Title: Interstice: Wednesday (1/7)
Author: Christy (attalanta@aol.com)
Category: MSR
Rating: PG-13
Additional Headers in Saturday: Part 1

* * * * *

Wednesday, December 26, 2001


"Hope is a good thing -- maybe the best thing -- and no good thing ever 
dies." - Stephen King

"I'm very brave generally," he went on in a low voice: "only today I happen 
to have a headache." - Lewis Carroll


* * * * *

DANA


Liam grabbed his bottle from his mother's hand and quickly, awkwardly fit it 
into his mouth. Scully settled him on her lap, cradling her son under her 
left arm and her coffee cup in her right hand. The ceramic of the mug fit 
hotly in the cradle of her hand, and she curled her toes in the warmth of the 
fleece socks she was wearing.

Setting down her mug, Scully pulled her robe snug around her shoulders. The 
bedroom had been warm and the flannel sheets even warmer, but now she could 
feel the cold of the kitchen tiles through her socks and the chill of the 
wooden chair against her back, despite her pajamas and robe.

Scully didn't want to think about getting dressed and beginning the day, 
didn't want to think about finishing her coffee and Liam finishing his 
bottle. She didn't want to think past that moment, especially if it had to do 
with her brothers or last night's argument. But mostly she didn't want to 
think about getting dressed because she had no clothes to wear. She and 
Mulder had only packed enough for one night, not anticipating the surprise 
ice storm, both figuratively and literally, that had settled over the Scully 
house.

She took a slow, hot sip of the simmering coffee, then ran her tongue over 
the roof of her mouth, behind her teeth. Damn. Burned her mouth. Again. Ever 
since she had switched to decaf during her pregnancy and while she was 
breastfeeding Liam, her mouth had become particularly sensitive to coffee.

Pushing the mug away, Scully reached for the newspaper that lay folded in the 
center of the table. The house had been quiet and sleepy when she awoke to 
the cheerful babble that traveled from the old crib near the window. The only 
other audible sounds were the whipping of the wind against the window glass 
and the subtle scrape of a tree branch against the side of the house.

So she had slipped out of bed quietly, not wanting to wake Mulder, who lay 
facing her, his face smashed between the mattress and his pillow, his mouth 
hanging just barely open. She pulled on her robe, lifted Liam from the crib, 
and quickly and quietly changed his diaper before heading downstairs. 

As she walked downstairs, through the early morning cold of the house, Scully 
had thought she was the first person awake. The lights were off, and the 
house was half-lit by the beginnings of daylight that streamed through the 
crystal coating of ice on the windows. 

But someone had beaten her downstairs. Someone had made coffee and gotten the 
newspaper... and tracked slushy footprints in from the front door.

"Morning."

Scully turned to see Charles standing there, his coat slung over his shoulder 
and a thick gray wetness oozing from between the treads of his boots.

Charles tracked his sister's gaze down to his feet and shrugged. "I'll clean 
it up," he promised.

"Sure," Scully said and stood. Balancing Liam on her hip, she grabbed a 
handful of paper towels from the counter and knelt on the floor in front of 
her brother.

"Hey, I said I'd do it," he told her. Gladly Scully stood and held the towels 
out to Charles, who snatched them away. "You doubt me?" he asked with a 
lopsided grin, squatting down and mopping up his mess.

She shook her head. "Never," she said with a smile, sitting back down at the 
kitchen table and reaching for her coffee. She turned just as Charles stood 
and took a step towards the counter. Again he caught her eye as she glanced 
down to where his still-damp boots were about to leave another wet trail on 
the tile floor.

"Yeah, yeah," he muttered, stooping to untie his laces.

Scully smiled before taking another slow sip of her coffee.

"Hey, Dane," Charles asked.

"Yeah?"

"Would you do me a favor?"

Scully peered at her brother over the rim of her mug. Charles stood in front 
of the sink, his big toe sticking out of a hole in his gray sweat socks and 
the frayed hem of his jeans grazing the tile floor. Liam squirmed in her 
arms, and Scully took his half-drunk bottle from him. His hands free, Liam 
grabbed at her hair, then turned and stared wide-eyed at his uncle.

"Could I borrow your car?" Charles asked.

"My car?"

"Yeah," he said. "I'd ask Mom, but hers is parked in the garage, and then I'd 
have to ask Bill to move his van and..."

"Can I ask where you're going?"

Charles looked down at the toe that poked out of his sock, then back over to 
his hiking boots. He looked back up at her, but did not meet her eyes. 
Instead, he studied Liam, who had abandoned her hair and was smacking his 
palms against the top of the table in a syncopated beat.

Finally Charles looked over at his sister, his expression both frightened and 
hopeful. "I want to go to the cemetery."

Even Liam noticed the mood shift in the room, and he stilled his movements, 
one arm outstretched. Both his eyes and his mother's were locked onto 
Charles's face, identical cool blue gazes.

"Okay," she said as she stood. Charles held out his hand, palm up, as if he 
expected her to produce her keys from the pocket of her robe. Instead, she 
held out Liam, who promptly extended his arms to his uncle.

Charles arched his eyebrow at her and regarded his nephew with uncertainty.

"Mulder has the keys," she explained, Liam still hanging between them. The 
baby kicked his legs. "He's still asleep. I'll get them when I get dressed." 
She looked over at him, asking his permission. Charles nodded, then held out 
his arms for his nephew.

Upstairs Mulder was awake, standing with his back to the door and clad only 
in a pair of faded blue boxer briefs. He turned when he heard the door squeak 
open, a gray t-shirt dangling from his hand.

"I don't have any clean clothes," he told her.

"I told you to bring pajamas," she said.

He chuffed at her suggestion, as he had when she'd first made it, while they 
were packing on Christmas Eve morning. "I told you, I like to sleep--"

"I know," she said with a smile. "But you can't exactly go downstairs like 
that."

He looked down. "You don't think Bill would approve?"

She laughed. "I don't even want to imagine Bill's reaction," she admitted. 
"But besides that," she said, "you'd freeze."

"Where's Liam?" he asked, finally realizing that Scully's arms were empty.

"Who?" Scully kidded, and Mulder grinned. "He's downstairs with Charles," she 
said, stripping off her robe. Awkwardly, she tried to put on her bra beneath 
her pajama top.

"What are you doing?" Mulder asked her, sitting down on the bed to watch 
Scully's contortions.

"Trying to get dressed," she grunted, "without getting undressed."

He watched as she got her bra hooked and attempted to slip a t-shirt on 
without removing her top. Finally she succeeded and then took off her warm 
flannel pajama top. She shivered mightily as she grabbed her sweater from 
their suitcase and dropped it over her head.

"Very impressive," Mulder said with a leering half-grin. "I bet I could think 
of some way to put that talent to good use," he told her.

"I'll bet you could," she said in a low voice, giving him a quick grin before 
quickly slipping her pajama bottoms off and a pair of pants on. Scully traded 
her fleece socks for a slimmer pair that would fit beneath her shoes. She 
rifled quickly through the overnight bag, then turned to face Mulder again.

"Do you have the car keys?"

"In the pocket of my jeans," he told her, and she snatched them out of his 
pocket before tossing the pants over to him. "We going somewhere?"

"I am," she said, slipping her shoes on. 

"And I'm staying here?" he asked, pulling on his jeans and buttoning the fly. 
"With your brothers?"

"Just Bill. Charlie's coming with me."

Mulder frowned and opened his mouth to object. Scully smiled. "Charlie and I 
are going to the cemetery," she explained.

"And you're leaving me here with Bill?"

"Don't be a baby," she said. "You won't be alone. Mom and Tara will be here, 
too. And Matthew and Liam," she reminded him. "I'm sure your seven month old 
son will protect you from my big bad brother."

"Don't mock," he told her. "I could use all the reinforcements I can get... 
Hey," he said, giving the underarms of his t-shirt a quick sniff before 
pulling the garment over his head. "You don't think Bill'll hit me if I'm 
holding Liam, do you?"

"He's not going to hit you," she said as she stuffed the keys in her pocket 
and opened the door.

"Promise?" Mulder asked, following her out of the bedroom and down the hall.

When they got downstairs the rest of the family was awake and making 
breakfast, though Scully noticed that each of them was preparing their own 
meal. Charles stood at the counter, stirring milk and sugar into his coffee 
with one hand and anchoring Liam to his hip with the other.

Tara, still dressed in her pajamas, was cutting the crusts off a slice of 
cinnamon toast. Bill, who was wearing a stiff white shirt that looked as 
though it had just been ironed, stood against the back door, the steam from 
his coffee cup fogging up the window to his right.

Also dressed, Scully's mother was lifting Matthew into his booster seat, and 
she paused when Mulder and Scully stepped into the kitchen. "Good morning, 
Dana, Fox," she said.

"Morning, Mom," Scully said.

"Mrs. Scully," Mulder echoed.

"Mama," Liam cried out after catching a glimpse of Scully, and Charles 
eagerly handed him over.

Tara and Charlie nodded their heads in greeting. Bill, however, simply 
crinkled his brow at them. "Are you three leaving?" he asked.

"Charlie and I are going to the cemetery," Scully announced, pouring her 
coffee into a travel mug. "Get my coat, too, will you?"

Charlie nodded and headed towards the hall closet. Bill glanced at Scully, 
then over at Charles's retreating figure. Scully could see that he was torn, 
that he wanted to come but wasn't yet ready to swallow his pride and ask if 
he could join them. His gaze continued to shoot between his brother and 
sister. Scully almost felt bad enough to ask him to come along. Almost.

She turned to Mulder. "We'll stop by the apartment and pick up some clean 
clothes on the way back," she said, handing him the baby. "Is there anything 
in particular you want?"

Mulder shook his head. "Anything clean," he said. "And warm." She smiled.

Charles returned wearing his coat and carrying a dark bundle. "This one 
yours?" he asked Scully. She nodded when he held up her black leather jacket, 
and he tossed it over to her. Then he held up the other jacket he'd brought 
and tossed it at Bill.

"Let's go," Charles said.

* * * * *

MULDER


"So stubborn," Margaret Scully said, shaking her head as she watched Bill, 
Charles, and Scully walk out the front door. She turned back to Mulder and 
Tara, who had both sat down at the kitchen table. "Especially Bill and Dana," 
she told them, concentrating her gaze on Tara and Mulder in turn.

Mulder smiled ruefully, quite familiar with the Scully family stubbornness. 
Apparently a dominant trait, he thought, glancing down at his son. He 
intercepted Liam's curious fingers, which were heading towards the coffee cup 
Bill had abandoned on the table.

Tara was also grinning. "At least Charlie's more easygoing," she said. "I 
can't imagine having three children so stubborn."

Maggie nodded. "Two was plenty," she said. "Melissa was my salvation. Bill 
and Dana were so competitive with each other, especially when it came to 
their father's approval. But Melissa was so easygoing, so sweet and loving."

"And Charles?" Tara asked.

"Charles," Maggie echoed. "Charles was the most difficult. They fought all 
the time, but Bill and Dana were quite independent. They insisted on doing 
everything for themselves, and it was easy to let them, with Charles to worry 
about. Charles was...

"Charles was different. Difficult. Moody and emotional. He cycled between 
depressed and withdrawn, and volatile and angry.

"But Missy was a big help; when Charles was a baby she was just the right age 
to help take care of him. And, by that time, believe me, I needed all the 
help I could get. Dana was too young, but Melissa was like a second mother to 
Charles."

Mulder nodded. In a small way, Charles reminded him of Samantha, both babied 
by their parents and older siblings. Strangely, he found himself sympathizing 
with Bill and Melissa. He, too, had been the oldest, had shouldered his 
parents' responsibility, especially after Samantha's disappearance when, at 
times, it felt almost as though he were the parent.

Liam began to kick at him, growing restless on his lap. So Mulder stood the 
baby up, allowing him to bounce up and down of his own accord. Liam stared up 
at the stained glass lampshade that hung over the kitchen table. He reached 
toward it, pushing against his father's thighs in an effort to get closer.

"It gets busier with the second child than you would think," Maggie told 
Tara. "You not only have a new baby to look after, but the older one, too. 
I'm sure it'll be easier for you and Bill, though. There was only a year age 
difference between Bill and Melissa."

Tara shook her head. "A year," she marveled. "I can't imagine. Matthew was 
still a baby at a year."

Maggie nodded, turning to Mulder. "Bill and Melissa were fourteen months 
apart," she said. "But it'll be easier for you two," Maggie repeated to Tara. 
"Matthew will be -- what? -- four and a half when the baby's born?"

Tara nodded. "Just about."

"That's even more than the age difference between Missy and Charles," 
Margaret said, "and that worked out well. Their father and I definitely got 
smarter as we went along. A year between Billy and Melissa, twenty months 
between Melissa and Dana, then three and a half years between Dana and 
Charles.

"Well," Maggie said after a pause. "I'd better get over to Mrs. Patrick's 
house." She grabbed the picnic basket from the counter and rearranged the 
food inside before she shut the hinged flaps to cover the basket.

"I should be back in an hour or so," she told them, grabbing her coat off the 
chair next to Tara and leaving through the back door.

Tara and Mulder sat in silence until Liam started whining. Then Mulder 
searched through the cabinets until he found a box of Cheerios and dropped 
several handfuls onto the table. He took a banana from the refrigerator and 
broke it into pieces, then caught the baby's attention and directed him to 
his breakfast.

Liam's eyes widened, and he reached out for a piece of banana. Mulder sat 
down next to the high chair, warming his hands with his own coffee mug. 
Mulder and Tara watched Liam carefully pinch Cheerio after Cheerio between 
his thumb and forefinger and fit them into his mouth.

"I'd better get to work," Tara said, rising from her chair and checking on 
Matthew, who was quietly playing with the remains of his cinnamon toast, 
waving his messy fingers in the air.

"Work?" Mulder asked.

"B-i-r-t-h-d-a-y C-a-k-e," she spelled, wiping her son's hands with a 
washcloth before lifting him from his seat at the table. "Okay, Matty," she 
said. "Why don't you go play with the train set in the living room?"

"But Daddy said he'd build a snowman with me," Matthew whined.

"He'll help you when he comes back, Matty."

"Promise?"

"I promise," Tara said.

But Matthew was not to be pacified. "But where did Daddy go-ooo?"

Tara sighed, and Mulder could sense her patience thinning. He wondered how 
much sleep she'd gotten last night. "He went to the cemetery, baby," she 
said, running her hand through his hair. "With Aunt Dana and Uncle Charles. 
He'll help you when they get back."

Finally Matthew gave in and went into the living room. But Mulder continued 
to watch Tara, who closed her eyes for a minute and sighed again, long and 
audible. Finally she stood and went to the cupboards.

After last night they were all worn thin. Mulder had felt it still when he 
woke up that morning, woke to find the bed empty and Scully and Liam gone. 
Last night's argument had not been Tara's -- had not been Mulder's, either, 
really -- but he felt out of sorts, especially after Scully left with her 
brothers and even more strongly since Maggie went over to her neighbor's 
house.

Of course Mulder was grateful that it wasn't Bill he'd been left alone with, 
but he didn't know Tara very well. She was friendly enough, and Scully seemed 
to like her, but Mulder wasn't sure. After all, she was married to Bill.

"What about you, Mulder?" Tara asked as she removed ingredients for Matthew's 
cake from the refrigerator and cupboards. "Do you have any brothers or 
sisters?"

Mulder stopped, his coffee cup frozen in mid-air. He had assumed that Tara 
knew about Samantha. Mulder himself had mentioned losing a sister to Bill 
once, when Scully was sick with her cancer. But Bill must not have told his 
wife, or must have forgotten it himself. Still, Mulder thought Maggie would 
have mentioned it...

"I had a sister," he said, setting his coffee cup down and helping himself to 
one of Liam's Cheerios. "Samantha. She disappeared when she was eight. I was 
twelve," he said.

"And you never...?"

"We never found her."

"I'm so sorry," Tara said, stopping and sitting next to Mulder at the table.

Mulder nodded, took a long sip of his coffee. "What about you?" he asked 
finally.

"Me? Oh, right. I'm the youngest. Two older sisters, and I always wanted a 
brother. In a way," she said with a grin, "I can sympathize with Charles, 
being the baby of the family. At times it was fun, but eventually you grow up 
and get frustrated when no one takes you seriously."

Mulder nodded. In a way, he knew what Tara meant. During his tenure on the 
X-Files he so often felt as though no one took his work seriously. On most 
days he could handle it, but at other times he had felt overwhelmed and 
underappreciated. Only Scully had believed him, had respected his views even 
though she usually didn't share them.

Mulder reached over and stole another Cheerio from Liam's tray. The baby had 
grown bored of his breakfast and had started to play with the cereal, most of 
which was now covered with a gummy coating of banana mush.

"Okay, buddy," Mulder said. "I think you're about done with your breakfast." 
Mulder wet a paper towel and wiped off the high chair tray, while Liam, who 
wasn't finished playing, began to whimper.

"Come here, sweet boy," Tara said, lifting the baby out of the high chair. 
Liam went to her eagerly, and she handed him his bottle. She held him on her 
lap, smoothing his hair and trailing her hand down his arm to his fisted 
fingers.

"You forget how little they are," Tara said, setting her palm flat against 
the tiny feet of Liam's pajamas. Mulder dropped the paper towel into the 
trash and sat back down.

"Enjoy this time, Mulder," she said, glancing into the living room, where 
Matthew was motoring the engine of the train around the base of the Christmas 
tree. "It goes so fast."

Mulder nodded, then took his son from Tara. He grabbed a handful of toys from 
the microwave tray near the window, then sat back down at the table and 
arranged Liam in his lap. The baby grabbed his favorite toy, the thick wand 
filled with water and glitter and small plastic fish.

Tara stood and went back to her cake recipe, and Mulder alternated between 
watching her, watching Liam, and sipping his coffee, as Tara measured out 
ingredients into a large mixing bowl.

There was a question, one question, that he was burning to ask Tara. As he 
watched Liam hold his bottle with one hand and repeatedly invert his toy in 
the other, Mulder considered the idea. Ask her, he told himself, watching the 
tiny plastic fish fall through a shower of glitter as Liam dropped the wand 
on the table. Ask her.

Mulder took a sip of coffee. "Tara?"

"Yeah?" she said, searching through the drawers for a mixing spoon.

"Drawer to the left of the sink," Mulder told her.

"Thanks," she said, removing a large wooden spoon.

"Tara, did you ever meet Captain Scully?"

* * * * *

DANA


They took Scully's car, though both it and Bill's van were crusted over with 
a crisp, icy coating of snow. Scully tried the key in the keyhole with no 
luck. The locks were frozen shut. She brought the key to her lips and 
breathed several quick puffs of air onto the cold metal, then tried again. 
Success.

Scully was pushing her own seat closer to the gas pedal when she noticed Bill 
scooting his back before getting in. Bill could have driven, Scully thought; 
after all, he was approximately Mulder's height, and they wouldn't have had 
to change the seats.

But Scully wanted to drive. She started up the car, which chugged to life and 
sputtered several tentative puffs of cold air at them. 

Scully reached in back for the scraper, but Bill beat her to it. He got out 
and chipped the ice from the front and back windshields and windows. Scully 
glanced to Charles in the backseat, but he just shrugged. "Let him," he said.

A penance, she supposed. Frankly, she didn't much care, as long as it meant 
she could wait in the car in anticipation of the heat starting up. She 
listened halfheartedly to the radio. Mulder had tuned it to a traffic report 
on their drive over two days before, and the station, which usually played an 
assortment of oldies, was offering a weather report. Cold, with a chance of 
snow.

Soon Bill was finished, and he folded himself back into the passenger side, 
dropping the scraper into the back seat. They were quiet as Scully pulled 
slowly out of the slick driveway, the snow crunching beneath the car's tires. 
The weather report ended, and a song started, an old Carole King tune Scully 
recognized but barely.

"Here I am,
Carrying the child of our sweet love,
And you're far away.
That's how things go down.
But I want to see you again."

Scully froze, and not from the cold. She willed Bill to turn the radio off or 
change the station; she was concentrating too intently the icy turns of the 
road to comfortably remove a hand from the wheel. But he simply sat there, 
his vision trained blankly at the end of Maggie Scully's street. It was as if 
he and Charles didn't even hear the music, or didn't understand its 
significance.

Finally Scully pulled onto the main road, which had been cleared off, and she 
reached out and turned off the car stereo. Silence engulfed the car, and 
Scully had to admit that she was surprised. She had expected maybe a lecture 
from Bill, who so often couldn't keep his mouth shut. 

He had always been bossy, had been the one who, when they were children, 
chose what game they would play and who would go first, most often him. It 
was in following Bill's lead that Scully had become a tomboy. And it was from 
rebelling against Bill that Melissa, and later Charles, had not.

But that morning her brothers were silent, watching the road intently, 
holding their breaths as the car fishtailed when Scully turned onto an 
ice-slicked side street. But she quickly righted the car, thanked God for the 
practice she had driving under dangerous circumstances -- despite Mulder's 
frequent monopolizing of the wheel -- and the rest of the drive was 
uneventful.

The trip took almost fifty minutes, double the usual driving time because so 
few of the streets were plowed or salted. But when they pulled into the East 
entrance of the cemetery, Scully saw that the driveway was cleared and the 
parking spaces lining it nearly filled. Clusters of people huddled together 
around gravestones that rose, cold and imposing, from the white blanket of 
snow. Baskets of flowers dotted the landscape in pinks and blues and yellows, 
and Scully wished that they had thought to bring something for Melissa's 
grave.

Scully maneuvered the car carefully along the driveway, then pulled it into 
an empty space near Melissa's grave. She and her brothers got out of the car, 
testing their footing on the ice before taking a step. But both Bill and 
Charles held back, letting Scully lead them over to Melissa's grave.

It was then that she realized suddenly that not only had Charlie never been 
to the cemetery, but Bill had not either. At least not since the funeral. 
Anger welled up inside her, then quelled. Bill lived out in San Diego and 
didn't get back East very often. And when he did, it wasn't for long, a day's 
stopover in Norfolk or Annapolis. Who could blame him for choosing to spend 
that time with his mother instead of his sister's grave?

Scully trudged through the crusty snow, leading them to a gentle valley 
tucked between a pair of barren trees. She stooped to brush the snow from the 
headstone with a gloved hand. Melissa Scully, she traced. Bill and Charlie 
bent down next to her, and, together, they cleared off the rest of the stone: 
Beloved Sister and Daughter. 1962-1995.

Charles reached into his pocket and produced a large scarlet poinsettia 
blossom, which he set atop the grave. Then he sunk to his knees in the snow, 
leaning forward against the cold stone. "Oh, Missy," he cried in a strangled 
voice. "Missy."

Scully closed her eyes against her tears, turned away from her brothers. She 
knew she had imposed on Charles by coming with him to the cemetery -- she 
herself liked to come alone, so there might be no witness to her grief -- and 
now she wanted to give Charles what little privacy she could.

Scully stepped away from Melissa's grave, digging the toe of her boot into 
the snow. She surveyed the flat white landscape of the cemetery, dotted by 
solitary men and women in black coats and brown coats, and a small cluster of 
children in nylon jackets, puffy and bright, corralled by a middle-aged man 
with a hat pulled low over his eyes.

Graves in pink and gray granite peeked out from under the blanket of snow. So 
many of the graves rose in pairs, Scully saw, pairs like an open book. Like 
eyes, peeking over shallow hills and around sloping valleys. So many of the 
stones bore two carved names, husband and wife, together forever on black 
granite in Times New Roman.

Here lies Doris Julia Carpenter, 1926-1994, Beloved Wife, Mother, 
Grandmother. A Byzantine cross rested between the names of Doris and John, 
her dearly beloved. But John Stanley Carpenter, 1928-, was beside his wife in 
name only; John Stanley Carpenter was still walking this planet, alive and 
presumably well, his name holding his place next to his wife, waiting for the 
day when he joins her. Till death do us part.

Half of the headstone was cleared of snow, and Scully wondered whether John 
Stanley Carpenter had come recently to visit his wife's grave. She wondered 
whether he came often, whether he stood there with his children and 
grandchildren, thinking of Doris. She wondered whether his gaze lingered on 
his own name, his own birthdate, the smooth stone and cold earth ready to 
receive him.

Scully turned away from Doris and John, and searched for a small stone to 
leave on Melissa's grave. Finally she found one in the dirt at the edge of a 
freshly dug grave. She kicked the brown dirt with her toe, taking in the tiny 
wooden cross planted at the gravesite. To mark the life, mark the moment.

Slowly Scully wandered in a circle around Missy's grave, but she could do 
nothing to block out Charles's keening sobs. He rocked himself back and 
forth, touching his forehead to the cold stone each time he leaned forward.

"Missy, Missy, Missy," he called out.

Scully saw Bill several feet away, inconspicuously studying a grave decorated 
with a tiny flag planted proudly in the snow. After several minutes Scully 
stepped back toward Melissa's grave and reached down to set her hand on her 
brother's shoulder, fully expecting him to pull away.

Instead he latched onto her legs, like Liam did whenever she or Mulder tried 
to stand the baby up and urge him to take a few tentative steps. Charles laid 
his head against her thighs, and she reached down and stroked his hair.

Finally Charles stood, brushing the snow from the knees of his pants. Scully 
gazed up at him. "Are you okay?" she asked, and he shrugged.

"What's okay?" he asked, and she smiled, understanding.

"I'll be fine," he assured her. "I just needed to see it," he said, and she 
nodded. "I mean, I knew she was dead. Intellectually, I knew it. But somehow 
it wasn't completely real until I saw. Then I could believe..."

* * * * *

BILL


Dana's key chain rattled in the door to her apartment as the keys stuck in 
the lock. Finally they released and she pushed open the door, letting them 
follow her inside.

"Have a seat," she said, dropping her keys on a small table next to the door, 
then gesturing to the couch. "Let me just get together some clothes and some 
things for Liam, and then we can go."

Bill nodded at his sister's retreating back and watched as Charles plopped 
down on the sofa. He kicked his heels up on the coffee table and carefully 
considered the piles of books strewn on the table.

"Hmm," Charles said, "let's see." He flipped through several children's 
books, some of which Bill recognized from Matthew's collection. Then Charles 
reached the denser texts on the bottom of the pile and hefted two books off 
the table, placing one in each hand as if weighing them.

"'Criminal Profiling in a Politically Correct World' and 'Recovering Trace 
Evidence: Beyond the Y Incision,'" he read. "You need to work on the reading 
material here, Dane, or Liam's gonna be one seriously messed up kid."

Dana's only response was the swift slam of a drawer, and Bill grinned despite 
himself.

Charles abandoned the books and turned his attention to a pile of magazines. 
After digging through the stack, he picked out a slim volume. "Penology 
Review," he said. "Jesus, Dana, what have you got going on here?"

"This isn't a waiting room, Charles," came Dana's terse reply from the other 
room. "I'm sorry if the selection isn't to your liking." Charles just laughed.

Again Bill smiled, hoping his brother was just playing dumb, but he didn't 
sit down next to Charles on the couch. Instead, he wandered slowly around the 
room, investigating. Was this how Dana did it, taking everything in, trying 
to add up the clues and come out with some semblance of an answer? Some kind 
of truth?

Her apartment looked normal. It looked almost the same as it had the last 
time Bill had been there, except for the Christmas tree in the corner and the 
baby paraphernalia scattered around the room. Bill couldn't stop himself from 
smiling at the sight of all the baby clutter: neat-freak Dana had met her 
match, he thought with a satisfied grin, remembering how she and Melissa had 
once divided their bedroom in half, Melissa's side knee-deep in clothes and 
magazines and dolls, Dana's half clean enough to perform surgery in.

Ever since his mother told him on the phone that Dana and Mulder were living 
together, Bill had tried to imagine them in Mulder's apartment, which of 
course he had never seen. But he hadn't pictured Mulder moving into his 
sister's place. He couldn't picture Mister Special Agent leaving his paranoid 
hovel to join Dana in the real world.

Bill had imagined a wrought-iron gate, maybe, or a high-tech security system 
that was password-protected and required a retina scan to gain admittance. Or 
maybe just a dog, a really big, hungry dog with sharp teeth. Bill could even 
picture Mulder in a cave somewhere, hiding out with a gun tucked in his 
sleeping bag and a telescope poised for a good view when the aliens landed.

Even besides the mess, however, this apartment surprised Bill. He hadn't 
expected this. He hadn't expected normal.

But that's exactly what their apartment was: Normal. Despite the unusual 
selection of reading material on their coffee table, the apartment could've 
belonged to anyone. Bill recognized most of the furniture as his sister's, so 
maybe he wasn't wrong; maybe Mulder had lived in an empty apartment before 
moving in with Dana, sleeping on the floor, ready to dash away at any 
indication of imminent alien invasion.

There was a bookshelf against the East wall, the books that filled it 
diverse. One shelf was filled with medical texts, the next with psychology 
books and journals. Another shelf was crammed with paperbacks, some beloved 
with broken spines, others shiny and new. Bill thumbed one well-worn book 
from the shelf: Stephen King's "The Dead Zone." Someone had obviously loved 
this book and read it more than once. Probably it was Mulder, Bill thought, 
not able to picture Dana reading Stephen King.

But when the cover fell open Bill saw that it was Dana Scully's name that was 
written carefully in pen on the inside front cover.

Bill himself had read the book his freshman year at the Naval Academy. Horror 
had never been to his taste -- no, he preferred historical fiction or the 
occasional military thriller; Tom Clancy had long been a favorite. But he had 
picked up "The Dead Zone" on his roommate's recommendation.

Bill had been surprised to find that he enjoyed the book, which didn't fit 
into his idea of typical King: no bloody massacres or killer zombies or 
possessed toys. Instead, the book had presented an interesting take on a 
classic dilemma: if you could travel back in time, would you kill Hitler?

Of course, the book hadn't presented the problem in exactly those terms -- 
King had to get some supernaturalism in there somewhere, with his everyman 
protagonist (named, appropriately, John Smith) gaining some mysterious 
prognosticant power when he touched someone. And then, at a political rally, 
Smith happens to shake hands with a man who, he sees, will someday become the 
President of the United States and destroy the world.

Despite the novel's fantastic element, Bill had been intrigued by its 
premise, intrigued enough to remember the book's effect on him so many years 
later. What would you do if you were an ordinary man in possession of 
extraordinary knowledge that would save the world? Would you risk your own 
life -- and your reputation as sane -- to save billions?

Bill liked to think he would, but he knew that every person who read that 
book probably thought the same thing. I would be brave like John Smith; I 
would risk myself for the greater good; I would devote myself to a cause I 
believed in. Bill replaced the book on the shelf, wondering when Dana had 
read it.

Then he walked over to the desk and chair that sat by the window. On the desk 
top, next to the computer, sat several framed photographs. One frame held two 
pictures, side by side. The first was of Dana and Melissa as teenagers, 
sitting on a dock, their feet dangling into the lake below. Melissa was 
wearing a pink bikini, her pale midriff begging for sunburn. Dana, ever the 
practical one, was wearing a t-shirt and a floppy hat that was folded up to 
uncover her freckled face.

The second photo in the frame showed all four of them: Bill, Melissa, Dana, 
and Charles, standing on the staircase of their base housing in some city he 
couldn't quite remember. Charlie had the top step and Bill the bottom, so the 
children were approximately the same height. Bill recognized the picture as 
part of a Christmas card they'd sent one winter, when he was about eight.

What struck him most about the photograph was how happy they all looked. Were 
they? He couldn't remember. He was also surprised by how much the four of 
them looked alike back then, especially Dana and Charles. Their smiles -- 
their real smiles, not the artificial ones they sported for poorly posed 
school pictures -- were the same. Down another step stood Melissa, who, with 
her red hair and pale skin, definitely looked like a Scully. It was 
eight-year-old Billy who was out of place, with darker hair and a stockier 
build, his eyes not as large and trusting as his siblings'.

Bill pushed the photo aside and turned to the other frames on the desk. The 
next picture Bill didn't recognize, a dark-haired boy and girl, probably 
brother and sister. The boy was older, and stood against a tree, grinning 
into the sun, his arms crossed in front of him. The girl stood next to him, 
also smiling, but her grin was more happy than squinty and sarcastic. 

The boy, of course, was Fox Mulder. He had the grown Mulder's same smartass 
grin, the same cocky tilt of his head. Bill figured that the girl was Fox 
Mulder's infamous missing sister.

Bill picked up the third and final picture, which was of Dana, Mulder, and a 
newborn Liam, sitting together on the same couch where Charles now sat. 
Mulder was holding Liam, and Dana was sitting next to him, so close, Mulder's 
elbow pressing into her shoulder.

Bill recognized the picture even though he had never seen it before. He and 
Tara had one just like it on the mantle of their fireplace, in their own 
home, with their son as the focal point, held in Bill's arms, with Tara 
standing nearby. He remembered how she had urged him to hand over the baby 
when he got fussy, and how he had refused. You carried him for nine months, 
he'd said, it's my turn now.

Bill shuddered and set the picture back down, smacking it against the desk 
top. He had nothing in common with Fox Mulder, nothing. Well, he admitted, 
nothing except Dana.

At one time Bill had been confidant that Dana's partnership with Mulder 
wouldn't last. Surely she would continue up the rungs of the FBI ladder, 
leaving her crazy partner in the dust. But then Bill came to see that Dana 
wasn't going anywhere.

So, Bill revised, it would be Mulder. Mulder would be reassigned, or fired, 
or placed on an extended disciplinary leave that faded into forever. Mulder 
might have moved into Dana's apartment, but surely it was just a pit stop; 
surely the man would up and leave whenever he caught wind of a new lead, a 
new conspiracy.

But now Bill didn't know. This week Mulder had been acting like he was there 
to stay. He had played nice with the rest of the Scully family... nicer than 
Bill had, if he was honest with himself. If Bill didn't know any better, he 
might suspect that Mulder was looking for their approval.

And he appeared to have found it. Bill could see that his mother and Mulder 
were closer than he had thought, and, by the looks of it, they had been close 
for a while now. When had that happened? Bill wondered. Maybe as far back as 
Matthew's birth, he thought, remembering his mother's relief at Fox Mulder's 
arrival.

Or maybe longer. Maggie always managed to weave Mulder's name into their 
weekly telephone chats. It was usually in the context of Dana's work, but 
Maggie also dropped in the occasional personal mention: she had had dinner 
with Mulder; he had stopped by on Mother's Day; she had to go shopping for 
his birthday present.

But mostly it was work, though he suspected Maggie understood little of her 
daughter's job. Bill knew from his own work, relatively safe and dependable 
as it was, that Dana's job was no picnic. Since she entered the Academy Bill 
had kept his ears tuned to any conversations about federal law enforcement. 
Not that his department of the Navy had all that much to do with the FBI, but 
he did try. At first he had simply looked for ammunition to get her out of 
the Bureau. He had even shared a few anecdotes with his father, hoping he 
would pass them on to Dana.

But, as he learned more and more about the X-Files, Bill listened in an 
effort to understand the danger she was in. It was a small thing, he knew, 
but it kept him in his sister's life. God knows she didn't share anything 
with him willingly. No, nearly all of his knowledge about his sister's life 
came from their mother, and it was through her that he came to know Fox 
Mulder as well.

Suddenly Bill was sure he could pinpoint when it was that Mulder had first 
insinuated himself into Bill's family: Dana's disappearance. Bill had been at 
sea and, by the time he learned what had happened, Tara said Maggie was 
coping well, that she had calmed herself down. So Bill had decided that him 
leaving the ship would not help anything. Though now he wondered whether it 
was someone else, someone named Fox Mulder, who had done the calming.

It had been that far back, Bill realized, that Mulder had begun to take his 
place in the Scully family. His father hadn't even been buried for a year, so 
obviously Maggie was looking for a man to rely on, though why she believed 
that man was Fox Mulder, Bill did not know. Lack of competition, he figured 
guiltily.

After not being there after her disappearance, Bill had taken a few days' 
leave from his commission when Dana's cancer landed her in the hospital. And 
Mulder was absent, though he certainly held enough influence to pull Dana 
from a family dinner just days earlier.

And then Mulder had reappeared, back from the dead -- the guy had a knack for 
that -- and slipped back into the number one slot in Dana's life. She had 
even agreed with his ridiculous idea that sticking some small piece of metal 
in her neck would cure her. If it were that easy, Bill thought, every patient 
in the oncology wards would be calling Mulder for one of those magic pieces 
of metal.

Bill remembered that day in the hospital with a crispness borne of reliving 
it every time he thought of his sister. Dana in bed, looking suddenly so old, 
looking as though she was holding back tears. Her doctor standing at the foot 
of her bed, not believing in Mulder's science fiction but not disagreeing 
either.

And then Bill and Maggie on one side of Dana's bed, and Mulder on the other. 
An appropriate position, Bill thought. Appropriate until his own mother had 
joined Dana on Fox Mulder's side. They were all on Fox Mulder's side, Bill 
thought. Mom and Dana and Charles and even Tara.

But Bill was no fool; he had noticed the shiny new ring on Dana's left hand. 
While it didn't appear to be an engagement ring, Bill didn't know what to 
make of it; he didn't know what to make of a lot of things. He sighed, 
feeling the pounding between his eyes, the beginnings of a headache.

"Dana?" he called out, wandering into the hall.

"Yeah?" she answered, and he followed her voice into the bedroom. 

Dana was standing near the door, at a dresser against the wall, dropping 
something -- underwear, he soon realized -- into an overnight bag. He averted 
his eyes, but not before he saw that it was not hers.

"Do you have any aspirin?"

"In the medicine cabinet in the bathroom," she said, gesturing towards the 
bathroom. She resumed her packing without skipping a beat.

Bill stepped into the bathroom, carefully surveying the scene. Surely, he 
thought, there had to be *something* screwy about the place Fox Mulder called 
home. But the bathroom was just like the rest of the apartment: unobtrusive 
and unspectacular.

Bill popped open the mirrored door of the medicine cabinet and searched 
through its overstocked shelves. He cleared aside various bottles and jars, 
then finally Bill picked out the plastic bottle of aspirin. He shook out two 
gel-coated capsules, then took a third. Bill recapped the bottle and 
carefully fit it back onto a shelf. He jiggled the pills in his closed fist, 
glancing around the bathroom for a glass.

Bill gave up and went into the kitchen, considering the cupboard doors. He 
got lucky on his first try and took a plastic New York Knicks cup. He filled 
it with tap water, then gulped down the aspirin. Bill rinsed out the glass 
and placed it in the plastic dish drainer.

He crossed his arms, taking time to study the kitchen. Searching, searching, 
for anomalies, for signs that all was not well in his sister's apartment or 
her life. He thought he was prepared for anything: an alien tracking device, 
or some mysterious weapon, or a prescription for anti-psychotic drugs in 
Mulder's name. But what he found surprised him.

Sitting in the middle of the kitchen table was a menorah.

"Charles," Bill called out as he stepped into the main room of the apartment.

"Yeah," Charles said, looking up from the magazine that was open on his lap. 
"This Penology Review isn't so bad," he said with a grin. "Definitely not 
what I thought it was, though."

Bill suppressed the urge to roll his eyes. "Is Mulder Jewish, do you know?"

Charles shrugged. "You'd know better than I would. I didn't even meet the guy 
until this week." His brother turned his attention back to the magazine. "Why 
don't you ask Dana?"

Ask Dana. Of course. But he knew she would take his question as a criticism, 
even though it was not. Fox Mulder's religious affiliation didn't sway Bill's 
opinion of the man in any way. Really.

Charlie waited, sifting through several more pages, before again looking up 
at his brother. "Well?" he asked, but Bill merely shrugged. Charles rolled 
his eyes.

"Dana?" Charlie called out.

"Yes?" Dana came out of the bedroom carrying a small overnight bag.

"Is Mulder Jewish?" Charles asked simply.

In the pit of his stomach, Bill felt a twinge of jealousy over the ease 
Charles had with Dana. Even though they had certainly gotten along better in 
the past, Bill's relationship with his sister had always been precarious. If 
Bill had asked the question, Dana would have read into it some kind of 
judgment. But she gave Charlie so much more latitude with her exalted 
privacy; she always had. With Charlie asking, Bill knew that she would simply 
answer the question. And she did.

"His father was," she said, and Charlie nodded before slapping the sleeves of 
the magazine shut.

"You ready?" Charles asked.

"Almost," Dana said. "I've got to get a few things for Liam." She stepped 
back into the hall, and Charles stood and followed her. Bill glanced between 
the door, the couch, the kitchen, and his brother's retreating back. Finally 
he followed Charles.

Liam's bedroom, too, was unanomolous. The walls were painted a pale blue and 
decorated with a baseball-themed border. The room was crowded with a crib, a 
changing table, a small dresser, a bookshelf, and a rocking chair, which was 
where Charlie sat, pushing back and forth, coming inches from cracking his 
head open on the wall behind him. Bill stood in the doorway, his arms 
crossed, watching.

"His father isn't alive?" Charles asked as Dana packed a stack of diapers 
into the overnight bag.

"No," Dana said. "He was killed a year and a half after Dad died."

"And his mother?" Charles asked.

Dana dropped a pair of overalls and a tiny shirt into the bag. "She's dead, 
too."

Bill couldn't stop the twinge of sadness that rose in his chest, sadness for 
Fox Mulder, of all people. Damn it, Bill thought. He knew how difficult it 
was to lose one parent, and he didn't want to imagine losing both of them. Of 
course he knew that day would come, but Margaret Scully was relatively young 
and quite healthy, and Bill hoped he wouldn't be confronted with that 
situation for a very long time.

"No," Charles said. "I mean, his mother wasn't Jewish? You said his father..."

"No. His mother was... Protestant, I think," Dana said, glancing at Bill. She 
ran her thumb over her ring. "At least part of her family was. Mulder used to 
spend Christmas with them. But he and Samantha were raised Jewish."

"Samantha?" Charles asked.

Dana zipped up the bag, then turned to her younger brother. "Mulder's sister. 
She disappeared when he was twelve and she was eight." Dana again looked over 
at Bill, who was still perched in the doorway. "They never found her, and 
Mulder spent years looking for her."

Bill looked away. He had known about Samantha; he remembered what Mulder had 
mentioned when they met outside Dana's hospital room more than four years 
ago. Bill hadn't been able to get it out of his mind, the pathetic, puppy-dog 
look on Mulder's face; it had taken every ounce of his self-control not to 
haul off and deck the guy for his naked emotion.

What right did Mulder have feeling sorry for himself when it was Bill's 
sister who was dying in the next room? Mulder only worked with Dana. It 
wasn't like he was family or anything, and back then Bill couldn't imagine 
his sister being friends with the man, couldn't imagine *anyone* being 
friends with him. They were working partners, and that was all, Bill had told 
himself. What gall Mulder had to assume the position of bereaved. How dare he?

And, worse yet, all the bad things that had happened to Bill's family were 
Mulder's fault. Maybe the guy had had a rough childhood, losing a sister. 
Fine. But that didn't give him the right to destroy Bill's family, to pick 
them off sister by sister. It was Mulder's crazy searching that had gotten 
Melissa killed, had gotten Dana kidnapped, had maybe even given Dana cancer. 
If this guy had any shame, he would run away and never look back, especially 
after what he had done to Bill's family.

But of course, Bill thought as Dana grabbed a handful of baby toys from the 
bookshelf and stuffed them into the overnight bag, Mulder had not turned 
back. And, for some inexplicable reason, Dana hadn't had the good sense to 
dump her troublesome excuse for a partner either. No, Bill thought, his anger 
flaring up again, she had probably taken one look at that pathetic expression 
and those self-pitying eyes and agreed to follow Mulder to the ends of the 
earth in search for his truth.

Remembered rage burned through Bill, and he tried to calm himself. He had 
once believed that Dana felt some misplaced mothering instinct towards her 
partner, that she had wanted to protect and care for him. 

It certainly fit; months after his sister's bout with cancer had ended, his 
mother had told him that Dana couldn't have children. Probably, Bill thought, 
it was from the chemotherapy or, more likely, that crazy chip Mulder had 
convinced her to put into her neck.

Now Bill wished that a misplaced mothering instinct was all it had been. 
Obviously there was something more going on here than the simple ticking of 
his sister's biological clock.

* * * * *

MULDER


"I met Bill's father once," Tara said, turning from the ingredients stacked 
on the counter to face Mulder.

"Bill was home on leave. We hadn't been dating for very long and I don't 
think he was planning on introducing me to his parents yet, but his leave was 
so short."

Mulder nodded, bending over to pick up Liam's toy, which had fallen to the 
kitchen floor. Tara abandoned the birthday cake batter and sat at the table 
next to Mulder.

"So the four of us went to dinner: Captain Scully, Maggie, Bill, and me. And 
it was..." She paused, traced a fingernail along the dark grain of the wood 
of the table. "It was very informative," she said finally.

"Informative?"

"Captain Scully had quite a presence, definitely the man of the house," Tara 
said. "But I got the impression that Maggie had more influence over him than 
he let on. I could tell just from that dinner how much he loved her."

Again Mulder nodded. He only knew Scully's father from what Scully had told 
him -- plus what little Maggie had mentioned in his presence -- but that much 
he knew: the Captain had loved his wife.

In fact, for a while it had scared Mulder, thinking of the model of love that 
Scully had grown up with, so opposite the example his own parents had set. 
Scully's parents' love had survived weeks and months at sea, and Maggie often 
alone battling chicken pox and school bullies and broken curfews, times four. 
Mulder wondered whether it would have survived the loss of a child.

"They met at a mixer on the base when Captain Scully was on a break from the 
Naval Academy. She was still in high school and he went back to school a few 
weeks later. She wrote to him, just as friends at first, for months after 
that, and when he went to sea. And that was how they dated, on paper. They 
were married a month after his ship returned to port."

Mulder smiled. In a small, strange way, Maggie and Bill Scully's courtship 
had mirrored his and Scully's: starting out as friends, getting to know each 
other in a decidedly unconventional way, but somehow ending up together.

"They had this amazing give-and-take, interrupting and correcting each other. 
They joked a lot," Tara remembered with a smile, then her forehead crinkled.

"But only together. This I remember very clearly: Captain Scully's 
relationship with Maggie was so easy. But with Bill... Well, they were more 
formal. Probably the same father-son dynamic that played out in most American 
households around the time we were growing up."

Mulder looked down at Liam, remembering his relationship with his own father. 
He wasn't sure it was typical of the time, but certainly it was formal. Until 
the day of his death, Mulder couldn't remember his father initiating an 
embrace with him, couldn't remember the man initiating any physical contact 
at all, save the overly formal handshake that Bill Mulder passed off as a 
greeting.

Mulder shifted Liam on his lap, and the baby kicked his legs out in 
frustration. Probably he was tired, Mulder thought as his son ground his 
fists into his eyes. None of them had slept well that night, Liam included. 
Mulder held Liam up so that the baby was standing on his thighs, but he 
wouldn't be quieted. Instead, he leaned his head against his father's 
shoulder, and Mulder raised an arm to stroke the baby's back.

"Anyway," Tara said, taking her eyes off her nephew, "I think partially Bill 
was afraid his father would disapprove of me," she said with a shrug and a 
half-smile. "Bill was so nervous. His father's opinion was very important to 
him. I remember being afraid that, if Captain Scully didn't like me, Bill 
would break it off between us.

"Not that his father would've come out and suggested that -- or maybe he 
would've, I didn't know him all that well -- but I think Bill had--" She 
stopped, corrected herself. "--still has a great need for his father's 
approval.

"That part was a little scary," Tara admitted. "It felt like I was being 
tested: if the Captain approved, then it was smooth sailing," she joked. "But 
if he didn't, then... Abandon ship."

Mulder continued to stroke Liam's back, and he felt his son's breathing slow 
and his body relax. Thank God, Mulder thought. Liam always got fussy when his 
sleep schedule was interrupted, and he had been prone to angry outbursts 
recently. Once he had stiffened his back and limbs and cried out tortuously. 
Mulder had been afraid that the baby was having some sort of seizure or 
something worse, something they had been afraid to consider.

But, luckily, Scully had kept her head. She said Liam's behavior normal, the 
early beginnings of the infamous Terrible Twos temper tantrums. She had even 
consulted an old pediatrics textbooks she had saved from med school to allay 
his fears. So Mulder had relaxed, at least for the moment, reminding himself 
that Liam's reaction was normal, perfectly normal. Nothing to worry about.

"But, in another way," Tara continued, "that dinner was what made me fall in 
love with Bill. I saw how much like his father Bill is and how much Captain 
Scully loved Maggie..." She smiled almost shyly.

"It was like seeing a future version of us, the good parts and the bad. I saw 
how difficult being married to a Navy man would be: the transfers and the 
moving and the time alone when your husband is at sea. And I saw how tough it 
would be to be married to Bill, if he was anything like his father, and I 
could tell even then that he was," she said with a certain nod.

"But that was all I ever saw of Captain Scully," Tara said. "He died a few 
months later, while Bill was still at sea. He got a leave for the funeral, 
and I went with him. I thought it would give me a chance to meet Melissa, 
Dana, and Charles," she said, her voice trailing off.

"It didn't?" Mulder asked.

Tara shook her head. "I met Dana," she said. "And Michael, their cousin, the 
Captain's nephew. He was there with his wife and two little boys. But Melissa 
wasn't there, and neither was Charles."

Mulder didn't understand that. Despite his feelings for his father, it was 
one of his greatest regrets that he had missed the man's funeral, especially 
that he had allowed his mother to suffer through that ordeal alone, knowing 
he was missing and thinking him dead. At least Scully had been there, he 
thought with a warm feeling. Even that long ago Scully had been there for 
him, even for his mother, though Mulder suspected that Scully's feelings for 
Teena Mulder weren't completely complementary.

"I didn't understand it then," Tara said with a shrug. "And I'm not sure I do 
now. They're a complicated bunch, and I never did meet Melissa and barely 
know Charles. It was unfair, but I made more than a few snap judgments about 
them based on that day," she said. "And maybe about Dana, too."

Mulder cocked his head at her, wondering.

Tara blushed a bit and glanced away. "Going back to work the afternoon after 
the memorial service, leaving town especially," she said. "I didn't 
understand how she could do that. Of course, she looked like a saint compared 
to Melissa and Charles, but still..."

Mulder nodded, remembered trying to convince Scully to take some time off 
after her father's death and not dive right back into work with a case as 
emotionally trying as Luthor Lee Boggs. He'd even called her "Dana," 
something that had sounded so forced, so foreign, on his tongue, that Scully 
had given him her now-patented what-the-hell-Mulder? look.

Still, Mulder mentally finished for Tara, it gave the impression that Scully 
wasn't close to her father, that she didn't love him. But even back then 
Mulder could tell how important Captain Scully was to her, how much she 
valued his opinion. And knowing all that back then had just made Mulder 
admire her even more. She was so brave to stand up to him, to choose her own 
path despite her father's obvious disapproval, to not abandon her dream 
because of some misplaced sense of guilt after his death.

"Like I said," Tara continued. "It was a snap judgment, and an incorrect one. 
I could see that after I got to know Dana better. And maybe," she mused, 
"maybe my impressions of Captain Scully are misplaced, too. I only met him 
that once, and only for a few hours. But I saw so much that night, about Bill 
and about his dad. They're both tough on the outside, but inside... That 
night at the restaurant, I also saw how deeply Bill was capable of loving."

Mulder bit his lip and looked back down at Liam. The baby hadn't fallen 
asleep yet, but he was well on his way. His body draped against Mulder's 
chest, heavy and trusting. Mulder felt his own breathing fall in sync with 
his son's. Liam sighed gently and Mulder thought back to Bill Mulder, to the 
Bill Scullys, Senior and Junior. We won't be that way, he silently promised 
Liam.

Tara's voice dropped. "And Bill does love her," she said, and Mulder looked 
up.

"Scu-- Dana?" he asked.

Tara nodded. "It may be tough to see--" Pretty damn impossible from where I'm 
standing, he thought. "-- but that's why Bill acts the way he does. He thinks 
it's his job to be the family protector now."

Mulder stiffened. Scully doesn't need protecting, he thought. And if she did, 
he'd be the one doing it. He felt his muscles tense and hold, his frustration 
building. Liam's body stiffened and he whined none-too-softly into his 
father's chest, and Mulder tried to force himself to relax.

"He'd kill me for telling you this--" I'll bet, Mulder thought. "--but he's 
afraid he's not doing as good a job as his father. He feels responsible for 
Melissa's death and, I think, for Charles's estrangement from the family. 
Maybe even for the trouble Dana's been through."

Mulder furled his brow. "How?" he asked, not understanding how Bill could 
parlay his feelings of responsibility for his sister into blame for Mulder.

Tara shook her head. "Maybe he thinks it's his responsibility to take care of 
the family? I don't understand it," she said. "And I'm not trying to give him 
an excuse -- at times he's been so cruel to you and Dana -- but he does have 
his reasons."

Mulder nodded, though this wasn't what he wanted to hear. In a way, he wanted 
Bill to play the villain. His feelings of anger and hurt and resentment 
towards Bill were old and easy, and he could fall back into them without 
thinking. Casting Bill as the bad guy made it a no-brainer who the good guys 
were, Mulder realized. But maybe that wasn't exactly fair; maybe it wasn't 
exactly accurate, either.

He wondered how it would be when Scully, Charlie, and Bill came back from the 
cemetery. He knew how it would be if this were his family, not that he had 
spent that much time with his parents after their divorce. But he knew they 
would pretend nothing had happened. Even before Samantha's abduction they had 
been good at that. Dad doesn't show up for your birthday, well, just accept 
the gift he brings you in the plastic bag with the receipt still inside, and 
pretend he had been there all along, snapping photos as you blew out the 
candles on your cake.

Tara set her hand on Mulder's, and he almost jumped from his chair. He tried 
to temper his reaction, not wanting to jolt Liam out of his relaxation... and 
not wanting to scare Tara. Her hand was warm and small, though not as small 
as Scully's. She patted his hand twice, then reached out to run her hand over 
Liam's back, leaving a blush of flour on the back of Mulder's hand.

"Bill will come around," she said, stilling her hand on the baby's back and 
finally catching Mulder's gaze. "Babies have a way of doing that to people."

With a final pat of Liam's back, Tara stood, smiled, and stepped through the 
swinging door that separated the kitchen and living room. Mulder could hear 
her call out to Matthew, followed by the little boy's answering giggle.

Mulder stared down at the flour stain where Tara had touched his hand, 
realizing that he hadn't been touched that way in a long time. His mind 
reeled, thinking.

Of course Scully touched him, both like a friend might and like a lover 
might. Liam touched him like a child, purely and spontaneously. And Maggie 
Scully touched him like a mother might.

But it had been years since anyone had touched him like a sister might.

* * * * *

BILL


Bill watched the passage of time on the dashboard clock, the minutes clicking 
away with alarming quickness. He dreaded returning to his mother's house; 
returning to his wife, who likely still blamed him for the previous night's 
argument; returning to Fox Mulder.

Bill's thoughts traveled back to Dana's apartment: to the photographs, to the 
menorah and the Christmas tree, to their bedroom and baby's bedroom. A single 
thought ran through his mind, through his heart:

I don't really know her at all.

He saw his sister not infrequently, mostly on holidays and the rare trips he 
took to Norfolk or Annapolis. She kept to herself, listening in on his 
conversations with their mother but seldom participating. Obviously it was 
Bill's presence that precipitated her silence. Bill knew that Dana talked to 
their mother, since it was through Maggie that he had learned of Dana's 
pregnancy; of Mulder's disappearance, apparent death, and subsequent rebirth; 
and of the baby's birth. 

The baby. Bill didn't know what to feel toward his nephew, the child of a 
sister he loved yet did not know and a man he despised yet did not know. 
Clearly Mulder was Liam's father. No matter how strongly Bill wanted to 
believe the opposite, he could no longer deny the truth, not after spending 
these days with them and especially not after seeing their apartment, their 
life in full glory.

Whatever he felt, Bill knew that it would get no easier when he, Tara, and 
Matthew moved to Norfolk. He knew his mother would be overjoyed at having two 
of her children nearby. She would insist on the family getting together for 
holidays and birthdays. And, for the first time, Bill would be able to attend 
these gatherings, not having his well-worn I'm-shipping-out excuse to fall 
back on.

One small consolation was that Bill probably wouldn't be seeing Charles for 
another, what, ten years or so. Or maybe not, he thought, remembering Dana's 
gift to their younger brother, an airline ticket to DC, open-dated and paid 
for with her frequent flier miles. Bill glanced over his shoulder, at Charles 
sitting in the back seat and gazing out the window.

The prospect of them all together again clawed at Bill. Of course he wanted 
it. He wanted Matthew to have a family. He loved his grandmother, and Bill 
wanted to give him the rest of his family, too, aunts and uncles and cousins. 
Sure, Matthew had that from Tara's side -- Tara's family who had always 
gotten along and who only argued over who would host the yearly fourth of 
July picnic -- but Bill wanted that same thing from his family, too.

Especially now that Matthew had a cousin. Bill glanced over at Dana, quickly 
so that she wouldn't catch him looking. He didn't know what to think of his 
sister's son, the baby Bill had initially believed had been named for their 
father, only to find out he had been named after Mulder's father.

That was something else Bill didn't understand -- how Dana, who had always 
been their father's favorite, who had always seemed to be so close to Captain 
Scully -- could have abandoned him and their family to latch onto Mulder. 
Their fathers had the same name, damnit, why couldn't the baby be named after 
both of them? But no.

What most puzzled Bill was why. Why had Dana chosen this life and this man? 
Why hadn't she asked for reassignment years ago or even left the FBI? She 
could have had a successful medical practice, or even worked as a medical 
examiner if she wanted to stick with pathology, though Bill couldn't 
understand why she would choose this specialty out of all of medicine. Her 
job was dangerous, and, though she and Mulder were not assigned to the 
X-Files anymore, they were obviously still involved in those cases.

Why? Bill thought again. Why the FBI, why the X-Files, why the devotion to a 
partner who brought her nothing but trouble? And, perhaps more importantly, 
why Fox Mulder, why a child out of wedlock, why this self-imposed emotional 
exile from her family, from the people who loved her most?

Why? was the only thought in Bill's mind as the green pick-up in front of 
them shrieked to a stop and Dana's foot pounded the break. Why? Bill wondered 
as the car gave into centripetal force and spun, head following tail, off the 
road. Why? Bill thought as the car came to an abrupt stop and his head jerked 
to his right, came into contact with the side window, then rebounded onto his 
left shoulder.

The car was silent for a minute as Bill blinked through a flash of blackness 
punctuated with brilliant white spots. Then the world fished back into focus, 
and a jolt of nausea flashed through his body and dropped out through his 
feet.

"Everyone okay?"

Bill found it surprisingly easy to turn his head towards the sound of his 
sister's voice. "Fine," he said, his own voice sounding far away.

"Charles?" Dana asked.

"Yeah, I'm okay," came a voice from the backseat, even farther away. Bill 
tried to turn in his seat, saw the world waver for a second, and then could 
see his brother unbuckling his seatbelt.

"Guess these things did their job," Charles said with a smile. Yeah, he's 
okay, Bill thought. He turned to his sister, her face pale and scared and 
childlike.

"Bill, your head," she gasped.

"My head?" His hand found his chin, then his cheek, then his forehead. When 
he reached his hairline, he felt something thick and sticky, and he brought 
his hand down.

It was blood, and his hand aimed back at his head before it was intercepted 
by Dana. She set his hand on his lap, snapped off one of her leather gloves, 
and touched her fingertips to his forehead. Gently she surveyed his head, and 
Bill closed his eyes against the pain that flashed through his consciousness 
and out.

"Does that hurt?" Dana asked as her fingers skimmed down over his right 
eyebrow.

Bill shook his head, pleasantly surprised when the world stayed put. "I'm 
fine," he insisted.

"Track my finger with just your eyes," she said, and he obeyed. She scooted 
close to him, peering intently into his pupils.

Then she dug into her purse and produced a penlight. Dana snapped the 
flashlight on and waved it back and forth in front of her brother's eyes. 
Then she extinguished it, seemingly satisfied.

"Dana, I'm fine," he insisted.

She sighed. "You've got a pretty serious cut on your hairline. I need to 
clean it up and take a better look. Let me get my bag out of the trunk."

"Dana, I'm fine. You don't--"

But she had already turned off the ignition and stepped out of the car. Bill 
turned in his seat and watched her climb through the snow and open the trunk. 
She returned with a small nylon bag, already unzipped. She hunted through its 
contents, pushing a small glass vial and a handful of plastic-wrapped 
syringes out onto her lap.

"Here," she said, removing a packet of wet wipes. She ripped it open, setting 
free the mediciney aroma of ethanol, and removed one, then turned back to 
Bill. "Can you turn in your seat? I can't reach."

He turned and she dabbed gently at his forehead with the wipe. When she 
brought her hand down Bill could see that the small square cloth was soaked 
through with bright red. Panic rose in his throat, mingled with the bitter 
tang of adrenaline.

"Charlie, I need your help," Dana said calmly.

"Yeah, what do you want me to do?" he asked, kneeling so that he hung over 
into the front seat, his head between them.

"Reach into my bag. There should be a pack of gauze."

"Yeah," Charles said, grabbing the bag off Dana's lap. "Here." He offered her 
the thick paper-wrapped package.

"Open it."

He opened the packet and Dana pulled out a chunk of white gauze. She held it 
tight against Bill's forehead. "I can do that," he told her, covering her 
hand with his, brushing his finger against the cold metal of her ring.

She let go of the gauze. "Press hard," she said, and he did, then made the 
mistake of looking down at the bloody alcohol wipe. His eyes widened, and he 
pressed harder against his forehead.

"You're fine, Bill," she told him. "Head wounds bleed a lot. It looks worse 
than it is." He nodded against the pressure of his fingertips.

"Is he gonna need stitches?" Charles asked, craning his neck to catch a 
glimpse of his brother's forehead and the tinges of red on the edges of the 
gauze.

"It's borderline," Dana said. "Some doctors would give him a bandage and send 
him home, and another might given him a stitch or two."

"And what camp would you be in?" Charles asked.

"Considering I don't have a sterile needle or any Lidocaine, I'd have to 
favor the Band-Aid and aspirin stance, myself."

"So you don't think he needs to go to the hospital?"

"You can quit talking about me like I'm not here," Bill snapped at them.

"Sorry," Dana said, switching his bloodied square of gauze with a fresh 
piece. "No, I don't think you need to go to the hospital... But we do need to 
get out of here."

Bill looked past his sister, out the driver's side window, and saw that the 
car was resting in the small dip just off the shoulder of the road. They were 
off the road, not in danger of being hit by any passing vehicles, but they 
weren't so far from the street that a hefty push wouldn't put them back on 
track.

"I'll call a tow truck," Dana said, reaching into her pocket for her cell 
phone.

"That'll take forever," Charles said, sighing. "There are probably motorists 
stranded up and down I-95 in this weather."

"We hardly have a choice," Dana said. "I'll have to call Mom's house to get 
the number of a tow truck, though."

"Wait, Dana," Bill said as his sister's cell phone blinked to life. "The 
car's not far off the road. We could just push it back on and drive back to 
Mom's, no waiting."

"We?" Dana asked.

"Me and Charles."

She shook her head. "Oh, no, Bill. You've sustained a head injury. It may not 
be serious, but you don't need to aggravate anything by trying to push a car 
up a hill."

"It's not a hill," Charles put in.

Dana whirled around to face their brother. "Don't tell me you agree with him?"

Charles shrugged. "You said yourself that he's fine."

Dana shook her head. "Yes, he's fine to go home so I can clean up that cut 
for him, not fine to enter a Tough Man competition!"

"Come on," Bill said. "I'm fine." He removed the gauze from his forehead and 
was nonplussed to see that it was soaked with blood.

Dana stared pointedly at the gauze. "If you push the car, it'll get your 
heart pumping and your blood flowing faster, and you'll bleed more," she said.

"I'll be fine," he said.

Dana looked between her brothers, then settled her gaze on Charles. "Fine," 
she said coolly, snatching another square of gauze from her bag and holding 
it to Bill's head. "Charlie, there should be a role of cloth medical tape in 
there. Rip off two pieces."

She took the tape and affixed the gauze to his head, then Bill ran his hand 
over his makeshift bandage. "See, good as new," he said, smiling.

Dana nodded. "Fine, fine," she said. "Let's push the car."

"'Let's'?" Bill repeated. "I meant me and Charlie."

"What?"

"Charlie and I'll push the car. Not you," Bill explained.

"And why the hell not?"

"Come on, Dana," he said. Did she really want him to point out the obvious, 
the difference in their heights and builds and probable strengths, not to 
mention the fact that she was a woman.

"Because I'm a woman," she asked, not at all a question.

"Charles and I are stronger than you," he said. "And bigger. And besides, 
someone needs to steer the car back onto the street. And you're lighter, 
anyway; you won't add as much weight to the car."

"Oh, so now you're worried about not being able to push the car if it's too 
heavy?"

"Come on, Dane," Charles said, setting a hand on their sister's tensed 
shoulders. "It's not a big deal. Bill and I are bigger and it'll be easier if 
you stay in the car and steer."

"But--"

"Dana," Charlie said softly. "We know you're strong and capable, and can take 
care of yourself. Hell, you could probably push the car back onto the road 
all by yourself." She narrowed her eyes at his tone, which, Bill thought, was 
almost patronizing. Almost, but not quite. "So why don't you let Bill and me 
try to measure up to your hard-assed, over-achieving self by pushing the car 
back on the road?"

Dana smiled, shaking her head. "Fine, push the car," she said. "Knock 
yourselves out." She turned to look at Bill, then faced forward and turned 
the key in the ignition. The car roared to life.

"It seems to be running okay," Charles said as he climbed out of the back 
seat. Bill turned slowly, carefully, and also got out of the car, one hand 
steadying himself against the roof of the car as he and Charles went around 
to the back of the vehicle.

The car was stuck diagonally off the road, and Bill saw that he had been 
right, even though he was just guessing when he told Dana that they would 
need someone in the car to steer to make sure they made it back on the street.

"How's it look?" Dana asked, craning her neck to peer over the hood of the 
car at them.

"It's fine," Bill called out. Indeed, the car didn't seem to have sustained 
any damage. It was resting almost softly in the snow bank, its half-buried 
front headlights causing the snow to glow. They would need to dig enough snow 
from behind the car, Bill saw, so they would have room to push.

Working quickly, their breaths huffing small clouds of condensation into the 
air, Bill and Charles cleared the snow out from behind the car, making a 
small passageway where they could stand. Uncovered, the lights blared in 
Bill's eyes, and he motioned blindly at his sister, urging her to turn them 
off.

"Ready, Dane?" Charles called.

"Yeah," she said.

"Just make sure it's in reverse," Charles kidded.

Dana turned, stuck her head out of the car window long enough to give them a 
sarcastic half-smile. "It's in reverse," she said. "Ready?"

"Yeah," Bill called. He bent down, placed his hands on the car's front 
bumper, digging his heels into the snow bank behind them. Charles did the 
same, then, after a quick nod, they shoved at the car. Dana eased on the gas 
and, together, they managed to get the car most of the way onto the shoulder.

"You okay?" Dana called, sticking her head out the open window.

"I'm fine," Bill said, pausing for a minute to allow the image of the car to 
stop swimming.

"You sure?" Charles asked under his breath, staring, concerned, into Bill's 
eyes.

"I'm fine," he said, but brought his hand up to his forehead. Thankfully, he 
could feel no blood, and the bandage was still intact.

Charles nodded. "One more push?"

"Yeah," Bill said. "We're gonna give it one more, Dana," he called out. "You 
should be able to maneuver the car completely onto the shoulder."

They pushed, she maneuvered, and finally the car was resting half on the 
shoulder, half on the street. Charles headed for the back seat, but Bill 
paused for a minute, his hand again straying up to his forehead. He closed 
his eyes, took a quick breath of cold air, then followed his brother.

"You sure you're okay?" Dana asked again as he buckled himself back into the 
front seat.

"I'm fine," he snapped at her, then immediately regretted it.

She turned away from him, setting her gloved hands back on the steering wheel 
and checking her side view mirror for much longer than necessary.

"Sorry," he said. "I didn't mean to snap at you, but I'm fine. Don't worry."

She nodded but said nothing, instead pulled the car onto the street.

I am sorry, Dana, he thought. And not just for this. I'm sorry for Christmas 
night, he thought, and for making you feel like you had to hide yourself from 
me. I'm sorry, Bill thought.

He hadn't meant to make a scene, and especially hadn't meant to wake up their 
mother and drag her into all this. He had felt bad as soon as the family 
abandoned him downstairs, Dana fleeing for her bedroom and Mulder going after 
her. Charles had gone outside, slamming the door behind him, and their mother 
went back to bed, but not before shooting Bill a disappointed look.

Bill supposed he could have blamed it on the beer, on the forced 
togetherness, on all of them being expected to be a family again. In fact, he 
had blamed it on those things, the previous night as he puttered around 
downstairs for a while, not eager to go upstairs and face Tara. He had hoped 
she would be asleep already when he finally went upstairs, but she was 
sitting up in bed, waiting for him, when he slipped into the spare bedroom.

She said nothing, simply watched him as he closed the door behind himself and 
began to undress. Her eyes didn't leave him as he buttoned his pajama top and 
stooped to untie his shoelaces, and he could feel the tension building as he 
settled into bed beside her.

"Bill," she sighed, but said nothing else. She didn't need to. All he had to 
do was listen to the tone of her voice, and see the look on her face, never 
mind her body language, which was telling him that if he moved any closer to 
her, he would be switching beds with Matthew.

So he said nothing as he punched his pillow twice, then laid on his back, 
crossing his arms over his chest. He closed his eyes, ignoring the fact that 
Tara had not moved, had not slid down next to him, had not flicked off the 
lamp on her side of the bed.

He tossed and turned for several minutes, then surrendered and sat up again. 
Tara was still sitting there, bathed in half light, watching him.

"Fine," he said, sick of the anticipation. "Go ahead. Tell me I was an 
asshole. Go ahead."

But she only shook her head. "I don't need to tell you that," she whispered, 
ever mindful of Matthew sleeping just a few feet away. "You already know it."

He looked down at his lap and began tugging at a loose thread on the 
bedspread.

"I don't know what you were hoping to accomplish downstairs," she said. "But 
I know what you did accomplish." She reached out for his hand, and stilled 
its increasingly frantic movements. He looked up at her.

"You're going to drive Dana right out of your life," she said. "I know your 
heart's in the right place, Bill, but you're headed in the wrong direction. 
Charles... Charles might be a lost cause," she admitted. 

"But we're going to be seeing a lot more of Dana when we move back East. Or, 
at least, we might," she said. "I wouldn't be surprised if she and Mulder and 
the baby are already gone when we wake up in the morning, or if they don't 
come up with one excuse after another not to spend time with the family 
again."

Bill shrugged helplessly. Nothing he could do about that now. He wasn't about 
to knock on their door, wake them up, and apologize.

"Bill, I know you don't approve. Fine. But no one asked for your approval. 
Dana's a grown woman and she can make decisions for herself. Clearly she 
loves him. If you force her hand, if you're expecting her to make some kind 
of choice -- you over Mulder and Liam -- you're going to lose her forever," 
she told him.

Tara turned away from him slipped down under the sheets. Bill lay down as 
well, then finally Tara reached up and flicked off the light.

But it was at least another hour before Bill could sleep, long after his 
wife's soft susurration of breath faded into the measured rhythm of sleep. 
Tara was right; he knew that. He didn't expect Dana to make a choice between 
him and Mulder; everything he had seen these past four days indicated that he 
could not win that fight. But he did expect her to listen to reason and fact, 
to think logically for once instead of plunging into the deep end.

Would he really lose her if he kept pushing? Or would he help her see the 
truth?

Bill had already lost one sister, and he didn't want to cut the tenuous 
string that connected him to the other. But there were many ways he could 
lose Dana, and Bill knew that forcing her to chose between him and Fox Mulder 
was not the only one.

* * * * *

CHARLES


"Anyone home?" Dana called as they paused in the foyer to kick off their 
boots and hang up their coats. 

"We're in here," Tara called and they followed her voice to the kitchen to 
find her and Mulder at the stove, mismatched aprons tied around their waists. 
Tara was chopping a stalk of celery, and Mulder stirred a large pot, one arm 
cradling a sleeping Liam against his chest.

"What smells so good?" Charles asked.

Tara and Mulder turned to face them, their gazes coming to rest on the piece 
of gauze taped to Bill's forehead. "What happened?" Mulder asked.

Tara dropped the knife and was at her husband's side in an instant, her hand 
hovering in the air just above his forehead. "What happened to you?"

"The car slipped off the road," he explained.

"You were in an accident?" Mulder asked, abandoning the stove and stepping 
over to Dana. His free hand landed on her shoulder, then traveled up and down 
her side to rest at her waist. "Are you okay?"

"We're fine," she assured him as his hand combed through her hair on the way 
to her uninjured forehead.

Charles glanced back and forth between Dana and Mulder, and Tara and Bill, 
feeling suddenly empty. Alone. He pulled back from the foursome, resting 
against the doorjamb, shoving his fists into the pockets of his jeans.

"An accident?" Tara asked frantically. "What kind of accident? What happened?"

"The truck in front of us slammed on its breaks," Dana explained. "And I 
tried to stop, but we slid off the road into a snow embankment."

"And your head?" Tara asked, standing on her toes to peer at Bill's forehead.

"I'm not sure," he said. "I must've cut it on something when we stopped."

"Shouldn't you be at the hospital?" she asked.

"Dana says I'm fine," he assured her.

"That was before you pushed the car out of the ditch," she said with a smile. 
"Now I'm beginning to wonder if you're suffering from brain damage."

"He did *what?*" Tara asked, turning to her sister-in-law.

"He and Charles pushed the car back onto the road," Dana explained.

"You could've called a tow truck," Tara pointed out, shooting a disapproving 
gaze at Charles before training it on her husband. Hey, don't blame me, 
Charlie thought. I wasn't driving and it wasn't my idea to push the car back 
on the road.

"That would've taken forever," he explained. "Anyway, Bill's fine; we're all 
fine. No harm done."

Tara sighed, but circled her arms around her husband's middle. "I'm glad 
you're okay," she told him.

Charles turned away to face his sister. Mulder had pulled her into a 
one-armed hug, the baby stirring as his body wedged between his parents'. 
"And you're okay?" Mulder asked again, softly.

"Fine," Dana insisted, "though I'm sure we'll all be a little sore tomorrow 
morning."

Charles looked back and forth between his brother and sister, both caught in 
the embrace of someone who loved them. He snaked his arms up to his elbows, 
holding them, holding himself. He diverted his gaze, feeling like an 
intruder, knowing he didn't belong.

"Daddy!" Matthew called, and Charles turned to see his nephew and his mother 
standing at the doorway. Bill pulled away from Tara and scooped Matthew into 
his arms.

"Hey, kiddo."

"Bill, what is that on your forehead?" their mother asked, approaching her 
son. "What happened?"

She looked over to Dana, then at Charles. She narrowed her eyes and rose her 
eyebrows, and Charles was reminded of a time when he was nine or ten years 
old, when he had broken a lamp while trying to teach himself to juggle.

"It was a car accident," Charles said bitingly, trying to keep the anger from 
his voice. Did their mother think he had done this to Bill? Charles almost 
laughed. He looked his brother up and down, his eyes resting on his broad 
chest and muscled biceps. Like Bill would be the one who got hurt if the two 
of them ever physically fought. Yeah, right, Charlie thought.

"A car accident?" Maggie echoed.

"We're fine, Mom," Dana assured her. "Bill's got a little cut on his 
forehead, but it'll be fine after I clean it up. It looks worse than it is."

Maggie nodded, and Charles noted that Dana didn't say anything to their 
mother about Bill and Charles pushing the car back on the road. Good, he 
thought. No need to worry her any more than necessary. Hell, he would've 
preferred not to tell her about the accident at all, but he supposed with 
Bill's injury, it was inevitable.

"What's for lunch?" Charles asked, steering the conversation, and his nose, 
toward the pot simmering on the stove.

Maggie paused, glancing between the three of them, then said, "Chicken rice 
soup. I had some leftovers, chicken from Monday's dinner, plus some 
vegetables from yesterday. I thought this would be an easy lunch."

"Daddy," Matthew said, tugging Bill's hand towards the back door. "Mommy said 
when you got back you'd make a snowman with me."

"I will," he promised. "After lunch, okay?"

"But Mommy said when you got back!"

"I know," Bill said. "But Grandma's making this delicious soup for us for 
lunch. We can play outside after we eat."

"'Kay," Matthew said finally, his voice defeated.

"'Grandma made'?" Tara kidded, smiling at her husband. "She wasn't the only 
one." She nodded down at the dirty cutting board in front of her, then over 
to Mulder, who still hovered protectively near Dana.

"Grandma and Tara, then," Dana put in, stepping around and behind Mulder. 
"Because I'm sure this apron's just for show," she kidded, tugging on the tie 
around Mulder's waist.

"Hey, there," he said, stepping out of Dana's reach.

"Fox has been a big help," Maggie said.

"He sure has," Tara added. "Keeping Matthew and Liam busy while we worked."

"Hey," Mulder said again, this time directing his mock outrage at Tara. 
Charles watched as Bill squinted at them, then the younger man shook his 
head. What, was Bill mad now that Tara and Mulder were getting along, were 
teasing like brother and sister? Or, Charles amended with a glance between 
Bill and Dana, like brother and sister *should.*

"Fox has been helping with lunch, too," Maggie affirmed as Dana leaned around 
Mulder to check on the baby. She held out her arms, and he carefully 
transferred his sleeping son into them.

"I left the overnight bag in the living room," she said, settling Liam 
against her chest. "Make sure you bring Liam's bag up, too. There are extra 
diapers and some toys in there."

He nodded as he slipped off his apron and tossed it over the back of a chair. 
"I'm gonna shower and change, then," he said, heading into the living room. 
He paused in the doorway, turning back to face them. "Oh, and, Scully, he's 
been fussy all morning. Every time I tried to set him down, he woke up."

She nodded as Mulder disappeared into the living room. Big surprise that the 
baby was fussy, Charlie thought. Bill might act all tough and detached, but 
Charles suspected that his brother had been as affected by the previous 
night's fight as the rest of them.

"Bill, why don't you let me take another look at that cut?" Dana asked. "I 
think I've got some antibacterial ointment upstairs."

As she left the kitchen, Bill called after her, "It's fine, Dana," but their 
sister said nothing.

Charlie wandered off into the bathroom, where he washed his face. He splashed 
handfuls of water against his skin, and it promptly pinkened in response to 
the cold. But it felt good, the coolness of the water against his overheated 
complexion. He still felt a little shaken up by their slide off the road, 
despite the fact that he wasn't hurt.

Truthfully, he had felt out of sorts ever since their argument the previous 
night... perhaps even since his plane touched down at Dulles. He almost felt 
like a child again, Bill playing the bully, Dana trying to keep things 
peaceful but unintentionally -- or maybe intentionally -- provoking Bill.

And the argument last night. Charles knew that had partially been his fault; 
he had egged Bill on, knowing right where to press, exactly what to say to 
get him worked up.

What Charles couldn't figure out was why. Why fight? It hadn't done any of 
them any good, certainly not Charles. As always, Bill, too, had known exactly 
what to say to hit him where it hurt. He had known that bringing up Missy and 
the Captain would cripple Charles, emotionally and verbally.

It had always been that way. Charles's two sore spots. A sister, loved and 
lost; and a father, lost, but, Charles wondered, loved? He had always been 
confused about the Captain's feelings for him, and his own feelings for his 
father.

Yes, Charles was sure the man loved him, the distant, requisite love that 
fathers felt toward their sons, he guessed. But the Captain had never loved 
Charles like he did Bill, like he did Dana. Certainly the Captain had not 
and, Charles was sure, would not love or approve of the man his youngest son 
had become. Probably, if he were alive today, he would be telling Charlie to 
get a real job, to go back to school, to settle down. To grow up.

Charles dried his face off with a hand towel and stepped out of the bathroom 
and into the hall. Bill and Dana stood there, Dana holding Liam against her 
with one hand and a tube of ointment with another, and Bill standing with his 
arms crossed, a tolerant, yet not completely unpleasant expression on his 
face.

They stepped into the bathroom after he stepped out, Bill sitting on the 
toilet seat and Dana flipping on both the overhead lamp and the lights 
surrounding the mirror. Charles headed back into the kitchen, but was stopped 
by his sister's voice.

"Charlie?"

"Yeah?"

"Could you give me a hand?" she asked.

"Dana, I said I'm fine," Bill insisted.

"Here," she said, setting the ointment on the counter and gripping the baby 
with both hands. "Hold him while I take a look at Bill's forehead?"

Charles felt a shot of panic at his sister's request, just as he had when 
she'd left the baby with him that morning while she changed for the cemetery. 
Gosh, he thought, it was only that morning. It felt like days, lifetimes, 
ago. "Uh," he said, stalling. "Bill could--"

Charlie glanced over at his brother, and was surprised by the look of 
discomfort on his face. Bill has his own son; surely he wasn't worried about 
holding a baby? What was his problem? Then Charlie realized that he hadn't 
actually seen Bill hold his nephew, hadn't even seen him interact with Liam. 
Strange, Charles thought. Why...?

"Just stand there and hold him," she said impatiently, already transferring 
Liam into her brother's arms. "I don't want to set him down and wake him up. 
He didn't sleep very well last night..."

Her voice trailed off, and Charles busied himself with adjusting the baby in 
his arms. He doubted any of them had slept well the previous night. Charlie 
himself had remained on the porch long after Mulder had gone inside, 
finishing his pack of Morleys and wishing he'd thought to buy another. So 
he'd played with his lighter, setting a chunk of rock salt on fire and 
watching it smolder and burn.

"Okay," Dana continued. "Let's see." She carefully removed the tape and gauze 
from Bill's forehead, and their brother winced as the adhesive stuck to his 
skin. Dana wet a washcloth and cleaned the cut, and Charles could see that 
his sister was right: it did look worse than it was. For all that blood, he'd 
expected a gash halfway across Bill's forehead. But the cut was small, and 
most of the bleeding had stopped.

After cleaning and drying it, Dana slathered a layer of antibacterial 
ointment on the cut, then searched through her mother's medicine cabinet. She 
found a carton of Band-Aids but, when she dumped the box out onto the 
bathroom counter, all that fell out was a small tube of ointment.

"Sit tight," Dana said as she stepped out of the bathroom. "Mom must keep the 
band-aids in the upstairs bathroom."

Charles listened to her feet tick gently against the stairs, then heard the 
squeak of the bathroom door opening and the resultant shout of the shower 
spray. The cabinet door smacked shut, and Charles heard a husky chuckle and 
lilting giggle before the bathroom door creaked shut again. 

Then Liam squirmed slightly against his chest, and Charles looked down at the 
baby. His head was cradled against Charles's shoulder, and his arms hung limp 
at his sides. He was so trusting, Charlie thought as his nephew sighed gently 
in his sleep. So fragile.

So scary, Charlie thought. Scary that this baby was relying on him to do 
everything right, to hold him tight, not to drop him, not to touch that 
mysterious place on his head that, Charlie had heard, would give him brain 
damage.

Was there such a place? he wondered. And how did you know if you touched it? 
Maybe you didn't know until it happened, until your child grew up and became 
strange and misunderstood and unlike the rest of your children. Charles 
wondered how many parents had inadvertently touched that spot on their 
babies' heads, how many siblings, trying to be gentle, had bumped it 
accidentally-on-purpose.

"Okay," Dana said as she stepped back into the bathroom, her face slightly 
flushed. She smiled over at Charles as she ripped open the band-aid and fixed 
the plastic strip over Bill's cut. Charles smiled back when he finally made 
out what was printed on the band-aid: Big Bird.

Oh, boy, Charles thought. He didn't want to be around when Bill saw that... 
though, he supposed, she could have chosen Oscar the Grouch. 

"I can take him," Dana said, and Charles carefully shifted the baby into 
them. "Thanks, Charlie." She nabbed the ointment off the counter, then headed 
upstairs. Charlie turned to follow, to maybe help his mom and Tara with 
lunch, when Bill grabbed his wrist.

"Hey," he said, and Charlie turned back to face his brother.

"What?"

Bill's gaze darted away, focused on the floor tiles. "You, uh," he stumbled 
before regaining his composure. "Uh, thanks." On his brother's surprised 
expression, he continued, "with the car. Pushing it. You know. And not 
telling Mom."

Charlie nodded, feeling like a kid again. Why are you thanking me? he 
wondered. We pushed and Dana steered, and we got the car back on the street. 
What was the big deal? Unless, Charles thought, Bill was trying to say 
something else completely.

But all Charlie said was, "Sure," before he turned and headed into the 
kitchen.

* * * * *

DANA


"Dana? You need some help in there?"

Scully turned to see her mother standing in the doorway.

"No, I'm almost done," she said, rinsing the last soapy soup bowl with water, 
then placing it in the dish rack. She turned off the faucet, then held her 
wet hands over the sink. "Though I could use a towel," she said.

Her mother snagged one from the handle of the refrigerator and held it out to 
her daughter. Then she stopped, staring, and the towel dropped slightly.

"Mom?" Scully asked, holding out one dripping hand.

Her mother recovered and handed Scully the towel, then looked over at her 
daughter with a big smile.

"What is it, Mom?" Scully asked.

Grinning, Maggie waited while Scully dried her hands, then she reached out 
and gently touched her daughter's ring, straightening the ruby so that it lay 
in the middle of the milky white skin of her finger. "And what is this?" she 
asked.

Scully looked away, cursing her fair complexion as she felt a blush creep 
over her cheeks. "It's not what you think," she said.

"And what is it I think?" her mother said with a smile.

"It's not an engagement ring."

Maggie quirked an eyebrow at her daughter. "It's not?"

Scully shook her head, though she knew how it looked with the ring on her 
left hand ring finger. "It's hard to explain," she said.

"Try me," her mother said gently.

"I need to tell you something first, Mom." Maggie nodded.

"Mom..." This is stupid, Scully thought. She already knows what you're going 
to say, she told herself. Still, she felt her heart pound against her rib 
cage, and her throat ran dry. She felt as though she were in the confessional 
at church. Bless me, Mother, for I have sinned...

"Mom," she said. "Mulder is Liam's father."

Her mother nodded, waited patiently. That's all, Scully wanted to say. Isn't 
that enough? I have sinned, she thought, sex outside of marriage, conceiving 
a child out of wedlock. She waited for her benediction and her penance. She 
hoped for forgiveness.

But Maggie only smiled. "Of course he is."

Scully sighed. "I know you knew, but I wanted to tell you."

Again her mother nodded, apparently understanding. "Now you've told me," she 
said, her eyes twinkling mischievously. "So what about this?" Maggie grasped 
Scully's hand from where it hung at her side, taking her daughter's hand in 
her own.

"It's..." She needed to confess it all, to lay with her head in her mother's 
lap and let out everything she carried, all of the worries and all of the 
fears. All of the love. She wanted to tell her that even though it wasn't the 
promise of a wedding, it was so much more. It was the promise of a life. 
"It's hard to explain," she said.

"Try me."

Scully dropped the towel on the kitchen table, then took a seat beside her 
mother. "I can't say that I haven't thought about marrying Mulder," she 
admitted. "I have thought about it. And I know he's thought about it, too."

Scully looked at her mother, stared intensely into her eyes as if willing the 
older woman to understand, to accept. Suddenly, inexplicably, it meant 
everything to her that her mother accept this. Scully didn't understand why 
and was almost embarrassed about this sudden need for approval. But, 
nevertheless, there it was. She knew her mother's patience had been pushed to 
its limit. Nevertheless, just one more thing, Scully pleaded. Please just 
accept this one more thing.

"But it's not going to work that way with us," she said finally. "We're the 
same people who kept a professional partnership -- and a friendship -- for 
almost seven years before we let it to go further." Scully paused to twist 
the ring on her finger.

"I know that parenthood changes people -- and it's changed us, too -- but it 
didn't turn us into people we're not. What we have now is good, and it's 
working. Why change it?"

Scully paused, anticipating her mother's objections. Anticipating a defense 
of the sacred covenant of marriage, of the security of the love of one man 
and one woman, till death do us part.

And Scully agreed: that kind of security was a wonderful thing. She -- and, 
she knew, Mulder -- just didn't think that marriage was a prerequisite for 
forever.

The image of Teena Mulder popped into Scully's mind, Teena Mulder standing 
alone at her ex-husband's funeral, Teena Mulder referred to as "the mother of 
William's children." As if that were all they had ever been to each other. 
Marriage did not mean forever, Scully thought vehemently. Mulder had lived a 
life that proved the very opposite.

"When I tried to imagine us getting married..." Scully shook her head. "It 
just felt wrong. I couldn't think of one reason to do it. We love each other, 
and we love Liam. Getting married isn't going to make that any more real."

Scully waited, bracing herself for her mother's disappointment. Maggie had 
been robbed of a wedding -- of the dream for a future of any kind -- for one 
daughter, and Scully knew that her mother had thoughts of rose bouquets and 
champagne toasts for the only daughter she had left. But there wasn't going 
to be a wedding, and Scully prayed for her mother to accept that. Please, 
God, she thought.

"So what does this mean?" was all Maggie Scully asked, again touching a 
finger to the gold band.

Scully replayed her conversation with Mulder. She remembered every word, 
every gesture, every emotion; but what she didn't know was how to do was 
explain it all to her mother.

"It is a commitment." Her voice broke, sounding like a little girl's. "It's 
Mul-- It's our commitment." She had almost said that it was Mulder's idea of 
a commitment, but it wasn't just Mulder. The truth was that she was grateful 
to him for broaching the subject, and it wasn't just Mulder who wanted the 
commitment without the trappings of a wedding.

Scully had never been one of those girls who dreamed of walking down the 
aisle with every eye trained on her, admiring her. Frankly, it made her more 
than a little sick to her stomach. She was unlike Melissa in that way, in so 
many ways. Melissa had chosen the dress she would wear, the song to which she 
would dance with her new husband, the exotic locale where they would 
honeymoon, and all before going on a first date.

You know me, Mom, Scully thought. You know that none of that is me. Please 
tell me that you understand that, she thought, afraid of the possibility that 
she might have succeeded so thoroughly in keeping her emotions to herself 
that her own mother might not understand her. Scully could feel her pulse 
twitching in her neck as she waited for her mother's response.

"I'm very proud of you, Dana," her mother said.

Scully shook her head. Now her mother was proud of her. Now. Not after 
graduating at the top of her classes in high school and college, not after 
attending medical school and the FBI Academy.

"All I did was have a baby," Scully said, but she couldn't help smiling. That 
wasn't all, Scully thought, but you know that, don't you, Mom? "Thousands of 
women do it every day."

"Not just for that," Maggie told her. "I'm proud of who you've become. I know 
your dad would be, too," she added.

Scully's eyes glassed over and she turned her face away from her mother. But 
Maggie took hold of her chin and forced their eye contact. "No, Dana, listen 
to me. Your father was so proud of you. You may not have chosen the path he 
would have picked for you, but he loved you very much."

Dana closed her eyes against the tears, and Maggie nodded, then slid her 
fingers into Scully's. She squeezed her daughter's hand and gave it a tug, 
pulling Scully into a hug. 

"Your father would have loved Liam," she said. "He always was partial to 
little redheaded babies," she laughed.

"I know he was," Scully said with a smile, laying her head on her mother's 
shoulder. Maggie held her daughter's head against her, gently stroking her 
hair.

"Don't worry so much, Dana," she said into her daughter's ear. "After 
everything you've been through..." She shook her head, holding Scully 
tighter. "All I've ever wanted is for you to be happy."

* * * * *

MAGGIE


Margaret Scully stood at the window, her breath puffing condensation onto the 
ice encrusted glass. She traced her fingernail along a lace of frost as she 
watched the activity outside her window.

The rest of the family was playing in the snow, clustered in small groups: 
Fox and Liam. Bill, Tara, and Mathew. Charles. Maggie watched Fox set her 
grandson carefully on the ground. The baby reached out a mittened hand, 
poking at the cold white fluff, a look of bemusement on his face. Fox 
laughed, bending down to scoop a handful of snow and mold it into a ball.

He tossed the snowball in the air and caught it, then caught sight of Dana, 
who was trudging down the snow-covered steps to join them. When she 
approached them, Fox pulled her toward him, sweeping her briefly off her feet 
before setting her back on the snow. Dana bit back a smile, darting her 
glance from one brother to the other, finally allowing a smile when she saw 
that no one was watching them.

Maggie grinned along with her daughter. Let go, Dana, she thought. Maggie 
rubbed her wedding and engagement rings around her finger, puzzling over the 
fact that they no longer felt out of place on her right hand, where she had 
moved them just recently. It wasn't a conscious decision. One day she had 
simply stepped out of the shower and reached for them and slipped them onto 
her right hand. It had been so easy it almost scared her.

Maggie glanced down at her rings, then out the window. She turned and watched 
the family play, separately, in the snow. Tara had joined Bill and Matthew, 
running alongside the sled; Charles was attempting an as-yet unidentifiable 
snow sculpture; and Liam was rolling in the snow like a puppy, with Fox 
keeping a watchful eye.

Maggie smiled. In many ways, Fox Mulder was a son to her, more than Tara had 
ever been her daughter. Of course she loved her daughter-in-law, but Tara 
didn't have the same raw need for her love as Fox did. Tara had grown up in a 
loving home, with parents who were devoted, both to her and to each other, 
and sisters whose most significant contribution to Tara's life had, perhaps, 
been their simple and sustained presence.

But Fox was different, reaching out for her love even as he thought himself 
undeserving of it; much the same way, she supposed, as he did with Dana.

Fox Mulder was not anyone Maggie would have ever imagined herself drawn to. 
Sure, she had befriended several of her children's friends while they were 
growing up. She had always encouraged them to bring friends home, trying to 
assuage her worry that the family's frequent moving would hurt their ability 
to make friends. But she had never seen a child who needed a mother's love 
and protection as much as Fox Mulder did. 

Maggie felt a protectiveness for each of her children, a protectiveness that 
had, at times, even turned on her husband. She remembered her husband's angry 
reaction to Dana's decision to join the FBI, their argument and Dana's 
unexpected yet steadfast insistence on attending the Academy.

Later that night, after they had retired to their bedroom, she had confronted 
Bill, defending her younger daughter with the ferocity of a mother lion, a 
ferocity unexpected by both Bill and herself. He would never hurt her like 
that again. He would try to be understanding and supportive. He would tell 
her that he was proud of her and interested in her work. And he would do all 
these things because he was her father, and because he loved her, and because 
she needed to hear them.

Bill had listened without responding. She supposed he was feeling guilty for 
arguing with Dana. But Maggie knew better than anyone that Bill Scully's 
guilt had no connection to Bill Scully's apology. Bill would be wracked with 
remorse, but he would say nothing to Dana. He would continue to beat himself 
up, but his kind of self-abuse left no mark, no indication to Dana the extent 
of his contrition.

Bill had always had difficulty apologizing. More than once, when both she and 
their relationship were young and she still believed she could change him, 
she had apologized for him, hoping he would pick up the habit. Not that it 
happened all that often, but when Bill was wrong, well, that knowledge was 
available only to her, and only because she had gotten good at reading the 
signs.

Maggie turned her attention back to her family outside. Several feet away 
from Dana and Fox, Charles lay spread-eagled on the snow. His arms fell away 
from his body and his legs kicked as he made a careful, perfect snow angel. 
He finished but did not stand. He lay there so long that a seed of worry 
began to grow in the pit of Maggie's heart, an admittedly irrational fear 
borne of mothering four children and losing one.

Then Charles moved, just the toe of his boot, but it was enough. Silly, 
Maggie thought, but Charles had worried her for so long that fear was nearly 
omnipresent in their relationship. And she had always been closer with 
Charles. He had been one of hers: him and Melissa, just as Billy and Dana had 
belonged to Bill.

Charles had always needed her more than the others had, more even than 
Melissa. He craved her attention; her constant reassurances of her love for 
him, her pride in him, her belief in him. So Charles became hers, and, Maggie 
supposed, Bill had been uncomfortable with that. Bill figured that, since 
Charles was a boy, he would be his father's son. But Dana's yours, Maggie 
felt like retorting whenever Bill returned from sea and tried to toughen the 
boy up.

But Maggie knew this division in their family hadn't started with Charles. It 
had begun when Melissa was born, just fourteen months after Billy. Bill had 
been away, leaving her with two babies to care for, but when he returned, it 
had been easy for Maggie to pass Billy on to him while she cared for baby 
Melissa. The two of them had such a natural closeness anyway.

So Billy was his and Melissa was hers; then Dana became his and Charles hers. 
Now Maggie wondered whether she had failed her youngest son. Would he have 
been better off as one of Bill's? Certainly Bill's average was better than 
hers. Billy had been an easy victory for his father, and Bill had proven to 
be a success with Dana as well; he was batting two for two.

But Maggie... Maggie was in such a deep slump that she was afraid of being 
yanked from the line-up. She had struck out with Melissa, who had always 
struggled against her parents, even before disappearing. Melissa had never 
been afraid to stand up to her father, a trait that had gotten her grounded 
more times than Maggie could remember.

And Charles. She was in the hole with Charles, no balls, two strikes, but he 
was hanging in there, valiantly fighting off pitch after pitch. He was still 
alive, still swinging; Charles still had a chance. She had to believe that.

On the other side of the yard, Bill was tugging Matthew through the snow on a 
sled, stopping frequently to remind the little boy not to reach out or lean 
over too far. Tara now stood near the porch steps, waving at Matthew and 
watching the cluster of birds hovering around the feeder that hung from a 
maple tree in the corner of the backyard.

Maggie had always considered Billy a victory. He was their golden boy, 
breezing through school, choosing a career on his first try, getting married 
and having a family. He had taken the path of ease that Dana had forsaken 
when she left medicine. But now Maggie wondered whether she had failed Billy 
as deeply as she had Charles. Maybe Billy should have been hers, she thought, 
and Charles should have been his father's.

That had been the first thought in her mind the previous night, when she 
heard Bill's voice boom through the house. Of course she was hurt by the 
things he had said to Charles and Dana, and to Fox. She was their mother, and 
she and their father had made them into the people they were. Especially she, 
who had been almost a single parent for the long months when Bill was at sea. 
Any failings on the part of her children were failings on her part, and she 
felt both the hollow self-righteousness of the aggressor and the stab of pain 
of the victim.

It had killed her that Bill could be so cruel, and to his siblings. Perhaps 
worst of all, he had masked his thoughtlessness in concern for her. He acted 
as though she were the one who was disappointed by Charles and Dana. But her 
own hurt was quickly put aside as Bill continued. It had taken every ounce of 
her willpower to keep from stomping downstairs and breaking up their argument 
as though they were the children they sounded like.

But she had waited, hadn't come downstairs until she couldn't take it 
anymore. Her stubbornness to let her children work it out was overcome by a 
fierce instinct to protect them, even if from each other.

"All you have is each other," she said softly, now.

Maggie didn't want to think about what will happen her family when she, too, 
is gone. Was she all that kept her children together? Had she failed to teach 
them the importance of family? She had thought all their moving around would 
make them closer to each other, since she knew it had made long-term 
friendships difficult. Clearly, though, she had been wrong.

Maggie was young for her age and healthy, and she had had her babies early, 
so she had a realistic hope that she would be around long enough to see her 
grandchildren grow into adolescents, perhaps even into adults, despite the 
fact that Bill and Dana had waited to start their own families.

But Maggie was also a realist. She knew that someday the three of them, 
surrounded by their own families, would stand at her grave. It will be hard 
enough, she remembered, thinking back to her own parents' deaths. Don't you 
see that you three could be a comfort to each other?

Outside, Matthew tumbled off his sled and scampered over to his aunt. He 
tugged on her hand, pulling her through the snow to his mother. Tara was bent 
over, rolling an oversized snowball that soon grew to snowman proportions. 
Dana joined her, rolling a smaller ball, and the two of them, with Matthew's 
help, formed a half-snowman. Fox scooped Liam off the snow, then joined 
Matthew, Tara, and Dana.

Then Charles crawled over to them on his hands and knees. But he didn't work 
with them on the snowman; instead, he sat next to Liam, rolling a smaller 
snowman for the baby. This snowman was soon joined by another, and another, 
until a small village of snowmen surrounded the little boy.

Maggie turned her attention to Bill, who still stood separate from the rest 
of the family, the sled hanging over his shoulder by its rope, the yellow and 
red of his Sesame Street band-aid visible even from where Maggie sat. Bill 
watched the rest of the family, his face expressionless, before turning and 
heading into the garage.

Oh, Bill, Maggie thought. Just walk over there and help them. It shouldn't be 
this hard. But, like his father, Bill was stubborn. Even if he was sorry -- 
and, sadly, Maggie had no indication of this -- apologizing had never been 
his strong suit. He was like his father in that way. Maggie hadn't heard him 
apologize to Dana or Charles, but she hoped he had said something to them 
when they went to the cemetery. She knew better than to expect Bill to 
apologize to Fox.

Watching Billy disappear into the garage, Maggie wondered whether she and 
Bill had failed all four of their children. Perhaps, she thought, instead of 
divvying them up into His and Hers, they should have shared.

This was the thought running through Maggie's mind as Bill emerged from the 
garage without the sled. He walked slowly through the crisp white snow until 
he approached the rest of the family. Wordlessly he reached into his pocket 
and stuck two two-liter soda bottle caps into the snowman head. Next he 
jabbed her orange-handled gardening trowel beneath the eyes, and Maggie 
smiled at the tool's resemblance to a carrot nose.

Then Bill reached up and pulled his scarf from around his neck. He handed the 
tartan wool to his son. Matthew jumped up and down in excitement, and then 
Bill lifted him up, allowing the little boy to tie the scarf loosely around 
the neck of the snowman.

* * * * *

Fifteen minutes later, Charles was kicking his snow-covered boots against the 
railing of the deck, and Maggie was heading upstairs. From her bedroom she 
could hear him open the back door and unzip his coat. She heard the soft 
floosh of the jacket landing on a kitchen chair, then the swoosh it made when 
it slipped off the chair and onto the floor.

By then Maggie was sitting on her bed, and she could hear were the creaks of 
the floorboards as Charles walked through the house. Bathroom, she thought as 
the door closed and then the toilet flushed. Wash your hands, she thought 
before the pipes groaned as the hot water rushed to the downstairs bathroom. 
Don't go back outside, she thought as the bathroom door groaned open and 
Charles's footsteps disappeared into the hum of the heat cycling back on.

Maggie smoothed her hand over the shiny wood of her bedstand. She ran a 
fingernail along the seam and into the knick that had appeared there, 
mysteriously, one day perhaps thirty years ago, each of the children 
professing ignorance. Of course I wasn't in your room snooping, Mom. How 
could you think...?

She pulled open the shallow drawer of the bedstand, then dipped her hand 
inside, fishing for the dog-earned corner of the leatherbound Bible she had 
received on her Confirmation day. She lifted the book from the drawer and set 
it on her lap. The edges of the pages were cottony soft, and as she flipped 
through the thick text, the pages ruffled gently. Such a comforting sound.

Maggie skimmed a fingernail over the tops of the pages, snagging the faded 
blue placemarker ribbon. She flipped the book open and ran her hand down the 
page, catching her middle finger on the ring tied to the bottom of the 
ribbon. Her eyes scanned the open pages, coming to rest on a single 
underlined phrase.

She had many favorites, and this was one of them. She smiled as she read it. 
Hebrews, Chapter eleven, Verse one: "Faith is the substance of things hoped 
for, the evidence of things not seen." Yes, Maggie thought. Indeed.

With one hand, she untied the ribbon from the ring, which fell loosely over 
her knuckle, thick and gold and heavy. Maggie brought it up to her mouth, 
pressed the cold metal to her lips.

Keeping a finger on the size-ten band prevent it from sliding off, she set 
the Bible back in the drawer and closed it. As she stood, she slipped her 
hands into the pockets of her wool sweater, clutching at the folded Kleenex 
tucked there.

Slowly she padded downstairs and into the family room, where Charles was 
lying on the floor, one arm and the majority of his upper body crammed under 
the couch. His duffel bag rested nearby, stuffed full of dirty clothes and 
one brand-new navy blue v-neck sweater.

Charles slid out from under the couch, a balled-up sweat sock and a quarter 
clenched in his hand. Maggie cleared her throat and Charles craned his neck 
to look up at her, still lying on his stomach.

"Hey, Mom," he said, turning onto his back. "Your sock?"

She shook her head.

"Must be mine, then," he said with a half-smile. He set the quarter on the 
arm of the couch, then turned back onto his stomach. "There's probably 
another one under here, then..."

"Charles," she said, taking a seat. "Sit with me."

Charlie pulled his arm from under the couch and rolled over. He side-armed 
the dirty sock into his bag, then climbed onto the couch next to her. "What 
is it, Mom?" he asked. "Something wrong?"

Her hand still buried in her pocket, Maggie felt the ring slip around her 
knuckle. She shook her head. "Nothing's wrong," she assured him. "I just have 
something to give you."

"To give me?"

She nodded, then slipped her hand out of her pocket. The band slid off her 
finger and into her waiting hand. She held it tight, savoring its warmth for 
the last time, then took Charles's hand. Maggie smoothed her fingers over his 
skin, rough from stretching canvases and hammering frames. She turned his 
hand palm up and dropped the ring onto it.

"Mom?"

She nodded. "It was your father's," she said.

He looked up at her, his eyes wide. He looked almost frightened, she 
realized. "Mom, no," he said, shaking his head.

"No?"

"I couldn't," he said, pushing his hand at her.

But she pulled away from him. "I want you to have it," she insisted.

"But Bill..."

"Bill already has a wedding ring," she said, only half kidding. She knew 
Billy would have liked having his father's ring as his own wedding band. But 
she hadn't been ready to give it away yet when Billy had gotten married. It 
had been too soon after Bill's death, everything still too raw.

"Dana, then," Charles whispered. "I'm sure she and Mulder..."

She shook her head. Dana would have been the obvious choice. And Maggie might 
have considered it, if Dana's Christmas present had been an engagement ring.

But even then, Maggie thought. Even then, she doubted she would have given 
the ring to her daughter. While Dana would certainly have appreciated her 
father's wedding ring, Maggie knew that Charles needed it.

"I want *you* to have it, Charles," she said.

"Mom, I don't think..."

"It's yours," she told him. "You can wear it now or you can save it for your 
own wedding or you can put it in a drawer and never look at it again. It's 
yours."

But still his hand stuck out between them, the ring resting against a rather 
painful-looking callous on his palm. She closed his fingers over the gold 
band.

"You're his son, too, Charles," she said.

* * * * *

CHARLES


"Happy birthday, dear Matthew, happy birthday to you!" they finished as 
Matthew leaned over and blew out the four candles clustered in the center of 
the cake.

"Happy birthday to me," Matthew called out gleefully through the smoke 
drifting from the extinguished candles. Charles smiled, wondering what his 
nephew had wished for. Charlie remembered his own last birthday, his 
thirty-fourth, in July. He had celebrated with friends at his favorite bar in 
Seattle, a dingy artists' dive three blocks East of his apartment.

As he blew out the single relighting trick candle in his birthday Twinkie, 
Charles had wished for a fresh start. Traditionally, thirty-four was nothing 
special; his thirtieth had passed without incident, and his fortieth was too 
far off to consider. But he had decided that thirty-four would be his lucky 
number. Thirty-four would be a fresh start.

Charles watched as Bill plucked each of the four candles from Matthew's 
chocolate cake, setting them on a napkin. He slipped the knife into the cake 
and cut a piece for his son.

"Is there ice cream, Grandma?" Matthew asked as his father passed the 
overeager boy his plate.

"I think I've got a half-gallon of mint chocolate chip," Maggie said with a 
smile.

"Mint chocolate chip," Matthew said, his eyes lighting up.

"Your favorite," Bill said.

Mine, too, Charles thought, accepting a plate of cake from his brother. He 
waited behind Matthew as Maggie defrosted the ice cream in the microwave. She 
placed a scoop on each of their plates, and they took their cake into the 
dining room.

Charles took a seat across the table from Matthew, and he watched his nephew 
enjoy his birthday cake. His joy was unadulterated, pure and unabashed. He 
used his fingers to coax a clump of cake and a smear of frosting onto his 
spoon. The spoon entered his mouth upside down and lingered there while he 
worked the cake off it.

Charles smiled and speared a square of cake with his own fork. 

He surveyed the small pile of unwrapped gifts at the end of the table, his 
eye catching on a large rectangular box. Charles recognized the box; it was 
nearly identical to those the Captain used to bring home for him and Bill 
when he returned from sea. The cover of the box depicted a circle of young 
boys huddled around the model of a ship, their father proudly offering 
pointers.

The scene was straight out of Charles's own childhood, him and Bill working 
on the model boat with the Captain dropping in the not-infrequent suggestion 
that all three knew the boys had better consider an order.

"No, no, boys, that's not how you do it. Try sanding those plastic ridges off 
the mast before you glue it to the deck."

"No, Charles, not like that. Watch Billy now. He's got the hang of it. Good 
job, there, son."

Charles remembered one occasional in particular. The Captain had brought home 
a tiny unassembled submarine, complete with decals and paints. They had, 
however, opened the box to discover that the small glass jars of paint had 
dried out. Quickly Charles had volunteered to bike to the hobby shop for more.

The Captain had agreed, passed him a five-dollar bill, and instructed him to 
make sure he got the colors right: gray with black trim, he reminded his 
youngest son. He even wrote down the manufacturer's color numbers for him: 
Gray no. 49, Black no. 1.

And Charles had fully intended on buying numbers 49 and 1. Really, he had. 
But when he got to the tiny hobby shop, he just couldn't resist the vivid 
rainbow of colors, golden yellows and vibrant blues and brilliant reds 
shining from the display case, beckoning to him. He had stood there, knowing 
what he was supposed to do and knowing what he wanted to do, jittery and 
nervous in his indecision.

He stood in line with the jars of Gray no. 49 and Black no. 1 clutched in his 
sweaty palm, but his eyes never left the display case. He saw a perfect shade 
of magenta, bright like something out of one of his most vivid dreams. Then 
he saw the violet, and his twelve-year-old brain decided that this was the 
perfect accent color for the magenta.

So he'd stepped out of line and exchanged the pots of paint, his heart 
racing. These paints were not numbered. Instead, the small pot of magenta was 
named Summer Sunset, and the violet, Beauregard.

It had taken him half the bicycle ride home to figure that one out. 
Beauregard, as in Violet Beauregard, of "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" 
fame. Charles smiled. Melissa had read him that book once, and he remembered 
enjoying it. But what really got him was the title character's name. It was 
perfect; it was fate.

The Captain, however, did not believe in fate. He believed in order and 
discipline and keeping your word. *Especially* keeping your word.

So of course he wasn't pleased when Charles showed up with Summer Sunset and 
Beauregard instead of Gray no. 49 and Black no. 1.

"Son," he'd said. "I thought I told you to buy gray and black paint." Charles 
had nodded, his eyes downcast. He had known what was coming when he bought 
the paints; he was not surprised. "And didn't you promise me that you were 
going to get the black and gray paint?" Again Charles nodded his head. "Then 
why did you buy pink and purple?"

"They're Summer Sunset and Beauregard," Charles had blurted out before 
thinking.

"They're *what?*" his brother had asked.

"Why, Charles?" the Captain pressed.

"I thought the boat would look nicer like this," he explained. "Instead of 
gray and black. All the boat models are gray and black. They all look the 
same. They're boring and ugly."

"It's not a boat," Billy howled with laughter. "It's a submarine, stupid!"

"Now, Billy," the Captain had said. "We don't use that word." Then he turned 
to his younger son. "Charles, you know that a submarine has to be black and 
gray to blend in with the ocean so it's not detected by any enemy vessels."

Charles wished he had some gray and black right then, so he wouldn't be 
detected by any enemy vessels. But he just stood there; then, when the 
Captain was finished with his lecture, gathered up Summer Sunset and 
Beauregard in their paper sack, wheeled his bike out of the garage, and rode 
back to the hobby shop to exchange the paints.

Now, sitting in his mother's dining room, eating his cake and mint chocolate 
chip without tasting it, Charles wondered why he hadn't just bought the gray 
and black paint to begin with. It was what he'd ended up getting anyway, and 
he had known, even then, that he would be sent back to buy the right colors.

Was he trying to get his father to understand him? Or was he just trying to 
cause problems, to widen the divide between himself and the Williams, both 
Senior and Junior?

Charles knew it wasn't only him that the Captain didn't understand. He had 
never really connected with Missy, either. She had told him that so many 
times, especially when she was a teenager, after she got caught sneaking out 
late at night, dating a boy whom the Captain had pronounced too old for her, 
or wearing make-up before she was allowed.

"He doesn't understand us, Charlie," she'd said to him one night after the 
Captain had forbidden her to go out with a group of friends he considered 
part of The Bad Crowd.

The two of them were alone in the bedroom she shared with Dana, Melissa 
gazing into the mirror as she brushed her hair, and Charlie lounging on 
Dana's bed, taking advantage of her absence to prop his feet up on her 
bedspread even though he was still wearing his ratty old sneakers.

"What do you mean?" he'd asked her. 

"I mean we're different," she told him. "We're different from Billy and Dana. 
It's hard to explain."

But he knew what she meant. He'd often felt that vague feeling of discomfort 
when the Captain returned from sea, but until that day he hadn't known why it 
was there. He'd simply tried to make it go away, knowing that he should miss 
his own father; he should want his father to come home. He knew Billy and 
Dana and even Melissa did, and so did the rest of the base kids.

"But we've got each other, kid," Missy had said, jumping on the bed beside 
him and shoving him over against the wall.

Melissa had always been perceptive, even back then. She had felt the 
Captain's unease around them, his tendencies towards Billy, whom he'd joking 
called "Billy the Kid," and Dana, whom he'd called "Starbuck." 

At times, and despite his closeness to her, Charles had even felt a vague 
sense of jealousy towards his mother, whom the Captain so obviously adored. 
He was frustrated by this, by the way the Captain could love Maggie yet be so 
distant to him and Melissa, who were so much like their mother.

Charles focused on the oversized dish cabinet against the opposite wall of 
the dining room. The shelf of the cabinet was decorated with his mother's 
trinkets, a hand-painted vase bought while the family was living in Japan; a 
pair of gold candlesticks passed down from her mother, Charles's grandmother; 
and a small hourglass, its white sand all clumped together and collected at 
the top of the glass. Time stood still.

"Hey, Charles," Bill said after wiping his mouth with his napkin. "What time 
does your flight leave tomorrow?"

"Early," he said. "Seven-thirty, I think."

Bill whistled softly. "That is early. So you want to get to the airport at, 
what, six-thirty?"

Charlie nodded. "Something like that."

"We'd better get to bed early, then," Bill said matter-of-factly.

"Huh?"

"Tonight," Bill said slowly, as if he were explaining something extraordinary 
simple to Matthew. "We should all get to sleep early, if we're going to drop 
you off at the airport tomorrow on our way to Pittsburgh."

Charles nodded, dazed. He didn't know when Bill and his family were planning 
on leaving, but he'd just assumed that his mother was going to take him to 
the airport. Or else Dana, maybe.

"What time are you three planning on heading home?" Maggie asked Dana, who 
shrugged.

"After we're through here, I suppose," she said. "We don't have a long drive, 
but I, for one, am pretty exhausted."

"It's been a long day," Tara agreed, "for everyone."

"A long five days," Charles put in.

"And it'll be nice to sleep in a bed again," Dana added. "I appreciate you 
moving onto the couch for us, Charlie, but the pull-out in the study is--"

"A pain the ass?" he supplied.

"Literally," Mulder said, and they laughed.

"And I'm sure you'll both appreciate being back in your own apartment," 
Charles said, "instead of this overcrowded house." He winked at his sister, 
and she pretended not to notice. But Charlie saw the twitches of a smile on 
the corner of her lips, and he grinned at her.

"So, Tara," Dana said. "How long a drive is it to Pittsburgh?"

"About four and a half hours," Tara said. "Not too bad."

"And your sisters will both be there?" Maggie asked.

Tara nodded. "Katie drove up from New York on Christmas Eve, and Gwen, who 
lives in LA, is flying in on Friday. She and her family spent Christmas at 
her in-laws' house in LA."

Charles slipped out of the conversation, letting his hand drop into his 
pocket and caress the ring buried there. It was thick and gold and warm, and 
when Charles pictured it in his mind, it was always on his father's finger.

Charlie hadn't been lying when he told his mother that he didn't want the 
ring. He knew she should give it to Bill or Dana, who had, after all, been so 
much closer to the Captain. They would treasure it like it should be 
treasured; they might even wear it, something Charles didn't think he could 
ever bring himself to do.

Charles knew he hadn't been a good son to his father; he knew he didn't 
deserve the ring. But his mother had given it to him anyway. You're his son, 
too, Charles, she had said.

Charlie fisted his hand around the ring, squeezing, feeling the bite of it in 
his palm. He kept squeezing, feeling the pads of his fingers dig into the 
flesh of his hand. Finally his hand started to ache from the pressure, and 
Charles unclenched his fist and let the ring rest easily in his palm. He 
toyed with it, passing it from finger to finger, but he did not slip it on.

* * * * *

DANA


"Dana?"

She knew who it was before she turned around and saw Bill standing in the 
doorway of the study. His arms were crossed over his chest, and the set of 
his mouth was stern, uncompromising. Scully wanted to climb in the crib in 
the corner of the room and curl up with her sleeping son. She remembered 
Mulder's crack about Bill not hitting him if he were holding Liam.

"D'you have a minute?"

She nodded, stepped away from the desk, where she had balanced the overnight 
bag she had just about finished packing. Their other bag, plus Liam's 
considerable baby gear, was piled next to the door. 

"I don't want to argue with you, Dana," he said.

"So don't."

"Fair enough," he conceded, then waited for her to respond. Nuh uh, Scully 
thought, crossing her arms protectively in front of her. You want to talk, 
Bill, then talk. I'm not going to make this any easier for you when you've 
given me such a hard time. Scully knew it was immature, but by this point in 
the visit, she didn't much care anymore.

She looked up at him, and he was watching her, staring. She shuddered 
slightly, trying to hide the movement by rubbing her hands up and down her 
upper arms, warming herself. He was looking at her like he was seeing her for 
the first time... or like he was never going to see her again.

"Just how much do you know about Mulder?" he asked finally.

More than you ever will, Scully thought, but said nothing, just waited for 
him to continue. She knew Bill well enough to understand that this wasn't an 
innocent question; he was heading somewhere, and he had his plan all worked 
out in advance. He had probably even scripted her answers, Scully thought. 
The answers he wanted to hear.

"I have this friend in Naval Intelligence. He sometimes helps out this FBI 
agent, and my friend owed me a favor..."

Rage darkened her eyes. "You had Mulder checked out?"

"Just listen to me, Dana," Bill said, setting his hands on her shoulders. "He 
has a stack of discipline reports a mile high. Jesus, use your head. Be 
reasonable."

"Bill, half those reports have my name on them, too," she challenged, and 
Bill's eyes narrowed. She shook free from his grasp. "Plus a few others."

"What?"

"So you didn't have your friend in Naval Intelligence check up on me?"

"Why would I?" he asked, confused. "I know you. It's Mulder I--"

"Bill, you don't know very much about what we do," she said. "And that's 
fine. In fact, it's probably for the best. But please don't pretend you 
understand, because you don't." You can't, she thought. *I* can barely wrap 
my mind around it all half the time.

"Because you won't let me," he said, his voice raising. She looked pointedly 
over at the crib, where Liam -- she hoped -- was still sleeping. Sighing, 
Bill lowered his voice. "You won't let any of us. You never call; you rarely 
write, and when you do, it's to Tara. *I'm* your brother, Dana."

Scully closed her eyes, wishing Bill away. "Yes," she said, eyes still shut 
tight. "You're my brother, not my father."

Seconds passed, a minute maybe, and Bill said nothing. Finally Scully opened 
her eyes. He was still standing there, an unfocused look in his eyes. "What 
do you want from me, Bill?" she asked.

"I want you to talk to me. Tell me the truth," he said. You can't deal with 
the truth, she thought.

The truth was that Bill was trying to take their father's place. But no one 
could replace Ahab. I should know, Scully thought. Haven't I been looking, 
all these years and maybe even before he died, to fill the void he left in my 
life when I disappointed him by leaving medicine? To find another man who 
would guide me, who would control me? Daniel Waterston; Jack Willis; even, at 
certain points, Mulder. The truth was that no one could replace their father, 
and the difference was that she no longer wanted someone to.
 
"You don't want the truth, Bill," she said, trying to keep the bite out of 
her voice. "You want me to say something you can use against us." And I'm 
sick of being persecuted, she thought.

He shook his head. "I just want you to be safe."

She could reassure him, tell him that she was fine; of course she and Mulder 
and Liam were safe; don't worry about us. But even though she and Mulder 
would do everything in their power to keep themselves and their son safe, 
Scully also knew that the time might come when their power wouldn't be 
enough. But there was no use trying to explain things to Bill.

"I don't want you to get hurt," Bill said.

He's not the one hurting me, she thought, and, until she saw the expression 
on her brother's face, she didn't realize that she'd spoken aloud.

She looked away, embarrassed. She had broken the unwritten rules in her 
relationship with Bill: fight back, be tough, suck it up and keep going. And, 
for God's sake, don't admit that you have feelings to hurt or that he has the 
power to hurt them.

"I'm not trying to hurt you," he said in a low voice. "I want to be able to 
talk with you. We could have so much in common, Dana, with kids the same age 
and me being transferred to Norfolk... But I know that whatever I do will end 
up being wrong. I don't know what to say to you anymore."

She looked up at him, rolling her lips. "You could say 'Congratulations' or 
you could say 'I'm happy for you.' Or, if you can't manage that, you could 
try not saying anything."

Scully wasn't surprised when her brother chose the latter. She shook her head 
and and went over to the crib to see if Liam was still sleeping. He was 
awake, his round eyes staring at her almost hopefully.

I'm so sorry, she thought at him, and the little boy almost seemed to 
understand. His expression relaxed and his pouty lower lip -- Mulder's lip, 
she thought absently -- paused mid-quiver. Liam held his arms up to her, and 
she lifted him from the crib.

"You're hiding behind him," Bill told her evenly.

"And you're hiding *from* him." It was out of her mouth before she could 
consider what she was saying. But it was true. Bill had been hiding from Liam 
-- or perhaps hiding from the truth of what Liam represented -- all week.

"I am not," he insisted. But his posture, the clench of his hands around his 
biceps, the taught muscles in his neck and his jaw, told her otherwise.

She turned to Bill, Liam still in her arms. The baby was soft and 
sweet-smelling, so warm and trusting. A contented smile graced his lips, and 
his downy hair was slightly unruly from his nap. He gazed solemnly at his 
uncle, his eyes wide. Liam had her eyes, Scully knew, and through him she 
could see her own expression, like looking in a mirror. She wondered what 
Bill saw.

"I'm not hiding from him," Bill repeated, as if he were trying to convince 
himself.

Scully didn't know how to make Bill understand. She knew it was asking too 
much for him to comprehend her work with Mulder, or their relationship. But 
she didn't think she was asking too much wanting him to understand her love 
for Liam.

"Then here," she said, holding Liam out to her brother, who flinched almost 
imperceptibly. Panic crossed his face before he managed to plaster on a 
neutral expression that seemed somehow familiar and far away at the same time.

But he took the baby, holding him stiffly in her arms. Hurt burned through 
her, but Scully didn't say anything, didn't take Liam back. Damnit, Bill, she 
thought, you know how to hold a baby. Don't hold my son like he's a ticking 
bomb you can't figure out how to diffuse. 

She turned away from her brother and resumed her packing. She considered, for 
a long minute, simply taking the luggage downstairs and leaving Liam with 
Bill. But there were too many bags for her to carry in one trip, so she 
turned back to her brother.

He was still holding the baby, which Scully considered at least a minor 
victory, and Liam had his hand out and was patting his uncle's chest softly. 
Bill gazed down at his nephew, and Scully could suddenly place the look on 
her brother's face. Those were their father's eyes staring at Liam; their 
father's eyes studying the baby, judging. Scully suppressed a shudder and 
waited for him to speak.

"You know, he looks like you." Bill's voice had softened into a whisper, and 
she had to strain to hear him.

"He looks like Mulder," she said, running her thumb down her son's cheek and 
over his chin. He smiled at the gentle caress and turned his face into her 
hand. Bill said nothing, but his eyes didn't leave the baby's face.

"Let's go," Scully said, picking up an overnight bag and the oversized travel 
baby bag. Bill nodded, lifted the other bag, and followed her downstairs.

* * * * *


MULDER


Scully came downstairs first, weighted down by Liam's bag and one of their 
overnight bags. Mulder took both bags and set them by the front door. He 
raised his eyebrows at her, holding up the baby's snowsuit.

Mulder followed her gaze to the staircase, watching until Bill appeared, Liam 
in his arms. Every muscle in Mulder's body tensed when he saw Scully's 
brother holding his son. A part of him -- hell, almost all of him -- wanted 
to sprint over and snatch the baby from Bill's arms.

But something stopped him, a memory of that first Christmas without Samantha, 
his father working -- trying to find her, he had said -- and his mother 
asleep, an orange pill bottle on the bedstand. Mulder hadn't understood why 
they weren't at his grandparents' house, where they always spent Christmas, 
and why they hadn't observed Hanukkah. Not only had he worried and wondered 
about Samantha's whereabouts, but he'd wondered about his grandparents and 
cousins. Did they miss him and Samantha? Were they thinking of the Mulder 
family, or was Christmas passing as usual for them, presents and stockings 
and his grandmother's egg nog?

So Mulder stood and watched Bill carrying his son, and he said nothing. There 
was hope there, in the tiniest gestures, a man holding his nephew. Mulder 
wondered what Scully had said to him upstairs; something had obviously 
happened for Bill to be holding Liam.

If only, Mulder thought as Bill stepped off the last stair and into the 
living room. If only he could see Liam the way that Mulder did. Not as a 
mistake, not as a regret, not as the product of a single lonely night. If 
only Bill could see Liam as the beautiful and hopeful child that he was, the 
tangible reality of a love that had been so patient, yet so persistent. An 
impossible dream, first Scully's and then his, in the flesh.

Bill stepped towards Scully, holding Liam out to her. But she stepped away, 
and instead took their coats from the closet. So Bill turned to Mulder, 
pulling Liam back into his body just slightly.

"Da da," Liam called out, smiling and reaching out for Mulder. Atta boy, 
Mulder thought, biting his lip to contain a proud grin.

His expression unyielding, Bill stepped close to Mulder, holding the baby 
out. Mulder maneuvered the snowsuit, and Bill fit Liam's legs into the leg 
holes. They worked together, slowly, to fit Liam into the puffy coat. Finally 
Bill transferred the baby into Mulder's arms. Then Bill stepped closer, too 
close. Mulder stood his ground, holding his son tight against him, waiting 
for Bill to speak.

But Bill said nothing, just stood too close and too still, imposing his 
height and bulk. His eyes narrowed and his jaw clenched, but Mulder just 
stood there, now knowing how to respond to Bill's unarticulated threat, for 
he had no doubt that was what it was.

But then Scully was beside them, Mulder's coat held out. Bill took his time 
stepping away from Mulder, his back stiff and stern as he walked away, 
leaning against the wall near the front door. Scully held his coat for him as 
Mulder slipped into it, juggling Liam from one arm to the next.

"Have a safe drive," Maggie said as she joined them in the living room, 
Matthew hanging off one hand and Charles and Tara following her.

"Thanks, Mom," Scully said as the two women hugged.

Maggie then turned to Mulder and Liam, and pulled them into her arms. "Thanks 
for coming, Fox," she said. "Merry Christmas."

"Thanks," he said softly. "Mom." Her grip on him tightened before she kissed 
the top of Liam's head.

"We'll see you next week, Mom," Scully said as her mother pulled away from 
Mulder and Liam.

"New Year's," she confirmed as her hand lingered on Liam's back.

"You'd better stay in touch, Dana," Tara said as she made the rounds, hugging 
first her sister-in-law, and then, quickly, Mulder and Liam. "And I expect 
plenty more pictures of that little guy."

Scully nodded and smiled, but said nothing. Mulder wondered what Bill had 
said to her before they came downstairs with their luggage. He hadn't heard 
any raised voices, so apparently things had remained civil, but Mulder could 
tell from Scully's demeanor that something had passed between them.

"Say good-bye to your cousin, Matty," Tara said, pushing the little boy 
forward. He hugged Scully, then approached Liam. Mulder squatted down to 
Matthew's level and held Liam out towards him. The little boy patted his 
cousin gently on the shoulder, then gave him a careful hug.

"Bye-bye, Lee-umm," Matthew pronounced.

"And we expect to see you before next Christmas," Scully said to Charles as 
she hugged him goodbye. "You can use those tickets any time," she reminded 
him. "The apartment may be a little crowded, but you're welcome to our couch 
anytime. And I can assure you that it's more comfortable than Mom's pull-out."

Oh, yeah, Mulder thought, quite comfortable. He bit back his grin. He and 
Charles exchanged a quick, back-slapping hug, then the younger man leaned 
down and kissed Liam softly on the forehead.

"Congratulations," he said to Mulder, who furled his eyebrow at Charlie. "For 
surviving Clan Scully for five whole days," he explained. "You deserve some 
kind of reward. Combat pay."

"Come on, Charlie," Scully said. "We're not that bad."

But Charles just smiled and shook his head, stepping away from Mulder and 
Liam.

"Yeah," Bill said, tossing a glare at his brother. "You'd think we were the 
Addams family or something." 

"Well..." Charles said, smiling and shrugging.

"Goodbye, Bill," Scully said as she and Mulder made their way to the front 
door. Scully walked slowly, scuffing her heels against the floor. She slowed, 
digging her hands into her pockets. She unearthed her gloves and slowly, 
leisurely fit them onto her hands as she stepped towards the door.

Mulder knew what she was waiting for, and he knew that she would be waiting a 
long time. He stood at the door, propping it open with his shoulder, and a 
cool breeze blew in through the screen door.

"Bye, Dana," Bill said. He stood with his arms crossed across his chest, the 
rest of the family watching them. Bill rolled his lips, then caught his lower 
one with his teeth.

Finally Scully reached in the doorway, standing between Mulder and Bill. 
"Bye, Bill," she said again, and Mulder stepped onto the front porch. He 
turned to see Scully standing in the doorframe, stopped by Bill's hand on her 
shoulder.

The embrace was quick, and Mulder almost missed it. "Keep in touch, okay?" he 
heard Bill say softly, dipping his head to speak into his sister's ear. She 
nodded slightly before he let her go, and she walked away to join Mulder and 
Liam outside.

* * * * *

To Be Continued in Interstice: Thursday