Title: To Disclosures or Crescendos
Author: Buckingham
E-Mail: buckingham15@yahoo.com
Classification: V/MSR, Post-Ep
Spoilers: Season 9, up through P/P
Timeline: Don't even ask. I am so confused at this
point that I'd need graphs and charts to figure the
damn thing out. Just know that this takes place within
days of the events of P/P.
Summary: How to regroup
Disclaimer: I don't own Mulder, Scully, William, or
anyone else you might recognize by name. They are the
lawful property of CC, 1013, and FOX.


- x -

If I feel the night
move to disclosures or crescendos,
it's only because I'm famished
for meaning; the night
merely dissolves.

And your otherness is perfect as my death.
Your otherness exhausts me,
like looking suddenly up from here
to impossible stars fading.
Everything is punished by your absence.
-- Li-Young Lee, 'The City in Which I Love You'

- x -

Here is their new life.

He has become the wanderer, ricocheting across the map
like one who's sense of gravity has been permanently
suspended. Ohio on Monday, Utah by Thursday, and a
Saturday spent in Nevada. There is a string of no-name
motels behind him, a stretch of empty, twisting road
in front of him, and desperation everywhere else. His
only consolation is that when he tips his head back,
the sky looks the same no matter what the zip code,
black, unforgiving, and horribly endless.

He reads the fine print in newspapers, bangs away on
his laptop, and wills an answer, a solution, to
materialize before his eyes, like an image coming into
focus in one of those three-dimensional puzzles. He's
always been good at that, seeing the unseen, piecing
it all together out of smoke, mist, and half-truths.
If only he could find an answer that he likes, one
that he could live with and not feel like he's broken
apart inside. That is the real trick.

Sometimes, he hears Scully's voice in his head, trying
to keep him on the straight and narrow, but still
urging him to work faster, faster, always faster. He
imagines her with their son, telling stories, coloring
in all the blank, gray spaces in a small life. He
imagines what it would be like to really play daddy.
He wonders what it will take to make things right,
once and for all. Sometimes he wonders if it's the
same particular ache that his father felt years ago,
miles away, with the weight of choice everyday bearing
down.

Over a hundred miles away, a thousand depending on the
day, she sings lullabies and tries to hold her world
together. But the sky is falling, cloud by cloud, and
she feels herself cracking up, faltering in every way.
There are her sudden homicidal tendencies and shaky
moral compass that allows for anything as long as her
son is safe. There is the raging paranoia (Is it
paranoia if they really *are* out to get you? She
thinks Mulder once asked her that very question, and
she probably rolled her eyes, shook her head in
dismay, smirked at his earnestness.), which makes her
doubt everyone from Skinner and Doggett to the skinny
kid dressed by Nautica who delivers her morning paper.
And then there are her ever-ready tears, shaky hands,
the awkward trembling in her voice whenever the going
gets tough. Sometimes she thinks she's holding herself
together by the sheer force of her will, sucking in a
breath and praying that the cracks won't deepen, won't
rupture her whole shell in clean, smooth pieces.

It's bad enough, she thinks, to be suspicious of
everyone else, but when she looks in the mirror and
doubts herself, it's nearly devastating. She doesn't
trust herself with her son's safety. She doesn't trust
herself to keep an objective mind at work. She doesn't
trust herself to find a way to bring Mulder home. When
she crawls out of bed in the morning, already drained,
and still manages to last the day, that is a victory.
Most days, it seems impossible to hope for more.

She wonders if she is becoming someone else, someone
other than who she was with Mulder. It terrifies her,
feeling like a betrayal of the highest order, a knife
through the back. So she stiffens her shoulders,
kisses their son, and tries to remember how to fight.

Months between them, miles apart, and still their
thoughts are in sync, skidding along in the same
connect-the-dots pattern of want and need. He wants to
go home, she wants him home, and both of them refuse
to give in to the hopelessness. Neither of them will
let the sky collapse.

- x -

He is waiting for telepathic messages, the
brain-piercing sting of clairvoyance, starlight
visitations, the voice of God even, so the air-raid
hiss of an alarm clock right beside ear is the worst
kind of disappointment. He's been lying awake for
fifteen minutes, facing the inevitable, but still it
makes him flinch, slap at the ancient clock radio with
a rage usually reserved for double-agent assassins or
cosmic bounty hunters.

The dizzy, world-upside-down ache in his head, his
skin's clammy, thin feel, and the hollow, tight pull
in his stomach that burns both hot and cold make
him wonder if he's coming down with something, the flu
or some twenty-four hour bug. It could even be some
sort of virus, origin unknown, tripping through his
blood stream with zero subtlety, like heroin, only
without the kite-high rush. He hates getting sick,
being reminded of all his weaknesses and limitations.
Unless--

Some long ago weekend, before his abduction, before
Scully's miracle, before his fall and rise, when he
got an early spring cold after they spent a few days
investigating a case at some snobby, germ-infested
preschool on Long Island. He was miserable, with a
stuffed-up head, rubbed-raw nose, and blistering
throat, so he locked himself inside his dusty
apartment, a self-imposed quarantine, and turned off
all his phones. He wanted to be free to wallow in his
suffering, surrounded by dirty tissues and empty
cartons of orange juice, without a certain redheaded
doctor's judgmental eye overseeing his every move.

When he heard the click of her key in the door, he was
in the middle of some fever dream about his fourth
grade teacher and the circus. He sat up, ready to read
her the riot act, tell her to quit mothering him, that
he was a grown man and if wanted to carry on like a
three-year-old at the prospect of cherry cough
medicine, it was his prerogative. But she appeared in
doorway of his bedroom, her hair a stringy mess, skin
pasty white except for the red tip of her nose, eyes
puffy and glassy, like she'd been smoking weed behind
the gym during lunch, and he had to fight off the
laugh that was about to rip through his throat. She
was wearing dark, silky pajama bottoms and a tank top
under her jacket, as if she'd crawled right out of bed
and into her car on autopilot.

"I got it too," she wheezed at him. Her pout was
fetching, even as she wiped her wet nose.

He loved her for many reasons, but her forethought was
number one on the list at that moment, since she
managed to stop at a store on her way to his place.
Her gifts of Nyquil, Vicks Vapor Rub, honey-lemon
throat drops, and a giant bottle of vitamin C weren't
exactly professions of love on her part, but the issue
of Sports Illustrated at the bottom of the bag and
pint of Mint Chocolate Chip ice cream, his absolute
favorite, were terribly romantic to his fevered mind.

"For our throats," she told him, as she climbed into
his warm, messy bed with the carton and two spoons.

They spent the entire weekend, sick and cranky,
feeding each other cough syrup, toast with strawberry

jam, and lukewarm tea. They took each other's
temperature and rubbed each other's backs through
coughing fits. They took a hot, steam-heavy shower
together, slumped against one another in the hopes
that they'd hold each other up.

Not their finest hour, he thinks, but he'd never felt
more loved, had never loved her more than when they
curled around each other under a comforter, with runny
noses and swollen glands, and watched cartoons he
still remembered from Saturday mornings when he was a
kid, fogged out of their minds with cold medicine.

He tries to imagine the feel of her cool, capable hand
on his forehead now, smoothing the hair away from his
eyes, her sexy, no-nonsense voice telling him to stop
being a baby, but he's not quite delirious enough for
that. Instead, he sits up in bed, and tries to coax
the watery, gray light of predawn from beyond the
curtains and into the void of his motel room. He tries
to call the sun out of hiding, so the day can begin,
so he can get the show on the road.

He thinks about the message she sent, just days ago,
and he knows that it's ridiculous to try to blame the
way he's feeling on bacteria or alien-rigged
pathogens, microscopic germs ripping his DNA apart and
making him feel like shit. It's dread, pure and
simple, with anger and guilt thrown in for good
measure. This is what his life has always yielded, he
thinks. These are the consequences for playing games
with the universe and thinking he might actually win,
for testing its boundaries with thoughtless arrogance,
for accepting the challenge of cosmic Truth or Dare
with such gleeful abandon.

He should have known that payback would be one hell of
a bitch. He should have known that he wouldn't be the
only one dealing with the costs. Of course he'd wind
up taking Scully and their son down with him.

It feels like he's tempting fate just by dragging
himself out of bed, but he doesn't have a real choice.
He's been called. In the dark bathroom, he brushes his
teeth, swallows an aspirin, and avoids the mirror.

Outside, the sun splits the sky in two, like broken
pavement, then crawls behind a lattice of drowsy
clouds.

- x -

No matter how hard she tries, the map will not fall
back in line. The paper crumples and tears in her
hands, and finally she drops it on the front passenger
seat, defeated. It's no longer necessary anyway; she's
where she's supposed to be. Finally.

The car's engine hums in her ear and beneath her,
idling in an empty section of the parking field, but
she opens her door anyway. She stands outside and scans 
the lot, looking over her shoulder for shadows in the
shape of men, aliens in the shape of men, men in the
shape of monsters. Early morning, and the air outside
is cool, tinged with the dampness of almost-spring,
but the car's heater, burning low, warms her until her
body is almost as confused as her mind. She checks her
watch, rests her elbow on the edge of the open door,
and lifts her eyes to the sky.

She is early, so her panic is completely irrational,
but still she can't help expecting the wrath of the
gods, divine retribution for every mistake she's ever
made, for every lapse in faith she's allowed to
overtake her heart. She is afraid that Mulder didn't
get her message or that he did but can't find his way
to her. She is afraid that he might really be dead
this time, lying cold and alone in a ditch somewhere,
just another John Doe with a well-placed bullet in his
skull. She is afraid that he might not recognize her,
even in her familiar black suit and skyscraper boots.
She is afraid that he'll see and feel her as someone
else, when all she wants is to be the woman he's known
for so long, the woman who followed him into a
graveyard and howled at the moon, who ran all the way
to Africa because he heard voices in his head and she
believed him. She wants it all back, life
uninterrupted.

Before her, Kentucky seems like a foreign land, with
its blue grass and bourbon-heavy air. She tries to
remember if she's ever seen the stretch of I-64 in
front of her. Maybe one sticky summer day with Mulder,
chasing telekinetic kidnappers or tarot-reading
murders. He'd know if she asked. He'd know the date,
what the weather was like, what they were both
wearing. He'd paint the picture for her using nothing
but his mind, every detail carefully shared no matter
how insignificant, and she'd be smitten, charmed by
the beautiful, complete way he'd remember such a
throwaway day.

The sky is dark as slate above the parking lot, and
though there is a hint of sunlight, spread out like a
white wash near the horizon, she wonders if it might
rain. She should have checked the weather report
before she left, so she wouldn't risk winding up
umbrella-less and wilted on the side of the highway.
In the back of the car, William lets out a yelp, just
as thunder rumbles out from behind some trees. He is
only six months old, and already he's been exposed to
the worst of the world, to the dark, hopeless corners
where lives are merely expendable. It is his legacy,
she thinks. The future that she and Mulder will pass
down, no matter how hard they might fight. She ducks
back inside the car, and stretches across the seat to
thumb William's cheek. He turns into her touch, like a
sun-hungry cat.

"It's all right, sweetie," she tells him. "It won't be
too much longer."

He shakes his head, as if he doesn't quite believe
her, but gives into the call of sleep, his eyes
slipping shut, lips pursed, slightly parted, just like
his father's mouth when he dreams. She crawls back out
of the car, all business now, no room for tears of her
own, for ridiculous, selfish fears. She searches the
truck stop again, looking for someone, anyone familiar
in the early morning activity. At the pumps, truckers
fill their tanks with gas, and stretch sore muscles. A
waitress from the diner chain-smokes under its green
awning, like she's anxious or just exhausted from an
all-night shift. Scully commiserates, but isn't about
to bum a cigarette, however tempting the idea of
offering silvery smoke rings up to the sky might be
right now. There is a patch of grass near the front of
the stop where golden blossoms are trying to pushtheir
way through the damp, cold soil, but she doesn't think
they'll make it until April.

Near the exit ramp, a tractor trailer begins to rumble
away, back toward the interstate, and William whimpers
again -- not out of crankiness, she thinks, but with a
neediness that sounds like fear. She's about to climb
into the backseat and rock him back to sleep when she
sees the cloud of dirt and gravel kicked up by the
trailer, pushing wide across the parking lot. It is as
thick as smoke, dense and gray, but there is a figure
making his way through it, indistinguishable in the
haze except for the sway of his walk, the long,
graceful line of his body that she thinks she could
pick out from halfway around the world. She feels her
heartbeat speed up, thinks her palms might be sweating
with the rush of adrenaline through her body.

He's crossing the parking lot casually, like he's been
here before, like he doesn't care who sees him. He
blends in easily, she thinks, with his dark baseball
cap, old jeans, and faded duffel bag. If she wasn't
looking for him, she might never pick him out. That
thought terrifies her; passing Mulder by is
inconceivable. But he doesn't seem to have spotted her
either, halfway toward the car, switching his bag to
the other shoulder. In the backseat, William has gone
quiet, and when she looks in on him, he's almost
smiling, batting at the air in front of him.

When Mulder gets closer still, she can see that it's a
Red Sox cap on his head, that he hasn't shaved in a
couple of days, that despite the ease of his walk,
he's as cautious as she is, eyes sweeping over the
truck stop for all possible threats. She can't call
his name, so she thinks about yelling "Queeque" or
"Spooky," speaking in a code that only he would
understand, but they catch one another's gaze in one
world-melting moment and no words are necessary.

Mulder starts a slow jog toward her just as she feels
the first sharp drop of rain.

- x -

The last time he saw her, she'd given birth only days
before, and all her angles were still rounded and
soft. Before that, she'd been carrying William,
waddling around like her body held the weight of the
world. She was beautiful in both of those
incarnations, but he can't remember the last time he
saw her at her fighting weight, lean and mean and
ready to shoot with perfect aim. As far back as he has
to reach in his collection of memories, he's still
certain that she's thinner now that she's been in
years. Fifteen feet away, and he can trace the
razor-sharp line of her bones, a lesson in skeletal
anatomy brought to life.

If he wasn't worried before, he's sure as hell worried
now.

Under a sheen of misting rain, she looks pale and
tired, faded in a way he doesn't remember since the
days of nosebleeds and radiation treatments. Her hair,
brushing past her shoulders, the ends curling with
dampness, is the one thing that makes him smile. It's
almost as long as when they first met, he thinks, a
half dozen lifetimes ago, and it makes him want to
start all over again.

He feels the earth tilt until he skids to a stop at
her feet.

- x -

"Are you all right?" he asks immediately, running his
hands up and down her arms like he's checking for
bullet holes, mortal wounds of any kind.

She nods, rain tripping down her cheeks like tears,
and lays her hands on his chest. His heartbeat is as
familiar to her as her own, maybe more so since it's
the last sound she hears before she falls asleep at
night, the rhythm she feels when she holds William
close to her and dreams. She would know, she thinks.
She would know if it was ever snuffed out, would feel
the disconnect within herself, like an artery severed.

"What about William?" Mulder demands. He bounces up
and down on his toes, ready to spring into action if
he doesn't get the answer he wants. She nods again,
and starts to cock her head toward the backseat, but
Mulder surges toward her, grabs her face in his hands,
thumbs her cheek bones, the corners of her mouth. The
tip of her tongue laps at his skin for less than a
second, but still she tastes his familiar salt.

"I was afraid," he says. "When I got your message...
Jesus, Scully, I didn't know what to expect."

She looks for his eyes under the shadow of his
baseball cap and finds them frantic, dark with
nightmares. His jacket is the green of army fatigues,
and the clothes underneath are dusty and worn-thin.
How many miles have they seen, she wonders. How many
roads has he wandered down in these rags? But this is
who he is now -- a drifter, with two days worth of
hair along his jaw, jittery hands, and a grim,
sleep-deprived pallor to his skin. She hates the
thought of him running, running, always running, when
they've only just learned to stop turning away from
each other.

"I had to see you," she confesses, overcome. "It's
stupid and selfish, but--"

"Don't," he says, pulling her against him. "It's okay.
It's all right."

She is crushed against his body, a second skin, with
her ear right over his pounding heart, but still she
can hear William grumble from inside the car, like
he's suddenly come awake from some disappointing
dream. Mulder goes stiff, his sixth-sense kicking in.
He looks down at her, asking with his eyes, and she
knows that he's trying not to hope for too much.

"I had to bring him," she says. "I know it's probably
not safe, but I couldn't trust anyone else to protect
him. I didn't even tell my mother. She's going to show
up at my apartment this morning, and find us gone. I
don't know what she'll think."

Mulder isn't listening. He moves closer to the car,
trying to peer through the tinted glass and catch a
glimpse of the backseat. His desperate frown is enough
to mobilize her into action, and she moves around to
the other side to open the door. Mulder stands behind
her, practically shaking, while she frees William from
his car seat. She tries to shield him as much as
possible from the rain, kissing his warm forehead
before turning to Mulder.

His mouth is open in astonishment, and he doesn't seem
to know what to do with his hands, his fingers
twitching madly. He looks down at William, then at
her, then back at the baby.

"Oh God, Scully," he whispers. He cups William's head
in his palm, strokes the fine threads of hair. "Oh my
God."

- x -

It was so neat and uncomplicated, the way the child
psychology books laid out development, with their
easy-reference charts and diagrams, the formulaic
week-by-week timetable, and theories galore -- Freud,
Piaget, Erikson, take your pick. In greasy diners and
rented-by-the-hour motels, on buses and in parked cars
at rest stops, he read them all. He read them and
tried to imagine William at each stage, William
growing in the orderly, incremental way that children
ever supposedly did, but within the sunny walls of
Scully's apartment, with Scully watching over their
miracle and cataloging the memories for him. He read
the books and tried to believe that he was still part
of the process, still part of the family, even if he
wasn't around to snap pictures and brag to the Gunmen,
to strangers, to whoever would listen.

But those books, he realizes now, were utterly
incomplete.

No doubt they'd gotten the basics down: grasping and
rooting reflexes at four weeks, laughing at sixteen,
vowel sounds at seven months, crawling at nine,
standing at eleven, walking by the year mark.
According to that schedule, at just over six months,
William should be sitting upright with assistance and
making spontaneous sounds. Easy enough to imagine.

While Scully navigates the car along the highway,
Mulder sits in the backseat beside his son, and
watches him babble, with complete seriousness, to a
stuffed rabbit. The books got that right, Mulder
thinks. But they didn't bother to mention the fact
that the baby would grow to have the same pale, sober
eyes as his mother and (fuck!) the same nose and mouth
that Mulder has lived with himself for forty years.
They didn't mention that despite the lack of years, an
infant's gaze could hold all the wisdom and
understanding of the ages. They didn't explain that
William's giggle would be an innocent echo of Scully's
laughter, like Scully distilled to the most basic.

The car shoots past an open field, with a herd of
black-and-white cows grazing on damp grass, but before
Mulder can point them out, William looks at up him,
appraising this new face before him with calm
interest, then dumps the toy rabbit on Mulder's knee,
almost like an offering. He mumbles more nonsense,
looking his father straight in the eye. It sounds
giddy but important, and Mulder struggles to
understand, to decipher the meaning.

Behind the wheel, Scully adjusts the rear view mirror,
fiddles with the radio.

- x -

When Mulder said he'd arranged for a room in
Lexington, she expected something standard: four
walls, clean sheets, a shower with decent water
pressure, room service maybe. That is what she is used
to with Mulder, the bare essentials of shelter and
food, because he's never been one to concern himself
with creature comforts. He's a man who could not only
appreciate the dusty, windowless world of the X-Files
basement office, with its perpetually fussy thermostat
and blinking overhead lights, but thrive there, make
it his home.

She is confused, then, by the four-star lobby she
finds herself standing in, by the smiling doorman who
stands beside a regal blue rug and tips his hat to
whoever passes by, by the diamond-bright atrium at the
center of the scene, built to sloping angles like some
kind of glass cathedral. Even with the rain dancing
overhead, she feels the openness of the sky above her
as she walks William through the knots of potted
trees. At the front desk, Mulder is taking care of the
details, but she is close enough to hear the pretty
clerk present him with the access cards to his
two-room suite. The only thing she can figure, the
only thing that makes any sense, is that Mulder sees
himself as a family man now, that he feels a need to
provide for her and William, and at present, material
things are all he has to offer.

She is moved and disturbed by the idea all at once.

Upstairs, she closes herself in the bathroom, and uses
a throwaway cell phone to call her mother. It's almost
eight, so her mother is already well on her way to
Georgetown, fighting rush hour traffic and planning
William's day. Scully leaves a message on her own
machine and one on her mother's for good measure.
We're fine, she says. We're safe. I can't tell you
where we are right now, but I'll be in touch. Love
you. Please don't worry. Love you.

Mulder has drawn all the curtains in the bedroom by
the time she's finished. Not for the sake of the mood,
she's certain, but because the windows overlook
the atrium, where guests are gathering on the way to
breakfast and nine a.m. meetings. He's probably
contemplated the possibility of some faceless figure
in a dark corner, training a telephoto lenses on their
room. If someone already knows that they're in the
hotel, she doesn't know what the point is, but she
keeps this to herself.

Curtains drawn, the world they inhabit is full of
shadows, blue and still, and she can barely see
Mulder's face from where he sits in a corner armchair,
with William balanced carefully in his lap. She's been
waiting to see this very thing for months now, and she
wishes for flood lights to fill the entire room so
nothing is missed. William tugs at Mulder's ear,
giving a humming monologue to the ceiling with an
almost smile, that wise, amused look that she's never
seen on a baby before.

Mulder grins too, in that starlight way she remembers
from a misty night in California. "I think he likes
me," he says, delighted. "I thought he might be
nervous since I'm pretty much a stranger, but he seems
to dig me."

He bounces William on his knee, like a ride on a
carousel horse, and the baby laughs, claps his sticky
hands. She realizes, with a pang, that her son isn't
used to this kind of attention, to simple games of
patty-cake and horsy. She is always so serious with
him, so careful, always looking at him with watery
eyes or a sad, nervous smile. He is her miracle, but
she finds it so difficult to rejoice in him. What kind
of mother does that make her, she thinks, so caught up
in fear and disappointment that she's cut herself
off from the simple joy of him?

Mulder is frowning when she looks at him. She wipes
roughly at her eyes, clears her throat.

"What do you think?" he asks, nodding down at William.

He sounds almost desperate, and she realizes he's
misinterpreted her silence. She kneels beside the
hair, one hand on Mulder's shoulder, the other on
William's back. She ignores the sting of tears at the
corners of her eyes, and offers a flimsy smile.

"He knows you, Mulder." They are both watching her
carefully, twin looks of interest trained on her.
"You're his father," she whispers.

Mulder nods, looking at his son again.

"His eyes, Scully," he says. "I can't get over his
eyes."

William blinks, as if he's flattered by the
compliment. He grabs the bill of Mulder's baseball
cap, and tugs on it, tries to latch his mouth onto the
dark fabric.

"Yeah, what do you think of that, buddy?" Mulder
bounces William again, then looks down at her. "I
thought it was a good cover. No self-respecting
Yankees fan would be caught dead in a Red Sox cap."

She smiles, feeling a tear slip free, and takes his
cap, throwing it to the floor. William leans in closer
to inspect Mulder's face. He makes an 'Oh' sound,
almost a giggle, and pats Mulder's nose. Over his
shoulder, he looks at Scully, checking in with her,
seeing if she approves of Mulder too.

"Not bad, huh?" she says to him, her voice rusty with
tears.

He smiles, then jams a couple of his fingers into his
mouth.

Mulder strokes his hand over the back of hair, and she
leans forward, chin resting on the arm of his chair.
His fingertips pulse against her, like he's trying to
tap out Morse Code against her skull.

- x -

When they first met, Scully's size amused him, like
her ugly plaid jackets and prissy, by-the-book ethics.
She was little girl small, five feet and change
without her shoes, and looked more like a coed, young
and pretty and tempting, than an FBI agent. She had to
use a step stool to reach the ink cartridges and boxes
of extra file folders on the top shelf at the back of
the office, and he'd sit back and watch her sometimes.
He found the backs of her knees, as she stretched so
her fingertips could find paper clips, to be
dangerously provocative, like the call of the sirens.
On that step stool, reaching, she made him wanted to
throw himself against a rocky shore and offer up his
eternal devotion. And the rush he got, standing over
her, seeing the red-gold crown of her head while he
talked, talked at her, was more than enough to make
him feel guilty. Intimidating petite little Scully,
bending her to his will -- that's what he honestly
thought was going on back then.

The joke was on him, for sure. From the beginning, she 
carried herself like she could take a man down with nothing
but her cool stare, bring him to his knees with one
properly exhaled breath, and the truth, it seemed, was
that simple. Scully was larger than life, in her
body's ability to contain a world of compassion,
might, and pain in such a streamlined package, in the
way her eyes could expand at will and rip the ground
out from under him, in her insistence on picking
herself up, dusting herself off, and going right back
out to the trenches, like the most dedicated and
principled of soldiers.

He watches her, telling the story of William's
kidnapping, and she reminds him now of the hundreds of
nameless women he's interviewed over the years, women
so undone by the pain of a lost child that he wondered
how they ever managed to get out of bed in the
morning. Beside his chair, she sits in shadows and
stutters out flimsy breaths, and he sees his mother,
who avoided the daylight for years after Samantha was
taken, whose voice was always stilted with guilt and
anger. A completely understandable reaction, he
thinks, but he never expected it from his
tough-as-nails Scully, who'd deny any emotion that
might imply tears in her armor, who'd faced the most
godless of monsters and never flinched.

"I think there really might be something *special*
about him," she whispers, eyes downcast and brimming
with tears, and he knows she doesn't mean 'special' in
the way that all parents feel their children are
special. She has never seemed so small to him before,
as fragile and unstable as everyone else. She is
terrified, he sees, in a way that she's never been
before, and it makes him go cold in the stomach. He
already knew what had happened to William, most of the
major details anyway, but listening to it straight
from Scully, with William squirming in his lap, makes
him want to put his fist through a wall, wrap his
hands around someone's throat and snap, good and
hard.

"What are you thinking?" Scully asks, seated on the
arm of his chair. William smacks her knee with wet
fingers, and leaves a print on her pants, like
finger-painting. Mulder traces it himself, until
Scully touches his cheek, lifts his chin. "What,
Mulder?"

"I'd kill them, Scully," he says, words laced with
ice. "I'd kill anyone who came within two feet of him.
Of either of you."

She doesn't blink, though there are still tears beaded
along her lashes. She must expect this kind of
sentiment from him by now. He isn't prepared for her
slow nod though, the clear, calm look in her eyes that
says she feels the same way.

He hopes like hell that neither of them ever have to
prove it.

-x -



Continued in To Disclosures or Crescendos (2 of 3)