again, sobbing miserably and mumbling about doctors.

"Try the house in Georgetown."

Dana shook her head again.

"I can locate him. Give me ten minutes." Skinner didn’t exaggerate. Fox Mulder signed for one more season with the Yankees, and the sports world buzzed. His photo was everywhere - in the papers, in magazine ads. At charity galas in New York and opening a new hospital wing in Boston. His voice advertised Cadillac automobiles and Morley cigarettes on the radio. Mulder couldn’t have hidden if he’d tried – and he didn’t seem to be trying. In fact, for a famous baseball player, Mulder had been reclusive until the last few months. Three calls. Between the society editor at The New York Times, the manager at The Plaza, and Mulder’s press agent, Skinner could have a G-man put a telephone in Mulder’s hand within ten minutes.

Skinner started to dial the FBI switchboard again. Dana put her hand on his, stopping him.

"I know Mulder,” Skinner insisted. “I know the kind of man he is. Whatever has happened, as soon as he knows about this baby, he'll be here within hours," he assured her. "If you need him, he'll be here. Don't you know he loves you?"

Dana looked at her tearful daughter, at the phone, and down at her belly. She bit her lower lip. As Skinner watched, trying to figure out what else to say or do, Dana covered her face with her hand and began to cry silently.

*~*~*~*

Skinner rose early, but only in self-defense. If he arrived at the office by seven, he might wade through the meetings and paperwork to be home by seven at night. That meant getting up around five, and Sharon long since stopped making him breakfast. On the rare weekends Skinner was home, he got up at eight and she cooked. Weekdays, Sharon set out English muffins or coffee cake before she went to bed.

Skinner wrapped his fingers around the top of the doorjamb and stretched.  The sun wasn't up yet, and cool dew covered the yard. Alexandria remained silent. He scratched his chest and yawned, getting ready to meet a long day. Every other house on the street had a newspaper on the porch, but Skinner’s paper waited smugly in the center of the wet front lawn. Every damn morning.

It's a conspiracy, Skinner told himself. He squished barefooted across the grass, getting the hems of his pajama bottoms wet.

Across the street, a car door opened. Skinner looked up. Nothing had happened since the smoking man caught him talking to Mulder at The Plaza, but he imagined he felt it coming like an approaching storm.

Fox Mulder emerged hurriedly from a new, black Chrysler. Mulder carried a small metal canister and a pistol. Mulder tucked the pistol into the waistband of his trousers. William sat in the driver's seat. The boy watched nervously as his father approached the house. 

"Mulder?" Skinner managed.

"I'm sorry. I was afraid to go to your office," Mulder said quickly.

Skinner didn't bother to ask how Mulder discovered his home address. "Is something wrong? Has something happened?"

"I need your help. Will you help us?" He held a film canister.

"Of course. Of course I will. Come inside."

Mulder turned back to the car. He nodded curtly; his son nodded back. Mulder had a dangerous air about him, like a lion when his pride was threatened or a soldier if the enemy struck too close to home.

Feeling naked in his T-shirt and pajama bottoms, Skinner picked up his own handgun from the table beside the front door. He carried it to the kitchen in case the bad guys lurked in the pantry.

"I need you to take this to the smoking man." Mulder handed Skinner the canister of film and sounded like he'd rehearsed his words. "Tell him I want to make a deal. Tell him there are copies, and if anything happens to Dana or Emily Scully, or to Will, or me, this film will play on the evening news. Can you do that? Do you know how to contact him?"

"I have a pretty good idea. Mulder, slow down and tell me what's happened. What is this? Where did you get it?"

"It doesn't matter. Tell him. If anything happens to them. Or us." He gestured to the car outside. "Anything. You'll do that?"

"Yes."

"Thank you," Mulder responded. He turned toward the front door. "Will and I will be away for a few days. A few weeks, maybe. I'll call you."

"If you think you're in danger, I can take you into protective custody. Let me get dressed and-"

"Last year, They tried to kill me. Yesterday morning, They pointed a gun at my son's head. My phone's tapped. My friend's phones are tapped. Someone searched my apartment at The Plaza, looking for that film. Forgive me, but you can't even come close to keeping us safe, Assistant Director. Please just make the deal."

"Mulder," Skinner called after Mulder, following him. "These men are the major league. What is this film you think They're going to make a deal?"

"It's Pandora's box," Mulder answered and repeated, "Thank you," as he walked out.

Skinner stayed at his heels. "What about Dana and Emily? You said you and your son would be away. What about Dana and Emily Scully? Where are they? Are they safe?"

Mulder hesitated. “I-I don't know."

"You don't know?" Skinner talked to the back of Mulder's head as Mulder jogged across the street. Mulder got in the passenger side. Will started the engine and pulled away from the curb.

Skinner stared at the car as it drove away, and at the film canister. It gave no clue as to what might be inside except the label: 'Roswell, New Mexico 1947: Project Blue Book'.

Still barefooted, Skinner trudged to the basement and reached up to turn on the bare light bulb. It took him a few minutes to find their old projector. He opened the canister and threaded the film through the machine. He found an extension cord, plugged the projector in, pointed it at a dark, bare wall, and flipped the switch.

He leaned on his workbench, squinting uncertainly as he watched doctors examine a creature on a table, seeming to be conducting an autopsy. Halfway through, Skinner stopped and rewound the film, watching it again. He knew what it looked like he saw, and what he couldn't possibly see, and his mind struggled with all the possibilities between the two extremes.

He knew there was a base near Roswell, New Mexico, and Project Blue Book was a top-secret military aircraft project based in the Nevada desert. In 1947, the Air Force claimed to retrieve a UFO near Roswell but amended that, saying they found a weather balloon. Either the government lied and it had been a UFO – and Skinner watched a film of an alien being autopsied - or it was a hoax created by the government to cover up something larger. Either way, Mulder was right. The grainy, flickering film stock was Pandora's box.

*~*~*~* 

Skinner remembered Dana offering him a bottle of Aspirin and a glass of water.

She'd said her head ached and gone to the medicine cabinet in the bathroom. As he watched, she poured two white tablets from the bottle and swallowed them. Dana turned toward him and raised the open bottle questioningly. Skinner, temples throbbing but not a fool, nodded. She shook two more identical pills out of the Aspirin bottle and onto his hand. The glass of water came directly from the tap and hadn't tasted odd or metallic.

But he didn't remember falling asleep. He carried Emily to bed for Dana, and returned to the living room. She agreed to pack her things and let him take her and the girl into protective custody - at least temporarily, until he could figure out what was happening. Until he could talk with Mulder in the morning and straighten everything out. The next thing Skinner remembered was waking at dawn, sprawled on an armchair in her apartment. The taste in his mouth indicated he'd been snoring, and his neck felt stiff on one side.

Skinner looked around, expecting Dana to be nearby. He didn’t see her. The radio played the local news, the radiator rumbled its warm belly, and the basket of oranges still sat on the kitchen counter. He pushed up from the chair and looked around the apartment. Emily's bed was vacant, and the blanket and pillow gone. The crayon drawings and worksheets that had hung on the refrigerator were gone as well. Dana's waitress uniforms still hung in the wardrobe, pressed and ready to be worn. Her robe hung on the back of the bathroom door, but the suitcase was gone from the bed. She left a pair of her shoes and Emily's toys, but cleared out a shelf of the medicine cabinet. A few dresser drawers were also empty, but he couldn't tell what had been in them. On a little wooden rack in the bathroom – the kind Sharon used to hang her stockings and brassieres and lacy underthings after handwashing them in the sink – Skinner found the handkerchief he’d given Dana the previous night. The white fabric was damp but no longer stained with Emily’s blood.

Skinner stumbled outside and squinted at the weak winter sun. The bakery was busy, as was the hardware store beside it. His head felt groggy, and he shook it to clear it.

Those must have been some Aspirin.

No one in Bellefleur knew where Laura might have gone or where she'd come from. Laura Samuels and her daughter Katie had been in town a few months. They were friendly but kept to themselves. The school still waited for Katie's records to arrive, but said she was a bright little girl, though ill. Laura had no checking account, no library card, and no post office box. The diner paid Laura in cash. She paid her rent and utility bills in cash. Big bills sometimes, her landlord, the bakery owner remembered. Her boss at the diner had a theory she was running from her husband and confided in Skinner Laura would have a baby in a few more months. Her boss said he had a sister who'd gotten herself in the same fix - a baby on the way and a deadbeat husband drinking and slapping her around. The diner owner didn't tell Skinner how things turned out for the sister, but did say he wished Laura Samuels luck.

Skinner started toward to deputy sheriff's office, debating about having an All-points Bulletin put out on them. A pregnant redhead and a sick little girl shouldn't be hard to locate, and Dana had pulled a sleight of hand and given him something besides Aspirin. That had to be some crime: annoying a Federal Agent.

The radio in her apartment was on last night so she could hear if he put out an APB after she left the hospital. At that realization, he stopped walking toward the sheriff’s office.

Not sure what to do, Skinner returned to her apartment, checking for some clue where she might have gone. There wasn't one, but he hadn't expected there to be. Whoever coached her did a good job - better than many FBI agents - and she listened. Skinner could turn the place inside out but he’d find no ties to her old life. No photographs, no letters, not even a newspaper article about Mulder. Skinner would have advised her not to change their first names or initials unless she had to, so he assumed this wasn't their first new identity. Spies were told to assume a quiet, simple, likable persona, exactly what Dana Scully had done. Making up too many details about the past risked getting confused and giving yourself away. Undercover agents were told to live what they knew, and Dana knew how to be a hard-working unwed mother. Except she wasn't. Most of the money would be someplace else. Accessible, but not local. Some in cash, some in bearer bonds, some in a numbered Swiss account. She'd have a reliable, nondescript car with a bag hidden in the trunk: new passports, birth certificates, a change of clothes, whatever she needed to quickly change their appearance. She could open the bag and instantly become someone else.

The only mistake she'd made in months was bringing Skinner a fresh cup of coffee yesterday morning.

Skinner wondered if Dana had a reason to return to her apartment last night besides, if he came after her, to drug or otherwise disable him and buy herself more time to escape. If she was one of his agents, he'd advise her to head north to Canada - over the border and out of reach of the U.S. government. Same language, sparse population, harsh winter: a good place to hole up and wait for her baby to come. And whatever came after that.

Skinner wished he knew what the hell was on that Blue Book film or where Dana got it. Or what made Dana Scully and her daughter special to anyone except Fox Mulder The Baseball Player. He didn't, though, and whatever Dana ran from, he couldn't help her. Skinner couldn't protect her, her daughter, or her baby, and he didn't even know who or what he'd be protecting her from. In fact, he’d placed her in far more danger than she ever placed herself. The best thing Skinner could do was let her run.

He pulled a chair from the kitchen table, turned it around, and sat down heavily at the edge of the abandoned living room. Reaching for the telephone, he asked the operator to connect him to Alexandria. After a dozen rings, he was rewarded with Sharon's sleepy, "Hello?"

"Hi," he said softly.

"Walter? What time is it? Where are you?"

"Early. Oregon."

He heard her yawn. "Still in Oregon?"

"Why don't you fly out, Sharon? It's beautiful."

"Fly out?"

"Get on an airplane. I'll explain once you get here."

She hesitated. "Walter, what is it? You sound different."

He looked around Dana's apartment. "I'm done with the Bureau. Whatever they're doing, I don't want to be a part of it."

She laughed nervously but stopped. "You mean it this time, don't you?"

"I mean it. I'm finding a motel, and my next call is to Hoover. Get up, pack a bag, and get on a plane to Portland. I'll find a car and meet you there."

"Portland. That's west of Middle-of-Nowhere, isn't it?"

"No, Portland's the social hub of Oregon, City Girl. Where I am: I'm west of Middle-of-Nowhere. There's a store across the street selling flannel and one next door selling axes."

"Walter..." she mumbled in disbelief.

"I'll be at the airport. I love you, Sharon."

"I love you," she answered quickly. 

She didn't hear that enough these days. For the last few years, she hadn't heard much besides Skinner telling her he wouldn’t be home for dinner (or the weekend, or Easter, or Christmas). If he was home, and she asked what was on his mind, she heard “It's work; you know I can't talk about it.”

"I'll have to find my dungarees," she said. "I think I still own a pair. My manicurist will be horrified. I'm telling her this is your idea. Do you want me to pack anything for you? Long underwear? Skis? Should I bring the skis?"

Skinner thought a few seconds. "Would you bring my boat?"

"I don't think I’ll have room in my suitcases once I pack your barbecue grill, all your tools, and the backyard pool."

"We could sail it here," he suggested. "I'll have to go back to D.C. to wrap things up at the Bureau. We could sail back to Oregon."

"The mid-west, Walter."

He laughed softly and reminded her, "The Panama Canal, Sharon. I mean sail the long way around."

She sighed, sounding amused. "I'm packing all our worldly belongings, a bottle of good wine, and getting on a plane. We'll figure things out over dinner."

"That sounds perfect," he assured her as he noticed the deputy sheriff's car rolling to a stop in front of the bakery.

"Assistant Director," the sheriff called as Skinner descended the frozen wooden steps from Dana’s apartment. "Folks said you were asking about Laura Samuels. Is she in trouble?"

"No." Skinner shook his head. "She's not in any trouble."

"Can't see why she would be. Is she at home?"

"No," he repeated. He buttoned up his overcoat. "She's not here."

The deputy chewed his toothpick. "Laura's a pretty girl, if you look at her. Made a few mistakes, but haven't we all? There were some government men out here last week, asking folks about her, like you."

"From which agency?"

"They never said. Arrogant fellows. Vague but used to pushing people around." The pot-bellied deputy glanced at Dana Scully's closed apartment door and looked at Skinner again. "Don't care for men like that. They came all the way from New York City wanting to know if Laura Samuels was who she claimed."

"You don't say," Skinner supplied, familiar with the 'aw, shucks' method of rural interrogation.

The deputy adjusted his hat and put his hands in his coat pockets. "Are you a baseball fan, Mr. Skinner?"

"Isn't everyone?"

"The New York Yankees, there's a team. A class act. Never seen them play, but I listen to every game and I read the sports page. My wife - she clips things about the players out of the society section and from magazines for me. I can tell you which starlet they're dating, where they're vacationing, all their kid's names. I keep a scrapbook, and I got the one subscription to the Sunday New York Times for two hundred miles around. My wife says I'm worse than a twelve-year-old boy about the team."

"Is that so?" Skinner said casually. "I like the Yankees. I've taken my father to a few games in Washington. We watch our Senators get their asses handed to them. I've met the Yankees’ centerfielder. The one who was shot last year. What's his name?"

"Fox Mulder," the deputy supplied reverently. "'Poetry in motion,' the paper says.

"He's as down-to-Earth a fellow as you'd ever want to meet. He's a regular guy who plays baseball for a living. With a mansion in Georgetown, a Fifth Avenue penthouse, and a German sports car I'd love to get my hands on for an afternoon," Skinner added.

"I read he's playing next season, and he's marrying that nurse who saved his life: Dana Scully. Pretty lady, with a sweet little girl; I got a photo the papers ran after he was shot. I guess there's some resemblance, but I can't imagine how anyone would mistake our Laura and Katie for those two." The deputy removed his toothpick and held it a foot from his mouth as he spoke. "I told those New York fools I'd known Laura Samuels all my life. She went to school with my baby brother, married my wife's cousin, and lost him this past summer. Hunting accident. One stray bullet and Laura and little Katie are on their own again. Insurance company said he killed himself, but no one around here believes it. Still, insurance company won't pay. I got the autopsy report. I showed it to the New York men. Showed them her late husband's tombstone. I can show both to you, Assistant Director. No trouble at all."

"That won't be necessary." Skinner assured him. "As I said, she hasn't done anything wrong."

The next block over, a tractor-trailer's engine roared briefly as the driver downshifted. The brakes squealed and the tires crunched slowly across the gravel lot beside the diner.

"He stutters - Fox Mulder does," Skinner said. "It's not bad, but I think he's self-conscious about it. If you'll listen to his interviews, he doesn't say much. A few scripted phrases. His agent answers for him. It's not because he's stupid - quite the opposite. It's because he stutters."

"I didn't know. I got a nephew who stutters. Little guys hates it. We keep hoping he'll grow out of it."

Skinner leaned back against the deputy's aged squad car. "You know she's not at home, Deputy. Last week, you told her strangers were asking about her, and you wanted to know why. Everybody makes mistakes, but you don't want any trouble in your town. She gave you a plausible answer: her husband's a drunk or ran off with someone else or died in Korea. But like you said, she's a memorably pretty woman. You went home and checked your scrapbook. Not your business, you told yourself, but you've been keeping an eye on her. And she knew you knew. I showed up. You're the one who picked her up from the hospital, and you know she's not at home because you saw her leave town in the middle of the night. You didn't ask where she's going, but you wish her luck. What you showed the men from New York last week was the autopsy report of a drifter who shot himself in the woods outside of town. Maybe the last name was a coincidence or she listened to local gossip for a week or so and chose 'Samuels.' Either way, if I go back to that diner and ask her boss, he's not going to tell me Laura Samuels is a local widow with a checkered past."

The deputy squinted at him. "I'm not clear what you're wanting, Mr. Skinner."

This might be the last thing he did as an Assistant Director of the FBI. In a few minutes, Skinner would call Hoover and say he was retiring. There would be paperwork and meetings, but this could be his last time in the field. Twenty-five years with the Bureau, a decade with the U.S. Marshals before that, and the military before that: this was the last time the decision about how to protect innocent people from the evil in the world rested solely on him.

"I want you to make sure, if more government men come asking, everyone's story matches," Skinner told the deputy. "It's a small town, and people talk, so make sure they're all talking about the same thing. Your story is a good one but has too many loose ends. Her story is better and it's harder to check. She's a smart woman. Stick with her story."

The deputy nodded. "You're the FBI man." He exhaled. His breath made a white cloud in front of his face. He said in the same easy, we-got-all-day manner, "Seems odd a man wouldn't marry a girl in trouble if they're engaged. It's been in the newspaper and everything. My wife and me - we got married quicker than we first planned, but no harm done. I know big city folks are different, but it- It don't sound like him."

"The mob." Skinner spoke as if telling a secret. "There's big money in gambling on professional baseball. Some players - some teams, even - will agree to shave a few runs. It's not common, but it happens. If a player won't go along, though – if he can't be bought or blackmailed, they can't break his knee to get him to cooperate. The best way to control an honest athlete is to threaten his family. We'll put the mobsters behind bars sooner or later, and we try our best to protect everyone, but I understand a man not wanting to risk his family in the meantime." He paused. "With a baby coming, I'd be surprised if he hasn't married her and they're keeping it quiet. That, to me, sounds like him."

They watched the gray horizon together as another truck rolled in, its engine rumbling, brakes complaining. The diner was filling up.

"It's nice when our heroes turn out to be the men we think they are," Skinner said more to himself than the deputy. "It's the way it should be."

"It is. You're right. But damn it, she was the best waitress that place has had in ten years," the deputy said.

*~*~*~*

End: A Moment in the Sun: Bellefleur

A Moment in the Sun: Normandy

*~*~*~*

John Byers had never been with any other woman. He didn't think of himself as naïve or prudish; he’d thought he’d know when it was right. And he had.

He'd been twenty-six years old, standing outside a Wiltshire pub with Fox Mulder, waiting for World War II to get back on track, as she walked by: a beautiful, blond-haired, blue-eyed Polish Jew. She had a fragility and loneliness about her, like a spider's silk thread adrift on the wind. She dropped her packages. He rushed to help. By the time they established in broken English she was Susanne Modeski and he was Captain John Byers, he’d fallen in love. They married thirty-six hours later.

In thirteen years, Byers never regretted it. If Susanne ever regretted her rash decision to marry a Virginia farm boy, fresh out of law school, unlicensed, and about to board a ship bound for D-Day, it never showed. They had the American dream. Byers was a senior partner at the firm, Susanne raised their twin girls, and they vacationed in Aspen. Dinner arrived on the table as he arrived home, except on Thursdays. Thursdays, the girls had piano lessons. He worked late and met Susanne, Ana, and Katy for spaghetti and meatballs at a bistro a few blocks from his office.

It was idyllic. Everything Byers ever wanted. Everything he wanted to believe life should be. Too perfect to be true.

Byers knew what he saw last spring. One minute, Alex Krycek pointed a sawed-off shotgun at Mulder. Mulder fired four shots. Alex Krycek's body lay on the pavement with half his head missing; three other men lay dead in the shadows. Within seconds, nothing remained of any of the bodies except the weapons, a Rolex watch, and some scraps of leather.

The day Mulder shot four men who weren’t men, and Dana and Emily went into hiding, Byers went home, still shaking, and took his telephone apart. He found a small electronic listening device hidden inside it. Susanne returned from the grocery store in time to hear their bedroom mirror shatter. She found Byers staring at the tiny hole in the wall behind it. Behind the hole, he discovered a camera.

That was Tuesday, May 31, 1955. That day, the Supreme Court ordered school desegregation should begin "with all due speed." RCA introduced color television. Salk's polio vaccine was deemed safe and effective. “The Ballad of Davy Crockett” played on the radio and "The Seven Year Itch" showed in theaters. John Byers woke from the American dream. 

He told Susanne it was the mob. He'd unknowingly represented a client who had dangerous enemies, and those enemies had no qualms about spying on or harming his family.

In a way, he told the truth.

Their new home was a weathered stone cottage with enough space the girls had their own bedrooms, with a few to spare. They had a big, old-fashioned kitchen, a dusty basement and a wine cellar, and a stuffy attic. The house came with a pond, a meadow, a garden, a meandering path through the woods, and the entire coast of Normandy, France for a backyard.

Paris was two and a half hours away. They could board an overnight train at dusk in Bayeux, sleep as it glided through Berlin, and meet Susanne's mother in Warsaw the next morning. They didn’t need a nanny or housekeeper, and their neighbors were farmers, fishermen, and dairymen: friendly, country, French people. So far, Byers hadn't seen any of them dissolve into green puddles.

Life was quiet. As Mulder said, it felt almost safe.

Byers traveled to Manhattan about once a month, but for all practical purposes, he was Of Counsel status with the firm. His name remained on the letterhead, but his role was consulting. He planted an orchard, painted a shed, and wrote long letters to old friends. He checked for microphones and cameras once a week, listening to his wife's sighs as he took the radio, television, and telephone apart yet again. As the summer of 1956 faded in yellow and orange splendor, he peeled and cored bushels of apples for Susanne as she tried making jelly and apple butter. He reread the classic novels, discovering new meaning in his favorite passages. He walked on the beach, examining the rusting remnants of the Allied invasion a decade earlier. He found himself looking across the Atlantic Ocean at dusk, watching the waves and wondering who or what out there watched back.

There was a flowerbox outside the kitchen window. Susanne gave it a teacup of water, closed the window, and turned back to the stove as the kettle began to whistle. She still wore her robe, and she hummed a lullaby he'd heard her sing to the girls when they were small. 

The faces across from him at the breakfast table could have been Susanne at eleven years-old. Ana and Katy had their mother's features and fair coloring along with the slim coltishness of early adolescence. Today, Katy had a ponytail, but that was the only difference. The girls didn't dress alike so much as they followed the dress code of their generation: blue jeans, bobby socks, saddle shoes, cardigans and, as Byers looked closer, his white dress shirts. He'd wondered what happened to all his shirts; his daughters had confiscated them.

"I don't think you can wear that," he commented neutrally, and thanked Susanne as she filled his teacup. The teabag blushed ginger, and steam rose from the surface of the water, swirling lazily. 

"We asked. Mother said it was all right," Katy responded for both of them.

Susanne explained over her shoulder, "They are old shirts, John," with her words marked by the strong consonants and even tempo of her homeland.

"No, I don't mind the shirts. Schools have rules about girls wearing trousers to school."

"But we're not going to school," Ana explained while her sister chewed.

"You're not going to school?" Byers put down his teacup, concerned. "Of course you are. You have to go to school. Education is important. If I'm going to drive you, you'll have to hurry. I need to meet Mulder and Dana at the station in-" He checked the clock. "An hour."

Both girls blinked at him in confusion.

"Hurry," he repeated gently. He took one last sip of his tea, set the cup aside, and stood. "Go change your clothes, girls."

His daughters started to get up.

"It is Saturday, John," Susanne reminded him softly.

"Saturday?"

Ana and Katy nodded in agreement, two identical blond heads moving in unison.

"Oh," he responded. He'd lost track of the days. He knew Mulder's train arrived from Paris on October 27th, but he hadn't realized that was a Saturday.

The girls sat down to finish their breakfast. He glanced up at Susanne sheepishly, and she smiled and ruffled his hair. He smoothed it back into place and picked up his teacup again.

*~*~*~*

Not being a sports fan, Byers had been the one soldier in the Allied Army not star struck by Fox Mulder. To Byers, Mulder was the guy in the chow line who liked cream and sugar in his coffee, and ketchup on everything else. Byers remembered Mulder being a good shot and a good soldier. Mulder couldn't follow a map, but he recalled every bit of information on it. He was bright, with a good head for numbers and an ear for languages. Mulder got seasick. Homesick. And Mulder had a son named William.

It took a year and several overheard telephone calls for Byers to realize William wasn't the toddler in Mulder's photos. Mulder's marriage had hit the rocks, and his wife and son lived in war-ravaged London, not New York. Mulder also initially neglected to mention three of the bodies they found in the German concentration camp were his Jewish relatives. At the tail end of the war, Byers realized what happened as Mulder looked down his rifle at the enemy; his mother’s family vanished into Nazi Germany, and Hitler's army encroached on his wife and son in Great Britain.

Rule number one about Fox Mulder: he was a nice guy, but threaten his family and he'd kill without a second thought.

If they met for the first time now, Mulder wouldn't say he’d finished his 13th and final season with the Yankees, including an astounding 10th World Series victory and tying Babe Ruth's homerun record. He wouldn't talk about the war or attending Oxford or consulting for the F.B.I. He'd say he was Dana's husband, a father, and about to be a grandfather. If they talked late at night and Mulder felt wistful, he might say he was Samantha's big brother.

As Byers parked beside the train station, he spotted Emily on Mulder's shoulders. Her hooded head bobbed above the rolling steam and the crowd of arriving passengers. Dana had Benjamin, though it looked like she held a bundle of blue blankets with a hat on top. The baby opened his mouth for a Cheerio from the Tupperware cup Mulder held, explored it with his tongue, and considered it thoughtfully before spitting it out.

"Mulder!" Byers raised his hand as he waded through the stream of passengers.

Mulder turned and waved. He said something to Dana, who waved as well, smiling. A few passengers watched them, admiring the pretty picture: the petite, fashionably slim redhead in her tailored suit, and the tall, handsome, athletic-looking man beside her. He was protective; she was lovely; their children were beautiful. An affluent American family vacationing in the north of France.

The autumn afternoons were warm, but the mornings remained cool and wet, and the breeze off the ocean carried a chill. Dana pulled a blanket around the baby's head. She had Mulder stoop so she could tighten Emily's hood before they followed the porter. Behind her mother, secure on Mulder's shoulders, Emily surreptitiously loosened the drawstring again.

"My God, you kept the Studebaker," Mulder said as Byers opened the back of the station wagon for the porter. "How did you justify putting that on a boat and shipping it to Europe?"

"Studebakers have a long-standing reputation for reliability and-" Byers realized he was being teased. He grinned self-consciously.

Mulder gave him a tired, lopsided smile. Instead of a hug or handshake, he offered a Cheerio, rattling the cup enticingly. "They're nummy-nummy," he promised.

The wind ruffled his hair and whipped the sleeves of his jacket like the sails of a ship. Up close, in the morning sun, the stubble on his jaw had flecks of gray. Byers saw fine lines around Mulder's eyes. Up close, Mulder looked less like a legend and more like a tired hero.

"How are you?" Byers asked as everyone got in the station wagon. Dana sat in the back seat with Emily and Mulder sat in the front, holding Ben.

"Fine," Mulder answered, but glanced back at Dana. "Are we fine?" She must have nodded, because Mulder sounded more certain as he said, "We're fine." 

*~*~*~*

There was no good way to cross the Atlantic with a nine-month-old and a just-turned-seven-year-old. The flight took twelve hours between New York and London by jetliner, and on to Paris, where they landed long before the sun rose. Luckily, Dana said Emily and Ben slept the whole way, waking as they boarded the train north to Normandy.

The children had slept; the grownups had not. Mulder and Dana were nodding off during the drive from the train station to Byers' home. Dana unpacked and laid down for a ten-minute catnap that turned into four hours. After getting the kids settled in, Mulder joined her. The girls were having a good time showing off their toys and fussing over Emily, which left Susanne to fuss over Benjamin. 

"He is such a good boy," she marveled, carrying Ben into the living room.

"I think he's Daddy's boy, aren't you?" Byers put his book aside. "Are you Daddy's boy?"

From Susanne's arms, Ben regarded them with his clear blue eyes. He was a quiet, contemplative child with Mulder's dark hair and Dana's fair skin, quite pretty to be a boy. Mulder said Ben could walk, though Byers didn't see how; Ben's feet never touched the ground with his father present. Byers rarely saw Dana get to touch her son unless Ben needed a diaper change.

Susanne sat in the old rocking chair and draped a blanket over the baby. Ben nuzzled against her breast. She stroked the fine hair on his head and patted his back in time with a sad, exotic lullaby.

Byers leaned forward, watching as she rocked Ben. To his surprise, after he told her the Mulders would be visiting, the girls' baby accouterments reappeared from the attic: a rocker, a highchair, a crib, a wooden playpen, and boxes of toys, bibs, diapers, and clothes. Byers hadn't realized Susanne still had all of it, let alone had moved it across an ocean. They'd talked about more children - especially a boy - but in twelve years there hadn't even been a false alarm.

"Don't get too attached; I don't think Mulder's going to let you keep him," he said quietly.

"He is such a good little boy," she repeated softly in her movie-star Polish accent, seeming uncomfortable with his scrutiny. "That is all. It makes me think. The girls are growing up. During the day, the house seems so quiet. But it is not going to happen, is it?"

The rocker creaked against the wooden floor. A pot on the stove in the kitchen gurgled. Byers heard a fit of giggles upstairs, and 'shushes' from Ana's bedroom.

"Susanne, we haven't been trying. Not in a long time."

"We have not been not trying, either, John."

He and Susanne were almost forty; statistically, they should be becoming grandparents, not parents again. Susanne was expecting when he returned from World War II, so except for a few dreamlike nights in Wiltshire and Paris during the war, they'd been parents their entire marriage. He barely separated the two. He thought of 'Susanne and the girls,' seldom just 'Susanne.'

Ben kept patting her breast, looking less contented.

"Hast du Hunger, Benjamin?" Susanne asked him softly, looking wistful. She said to Byers, "John, should we feed him something?"

The door of the guestroom opened. Mulder ambled out in his T-shirt and wrinkled trousers. He shrugged his shirt on and scratched the back of his head. His face was creased from the pillow and his hair flattened on one side.

Byers leaned back, Ben reached up, and Susanne stood, guiltily offering the baby to Mulder's outstretched hands.

Mulder looked at them blearily. "Get your own," he mumbled as he carried his son back to bed. As the door closed, Byers saw him hand the baby off to Dana, who was unbuttoning her blouse.

*~*~*~*

“We made it, but we were damaged in route.”

Mulder had said it with a half-smile and his usual dry, self-deprecating wit: simple words from the heart of a complicated man.

Mulder’s contract required finishing the season with the Yankees, which meant being on the road for weeks. Dana stayed in the Hudson Valley with Ben and Emily, away from prying eyes and taking some time to adjust after a year in hiding. Mulder would talk about Will and Maddie for hours, but whenever Byers asked how Dana and Emily were, Mulder said “better,” and changed the subject.

“We were damaged in route.” If Mulder wanted to specify further, he would. There was no use asking.

The shower adjoining the guestroom ran once, for a long time. Two clean people emerged, looking flushed. Dana changed into a skirt and sweater, and her damp hair began to curl as it dried. Mulder wore his favorite gray flannel shirt: a collection of patches, stains, and mended places rather than a garment. His blue jeans sat low on his hips, and he ran his fingers through his hair, getting it as neat as ever. He still had the rock-solid leanness from playing season, which made Byers glance at his own stomach self-consciously. Susanne had worked on fattening him up, so for the first time in his life, Byers couldn't quite be described as a beanpole.

They debated going out to dinner, but Will was on his way from Evreux-Fauville Air Base, where he was stationed for the moment. Instead, Susanne cooked and everyone else milled around the kitchen, sneaking tidbits and claiming they tried to stay out of the way.

"You were a medical doctor, yes?" Susanne asked, trying to make polite conversation with Dana as she sliced and diced. 

She'd met Dana twice: one Christmas in Aspen and one in Georgetown after Mulder was shot. She knew Dana had been a nurse, had been in medical school, and Mulder dated her on and off for several years. Ben was born before they married, but they were married now, which made it acceptable in Susanne's and most people’s minds. Like everyone else, she assumed Dana was widowed soon after Emily's birth, and Byers let her assume.

"I started medical school. I didn't finish. Emily was sick. Benjamin was coming," Dana answered evasively. "I would like to go back, someday. I would like to practice."

"Really?" Mulder said, and an uncomfortable pause followed. 

Dana shrugged. "Someday. Once the children are older."

"Oh," Mulder responded, looking like he forgot where he put his keys.

"Susanne, you attended college, didn't you?" Byers asked, knowing she had and hoping to move the conversation along.

"I did. The University of Berlin. Before John and I married, of course."

"Were you there at the same time as Wernher von Braun? Or Heisenberg?" Mulder asked curiously.

"They were physicists: quantum mechanics, theoretical physics-"

"Nuclear fission," Mulder said, pantomiming an explosion.

"-and I was studying chemistry."

"Alfred Grotjahn was there, wasn't he?" Mulder asked. "And Hans Gunther. Victor Klemper, chairing the Gesellschaft fur Rassehygiene."

The Society for Racial Hygiene. Eugenics. Byers recognized the names as Nazi scientists, many from the Nuremburg Trials. It seemed odd but logically, in the late thirties, in Germany, Hitler was in power, which meant Nazi scientists worked at the University of Berlin with Susanne. Byers had never thought about it. It was like Dana attending medical school; before he and Susanne married, before the war, Susanne was a university student. Aside from being proud of his bright, well-educated wife, her education had little bearing on their lives.

"I was studying chemistry," she repeated, her words more clipped. "A long time ago. Now, we get the best grades on science projects." Susanne smiled and ruffled Katy's hair. 

Katy shrugged away uncomfortably.

"You knew them though, didn't you?" Mulder persisted, staring at her as he held Ben. "You had to."

"There were no Jews at University once Hitler was the Fuhrer."

"But you don't look like a Jew. I do. My sons do. My mother's family did, but you don't. They couldn't pass, but you could."

"Mulder," Dana warned as Byers opened his mouth to object.

"What was the holdup with your passport?” Mulder asked. “You made it to England, but the government wouldn't let you immigrate to the States, even after you married an American citizen. I wondered why. You were expecting, and Byers wanted you away from the fighting, but they wouldn't let you leave England until after the war. Most Jews had no problem immigrating: Einstein, Freud-"

"Mulder!" Dana said sharply.

Byers was too stunned to speak. Susanne's family escaped Poland in the back of a truck, hidden among bags of seed corn. Her mother had a coat with a yellow Star of David sewn on it; she'd shown it to Katy and Ana. Obviously, it was a painful memory, and obviously, Susanne didn't want to talk about it. Byers thought Mulder would be the last person to push her.

Mulder kept staring at Susanne, grimly determined, like a dog with a bone. Byers knew the look; Mulder wasn't sorry and he wouldn’t drop the subject. Ana and Katy put down their carrot sticks. The girls looked at their mother, at Mulder, and at their mother again.

Susanne seemed shaken but she met Mulder's gaze. "It was a long time ago," she said evenly, enunciating carefully. "Now my girls get the best grades on their science projects."

Dana exhaled and started to apologize, but got interrupted by wheels crunching on the gravel driveway and a motorcycle engine rumbling as it coasted to a stop. Metal squeaked as the kickstand went down. A young man in a blue Air Force uniform got off the bike. William shrugged off his bomber jacket and looped his sunglasses on the front of his shirt. He started to run his fingers through his dark hair, but stopped as if remembering it wasn't long enough to be windblown.

"Bub," Emily announced, sliding down from her chair.

Dana got up and followed her daughter. Katy and Ana went with her, leaving Mulder, Byers, and Susanne in the kitchen.

On the front lawn, Will picked up Emily and gave Dana a one-armed bear hug. Will swung Dana around so her skirt whirled up and her slip and the tops of her stockings showed. She admonished him and got a real hug, with Will leaning down and resting his head on her shoulder. To Byers, Will looked like a little boy who had to grow up too fast. 

Mulder glanced at Susanne again, but turned, carrying Ben and going to greet his older son.

"Yes, I knew them," Susanne admitted as Mulder passed her. "But I did not know who they were. No one did, then. They were just men, not monsters."

*~*~*~*

Benjamin Mulder made Byers wish he had a son, and William Mulder made Byers careful what he wished for. Byers didn't dislike the young man, but to the father of two little girls who insisted on growing up too quickly, William meant Trouble with a capital T: too handsome, too charming, and too practiced at putting those mischievous brown eyes and lazy grin to good use. Will wasn't a chip off the old block; he was an entire chunk.

Last March, Byers’ secretary had buzzed in, apologizing for interrupting the meeting and telling him Mr. Mulder was on the line. Mr. Mulder had an emergency, she said, but whenever Mulder wanted something, Mulder thought he had an emergency. Byers sighed, excused himself, and picked up the telephone in the conference room. In the background, competing with Will's uncertain voice, Byers heard a pressured chaos of noise: a siren dying, wheels clattering across a hard floor, and indistinct droning over an intercom.

"Slow down and tell me what's wrong." Byers gestured for the other lawyers be quiet. "Are you all right, Will? Where are you?"

"At hospital. The hospital in Kingston."

"What happened? Are you hurt? Or sick?"

"I-I didn't see him," Will stuttered, struggling to speak. "It was raining; he ran the stop sign. I didn't see the car. I didn't see it."

"But you're okay?" Byers asked. "Did you call your father?"

"The police called him. He's coming. Oh God, he's gonna kill me."

"He's not going to kill you, Will. Calm down. It's a car. As long as you're all right, that's all that matters." There was a long pause. Byers asked, "Are you all right?"

"Yes. No," Will answered, his voice breaking. "Bloody hell, I don't know."

Mulder should be in Florida for spring training. Even if he chartered a plane, hours would pass before he landed in New York. 

"Let me talk to the doctor," Byers requested. "Give the phone to your doctor and let me talk to him." 

"A-all the doctors are with Maddie."

Byers' chest tightened. People needed a scorecard to keep track of Will's conquests, but he recognized that name. "Was she with you?"

"Yes."

"Is she okay?"

Will took a shuddery breath. "No. She hit her head. She wouldn’t wake up. Can you come? Frohike can't come. He said to call you."

Byers looked back at the attorneys around the conference table, waiting to start the firm's meeting. He had seventy-two hours until he returned to Normandy, and his secretary had every second booked, trying to squeeze a month's worth of work into three days. "Is she dead, Will?"

"No."

"Will, I-"

"She's pregnant."

Byers bit his lip hard and closed his eyes. He exhaled. "I will be there as soon as I can. Sit tight."

Contrary to Mulder’s claims, Byers could drive faster than thirty-five miles per hour. He honked and weaved, but still took eons to get through Manhattan traffic. Once the road cleared, he flew up the highway. His borrowed sports car's wheels hummed over the miles of slick asphalt ribbon toward the mountains. It began to drizzle, and to storm. Byers fumbled with the unfamiliar knobs and switches. He tried to watch the road while he battled the foggy windshield. The wipers slapped back and forth, cutting a clear arc across the glass as the rain drummed on the car's canvas roof.

It was a miserable day: cold and gray and so wet even the sidewalk should have been spongy. The hospital air conditioner had forgotten it was March. Byers shivered despite his suit and trench coat.

"I suppose this is when I promise I won't be any more trouble," Will said tiredly, turning away from the window in the lobby. He had Band-Aids on his forehead, a vividly bruised and scraped cheekbone, and his left arm in a sling. His shirt was gone. He had a rip in the leg of his blue jeans and smears of blood across his white T-shirt. For once, he'd lost his cool, cocky facade, and he looked like he wasn't sure if the universe was real or not.

"Are you okay, Will?"

Will smirked half-heartedly as he sank into a plastic chair. The boy moved like his whole body ached. 

Byers stood in front of him, holding the briefcase he'd inexplicably carried in from the car. He opened his mouth several times, searching for a neutral tone before he asked, "How is Madelon?"

"They had to cut her hair and remove her spleen." Will took a careful breath. "I don't even know where my spleen is. Do boys have spleens?"

"She's still in surgery?"

"She's back. Her father's with her. She wanted to talk to him alone. He doesn't speak much English, so he doesn't know about-" He glanced up, down again, and picked at the rip in his jeans. "Go ahead. Say it."

Byers didn't have to. This was exactly what Mulder never wanted for his son, and Will knew it. His father held onto a normal life by a gossamer thread, and this was exactly what he didn't need. Dana, Will, and Emily were Mulder’s world, and only Will remained. Unfortunately, Mulder seemed oblivious to his son sleeping his way through the Lower Hudson Valley.

"I'm not daft. I was being careful. Mostly."

"Mostly?"

"It was an accident."

"How? You lost your balance and accidentally fell in bed with her?"

Will hung his head miserably.

Byers checked his temper and set his briefcase down. "Are you certain you're the father of this baby?" he asked in a softer voice.

Will glanced up, perplexed, as if Byers asked a stupid question. "Yes."

"Have you thought about what you want to do?"

"Maddie wants to keep it. She wants to get married."

"What do you want?"

"I told her I wanted the same thing." Will studied the floor again.

"But what do you want to do?"

"Anything except tell my father. Bloody hell, he's gonna kill me."

Byers sat beside him, not sure what to do except wait for Mulder. Frohike was Will's confidant and partner in crime, but Frohike was in Florida, trying to keep his ballplayers in line.

"Do you want me to call your mother?"

"God no," Will muttered. He slouched in the chair.

Byers watched the clock on the wall as its metal hands inched away the afternoon. Will studied it. He leaned his head back against the wall, closing his eyes. "I have a chemistry mid-term in ten minutes."

"I don't think you're going to make it."

Will bit his lower lip until it went white. He opened his eyes, glancing around the lobby. The florist delivered a tray of bouquets, with the senders' get-well messages perched on little plastic pitchforks. A pretty young woman loaded them onto a metal cart and pushed it toward the elevator. She smiled sympathetically as she passed Will.

Byers caught Will starting to smile back.

"Will..." he said in frustration.

"When Dana comes back-" Will said. "When Dana comes back, Dana and Dad could take the baby. He wants another baby. He wants a girl. They could get married, and they could adopt the baby, and that would make everything all right. Right?" he asked uncertainly.

Byers swallowed his lecture about responsibility and being a man, and answered, "She's not coming back, Will. Not after this long. Your father knows, whether he says it or not."

"Dad could still take care of it," Will tried. "He likes babies."

Byers answered honestly. "Without Dana, I think the only way your father could take care of it is by calling Frohike. If that's what you want, you need to tell him."

For a second, Will had the spoiled, petulant expression Byers detested. Then he looked scared and lost. "I don't know what to do."

"I think you'd better decide," Byers answered.

Mulder emerged from a taxicab and sprinted for the hospital entrance.

"Will?" Mulder said as he burst through the doors. Mulder dodged around a slow-moving man on crutches with his wet cleats squeaking. Mulder still wore his pinstriped uniform, and rain spotted the shoulders of his baseball jersey. "My God; are you all right?"

Will stood stiffly and wiped his palm on his jeans.

"Oh my God, son." His hands shook as they hovered over Will's bruised face and the sling keeping his left arm immobile. "Are you okay?"

Will nodded. Mulder put his arms around the boy like he cradled glass. His son closed his eyes and laid his head on his father's shoulder.

"God. My boy. My baby boy. All in one piece. The police scared the hell out of me." Mulder rubbed Will's back, buried his face in his hair, and inhaled. Byers expected Will to pull away, but he didn't. Mulder moved back, but the boy remained still, letting his father catalog his injuries. "What happened, son? The police said you were speeding."

"I didn't see the car. I'm sorry. It was raining. He ran a stop sign. I didn't see him and I-I couldn't stop in time. He, he hit Maddie's side."

"Maddie was with you?"

Will nodded.

"The officer said the wreck happened at one in the morning. What were you doing driving around with Maddie at one in the morning?"

William shrugged and flinched at the same time but didn't answer. "She's upstairs. She had to have surgery.

"Is she going to be all right?"

"She's going to have a baby," Will said as quickly as possible, like his father might misunderstand or not notice if he said it fast enough. "We want to get married."

Mulder froze. A few damp strands of hair on his forehead moved as the air conditioner vent blew them. Will couldn't quite do it, but his father could: Mulder could have no expression.

"Are you sure?" Mulder asked after several long seconds. It seemed an all-purpose 'are you sure': are you sure she's pregnant, sure the baby's yours, and sure you want to marry her.

Will wilted more. He nodded.

After a heartbeat, Mulder nodded back. "Okay. I'll, uh, I'll- Wait here. Let me find a cup of coffee and the men's room, and- And I'll be back."

"I think there's a cafeteria," Byers offered.

Mulder looked at him in surprise. Mulder must have been too focused on Will to notice Byers standing there.

"Thank you for coming," Mulder said crisply as they walked down the hall, leaving Will in the lobby.

"He called my office. He was upset."

"I'm sure he was."

"Mulder-"

"Thank you," Mulder repeated. He turned and disappeared into the restroom.

Byers heard water splashing. A screech as the faucet turned off. There was a pause, and a crash of metal accompanied by a stream of curses that would have made a sailor proud.

Byers pushed open the men's room door as Mulder slammed his fist into the paper towel dispenser. Mulder knocked the metal cover off and sent the roll of brown paper unfurling across the tiles. He kicked the roll for good measure. He leaned back against one of the sinks, clutching his hand and staring up at the ceiling. Unless Byers was mistaken, Mulder struggled not to cry.

"Are you-"

"No," Mulder answered in a strangled voice. "How the hell do you think I am? What is he thinking? He's barely seventeen-years-old."

"He is seventeen. You have custody. He can't get married unless you consent."

Mulder blinked. He watched a flickering light bulb on the ceiling as he seemed to consider his options. "He loves her. I know he does."

"He's a child. He doesn't know what love is, and he doesn't know what he wants except for the problem to go away," Byers advised. "I think the best thing would be for you to make the decision for him."

"He doesn't get to be a child any longer."

"Let him provide for her baby if she insists on keeping it. He did make a mistake. Make him get a job at a filling station after school and learn some responsibility."

"Until he meets a nice girl in college he wants to marry and have a real family with?"

Byers started to agree but he realized Mulder was being sarcastic.

"He's not stupid. He's not naïve," Mulder said, talking primarily to himself. "Some accidents are less accidental than others." He pursed his lips. "I like Maddie. She's good for him. If he wants to marry her-"

"You can't be serious."

"I raised a good son, Byers. Maddie's a nice girl."

"If she was a nice girl, she wouldn't be in trouble."

Mulder gave him as look so venomous the force of it made Byers step backward. "We can't all be the bastion of moral fortitude you are," Mulder retorted angrily. "Some of us are human beings. Some of us are just doing the best we can."

Unsure how to respond, Byers pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and offered it to Mulder from a safe distance. "I know," he said lamely.

"No, I don't think you do."

Byers held the handkerchief out for a few seconds until it was clear Mulder wouldn’t take it. Mulder went back to watching the light on the ceiling flicker on and off, on and off, in time with the blood dripping from his knuckles. Behind him, the mirror was a patchwork quilt of cracks; Mulder must have punched it as well.

"Dana's gonna kill me," he said.

Byers thought Dana Scully was the least of Mulder's worries, but he didn't say so.

The light-bulb gave up the ghost, leaving the men's room lit by the dim bulb over the door. In the broken mirror, their reflections seemed darker than the men Byers thought they were.

Byers offered his handkerchief again, and this time Mulder exhaled and took it. Byers decided he was done giving advice - legal or otherwise - for the day.

"I've known a nice girl who got in trouble," Mulder said as he wrapped the white fabric around his bloody knuckles and tied it awkwardly in place.

"I know you have," Byers answered as he slid down from his moral high horse. Once Mulder's anger faded, Byers didn't think he'd ever seen anyone look so sad. Empty. Lost. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to pass judgment. Come on; I'll buy you a cup of coffee."

*~*~*~*

"You know you're welcome to stay as long as you want," Byers said softly, finding Dana alone on the porch after dinner. "If there's anything Susanne and I can do, please let us know. We want to help."

Mulder stood at the edge of the back yard holding Ben and staring at the ocean in the distance. Will stood with him, tall and slim, the breeze blowing his Air Force uniform. The sun hovered above the horizon, and the almost-full moon rose, pressing through the vast fabric of the sky and giving birth to the beginning of night.

"Thank you." Dana found a polite smile and put it on again.

"I don't mean to pry, but is he all right?"

"He has a lot on his mind right."

"I understand," Byers said, though he didn't. 

Mulder got it all: family, fame, fortune. All of it. He wrestled with the Devil and won. Alex Krycek, whoever or whatever he'd been, was dead. Dana had returned. Ben was healthy. Emily seemed better. Will wasn't dead or in prison. This was where the hero rode into the sunset, but Mulder stood and stared at it, holding one son and standing shoulder-to-shoulder with the other.

"How far is it?" Mulder called, looking back. "The bunker?"

It took Byers a moment to realize what Mulder meant. "About forty-five minutes up the coast, and a short walk," Byers answered.

"Would you drive us?" he requested, back-lit in scarlet by the clouds. "I want Will to see it."

Byers nodded. He returned to the house long enough to tell Susanne where he was going, get his jacket, his car keys, and find an old pair of loafers. After a silent drive, Byers parked on the roadside, near an ancient stone fence, and led the way. Mulder and Ben followed, and Will brought up the rear. The shadowy path meandered through the woods and high hedgerows, along the edge of a cow pasture, then opened to a cliff littered with broken chunks of concrete and twisted metal, and what looked like the doorway to an old root cellar.

Mulder walked around to look at the side of the unassuming, squat cement bunker hugging the face of a cliff. Byers saw him tense as if he still expected brown-uniformed German soldiers to be waiting inside.

"It's empty," Byers reminded him. As silly as it sounded, they both needed to hear it.

Will ducked into the narrow gray passage and Mulder followed, covering Ben's head with his hand. The inside was empty; anything of value or nostalgia got carried off years ago. The cement walls were pockmarked with bullet holes and large chunks had fallen from the ceiling. All remaining of Hitler's great seawall were cramped, damp bunkers like this one, with rifle slits looking out toward the ocean.

"This is where it happened," Will said, sounding like he didn't quite believe it. "D-Day."

June 6th, 1944 was the greatest invasion by sea the world had ever seen. One hundred and fifty-thousand soldiers came ashore that day, most never having seen combat before. The Germans had the north coast of France heavily fortified, and even with air and battleship support, the Allies knew the first troops on the beach would be slaughtered. Seasoned soldiers would retreat from certain death, but green troops didn't think the bullets applied to them. A few experienced captains and lieutenants led - Byers and Mulder among them - but the rest of the men had no idea what they'd face once the landing vehicles reached the shore and the gangplanks dropped.

Byers and Mulder should have been in the third wave, but were the fourth by the time they made it to shore: seasick, soaked, freezing, trying to scream commands and locate their men over the machine guns and mortars. The tide came in, devouring the beach and forcing them forward, toward the enemy. Their rifles were wet and useless, and the water was pink with blood. Bodies floated face-down in the choppy sea - soldiers shot as they waded and swam ashore, or drowned by the weight of their gear or because they couldn't swim. Around them, on the sand, weren't men, but pieces of men.

"The big guns were mounted here," Mulder told Will. He looked through the rifle slits to the golden sand of Omaha Beach in the distance. "Seventy-five and eighty-eight millimeter heavy artillery, aimed at our ships off-shore. They’re like a freight train screaming across the sky. In the trenches down there they had the machine guns. German MG-42's. 1200 rounds a minute. They fire so fast it sounds like canvas ripping."

Byers stayed at the back of the dark bunker, restless.  He'd been here, but alone. He never brought Susanne or the girls to see the bomb craters and rows of rusting razor wire among the weeds. He wanted to protect his family from this, not share it with them.

Mulder turned Ben so the baby faced the waves eroding the sand. "I'd seen combat in Italy, but nothing like this. This was Hell on Earth. Any man who says he wasn't terrified is lying. No one on this beach wanted to be a hero. D-Day had nothing to do with courage and everything to do with necessity. You'll be amazed what you can do once there's no going back. No choice. If you go back, you die, so you keep pushing forward."

"I suppose." Will leaned his elbows on the front wall of the bunker and stared out at the darkening sky.

"You say I never talk about the war, but how do you explain necessary evil to a child? There's no glory in killing. How do you say you've done things - for their sake - you couldn't conceive of yourself doing until the need arose?"

"I don't know."

"I don't either, but I'd do it all again, if need be. We weren't trying to save the world, Will; we did what had to be done. Those moments of absolute necessity: that's when you discover what kind of man you are and what you're capable of. The good and the bad."

Byers shifted again.

Will nodded. "Why were you here? You could have gotten deferred or spent the war playing exhibition games. You didn't have to fight."

"I did have to fight. Hitler had France and he was heading toward Britain. I had a son in London with a Jewish father. If we didn't stop them here, there wouldn’t be a second chance. Sometimes you don't get a second chance, Will."

Will's jaw broadened as he gritted his teeth.

"I'm proud of you," Mulder continued. "You know, don't you? It's okay to have doubts. It's okay to be afraid. Being a husband is hard, but being a father is like letting your heart go for a walk outside your body."

Another nod. This father-son fieldtrip had a subtext Byers hadn't anticipated. Will was one of those people who always seemed to land on his feet, but he'd jumped into the deep end this time: a new wife, an unplanned-for baby, and a job taking him far away from both.

Byers had witnessed this drama once before, as had William. Firsthand.

"You can do this, Will. I know you can. It's like hitting a baseball. You do all the thinking and planning and worrying beforehand, but once it's time, you stop thinking and do it. You swing for fences, son."

"Like you said, there's no going back."

"Nope."

Will hesitated. "I do love her."

"I know," Mulder assured him. "And I know what kind of man you are. You can do this," he repeated. "It'll be okay."

Will pushed back and looked up at the crumbling ceiling. "So you took this bunker?" he asked, abruptly changing the subject. "You and Mr. Byers made it up here and took the bunker?"

"God no," Mulder answered. "One of the Navy destroyers got it. We were-" He pointed vaguely toward the beach. "Over there. Miles from where we were supposed to be. Our landing vehicle was off-course and Byers lost his glasses and one of the radios coming ashore-"

"Mulder had the map." Byers stepped forward. "We didn't know where we were. We were lucky he didn't have us storm Belgium."

"I knew where we were, Captain Byers."

Byers gave Mulder a 'sure you did' look, and turned. He climbed over the rubble in the doorway and emerged to a world bathed dark auburn by the sunset. The sun settled behind the ocean, casting an otherworldly glow across the water and over hunks of broken cement so large it looked like the gods had been shooting dice. The salty breeze rustled Byers’ hair, and prickled the bare skin above his beard. It seemed strange to hear nothing except the waves, and Mulder and Will's muffled voices in the bunker. No machine gun fire, no screams, no mortars, no calls for help. It was peaceful, except for the echoes in his mind.

They won the war here. The fighting dragged on another year or so, but this was where they made their stand and drove Hitler back. Byers didn't enjoy being on the beach again, but he knew what it stood for, and he liked it between his family and the rest of the world.

As Will and Mulder emerged from the bunker a few minutes later, Byers asked Will, "Did your father ever tell you he dragged me halfway up that beach?"

Will shook his head, looking interested

Byers continued. "I was hit in the leg as we came out of the water. It wasn't fatal, but I was losing blood, I couldn't run, and we had no cover. We were under fire. Mulder grabbed my collar and dragged me two hundred yards until we found a foxhole."

Will grinned, liking this story, while Mulder bounced Ben and looked around for something else to talk about.

"He wasn't supposed to," Byers explained. "We were told if a man was hit, leave him behind. We needed to get up the beach as quickly as possible, and we couldn't do that if every soldier tried to save his buddy."

"My unit was supposed to cover his, and he owed me three bucks," Mulder said in his own defense.

Mulder looked at the amber and golden beach, and shifted Ben to his other arm. For a long time, he stood still, his eyes far away. 

Byers remembered what Mulder said as their landing vehicle approached the beach twelve years ago. Mulder had checked his rifle and looked at Byers sitting across from him. Mulder had kept his head down and probably struggled not to vomit again. “You look out for my son, Byers. The address is on my tags.”

“You look out for my wife,” Byers had responded. 

Mulder had nodded. They lurched forward as the boat struck something underwater and stopped, fifty feet offshore. The gangplank splashed open into the choppy water.

William had been five years old; Byers and Susanne had been married a few weeks.

"Dad?" Will’s voice said worriedly. "Mr. Byers?"

Mulder glanced at Byers and added in his glib, deadpan manner, "Come to think of it, Byers, you still owe me three bucks."

Mulder slapped Byers on the back. He looped his arm around Byers' shoulders affectionately, and carried Ben on his hip as they walked back to the car.

*~*~*~*

Byers favorite time of day was the long, cool lowering hour as late evening sank into night. The yellow harvest moon remained a few slivers from full. It pushed back the last of the blue and violet shadows, covering the fields in expansive black. Above, the sky glittered in a thick blanket of stars, unmarred by city lights. The dog went out one last time before she settled her old bones in front of the hearth with a wet sigh. The dinner dishes got dried and put away, the children tucked in bed, and the house belonged to the grownups. Fairy time, his grandmother called it. The rational day gives way to the magic of night.

"Burgundy," Byers guessed, and took another sip from the wineglass. "Or Bordeaux. Fine Bordeaux."

He’d found the bottles in the walled-up wine cellar, hidden from the Nazis and forgotten under layers of dust. The house had been empty for ten years. Most of the labels were missing, so if he and Susanne were adventurous enough to open a bottle, they could find anything from a smoothly aging red to red wine vinegar.

"We don't know what this one is either, but John said it is old, red, and good," Susanne explained as she carried another bottle to the living room.

Mulder and Dana sat on the sofa with their backs to the kitchen and their feet propped on the ottoman. Will sat on the floor beside the radio, searching for a station meeting everyone's approval. The first bottle was on the coffee table with an inch of wine remaining inside it. The rest had been divided between Dana, Susanne, Byers, and Will, who, to everyone's amusement, asked his father's permission before accepting a glass.

Again, Mulder declined. He crossed his ankles and adjusted his arm around Dana's shoulders as she sipped her wine. "What are the chances of me getting you tipsy and taking advantage of you?" Byers heard him murmur to Dana, after Susanne returned to the kitchen.

"I wouldn't rule it out," Dana said quietly, from behind her glass. "It's good wine."

"You think they'd notice if we took another shower?"

"Probably, Mulder."

Will must have overheard, because he rolled his eyes and turned the radio up. "God," he mumbled, sounding disgusted.

Byers caught Susanne's wrist as she returned with another bottle of mineral water. He pulled her back to him and put his arms around her waist. He fitted her back against his front and listened to the slow, hypnotic jazz on the radio.

"That discussion we had earlier?" Byers whispered, and she nodded. "I've been thinking about it, and I do think it's a good idea."

The more he watched Mulder with Ben, the more he wanted to be a father again. Now. Like this. He had the time and resources to care for his family the way he wanted to. 

When the girls were small, he'd struggled to make ends meet: a new wife, two babies, a cramped apartment, and a one-man law firm with too much overhead and not enough income. He remembered weeks Mulder was his only client. He remembered weeks his secretary got paid, and he and Susanne lived on beans and rice. He remembered Susanne nursing the girls because they couldn't afford baby formula and the doctor scolding her Katy and Ana would be malnourished. He remembered catching the subway into Manhattan before dawn, and returning home, shoulders aching, feet stinging, long after dark.

He'd trudge up the stairs swearing to himself he would become a plumber. The apartment door would open to Susanne in her apron, his dinner staying warm in the oven, and his girls clean and dressed for bed. He'd hang up his hat, coat, and jacket, shed his shoes, and lie in bed with the three of them. They’d read stories until the girls couldn’t keep their eyes open any longer. Susanne couldn't stay awake, either. Byers would turn the oven off so his dinner didn't burn to a crisp, move the girls to their crib, and return to bed with Susanne, preferring staying with his wife to eating.

Byers remembered, in those lean years, knowing he could catch the seven-fifty subway six blocks from his old office and make it home in time to put the girls to bed. He remembered never missing a night.

"What if we cannot?" Susanne’s whispered words smelled of sun-warmed vineyards. "What if something is wrong or it is too late?"

"Then we cannot, but it can't hurt to try." He paused, enjoying her against him. "I think I would like to try, if you would."

"I would," she said softly, leaning her cheek against his shoulder.

Mulder tilted his head back, glancing over the top of the sofa. He looked at Byers with his arms around Susanne. Without comment, Mulder went back to watching his sock feet and the crackling hearth in front of them. "Hey Will?" Mulder said carelessly, stroking Dana's arm.

"Hummm," Will responded from the floor.

"Those people who say these are the best years of your life?"

"Um-hum."

"Those people lie," Mulder informed his son. Mulder grinned and turned his head, making a low purring sound in his throat as he kissed Dana's earlobe.

Will rolled his eyes again.

*~*~*~*

Occasionally, it still happened. Byers would be in a store or on the sidewalk, and spot Susanne a few yards from him. She’d be occupied with shopping or the girls. He'd watch her, follow her unobtrusively, thinking what an enchanting woman she was. 

You're married; you aren't supposed to be enchanted with other women, his conscience would remind him, and send twinge of guilt down his spine.

You're married to her, his higher brain would realize.

Oh yes. That's right, he'd remember proudly, still surprised.

Byers reached around Susanne and turned the lock on their bedroom door. The lights stayed off but the moon outside the window lit the walls soft yellow. The air was cool enough to give her chill bumps as he unfastened the front of her dress. He kissed her swollen lips, her throat, the hollow of her neck.

"Cold?" he whispered, and she nodded, her eyes huge and blue in the darkness. "Come to bed."

He reached to pull loose a tie he wasn't wearing and started on his shirt buttons. She stepped out of her shoes and let her dress fall to the floor, leaving her slip and stockings. One of the straps fell off her shoulder, showing her white bra, and he traced the outline of her garter up her thigh. She was pale smoothness under his hands: soft skin and slippery silk and nylon. He loved the tastes and textures of her; he'd committed them to memory long ago.

"Give me a thousand years and I might get tired of looking at you," he whispered, stroking her cheek.

"My John." She caressed his name with her lips. "My sweet John. You love me so much, don't you?"

He pushed her hair back from her face. "Yes, I love you," he answered, in case she wanted to hear it a millionth time.

To his surprise, instead of kissing him, she laid her head on his chest, against his heart, and stayed there for a long time. He put his arms around her, uncertain what was wrong.

"Susanne?"

She slipped away, sat on the edge of the bed, and studied the rug. He sat beside her, his unbuttoned cuffs flopping and his shirt open.

"What is it?"

"What Mr. Mulder said about me marrying you to become an American citizen- It, it is not true."

"Of course it's not true. I don't know what got into him."

She looked at him sadly, hunched her shoulders, and went back to examining the rug. Her hair fell over her cheeks and hid her face. "I do not want you to think it is true. You are- I think you are the kindest, gentlest man I have ever met. I married you because I was lost and you found me."   

"I'm thankful I did." He hoped that was the right thing to say. Before today, he had trouble recalling the last time he'd seen her upset.

"You knew there was someone else. Before we met."

"Yes, I knew." She'd told him before they married, in case he might change his mind. He hadn't.

"You never asked who."

"According the Kinsey survey, fifty-percent of college-educated women have had premarital-" Then he said, "I thought if you'd wanted to tell me, you would have."

They were in their mid-twenties when they met. He found promiscuity unacceptable, but they weren't teenagers. He'd dated in high school and college and had several girlfriends in law school. Some of those girls, some nights – doing the right thing had taken all the resolve he’d possessed. If he’d been engaged, or more of a drinker, or even going steady when he was drafted, he might have had to admit “someone else” to her.

Byers imagined Susanne was engaged and her lover died, either in the war or in the death camps. 

"I should have told you."

"Susanne, it was thirteen years ago. It didn't matter to me then; why should it matter now?"  

"I should have told you." She didn’t look at him. Gooseflesh covered the fair skin on her shoulders and arms. He pulled the blanket from the end of their bed and draped it around her.

"All right," he said quietly. "If you want to tell me, tell me."

Outside the window, the wind rustled the tree branches, making the dying leaves whisper secrets. The curtains billowed in the darkness like white ghosts, and he heard his heart beating faster.

"One of the professors at University," she said after a few tries. "One Mr. Mulder said. I worked on his projects. I was the only woman, the only one who had not finished my doctorate. I was so proud." She paused, adjusting the lace hem of her slip. "What Mr. Mulder said was true: by the late thirties, Jews were not welcome at University. Jewish students were expelled. Jewish professors retired or were fired. But I stayed. He said my research was important and he convinced me it was a small lie. No one would question me. I look Aryan, I speak German. He said he loved me. He said he could keep me safe. He said he could keep my family safe if the time came. I did not know what he meant, but I trusted him."

Byers opened his mouth to ask a question. He closed it again.

"I was an organic chemist. I worked in a laboratory, not with people. Tables, formulas, reactions. It was all here-" She pointed to her temple. "-and on paper. On slides under the microscope. There would be a question and I would do research and answer. This is how genetics work; this is how they do not work. This is why you cannot combine this cell with that one. Sometimes they would ask the strangest questions, and I could not imagine why anyone would want to know such things."

She adjusted the lace hem again, pulling it over her knees. "My research would go to the medical doctors, so I never saw the end result or even knew why the question was asked. Sometimes, the doctors would have data, and ask me to analyze them, to say what went wrong or what would work better. It was all numbers, but sometimes details would slip through and I could figure out what it was. They were animal experiments: reproduction, euthanasia, and xeno-transplantation - combining one species with another. Futile experiments. Things that would never work. The mortality rate was so high and the experiments were careless, as if no one cared if the lab animals lived or died."

"They weren't experimenting on lab animals," he said, voice breaking and not quite believing his ears. 

He saw the end result of those experiments at Dachau, one of the death camps in Germany. He remembered Mulder being strangely calm as they searched the camp and telling him to have their men open the boxcars. He remembered vomiting all over his boots, and Mulder giving the order to execute the German guards. Once they ran out of guards to shoot, Mulder shot the guard dogs. Byers saw the dead, pregnant bodies with numbers tattooed into their skin. He'd done his share of the killing, and it was the darkest day of his life. And he'd never told Susanne.

"But I did not know," she insisted. "They told us people were resettled. The Jews, the Gypsies, homosexuals, the feeble-minded and crippled: they vanished." She stopped to take a shuddery breath. "One day, I opened a file, and someone had left a memo in with the other papers. They were testing a Formalin solution, injecting it into the uterus to sterilize females. The data I had said the subjects were female rabbits. But this memo said 'Untermenschen.' Subhumans. Jewish women." She bit her lip. "He lied to me. He kept me in that lab, doing research for his Nazi friends. He said he hated Hitler. He did not believe in racial purity and secretly worked against it. I-I telephoned my family, told them to get out of Poland however they could. I got in my car, and I drove. I had papers and money; I could get through the checkpoints. From Berlin to Paris, to Marseilles. A ship to Morocco to meet my family and buy visas to Lisbon. In England, the intelligence officers detained me, but let my family go to America."

Byers stared at her, trying to comprehend how his beautiful wife could have any association with the stacks of dead bodies they found in Dachau.

"I-I married you because I loved you. I still love you," she whispered desperately. "You have given me so much: children, a home. I love you. Please stop looking at me like that, John."

"The camera in our bedroom in New York," he said evenly, staccato-like. "The bug in our telephone- They weren't monitoring me. They were monitoring you."

"No. Why would they? The war has been over for a decade. What would they want with me?"

"It's not over!" he barked.

She flinched. 

On the other side of their bedroom wall, Mulder cleared his throat loudly.

Byers took a breath, trying to stay calm. "The research you did, the experiments those men did? It didn't stop. Those men never stopped, Susanne. They relocated their labs and got better at it."

*~*~*~*

Mulder was a romantic at heart, and he adored Dana and Emily. If Mulder wanted to believe some conspiracy caused Dana to have a daughter out of wedlock, Byers saw little harm in it. Emily needed a last name; Mulder needed stability. As his friend, Byers recalled having concerns about Dana Scully, especially after her mysterious three-month disappearance and 'miscarriage,' but he wasn't dating her. Mulder was. Mulder was a grown man; he made his own decisions, and it did no good to try to reason with him. Love was blind or at least, conditionally myopic.

Byers had been able to push the pieces into some semblance of order in his mind. Alex Krycek was an obsessed psychopath who seduced or, more likely, forced Dana, with Emily being the end result. She repressed the memory and replaced it with one of government doctors and secret projects. Years later, Krycek kidnapped Dana, forcing her to abort the baby she carried. Later, in a fit of jealous rage, he shot Mulder and staged it to look like a mugging. He went to their house in Georgetown, looking for Dana and Emily. Krycek cornered them outside Frohike's apartment building last year, and Mulder put a bullet in Krycek and his friends’ heads.

Until the day Krycek died, John Byers could arrange the facts to fit his perception of the world, but he couldn’t deny what he'd seen. Krycek looked like a man, talked like a man, but he hadn't been. If he was Emily's father, by whatever means, she wasn't entirely human either.

Occam's razor was never intended for application to little girls.

For the first decade of their lives, Katy and Ana campaigned for separate bedrooms, desperate to avoid sister cooties. Now that they had them, Byers often found them like this: both in Katy's bed, asleep amid a nest of discarded Nancy Drew novels, textbooks, and diaries with miniature brass locks. Tonight they had Emily between them, and curled up like a trio of sated kittens. Three half-empty glasses of milk left rings on the nightstand around a plate of cookie crumbs. A dirty kiss of chocolate remained Emily's lips.

Katy slept like a log, but Ana opened her eyes as Byers stepped into the room. "I'm checking on you," he whispered, tucking the blankets around them. "Go back to sleep."

"Emily wanted to stay here," Ana whispered back in the hushed darkness. "We're having a slumber party."

"That's fine." He kissed her forehead, and he collected the plate and glasses to take to the kitchen, trying not to clink them together.

"What time is it?" she asked groggily.

Emily started to stir.

"Late. After midnight."

Ana nodded, rolled to her side, and slipped back into unconsciousness as easily as she'd slipped out. Standing beside the bed, Byers watched for a long time, studying their serene faces. His girls didn't sleep with a night light but they rigged one for Emily by draping a scarf over a small lamp. Their stuffed animals joined the party as well, lined up to guard the foot of the bed. Among them was a worn Kitty, his glass eyes missing, his fur loved off, and his tail hanging by a thread.

"Mr. Byers?" Emily said softly, as he was about to turn away.

"Yes, Emily? Are you feeling all right?"

She yawned. "Does Santa come to France?"

"Yes, he does," he assured her quietly. "Not for a few more months, but he comes. They call him Pere Noel. Father Christmas."

"Mommy says Santa is meta-for-ical," she informed him sleepily. "Mulder says Mommy's a party pooper."

"Go back to sleep, sweetheart."

She snuggled deeper into the valley between the two pillows. "Bub says Santa's a fat pervert who's keen to play with elves. Someone should call the law," she mumbled, and closed her eyes again.

Balancing the glasses on the plate like a waiter, Byers moved Kitty from the foot of the bed to Emily's arms. He stood in the doorway, studying her in the red light that filtered through the scarf. She was such a sweet, beautiful child. Bright. Much-loved. Composed and mature beyond her years, the way very sick children sometimes were. If Emily wanted the moon, Mulder would write a check and Dana would get a stepladder.

Each time Byers tried to broach the subject of Emily's illness, Mulder answered his questions with more questions. Less than two years ago, Byers recalled reports of endless specialists and hospitals. Dana all but swabbed people with alcohol before she let them near her daughter. Several times Emily was close to death, rapidly losing the battle between her red blood cells and her immune system. Last spring, at Mulder's and then Will's wedding, the girl looked frighteningly ill. Byers assumed the end was near. Now, Emily tired easily. She had nosebleeds, but otherwise seemed healthy. Byers had asked if he and Susanne needed to do anything special during her visit, and Mulder said, “Wash your hands and try not to sneeze on her.”

According to Langly's monthly summaries, soon after Dana, Emily, and Ben returned, Mulder made a large purchase from a medical supply company. Byers checked, making sure it was a legitimate expense: a small autoclave, a specialized refrigerator, a microscope, IV poles, and everything necessary to collect and store blood or to perform a transfusion. All they needed was a nurse qualified to do the procedure, and a suitable donor. Dana was a nurse, and Mulder and Will were O positive. Except Will joined the Air Force shortly thereafter. Which left Mulder. 

Byers assumed Ben was ill, but Mulder assured Byers the baby was fine. Mulder said Dana purchased the equipment for Emily and changed the subject. Melvin Frohike was equally unhelpful, which meant mischief was afoot.

Emily's and Mulder's blood cells should be no more compatible than two strangers', yet they must be. Mulder and Dana weren't related, and Emily was Mulder’s daughter by adoption - Byers saw the blood test. Aside from a statistical anomaly, one possibly remained. Mulder was closely related to Emily’s real father. The thought sent a dark chill trickling down Byers' spine.

"Did they settle down?" Mulder's voice asked.

Byers jumped, rattling the glasses. He steadied them with his free hand before they crashed to the floor.

"Sorry, I didn't mean to startle you."

"I-I didn't hear you. Yes, they're asleep."

Mulder's flannel shirt was unbuttoned, with the sleeves casually rolled up. Above the V-neck of his undershirt, a faded scar ran from the base of his throat and disappeared underneath the white fabric. He must have realized Byers could see it, because Mulder adjusted his t-shirt uncomfortably. He started buttoning his shirt, watching his fingers. 

"Did you know," Mulder started awkwardly, still working with the buttons, "your wife is on the porch?  She's, uh- She's just sitting."

Byers switched from watching Mulder button to watching the floor, not focusing on either. "Oh," he said. He turned and watched his feet follow Mulder down the stairs.

Will lay on the sofa, sprawled in the black oblivion of sleep with one hand hanging off the edge and a foot propped on armrest. His lips parted and his eyes twitched beneath his eyelids as he dreamed.

"Hello, Daddy-O," he mumbled as Mulder pulled the blanket so it covered his escaped foot and lifted Will's hand back to his chest. 

"Hello, baby boy." Mulder smoothed what remained of Will's shorn hair.

Someone - Dana probably - had taken a roll of film of Maddie showing off her belly, and one of the black and white snapshots was propped against Will's empty wineglass on the coffee table. Mulder picked it up, squinted at it expressionlessly, and silently put it back. He rubbed Will's foot before he moved on. 

The logs in the hearth fell into molten orange cinders, hissing and sparking and dancing around the room as firelight. The front door was closed, but the window remained open a few inches, and the cool air whistled as it stole in. Mulder paused to look out, scanning the horizon as though making certain it was safe before he relaxed for a few hours. Byers stood beside him, wondering what he watched for. At least Mulder had a glimpse of the enemy; Byers felt like he shot at shadows.

"A smart woman told me everything has a price, and I had to decide if what I'd gain by being with her was worth what I might lose. I think she's worth it," Mulder said quietly, and let the curtains fall over the window. 

Byers nodded thoughtfully, not sure what they were discussing.  Mulder wasn't looking at him, but Byers had the uncomfortable feeling of being exposed.

"Goodnight, Byers."

"Goodnight," he responded automatically.

Mulder pushed open the door to the guestroom. Byers saw Dana in bed, reading. Ben slept in the corner in the old crib. Dana turned as Mulder entered, and lowered her book, saying something Byers couldn't hear. As the door closed, Mulder answered affirmatively, and sank onto the bed beside her.

Byers watched the door, feeling like a stranger in his own home. Time seemed distant, impersonal, as if he stood still as the world turned around him, a complicated tangle of secrets and lies. His wife had been one of Them. Them: the Nazis, the government scientists, the madmen, the corrupt elite. The evil he'd fought to stop before it spread to a global plague. More than a decade later, Byers found he slept with the enemy and sat across from her at breakfast.

More than a decade later, he was in love with the enemy. All Byers ever wanted was a home, a family, and love. Susanne gave him all three. The gingham dog and the calico cat chased madly around his brain, threatening to devour each other and leave nothing but stuffing and rags. 

Mulder was right. Susanne was on the porch, sitting with her white robe wrapped tightly around her. She didn't move as Byers approached, nor as he stood on the steps beside her.

"You shouldn't be out here without a sweater," he said softly. "Even a light breeze can raise the wind chill factor, making it feel ten to twenty degrees colder and..."

She shivered but continued staring into the darkness as if unaware of his presence. The sky was endless, like infinity sprinkled with a dusting of stars.

"Susanne..."

"At first, I did not tell you because I could not. Do you understand?"

"Yes, I do."

"I waited for someone to come to our door," she continued in a hoarse whisper. "To say 'You are not a good wife. You are not a good mother. You do not deserve this. You are a war criminal. You will come with us.' But they never came." 

"Susanne, you're not a war criminal. How could you know what was being done with your research?"

"How could I not know?" She wrapped her arms tighter around her body. "How could I be so naïve?"

"I think we were all naïve." He meant that to be comforting, but it didn't end up sounding that way. "I'm sorry, Susanne. When you told me- I didn't handle it well. Please come inside. We'll talk, if you want."

"What is there to talk about?"

"Come inside. Let me try to explain."

She still hadn't turned her head, so Byers descended a few steps and turned so he stood in front of her, blocking her view of nothing. She was crying. The wind pushed the tears back from the corners of her eyes, defying gravity.

"Please." His heart beat twice before he added, "I love you."

She stood and let him lead her into the house. As soon as the door closed, she pressed her wet face against his neck. She shivered and sobbed silently, as though she wasn't allowed to make a sound. He put his arms around her and wished they were strong enough to shield her from the world.

On the sofa a few yards away, William kicked his blanket off again. The fire crackled. The wind whistled, the dog snored, and the tree branches tapped politely on the windowpanes. The October night surrounded them like a velvet cocoon, keeping the monsters at bay for a few more hours.

*~*~*~*

The overhead kitchen light seemed too bright. They turned on the light in the pantry, which spilled out on the wooden floor in pale yellow puddles. The flame under the teakettle danced liquid blue, and the kettle creaked and moaned as it came alive. Seated at the kitchen table, they spoke in hushed voices of secret things, playing connect-the-dots with a series of random numbers.

Byers poured Susanne the last of the red wine, trying to get her to calm down. She clutched the goblet with both hands and held rather than drank it. He sat across from her. He ran his fingertip around the rim of his teacup while he waited on the kettle.

"I can’t explain what I saw, but I know I saw it, Susanne," he told her, still feeling like his voice was too loud in the empty kitchen.

The words sounded strange coming out of his mouth after spending so long lurking in the corners of his mind. Saying them gave them flesh, made them real. Saying them made them both more and less frightening, like a nightmare by the light of day. 

"Eugenics was alive and well in America and Europe before World War I," he said. "We like to believe the Nazis originated the idea of racial purity and forget we've sterilized the genetically inferior since the turn of the century in the U.S., while we encouraged the genetically fit to reproduce. What the Nazis did: it's a difference in degree. We've been building better humans in the United States for fifty years."

Her voice was still shaky, like her hands, but she answered, "Naturally occurring, yes. Parents passing on preferred traits - that is possible. That is what Hitler did. But what you are describing, John, human-hybrids, is not possible. That is science fiction. You cannot combine human with nonhuman. Aside from blood, plasma, and minor grafts, you cannot even combine human with human. The body rejects foreign tissue."

"But it doesn't reject it before a child is born, does it?" he asked. "Early on, foreign tissue can be introduced and the baby incorporates it into its body."

That information was the product of a late night, intoxicated conversation with Frohike last year, and Byers didn’t know whether to believe it or not. If Frohike was in his cups, he had his own brand of paranoia that made Byers' ideas seem quaint.

"Yes," she admitted. "A fetus has no immune system. For a while, yes, I suppose a human-hybrid could be created. But once it nears term, it will reject the tissue and die."

"But if it didn't?" The pressure inside the teakettle begin to build. Byers fussed with his cup, spoon, and saucer, needing to put something in order. "What if, through some means, it could be brought to term? A living, human-hybrid baby?"

She shook her head tiredly, her forehead wrinkling. "If it was possible, the offspring would be fragile. Sterile, probably. Each time the cells reproduce, there is a chance of rejection. There would likely be auto-immune problems-"

"Auto-immune hemolytic anemia?"

"Possibly. The immune system attacking red blood cells. It is hard to speculate.  Even if we could create hybrids, why would we? Why go to such lengths to create something so delicate? From a scientific viewpoint, whatever trait the government valued, it would be easier to reproduce it through a naturally occurring mutations in humans than try to hybridize it with animal genetics."

"What if it wasn't animal genetics?" He leaned closer to her. "What if it was alien?" he whispered. "Alien genetics introduced into a human child?"

Susanne stopped toying with her wine glass. She stared at him with her eyes wide and her lips parted. She waited as if making sure she heard correctly. Byers worried his lips between his teeth and waited with her.

The kettle shrieked, startling them. He twisted in his chair to turn off the heat, but left the kettle on the stove and the tea leaves dry.

"You are serious, yes?" she asked.

Byers nodded. He invested long-term, couldn't tell a joke, drove a Studebaker station wagon, and defined 'casual' as a starched, short-sleeve dress shirt and tie. She teased him about being such a fuddy-duddy, but he preferred to think of himself as orderly. Well-informed. Precise. A Victorian gentleman born after his age. Regardless, 'adventure' wasn't his middle name and he wasn't given to flights of fancy.

"In the summer of 1947, a flying saucer crashed in Roswell, New Mexico," he explained quietly. "It was in the newspapers, though the military later said it was a weather balloon. I looked up the article. That fall, the House of Un-American Activities Committee began investigating again. HUAC. It's the perfect cover. Our government had the data from the Nazi experiments in genetics, embryology, and immunology. It had its own ongoing eugenics projects - naturally occurring, as you say. After the saucer crashed, it had alien genes and technology. Anyone who dared question their activities was branded a communist."

Susanne glanced at her still-full wine glass. She set it carefully on the kitchen table as if deciding she'd had enough to drink for one night.

"I'm not crazy, Susanne. Think about it. Think about the scientific advances we've made in less than a decade. We've discovered DNA. We’ve harnessed the atom. Broken the sound barrier. Developed the heart-lung machine that saved Mulder's life. We're not far from putting a rocket into space. Even having Nazi research to build on doesn't explain all our advances. Name any other period in history mankind has made so many leaps-"

A door opened. Rapid footsteps moved through the living room. Still in blue jeans and t-shirt, Mulder bounded up the dark stairs with Dana a few steps behind him. Dana’s robe fluttered after her. 

Byers hadn't heard Emily but Mulder must have.

Byers watched them tensely. He looked at the ceiling. Footsteps hurried down the hall to Katy's room. The bed squeaked as someone picked Emily up. The hallway at the top of the stairs brightened as Mulder or Dana switched on the bathroom light. A faucet turned on, running water in the bathroom sink and probably wetting a washcloth. Another nosebleed. The third of the day.

Mulder's and Dana's voices upstairs sounded urgent but indistinct. Byers heard Emily coughing and struggling to breathe. He waited for it to stop, like the first two nosebleeds, but the kitchen clock kept ticking away minutes.

No sound indicated Ana or Katy was awake, so he and Susanne sat, waiting. Dana was a nurse. Byers would be in the way. It seemed wrong to do nothing, but he could think of nothing else to do.

Susanne helped him watch the ceiling. "Should we call the doctor?"

"No," Byers answered with his chest tight. "They don't want any more doctors. She's had enough doctors."

In the living room, the old dog got to her feet and paced restlessly. She whined and nuzzled Will, who slept on.

"Is it leukemia?" Susanne sounded as powerless as Byers felt.

"Anemia. Auto-immune hemolytic anemia."

In the guestroom, Ben started crying, sounding frightened and calling for his daddy. As Byers stood, Susanne's goblet cracked. Byers froze. First a single crack, then dozens climbed the bowl in jagged lightning bolts. The delicate goblet shattered, sending bits of glass through the air and wine flowing across the tabletop. Susanne’s chair squeaked as she jumped back. Dark red liquid spattered her white robe.

"My God! Are you hurt?” Byers bent over her. "What happened?"

"I do not know. I did not touch it," she said.

Upstairs, he heard Emily's frightened voice and Dana trying to comfort the girl.

The hair on Byers' scalp bristled as the wine drip-dropped rhythmically to the floor. "Don't move,” he ordered. He put a hand on Susanne’s shoulder. “There's glass everywhere and you don't have shoes on."

"I did not touch it, John," Susanne insisted.

Ben’s cries had become wails. Heavy footsteps hurried down the stairs, and Mulder called to his younger son it was all right. Byers shivered though he didn't recall being cold. A goose walked across his grave, his grandmother would have said.

"John-" Susanne started shakily. “I-”

The bulb in the pantry exploded, raining to the floor in a tinkle of glass. The kitchen went black.

"Don't move," Byers repeated as he tried to figure out what was happening. His body felt like a storm rolled in. Instincts tugged at the base of his brain and awakened senses forgotten for a million years. He felt the pressure building, the air moving over his skin like a living thing. It was magical. Sensual. Beautiful, primal, frightening, and far beyond his control.

Upstairs, he heard four loud pops. The top of the stairs went black; the bathroom vanity had four bulbs above it. Another ‘pop’ in the guest bedroom as Mulder reached Ben. Byers heard Mulder murmuring to the baby. The crying subsided.

Within seconds, the house was silent again except for water running upstairs, the fireplace, and Mulder's voice soothing his infant son. Byers’ heart continued pounding. 

"John," Susanne said a third time, her voice small and lost in the darkness.

"I'm here," he answered, and tightened his hand on her shoulder.

Something seemed missing.

Byers listened. The kitchen clock had stopped ticking.

*~*~*~*

God forgive him, but once Byers understood what Mulder asked over the crackling trans-Atlantic telephone line, he thought Mulder was drinking again. Byers’ second thought was Mulder couldn't afford two ex-wives.

"No, not Will. Me," Mulder had repeated. "I'm getting married. Next Saturday morning. I know it's short notice, but would you come?"

Byers' lips moved soundlessly. He had to remind himself not to drop the telephone. Susanne stopped making lunch, held the bread knife in midair, and watched him curiously.

"Byers?"

"We'd- Susanne and I- We'd planned to be there for Will's wedding. We, we have reservations."

"So do I. So does everyone," Mulder quipped good-naturedly. "But that's not for two weeks. I need a best man next Saturday."

"And you're asking me?" Byers squeaked. "Who, wh-who, uh, who are you marrying?"

"Take a breath, John. You sound like a hoot owl and you're starting to hyperventilate. Who do you think I'm marrying?"

Byers searched his memory, trying to think of any woman Mulder had mentioned since Dana and Emily went into hiding. No one Byers recalled. Mulder even made public appearances alone, and Frohike hadn’t pushed the issue. If Mulder wasn't playing ball or in the limelight, he spent his time holed up in the Hudson Valley, two hours and a world away from Manhattan, as he put it. He put on a good show for the cameras, but the months ticked by. Dana didn’t return. Since Will's baby announcement, Byers and Frohike held their breath, waiting for the other shoe to fall.

"Wait, she's here." The telephone shifted and Mulder's muffled voice requested, "Say hello, honey."

"Hello, honey," Dana's voice said, and asked if Mulder wanted another pancake.

Something hit Byers' shoe, and he realized he'd let go of the receiver.  He scrambled after it, pulling it back by the cord. His hand shook as he put it to his ear again. 

Susanne pantomimed 'who are you talking to?'

Byers mouthed, “Mulder.”

She shook her head and resumed making sandwiches.

"Byers? John- Are you there?" Mulder’s voice asked.

"I'm, I'm here. My God. Yes, I'll be there."

"Great," Mulder responded. "I appreciate it. We'd appreciate it. I'll explain more once you get here, but Byers-" His voice softened. "I need you to keep it quiet, but I have someone for you to meet."

"W-Who?" His brain had a case of the hiccups.

"His name is Benjamin Adam. Ben. Isn't it, buddy?" Mulder spoke quietly and to someone close by.

"Who's Ben?"

"He's, uh, mine," Mulder answered. "He's my son."

"Oh my God," Byers had managed.

*~*~*~*

Susanne's broom dragged slowly, precisely across the kitchen floor, gathering slivers of glass. She got every nook and cranny, and she went over the floor and baseboards with a damp rag, making sure. Byers watched her on her hands and knees. He wanted to tell her it was the middle of the night and to do that in the morning, but kept his mouth closed. It was her way of restoring order to an upside down world. 

Dana sat on the swing on the front porch wrapped in Mulder's flannel shirt and staring blankly at the dark horizon. The wind ruffled her hair, blowing it around her face. Mulder stood a few feet away. He leaned back against the banister, looking at ease, but tracked everything around him with the watchful eyes of a soldier. The thousand-yard stare, they called it in the Army - when a man spent too long watching for the enemy.

No clock in the house still worked, but Byers supposed it must be after two. Or three. Time slipped out of alignment and into a muddled jumble of real and unreal. It was the aftermath of the witching hour and the beginning of the long, empty wait for dawn to burn away the night. It was when fevers broke and babies came and logic became disjointed.  

Mulder turned his head as if noticing Byers watching them. He returned inside, leaving Dana to listen to the ocean. Mulder checked on Ben and Emily, who slept in the guestroom, before he joined Byers at the living room window near the hearth.

"I'm sorry," Mulder said softly, words seldom passing his lips. "We never meant to- I-I thought France would be a nice change of scenery for Dana. Emily wanted to see the Eiffel Tower. We could see Will-"

"Don't be sorry," Byers assured him. "We want to help. This isn't quite what I'd anticipated." He looked through the window at Dana, who sat unmoving on the old swing. "Is she all right?"

Mulder chose his words carefully. "It's hard for her. Em being sick. Ben. As much as she loves him, he frightens her. She feels helpless and Dana doesn't like feeling helpless." 

"But Ben doesn't frighten you?"

"No, he doesn't frighten me."

Whatever force shattered the lightbulbs and Susanne's wine glass, it wasn't natural. Not as Byers understood Nature to be. He and Susanne had been in the kitchen, directly under Katy's bedroom, and hadn't heard Emily wake. There was no way Mulder could have heard her from the downstairs guestroom, behind a closed oak door.

Mulder was so intuitive it was spooky, though. And Byers recalled seeing other things happen long before Ben was born. The bathroom light in the hospital with Will - though that could have been bad wiring. And perhaps the men's room mirror was already cracked or Byers hadn't heard Mulder hit it. Even before, though- Krycek had insinuated he'd watched Mulder and Dana in bed, and a bulb in the parking garage of Frohike's building exploded. The other three men Mulder shot - Byers hadn't seen or heard them approach.

"Can, can you read my mind?" Byers whispered after a few false starts.

"No, I can't read your mind. Not like you're imagining," Mulder answered as though that was a routine question. "I can sense things, especially if the emotion or sensation is strong. Some people I can sense better than others. If I want to, I can push a thought into your mind, like I'm speaking to you. And sometimes, some people, if they want me to... Yes, I can read their mind and I can let them read mine."

The last log in the hearth split, sending orange sparks up the chimney, and startling Byers. On the sofa, Will shifted but didn't wake.

"I've read of experiments involving ESP." Byers tried to sound calm. "In the 1930's, Oxford University did a series of controlled tests with Zeener cards, and-"

He stopped speaking as Mulder looked at him. The fire painted Mulder’s face in stark light and shadow.

"You were at Oxford in the 1930's," Byers realized.

"He who fights with monsters should take care lest he become a monster. If you gaze too long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you."

"That's Nietzsche."

Mulder nodded. "Knowledge is a dangerously seductive thing, Byers. It's easy to ask questions, but ask yourself if you want them answered. You can tell yourself it was a power surge, replace the light bulbs, and go on with your life."

"No, I want to know," Byers heard his own voice answer unsteadily. "What was that, Mulder? What the hell are you?"

"I'm your friend," he answered. "My mother is a German-born Jew; my father worked for the State Department. Intelligence. I assumed she was a war bride, but it's possible their marriage was arranged. They had two children: my sister and me. When she was nine, my sister vanished. I was with her in the woods. Sam didn't run away. She wasn't kidnapped. She vanished." Mulder paused. "Girls are born with all the ova they'll ever have. Dana told me. Did you know? To pass on a male's genetics, you have to wait until puberty, but in females, the ova are present at birth. Before birth, even."

"You think They waited until your sister was old enough to demonstrate the same, uh, abilities you have, and took her?"

"I think so. Whether it was intentional or a fluke, a natural, latent gene got switched on in Samantha and me. We can pass it on. Ben has it. Will doesn't. I can't hear Will the way I can hear Ben, but Will or his son could be a carrier."

Byers nodded, wanting him to continue, but Mulder waited a long time before he spoke again.

"I was superfluous, the boy who came before the girl They wanted. Aside from keeping track of me, testing me, giving me a few nudges here and there, I don't think They gave me a second thought until I met Dana. But once They realized the opportunity, They capitalized on it."

He cleared his throat.

"I see them sometimes. In my dreams," Mulder said in a rough whisper. "Our babies. Twin girls: happy, redheaded toddlers. Safe. Loved. I see Samantha, still nine years old. She's happy, too. But sometimes I see other children. Dark-haired babies: identical boys and identical girls. Seven or eight of each. Like Samantha, but not. I feel what's inside them; it's dark, too."

"Do you think any of what you see is real?"

"Some is, but I know some of it isn't." Mulder shifted his hands on the windowsill, still watching Dana on the porch. "We're real, though." He tilted his head toward her. "She and I."

"If what you're saying is true, you have to-"

"What?" Mulder asked curtly. "I have to what? Notify the proper authorities? The death camp, Byers: do you know who granted immunity to the men who did that? Who continued their work? You know who took our first babies and left Dana to die? Who took my sister? Do you know who's behind Emily's birth? Do you know who shot me?  Who pointed a gun at Will? Do you know who those men are? They’re the proper authorities, Byers. Old Glory, apple pie, Mom, and ticker tape parades - God bless America."

Mulder pushed away from the window, reminding Byers of a dangerous animal confined to too small a cage.

"Don't tell me what I have to do. I have to protect my family. I waited forty-two years to be normal. To have one moment of what every other man has. To be able to come home at night and kiss my wife and read a story to my children before bed. Have my daughter-in-law bring my grandson over so I can stuff him full of sweets and tell him stories about when Papa was a boy. You've had that all along but I just got it, so don't tell me what I have to do, Byers."

As Mulder paced, the storm-coming-in feeling crept up Byers' spine again. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to presume."  

Mulder exhaled, and the feeling subsided. "I know. I know you didn't. It's-" He paused. "You said you wanted to know. You said you wanted to help."

Byers hesitated. He'd meant help in a 'babysit for the afternoon' way. The last time he blindly agreed to help Fox Mulder, he ended up an accessory to multiple murders.

For such a nice guy, Fox Mulder was frighteningly good at killing people.

"We do want to help," Susanne's voice answered. Byers turned. She stood in the doorway between the kitchen and living room. She still wore her wine-stained robe. She clutched a dishrag. Under Mulder's penetrating gaze, her shoulders hunched and she looked at the floor. "I did not mean to overhear. I was in the kitchen.” She wiped a spot on a spotless doorjamb. She lowered the dishrag, squared her shoulders, and addressed Mulder. “If John will permit it, I would like to help."

*~*~*~*

It was the last Saturday morning in May, after the full moon crested. The florists and caterers must have arrived before dawn to set up the white tent beside the river. The sun pulled the mist from the tops of the mountains and off the river. The ranch's previous owner bred racehorses. Miles of split-rail fences enclosed the fields populated by a single fat pony. An old, one-eyed cat prowled the perimeter of the house, his tail flicking as he kept watch over his domain. 

As Dana came to greet Byers, she smiled uncertainly, looking vulnerable. She still wore a robe, with her hair done but her face bare of makeup. She seemed paler and slimmer than he remembered, and more watchful. But she was real. Alive. Standing on Mulder's front porch steps. Mulder never wavered in his insistence Dana would return, and Byers felt traitorous for not believing him.

"I'm early; I'm sorry I'm so early. Eighty-two percent of commercial flights arrive at least thirty minutes late. Whoever heard of a plane landing early?" Byers said clumsily. He shook the hand Dana offered as though they met for the first time. "It's so good to see you again."

"It's good to see you." She took his satchel. An awkward pause followed, which Dana ended by saying, "Mulder wanted to talk with you. He's down by the boathouse."

The air was crisp, and the grass damp with dew, which collected on the hem of his trench coat and dotted his wingtip shoes. Under the tent, men arranged tables and chaffing dishes, while beside the river, chairs were set out for the ceremony.

It was a simple wedding in the middle of playing season, and therefore sandwiched between week-long road trips. No honeymoon, but no reporters, no photographers, and no one except close friends and family. No one in the press knew about the wedding, or Dana and Emily had returned, or about Ben. Mulder wanted to keep it that way as long as possible.

Frohike was meeting Dana's sister at North Beach Airport and driving her upstate. Langly flew into Albany, as did Agent Dales and a man who'd been an Assistant Director of the F.B.I. - hopefully, not on the same flight. According to Frohike, Mulder's mother and Dana's mother were invited, but neither would be attending.

Mulder lounged in a chair in the first row. He wore expensive suit trousers and a white dress shirt with the collar open. He seemed to watch the fog rolling off the river. Except for metallic squeaks as the caterers worked, and petals and fabric rustling as the florists decorated, the only sound was the water lapping against the dock.

"Dana won't let me have a tilt-a-whirl or a dunking booth," Mulder complained softly. He looked over as Byers approached. "Or a cotton candy machine. They rent them, you know. I think this shindig would benefit greatly from a cotton candy machine."

Byers looked around, trying to fathom where Mulder thought a cotton candy machine would fit into this pristine setting.

"I'm joking." Mulder nodded to the chair beside him. "Take a load off."

Byers sat down and leaned over to examine the bundle nestled in the crook of Mulder's arm. Defying all odds, a small baby slept soundly.

"This is Benjamin." Mulder stroked the baby's cheek. "Ben. He's four months old. It's been an eventful night, so he's taking a little nap."

Byers stared at the baby's peaceful face, trying to comprehend he was real. "My God, Mulder. Did you know? All this time?"

Mulder nodded slowly, and he smiled as Ben pursed his lips. He was a man in love.

Byers shook his head in disbelief. "Why didn't you say something?"

"It was safer not to."

"Did Frohike know?" Byers asked, feeling left out. "He did, didn't he?"

Mulder studied Ben. "Get the paperwork rolling for me to adopt Emily. Ben's birth certificate needs to be changed. My name isn't on it, and it needs to be. My will needs changed, too."

"I'll get someone on it right away."

Byers waited for further instructions, but Mulder held his new son and watched the mist skimming the silvery surface of the water.

"I'm getting married, Byers," he said absently. "In two hours. For better or for worse, till death us do part. Ani l'Dodi, v'Dodi li," he added in Hebrew. "The whole shebang."

Byers nodded, trying to be supportive. Instead of pre-wedding jitters, Mulder was in one of his odd, contemplative moods.

Mulder exhaled. "And to that end, I'd better finish getting dressed," He adjusted the blanket around the baby and got up.

Dana made her way down the path from the house, carrying two steaming mugs.  Mulder smiled at her and exchanged the baby for one of the cups. He blew the surface of the coffee to cool it.

"My mother called." Her voice sounded shaky as she settled Ben against her shoulder. "She's changed her mind. She's at the service station in Kingston. Bill wouldn't bring her, so she drove. From Alexandria. All night."

Mulder’s eyebrows rose. "Your mother can drive a car?" he asked over his mug.

Dana bit her lower lip. "Will left to pick up Maddie. I'm afraid to leave Emily long, and I still need to feed Ben and get ready. We'll have more people here any minute. Could you-"

"You want me to go meet her so she doesn't get lost?" Mulder offered gently.

Dana nodded again.

"Your mother frightens me, Scully."

"Lock your doors, roll up your windows, and come straight home," she advised, and turned away.

"We're gettin' married, honey," Mulder called after her, as though he realized it. "Third time's a charm."

"Don't say that too loudly," she responded over her shoulder and winked.

Mulder chuckled and sipped his coffee. He stepped aside to let two men unfurl a long runner between the chairs, creating an aisle ending at a small canopy - a nod to Mulder's heritage. 

"It would be better with a cotton candy machine and a dunking booth," Mulder said wistfully, looking around at a scene making 'picturesque' seem cliché. "but I suppose this will do."

"Congratulations," Byers answered, remembering his manners. "I hope you'll be very happy together."

That came out sounding less certain than Byers intended, but Mulder didn't seem to notice. Mulder watched Dana walk back to the house with his infant son.

Byers stood awkwardly, worrying he said the wrong thing. The coffee mug was warm between his hands and the steam drifted with the breeze.

High above the Hudson River, two bald eagles soared, watching them.

"These stubborn human women... It is a remarkable universe, Byers, and they make it all worthwhile," Mulder said.

Byers nodded. He had no idea what Mulder was talking about, but he agreed completely.

*~*~*~*

Despite the glare of the public spotlight, Mulder was a private person, as was Dana. Neither asked to be extraordinary. All they wanted was to be together, raise their family, and live their lives. Through some cruel twist of genetic fate, those were the three things they struggled hardest to do.

Byers and Susanne sat with Mulder at the kitchen table, listening as he explained fifty years of government conspiracy. Mulder said, beginning around the turn of the century, the U.S. and Europe attempted to create superior humans through selective breeding programs. After World War II, after Roswell, those programs shifted focus. It wasn't enough to build a better human anymore. The Russians could do that. The U.S. had the Nazi data and the alien tissue from the Roswell crash. America could create an alien-human hybrid.

The swing on the front porch squeaked as Dana shifted. Mulder stopped speaking momentarily.

He explained the first experiments after Roswell were clumsy: creating hybrid pregnancies in unsuspecting women in the military, relying on their shame to keep them silent or to force them to give their babies up for adoption. He said Emily was a product of those experiments, but didn't say Dana was never married to Emily's father. He said Alex Krycek was dead, but didn't mention the bullet that killed Krycek came from Mulder's gun.

Mulder said the experiments evolved, becoming more adept at blending human and alien DNA. Using vaccinations and the hunt for communism as a smokescreen, the government tracked people's genetics, monitoring those whose genes would be most compatible with alien tissue. Using them as unsuspecting test subjects. Using their tissue. Using their unborn children's tissue to further their project. Mulder never mentioned the first babies he and Dana conceived: not that Dana disappeared for three months, not that her pregnancy mysteriously ended, not that she almost died herself.

"These men are dangerous," Mulder said. "Above the law. They'll stop at nothing to get what they want. You need to understand."

Byers glanced at Susanne. "We understand."

Mulder chewed the inside of his lower lip. He said slowly, "Emily has a rare, auto-immune anemia. It can be treated with blood transfusions but the donor's cells have to be compatible. In Emily's case, it means being compatible with alien genetics. Not alien, per se, but able to co-exist with alien." He watched Susanne as if gauging her reaction.

Susanne nodded.

"I'm compatible, as staggering as the implications are. Emily seems to benefit from my immunities; if I have antibodies, she can use them. Muldercillin, Dana calls it. She keeps saying my body wasn't designed to produce red blood cells for two people, but I've always been healthy and right now, I'm fine. Emily's getting better. But I'm the only one we're sure she's compatible with, and we discovered by dumb luck. If something would happen to me or if it becomes too dangerous for Dana, Ben, and Emily to stay with me... We need a plan B, if there is one. A way to slow the anemia. A way for her to be compatible with another donor. A way to find another donor. We don't even know what in my blood makes me a match."

Susanne nodded again.

"I know what I'm asking for is a medical needle in a haystack," Mulder said, speaking solely to Susanne. "We've had the best doctors in the world tell us it isn't possible: there is no cure, and the treatment they offer makes her sicker than the anemia." He opened and closed his mouth several times. "I'm not ready to accept that. The science at Johns Hopkins and Children's Hospital isn't the same science that created this child, and it isn't the science that's going to make her better. You knew those men; you've seen their science." Mulder’s eyes seeming to scan her soul. This time Byers sensed no accusation, but calm appraisal and a statement of fact.

"Yes," she said, barely audible.

"I can get you access to whatever equipment or information you need," Mulder offered. "Blood samples, medical records - whatever you need."

She nodded.

"Do you think you can help?" he asked hesitantly.

"I'm not sure. I can try," she said softly.

"Thank you." Mulder took a deep breath and got up. He rolled his neck and shoulders tiredly. "We can talk later. I should get my wife off the porch before she turns into a Scully-cicle."

As Mulder reached the doorway to the living room, he turned back. He braced his hands on the doorjamb. "If you discover there isn't a plan B-" He seemed to weigh his words. "-I don't want Dana to know. If you can’t help, I don't want her to know about any of this. Ever."

Susanne nodded again.

*~*~*~*

Byers didn't recall Mulder wearing reading glasses, but Dana noticed him squinting at the photo and handed him a pair from the pocket of the gray flannel shirt she'd borrowed. Mulder put them on and tilted the picture of Maddie and her belly to see it in the dim light.

"Did you look like this?" Mulder glanced up at Dana. "With Ben? This big?"

"Bigger." Dana toyed with Mulder’s hair as he sat on the ottoman beside the sofa. "This is her first baby, and she was still at the cute stage when I took these. Give her two more weeks."

Mulder looked at the picture again as if trying to fathom that. Eventually, he put it back on the coffee table and jostled Will's shoulder gently.

"Aren't you supposed to report for roll call, baby boy?" Mulder asked. "Time to get up."

"...don't have school today," Will answered without moving his lips or opening is eyes.

"William, come on. Gotta get up."

"Dad?" Will grimaced unhappily "...time is it?"

"Almost morning. After five. You need to get back to the base."

"Shit. Five isn't morning. Write me a note, Daddy-O." He burrowed deeper under his blanket. "We'll call it an excused absence."

"Unfortunately, the Air Force will call it AWOL. Get up, go shower, and I'll see about coffee."

Will squinted at his father like a pampered pet denied his place at the foot of the bed and started to go back to sleep.

"AWOL. Summary court-martial. Military jail, William," Mulder reiterated. "A note from Daddy-O won't cut it anymore."

Will grumbled unintelligibly and got to his feet, yawning and stumbling through the darkness toward the downstairs bathroom. After some slamming and cursing, a faucet turned on, and the showerhead. Water splashed against the tiles. Mulder remained on the ottoman.

"Did you talk to him?" Dana asked with her back to Byers.

"We talked at the beach this afternoon." Mulder rested his head against her thigh and looked up at her as she stood beside him. "He loves Maddie but he's so young. He's scared. Maybe I shouldn't have let them get married. Maybe I..."

Mulder sighed, pulled off his glasses, and rubbed his eyes.

"He made his decision. You can't live his life for him," she reminded him.

"I want him to be happy. That's what I want for all of us: to be healthy, happy, and safe. I don't think that's so unreasonable."

"Neither do I, but I think your cape's threadbare tonight." She ran her fingers through his hair again. "Saving the world may have to wait a few hours while you get some sleep, Superman."

Mulder rubbed his jaw against the fabric of her pajamas, making a rough, scratchy sound as stubble slid against cotton.

"Not the whole world tonight: a select minority. Saving the whole world is a larger, long-term goal." He turned his head, looking past her and at the last of night outside the window. "It's almost full: the moon. We'll have a full moon for Halloween," he said thoughtfully.

"Again."

"Three years, Nurse Scully," he said in some pre-dawn shorthand exclusive to the two of them. "A hundred lifetimes squeezed into 1,095 days. One hundred and fifty-six Saturday afternoons. Would you do it all again, if you had the choice?"

"You know I would, Mr. Marty Martin," she answered, and stroked his cheek as he leaned against her.

"I know. I like to hear you say it." He nuzzled her thigh again, and deadpanned, "Are you wearin' lead panties?"

Dana nodded, and Byers heard her laugh softly. 

A hollow place inside him envied the sound. Mulder and Dana had forgotten Byers was there and, in a few seconds stolen between everyday worries and global conspiracies, gotten lost in each other. Their world was the two of them. In the vast, hungry darkness of the universe, two souls found an oasis.

Dana trailed her finger down the outline of Mulder's neck and underneath his t-shirt, stroking the top of the scar bisecting his chest. “A love line,” Byers heard Dana call it on another occasion he accidentally intruded. 

Byers turned silently and, for lack of anywhere else to go, returned to the kitchen. Susanne stood at the stove, cooking nothing. Unfinished conversations hung in the air. The silence from the living room was comfortable, but in the kitchen it felt strained, like catgut strings over a guitar's frets.

"William's awake. He needs to get back to the base," he said, his voice sounding foreign to him. "He'd like coffee."

Susanne nodded and started the mundane process of making coffee, seeming relieved to have a direction. After plugging in their seldom-used percolator, she supervised the creaks and rumbles as the metal pot heated.

"Susanne-" Byers wasn’t sure how he planned to finish his sentence. 

"Do you want tea?" she asked.

"No. I-I can drink coffee. Later. I don't want anything right now."

She nodded and went back to watching the percolator.   

"Susanne-"

"I should make breakfast for him." She spoke rapidly as she reached for a skillet. "I should make breakfast for everyone. An American breakfast: pancakes and eggs and-"

"I don't think anyone's hungry this early."

She stopped with her hand poised over the knob to turn on the burner. Her shoulders slouched tiredly, and her head tilted down, as if exposing her neck for the executioner's ax.

"Do you think you can help Emily?" he asked, and she turned, looking ethereally pale. "Or were you being polite?"

"I don't know," she answered in lost whisper. "With blood samples, the right equipment, and enough time, I should be able to discover what makes Emily and Mr. Mulder compatible, so at least they could search for another donor. Beyond that, I am not sure."

It was Byers' turn to nod.

"To find that, though: the precise link between humans and aliens... If I find it, these men you and Mr. Mulder speak of - they would kill for that knowledge, John."

"You don't owe them anything, Susanne. If you think it's too dangerous, all you have to do it say 'no'."

She looked past his left shoulder, not focusing on anything behind him as much as avoiding everything in front of her. "How can I say 'no'? Emily could be our daughter."

"Could she?" he asked hoarsely. 

He'd never questioned her about Ana and Katy, and he'd never had any reason to. At the raw edge of spring 1945, after the Allies routed the Nazis from France, he'd finagled a pass and met Susanne in Paris for twenty-four giddy hours. They wrote copious letters and talked by telephone if he could get to one, but Paris was the first time they'd seen each other since they married. She shown him the Left Bank that afternoon, the Eiffel Tower that evening, and nine months afterward that night, they become the parents of twin girls.

His beautiful, bright, tall, blonde-haired, blue-eyed daughters - he wanted desperately to believe the timeline didn't fit. According to her story, Susanne left Germany several years earlier. There was no tampering with her pregnancy, no ulterior motive to her marrying him. Two lonely, frightened people had found each other and fallen in love in the middle of a war.

She wasn't cruising Wiltshire, looking for Mr. Gullible Good Genes and his American citizenship.

He wanted to be her Superman.

"Susanne?" he said, his voice rising an octave.

"John, no. Do not even think that. I mean she is an innocent little girl."

She hung the skillet back on the pot rack. Susanne lifted the pan with both hands as though it had grown heavier, and she had trouble securing it on the hook.

"Is 'Susanne Modeski' even your real name?" He worried his wedding band with his thumb.

'Modeski' wasn't a Hebrew surname, but he assumed her family adopted it as an Anglicized version of 'Moidecki' or 'Moidezki,' while 'Susanne' was the German equivalent of 'Susannah.' Her mother called her 'Nan,' which Byers thought was a diminutive from childhood.

It was also, between Hebrew, Polish, and Yiddish, 'Grace,' 'Ann,' and 'Nancy.'

The papers allowing Susanne to flee Germany were forgeries, and any earlier documents had been destroyed. The crumbling Nazi regime burned birth records, attempting to conceal the genocide of the Jews as well as the Lebensborn project: a quarter-million 'racially pure' children either born to unmarried Aryan women and SS officers and given to the government to raise, or kidnapped from occupied countries. Many immigrants - Jewish and Aryan - arrived on Allied soil with their fake passports and the clothes on their back. Those immigrants were, for lack of any evidence otherwise, whoever they said they were. It was possible, even likely, she bought a passport on the Moroccan black market in 1943, became 'Susanne Modeski,' and the woman she'd been before ceased to exist.

"I cannot imagine being anyone but your Susanne," she said.

"You didn't answer me."

"John, I-" Her voice broke.

He tried to say something but he felt bone-weary, numb, and stretched tissue thin. His eyes burned, his temples pounded, and his shoulders ached from the weight of the world.

He married a beautiful stranger, lived with her, loved her, and raised children with her, to realize she remained as much a stranger as the day they'd met.

He needed a fact to quote. He liked facts and figures, but the only related one he could think of was almost six million Jews died in the death camps, and only twenty-one Nazi scientists were ever brought to justice in a court of law.

Byers wondered, as his tired mind began to drift past the edge of reason, if her German lover was one of the men tried at Nuremburg. The trial was late November 1945, right after the war and before Katy and Ana were born. Byers hadn't owned a television, but the window of the appliance store near their first apartment had one. He remembered stopping with Susanne, who was well into her seventh month of pregnancy, to catch a glimpse of the tiny, flickering screen one Saturday morning. There was a crowd, so he'd waited on the curb and held their umbrella. She watched for several minutes, huddled under a leaky awning in her too-tight winter coat. She turned away, took his hand, and walked on. She hadn't looked back.

"I doubt La Sorbonne has the laboratory equipment I will need, but I am sure Oxford does." She avoided looking at him as she spoke. "I could go there. It is not so far away. Across The Channel. I could come home, sometimes."

At 'sometimes,' his head popped up and tilted to one side. He envisioned her working on this research while the girls were at school. There might be trips to universities for the labs or libraries, but not extended stays. He wanted to help Mulder, but not if it meant having his wife and Katy and Ana's mother away for weeks at a time.

"What do you mean 'sometimes'?"

"I-I mean I could- I could see the girls? Yes?" she asked, looking at him from underneath her eyebrows, her blue eyes pleading. "Sometimes?"

He stepped forward, closing the gap between them. "I don't want you to leave. Is that what you think?"

She nodded miserably.

"You're my wife, Susanne. The mother of my children. All I want is for you to tell me the truth." He paused. "Whatever that truth is."

"I told you the truth!" she responded loudly, her lower lip trembling. "You do not believe me! You think I am a Nazi harlot! I killed my own people! I have my old research notes. In the attic. They are packed between the boxes of summer clothes and the second-hand law books from your first office. Do you want to see them, John? See what I did? Your wife? Mother of your children? I have all the numbers. Twin studies: mortality rate of ninety-three percent. Xeno-transplantation: mortality rate of ninety-nine-"

"Stop it! Please."

Her face crumpled. She wrapped her arms around her body, struggling not to cry.

He braced one hand on the stove beside her and, without touching her, looked down at the spotlessly clean floor. "I believe you. I-I need some time to, to think. To sort this out. All of it. You. Ben. All of this."

"I am sorry," she managed.

"So am I."

"How can you possibly want me here?" she asked in a ragged voice.

"How can I possibly not?" His words bypassed his overworked brain and came straight from his soul.

She lost her battle against tears and started to sob, covering her face with one hand.

Without raising his head, he slipped his hand into hers, toying with her cold fingers. "Ani l'Dodi-" he started, his voice creaking like a rusted hinge. "Ani l'Dodi, v'Dodi li."

It was one of two Hebrew phrases she'd taught him. 'I am my Beloved's, and my Beloved is mine.'

She inhaled shakily, rested her head and one wet, white knuckled fist against his chest, and stood motionless for a long time. Eventually, as the night began to fray at the edges, his heart slowed beneath her hand, thudding dully instead of pounding in his ears. Her fingers unclenched and he closed his eyes. 

"Ani ohevet otcha," she whispered hoarsely. She leaned against his chest as though it would open and she could crawl inside and never come out again.

"I know. I love you, too. I do." He put his arm around her, stroking the silky back of her robe.

Behind him, a man cleared his throat apologetically.

Byers exhaled and stepped back, expecting Mulder, but it was Will who asked, "Am I interrupting?"

Byers said, "No," as Susanne moved away, wiping her eyes. She opened the cupboard to get Will a mug. "Please sit down. I think the coffee's ready."

"I was looking for my dad. Or Dana. Dad woke me but he's not in the living room or their bedroom."

Byers massaged his forehead. "I think they may be otherwise occupied."

"Occupied?" Will said skeptically, buttoning his uniform shirt. He paused to yawn and stretch. "No, they're not. I was in the shower."

Susanne salvaged the conversation by handing Will a cup of hot coffee and asking if he wanted sugar.

"Lots of it. Why is everyone awake? And dressed?" he asked, seeming to notice the dress shirt and slacks Byers had worn since the previous day.

Susanne kept her head down, fiddling with the fabric belt of her stained robe. 

"We were talking."

Will looked unconvinced, but shifted his attention to spooning half of the sugar bowl into his coffee cup. He left a sprinkle of sugar across the counter, as well. He stirred his coffee with the sugar spoon, thought a moment, and asked, "May I use your telephone?"

"Of course," Byers answered. "Do you want me to put the call through for you?"

Will shook his head 'no,' and reached for the receiver as he took his first sip of coffee. To Byers' surprise, Will had no trouble conversing with the operator in French. William waited, yawning again and licking off his spoon, while he was routed through to the switchboard in Kingston, New York. It was an hour before dawn in France, but mid-day on the U.S. East Coast.

"Bonjour, Madelon," Will said in a husky whisper making Byers want to guard his daughters with a shotgun. "Comment ca va?" There was a pause and a grin. "Yes, I know. Dana showed me the photographs. You're huge. What are you going to have? An elephant?"

To Byers, the years peeled away. He remembered watching Mulder on the telephone during the war, and Will unknowingly mimicked his father's posture perfectly. If there was a lull in the fighting, Mulder was on a pay telephone trying to get through to his wife and baby boy. Byers was in line behind Mulder, sitting on his field radio and waiting for a chance to talk to Susanne.

Spring 1944 to autumn 1956. More than twelve and a half years. Six hundred and fifty-four Saturdays.

Will listened to whatever Maddie was saying. He ducked his head and responded softly, "I know. I miss you. Je t'aime aussi. So much, honey."

The sky outside the kitchen window was black but the stars had begun their slow slide toward morning. In the distance, lights twinkled in their neighbors' kitchens and barns: dairymen who milked by lantern light and fishermen making their way to the dock, as they had for the last thousand years. Dawn would come soon, opening her rational eyes and pushing back the fairy magic of the night. In a few hours, the girls would get up and life would go on. The same, but not.

Yawning, Byers slid his hand down Susanne's sleeve and over her wrist and fingertips as he left the kitchen. In the living room, the dog yawned and raised her gray muzzle. Her tail thwapped hopefully against the stone hearth. Mulder must have rebuilt the fire, because flames licked their way over the logs and warmed the old walls. 

As he started toward his bedroom, Byers noticed Mulder's and Dana's door was open, revealing nothing on their rumpled bed except Emily and Ben. He lingered in the doorway, studying them. They slept like all children: cuddled together, safe, innocent, and certain one cry would bring their parents swooping in to chase away the boogieman. Except, for Emily and Ben, the nightmare boogiemen in the shadows were real.

He patted the dog's head absently as she came up beside him. He turned, looking around his living room as if it might appear differently than it had the previous evening. Will turned on the radio, and The Five Satins crooned the opening notes of “In the Still of the Night.” The song was number twenty-four on the chart that week, according to the French announcer. The breeze picked up, whistling under the sash and making the white curtains billow.

The dog sighed and lay down outside the guestroom, watching the front door. She kept one ear cocked sideways, listening for Emily and Ben.

A board creaked outside. Byers went to the window, thinking a stray animal was on the porch. Instead, back-lit by the distant yellow moon, he saw Mulder and Dana dancing slowly. Mulder had his old gray shirt back. With his hands around Dana's waist, he stroked the skin beneath her robe and simple blue pajamas. She tilted her face upward, tiptoeing and parting her lips as he kissed her softly, reverently. As the silhouette of their faces separated, she rested her head against his chest and they resumed dancing.

Byers doubted they could hear the radio, but it didn't seem to matter.

"John?" Susanne asked hesitantly. Byers turned, noticing her across the room, spatula in hand. "I thought you were going to bed. Did you change your mind?  About breakfast?"

She wanted to fix breakfast for him far more than Byers wanted to eat it.

"Or I could make tea," she offered.

"Tea," he conceded, and followed her back to the kitchen.

Will had pulled a chair away from the kitchen table, and straddled it backward as he cradled the telephone against his shoulder. He was on his second cup of coffee, and discussing baby names in a rapid jumble of French and American slang. It was a fruitless conversation. Mulder said the baby was a boy and would be named Luc. Byers wasn't sure how Mulder knew, but he'd lay odds Mulder was right.

Susanne turned on the burner under the kettle with a blue whoosh, and set an empty mug on the table in front of Byers.

"Did you know the beverage we know as 'tea' is virtually unchanged from what Emperor Shen-Nung discovered in 2737 B.C.?" Byers asked. He looked up at Susanne. "According to Chinese legend, the breeze blew some dried tea leaves into a kettle of boiling water. The Emperor tasted the resulting brew and soon tea-"

She smiled, looking tiredly bemused. "My John," she whispered, ruffling his hair.

He pushed his eyebrows together in what Mulder called his 'puzzled puppy dog' expression. "You don't want to hear the rest of the story?"

"Of course I do," she assured him. "Tell me the rest of it."

Outside, on the porch, in the darkness, another board squeaked.

Byers cleared his throat and smoothed his hair into place as she turned away, reaching for the tea bags.

*~*~*~*

End: A Moment in the Sun: Normandy

End: A Moment in the Sun.