Part Six:

Mulder can still smell Scully on his skin, feel her strong fingers in his hair and taste her fresh breath on his tongue. He chooses not dwell on the realization that his heightened sensory reaction probably means that he stinks and desperately needs to brush his teeth.

He spins to grin at Skinner, who still lurks in the shadows after Scully had been ordered away by the guards. His 'lawyer' can remain, needing the few hours they had to prepare for the tribunal.

"One down, one to go," he tells the other man.

"What?" Skinner says, squinting.

"I've held and kissed Scully. William's next."

Skinner just stares at him, his mouth slightly agape.

"You want your kiss after all?" Mulder can only laugh at Skinner's look of distaste. He can't stop his joy from bubbling up, despite all the weight remaining on his shoulders. He paces the small cell. "They probably won't let her bring a baby into this prison, but maybe to the trial-"

"Mulder...Fox."

Something in Skinner's voice makes Mulder stop in front of his friend. He blinks slowly, willing time to stop. Scully is in his arms again and this time, he feels despair bleeding from her limbs even as she desperately kissed him back. Finally, he states: "Something's happened to William." He doesn't bother making it a question.

"It's not that simple." Walter lifts his glasses and squeezes the bridge of his nose.

Mulder lunges against the iron door, his heart suddenly racing. "Scully!" he yells.

Skinner drags him away. "She's gone. I've told her to go home and get some rest before the trial begins."

"What happened," Mulder hisses. "Did they kill him?"

"He's alive. He's well," Skinner assures him in a rush.

"Then what's wrong!?"

"Scully had to place him with another family-"

Place him with a family-this sounds as though their son was a stray dog. Mulder cocks his head, trying to comprehend the words and knock down his rising fury,flames in his heart.

Skinner steps close and grips his arm tightly, as though to hold him to the ground. "They came again and again, Mulder. As close as a man with a pillow over William's face before Scully shot him."

When Mulder closes his eyes, he hears Scully screaming anger and fear, feels the concussion of the shots in their bedroom, feels the warm blood splatter his skin.

"They wanted you dead too. They managed to kidnap William once, putting Doggett in a coma in the process-"

"Son of a bitch!" Mulder whirls away from Skinner's grasp but there's nowhere to go in the dank cell.

"They said that they'd give William back if Scully would bring them your severed head. This was obviously about more than just taking a baby that they thought was special-"

"He's just a little boy." Mulder leans against the wall, no strength in his body.

Skinner looks uncomfortable "No...He had some powers..."

"Powers?" Mulder now feels nauseous. He never should have left. He should have gone Cro-Magnon in Scully's ass, dragged her off to a cave...

"At least others thought he did...These people thought he would play a role in stopping the invasion...And Scully saw some things that she couldn't explain...Even Jeffrey Spender showed up, acting on what he believed William was-"

"Fuck, fuck, fuck," Mulder spits the curses out like blood-soaked glass.

"There was only one way to stop it."

"No, there was another way. I could have come back."

"Scully wouldn't let you," Skinner points out, ever practical. "She wavered once, and looked what happened-"

Mulder just shakes his head petulantly. "I shoulda been a man-"

Skinner reminds him: "She told you that you were no good to her and William dead. That's still true. William can't be with you two, but you can only preserve this world for him to grow up in if you're alive."

"Where is he?" Mulder grinds out.

"We don't know. Scully had me set up the adoption, but I went through a middleman to assure that even under torture, I couldn't reveal his location."

Mulder's on the move again, but now his arms are swinging too, his clenched fists coming close to the concrete walls.

"Hey there." Skinner steps between him and the wall and puts up his large hands. "You gonna punch something, hit my hand. No sense breaking your knuckles right now."

This sounds like a great idea. Mulder puts all his power behind a one-two bevy to Skinner's solid palms, only to stagger backward in pain. "Son of a bitch," he gasps. "Might as well have hit the wall."

Skinner shrugs. "Got it out of your system though?"

"Yeah, I guess." Mulder wipes the tears from his eyes.

Briefly wrapping him in a hug, Skinner says in his ear: "You gotta be strong for Dana. Or I'll kick your ass."

Mulder steps back and looks the other man in the eye. "Is there something you need to tell me, Walter?"

Incredulous, Skinner raises his eyebrows. "You were the one kissing her, Mulder. Tell me if anything's changed since you left."

"No."

"All right then. I gotta go. Turns out some crazy bastard has asked him to be his legal representation-" Skinner checked his watch. "And I've got until eight hundred hours to obtain my law degree."

"Thanks, Walter. For everything."

Skinner just waves him off and leaves the cell without a backward look. Mulder slides down the wall to the bare floor, now his familiar bed. Just what he deserves; cold, painfully hard and unyielding.

It seems as though he's just closed his eyelids when a sound breaks into his roiling thoughts. It's the crunching of sunflower seeds.

He looks up. His father leans against the door, fastidiously spitting the shells into his palm.

"What do you want?" Mulder asks.

Bill raises his eyebrows. "I thought you were the one who wanted to talk to me."

Six or seven years ago, yes. Today, not so much. He'd found almost too many answers over time.

"Why would I want to do that?" he challenged.

"Looking for advice, one no good father to another?" suggests Bill.

Mulder stares up at the ceiling. The old man has a point.

Might as well start at what was foremost on his mind right now. "How'd you do it, Dad? How'd you sleep again after what you did?"

"I had a higher purpose which I was pursuing," Bill says evenly, crunching seeds between his words. "I couldn't allow my personal feelings to cloud that. And now you, although you weren't there to make the decision, have made the same sacrifice."

His old man always could find the slightest of papercuts to rub salt in. Mulder says: "I've been traded for again. Scully gave away our boy so I might live." He struggles to his feet. "When the fuck-" He punctuates every word with spit. "The fuck is everyone going to figure out I'm not worth it!?"

"When are you going to figure out that you are?"

Mulder just slumps against the wall. If these apparitions are his sub-conscious, this one seems to be doing some unwanted self-analysis.

"You were such a good boy, Fox. You don't remember that, but you were. You shared with your sister; most boys aren't like that. Just ask your Aunt Flora what sort of big brother I was-"

"Aunt Flora died in 1998," Mulder says hollowly.

Bill shrugs. "Take my word for it. I was a little jerk. But after Samantha was gone, you got even worse. No worries about you becoming a juvenile delinquent from the trauma. Top of your classes, working for the government..."

Only his father would sound confounded by a son being a credit to the family name. And yet Mulder had kept seeking his approval, and that of men like him.

Mulder wanders the cell, ignoring his father for the moment. He and Samantha had shared a room until her disappearance. His parents had been in the process of setting up his 'big boy' bedroom when she'd been taken. There were moments of confusion afterward for Mulder, where he kept hearing them saying that it was time to separate the siblings and that somehow explained where Samantha had gone. She wasn't abducted; she was just in another room. He refused to use his new bedroom for months, doing as he'd once told Scully, closing his eyes before entering their shared bedroom to will his sister to be in her single bed to the left of window, slumbering under the pink-ruffled bedspread. Now it all seemed like something a psychologist would have a field day with and probably explained a lot about his intimacy issues and problems developing positive sexual relationships, but right now, it just caused him to start crying again.

His father obviously wasn't going away. "You remember when I'd bring a box of donuts home from Hansen's Bakery? It was down the street from the State Department-"

"Yeah," Mulder says listlessly.

"You'd let Samantha have the first pick, only she liked the same kind that you did; with the colored sprinkles. She'd always break it in half-she was a good kid too-but the point is, Fox, you need to be a selfish bastard every now and then."

"What's your point, Dad?"

"Get out of this place. Go home to your woman. Make love to her. Forget all this."

"All this? You mean this hell that you wrought; you and men like you?" Mulder turns his back on his father. What measures that Bill Mulder had done to stop the invasion hadn't been enough. He's still cleaning up the mess.

"You've been doing the same thing for years now, without much success," Bill reminds him. "Let me just point out, that when you finally allowed yourself to be selfish-falling into bed with Dana Scully-something very wonderful and earth-changing happened."

Mulder shakes his head.

"At least admit that you wanted that baby just as strongly as you want to stop the invasion-" Bill urges him.

"Scully wanted it," he says automatically. "I've just been along for the ride."

Bill smiles craftily. "Remember where I live now, son. I know your inner thoughts. Even the ones that you won't admit to yourself. You've spent over ten years holding a patronizing pity for all these creatures you encounter on cases, who did horrible things in the drive to reproduce. And in the end, you were just one more of them."

His father cracks another seed. "But if it makes you feel superior to say you were just trying to help a friend out, fine. 'Sure, Scully, I'll be your sperm donor'," he mocks his son with a droll tone.

Then he lifts his shoulders. "I gave it to you anyway."

"Gave it? You mean-" Mulder waves his hand.

Bill nods.

Mulder shakes his head as if to fling away this insanity. "First of all, that means I have to believe in God, then that you are with that god and have his ear."

Bill chuckles. "Believe what you want. William came to be, and neither you, nor your delightfully lovely little scientist, have an explanation."

Mulder just wants his father to go away. He strikes out. "My leading theory was that your friend, the smoking bastard, had done something. He was the source of Scully's cancer cure, and he had her before she became pregnant."

His small smile becoming a smirk, Bill says, "He thought he could. I got there first."

Mulder purses his mouth. "Doesn't matter," he said shortly. "William's gone."

The seeds are finished. Bill brushes the salt from his hands. He pins his son with his cool stare. "Are you going to blame Dana for that?"

Mulder only glares back, trying to close his thoughts against a spirit which he does not believe is real and feeling like a damn idiot in the process.

"Your mother hated me every day after Samantha was taken. Don't be like that too."

"It's not the same," Mulder says, the words catching in his raw throat.

"True. Dana Scully is stronger than I am. But you are your mother's son," Bill says, cursing Mulder as lightly as touching him with a raven's feather.

Mulder leans against the wall again, requiring its cold comfort. "You and Mom didn't survive. How will Scully and I make it?"

"Just take the damn donut, son," Bill urges him.

Sliding down to the floor again, Mulder shakes his head in protest. He is his father's son; he has lost the battle to stop the invasion, and in the process, allowed every immediate happiness to be lost as well. There are yet more sacrifices to be made. Only then does he realize that the cell is mercifully silent again. He is alone.

When the touch comes to his shoulder and he hears Scully's pained breathing, he assumes that it's another vision. Then she says, "Mulder's it's me."

It's always her. And he wakes to fight again.

~The End