Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

TITLE: A Moment in the Sun

AUTHOR: prufrock's love

GENRE: AU, Pre-X-files

RATING: R

ARCHIVE: Gossamer & AO3 only

DISCLIAMER: FOX Network owns The X-Files. No copyright infringement is intended and no money is being made from the use of these characters.

SUMMARY: Autumn in New York, 1953. A legendary baseball player past his prime and a beautiful woman with a secret.

*~*~*~*

For immediate release:

New York, New York (October 7, 1953) Following a stellar baseball career with the New York Yankees, Fox Mulder confirms rumors he will not return for a twelfth season in the sun. Mulder, the Yankees’ longtime center fielder and three-time MVP winner, holds the longest base-hitting streak in Major League history: 56-games during the 1941 season. He is a nine-time World Series winner, and regarded as a living legend of the game. Known for being a private and dedicated family man off the field, Mulder is also a decorated World War II veteran who served in the D-Day landing and later in the liberation of Germany. Though plagued by knee injuries, he finished this season by hitting the game-winning homerun to the delight of the cheering crowd. He looks forward to spending time with his family.

*~*~*~*

America remembered 1953 as an era of innocence and conformity – too idyllic to be true. After the lean times of the Great Depression and the horror of World War II, a healing nation took comfort in family and normalcy. Women left their war-time jobs and returned to their traditional roles of wife and mother. Prosperous couples abandoned the cities for manicured suburban homes. Baseball remained a national past-time, bordering on a religion. Sixty-eight percent of households with a television set tuned in to watch Lucille Ball have her baby on “I Love Lucy,” but no gentleman used the word 'pregnant' in mixed company. Elvis Presley still drove a truck in Mississippi, and Ray Charles and James Brown remained unknown outside the Chitlin' Circuit. “The Crucible” by Arthur Miller opened on Broadway. Dean Martin, Doris Day, and Bing Crosby topped the charts. In England, the young Queen Elizabeth II ascended the throne, and sugar - rationed since 1942 - became freely available.

It was a rigidly moral time, as well. Marriage was sacred, and divorce rare and socially unacceptable. Illegitimacy bordered on leprosy. An unremarkable movie entitled “The Moon is Blue” shocked the public by mentioning the words ‘virgin,’ ‘seduce,’ and ‘mistress;’ Boston banned the film. Human nature changed little in private, though; about 50% of women had premarital relations, according to Kinsey's landmark study on human sexual behavior - but most with their intended husband.

Patriotism reigned and the evil Soviet menace lurked in the shadows. The House Committee on Un-American Activities held hearings to sluice out communists in Hollywood and the US government. Families built bomb shelters in their backyards, certain of imminent nuclear war. Ethel and Julius Rosenburg went to the electric chair as Russian spies. In 1947, an unidentified object crash-landed in New Mexico, and got reported as a weather balloon. As more and more mysterious saucers were observed, the CIA-sponsored Robertson Panel met to discuss UFO's. At the end of World War II, classified government projects brought Nazi and Japanese scientists to the United States to continue their wartime medical research. Administration of LSD was quietly approved in the MKULTRA mind control project. Hillary and Norgay reached the summit of Mt. Everest; Watson and Crick discovered DNA. 58,000 people contracted polio, but a vaccine was in the works. Science promised salvation.

People knew who they were - or at least, who they should be - and they trusted their god and their government. Anything deviant from that ideal was disposed of like a used razorblade into the mysterious slot in the medicine cabinet: a hole leading nowhere. Unwanted things got slipped through; they disappeared, and no one thought to ask their destination. In truth, hundreds of rusting razor blades piled up inside bathroom walls, Big Brother watched, and mankind was far from alone in the universe. But out of sight was out of mind. The world had a simple, set, noble, naïve order.

And in the autumn of 1953, in New York City, a legendary baseball player past his prime met a beautiful young woman with a secret.

*~*~*~*

Mulder physically embodied of the American dream; The New York Times said so in print less than a month ago. Fox Mulder was tall and slim, with long limbs and dark hair tousled not matter how short the barber cut it. His father’s sharp German facial features blended handsomely with his mother’s Jewish ones. He had a broad, full mouth and sleepy hazel eyes that sparkled when he was amused. He knew the beauty of the world, but had also met pure evil face-to-face. A wealthy man, he liked to be comfortable: expensive suits, nice cars, good liquor, and soft beds. He thought deeply and a great deal, but said little, afraid of stuttering or looking foolish. Society didn't expect baseball players to be bright or well-educated, so he watched people, mostly - an observer of society rather than a full participant. But sixty-thousand people cheered as he hit a last homerun and took his final lap around the bases. That afternoon, Fox Mulder was genetic superiority and preternatural skill and triumph over adversity and poetry in motion, according to the Associated Press and a good dose of Melvin Frohike chutzpah.

Mulder’s career ended, the lights dimmed, and night fell. By All Hallows Eve 1953, the American dream felt so hollow it echoed.

Mulder shifted the icepack. He found a colder, dryer spot, and pressed it against his forehead. The swollen gash above his eye ached, but a dull pain pulsed throughout his head. Twelve hours had passed since his last drink. ‘Du sollst der werden, der du bist,’ Nietzsche wrote. A man becomes the person he truly is. Mulder’s father had loved to quote Nietzsche.

Mulder sat on the edge of the examination table and waited. And waited. His feet dangled and his crumpled dress shirt and tie lay on his lap, both spattered with blood. He wore a bloodstained T-shirt, gray flannel suit trousers, and polished wingtip shoes. The dark hair on his forearms bristled in the cold room. He starred dully at the floor tiles as the overhead light glared down at him.

The man on the next examination table lurched up and pushed a nurse aside. He knocked over a metal tray. Stainless steel instruments scattered, clattering loudly across the floor. Another nurse came running as the doctor passed the man a basin. The man leaned over and emptied the contents of his stomach into the basin. Across the room, another man roused drunkenly and beginning yelling at no one in particular.

Mulder reconsidered seeking out medical treatment. An hour ago, it seemed necessary, but perhaps he could continue to bleed.

After his father died, Mulder’s after-dinner Scotch sometimes became three or four Scotches over an evening, if his son wasn't around. William spent the summer in England with Mulder’s ex-wife, so Mulder’s solo cocktail hour slipped to earlier in the day and continued until the early morning. It was 1953; everyone drank. Mulder never drank on game days, though - not before the game. By August, his stomach started to complain and his doctor to lecture, but Mulder ignored both. He was a big boy, and as long as he wasn’t drunk during games or in front of Will, he was fine. The games stopped and the days started to blur together. Mulder hadn't been sober in a week, but this afternoon, he woke next to a pretty woman he didn't remember taking to bed. Mulder’s teenage son had stood in the bedroom doorway with his book bag over his shoulder, staring at the bed.

The drunk tried to leave, and had a long, incoherent argument with the nurse blocking his way.

Mulder exhaled a long breath. 'Was mich nicht umbringt, macht mich starker,' Nietzche also wrote. What did not destroy him made him stronger.

The weathered doctor shook his head at Mulder in apology and nodded to the second nurse. Small, white shoes entered Mulder’s field of vision. A warm hand touched his arm, and a young woman's voice said, "Come with me please sir, and I'll get you fixed up."

Mulder slid off the table and carefully to his feet. He kept the ice pack against his head and between him and the light, and followed the nurse to an adjacent room. "Is that a promise?" he asked half-heartedly. 

She gestured to the low steel stool in the center of the little room. "I can't guarantee perfection." She answered with her back to him as she rooted through a series of metal drawers.

"I wasn't perfect to begin with," Mulder admitted.

"Then you should be fine." She faced him with the corners of her mouth turned up and her lips pursed. At one AM, her blue eyes twinkled, and his head ached less.

Mulder exhaled again and rolled his shoulders back as he looked up at her. He lowered the ice pack and tucked the toes of his shoes behind two of the stool's legs. She put a hand on his chin, tilting his head toward the light. He tried not to wince.

"The doctor looked at your X-rays, and the damage is all superficial." The nurse wiped off his forehead. "It looks worse than it is."

"I-I'd like that in writing," he requested, stuttering.

The young nurse looked at him, seeming tolerantly amused. "No guarantees."

He chuckled softly even though it hurt. She inhaled and - in case she could still smell alcohol - he made sure to breathe through his nose.

He watched warily as she readied everything, flicking the syringe with her finger to get the bubbles out. In the other room, the drunk yelled again.

"There are meetings, aren't there?" Mulder asked, breaking the tense silence. "For alcoholics?"

"AA. Alcoholics Anonymous."

"How do you find them if they're anonymous?" he said casually.

"We have a schedule at the desk."

He nodded without comment.

"You’ll feel a prick. I’ll numb your forehead and I can put the stitches in. Come back here, big guy." 

He hadn't realized he leaned away from her, eyeing the needle, until a warm hand took him by the shoulder and guided him back under the light. Mulder found himself eye-level with her breasts. Nice breasts, which he made a polite effort not to stare at. This room was cold as well, and she wore a white cardigan sweater which covered part of the name tag on her chest. She was 'Nur'. Apparently, he still didn’t stay where she placed him, because the nurse kept a firm grip on his chin while she cleaned the gash one-handed.

"So tell me, patient to nurse, what happened to you, Mr. Martin." She seemed trying to distract him from the miniature meat hook she prepared to jab into his flesh. "This looks like a blunt trauma rather than- What was your cover story"

The doctor had addressed Mulder as ‘sir,’ not by name. Mulder couldn't tell if this nurse was joking or if she didn't recognize him. "Slipped on some ice," he said. "I'm not very creative, but my head was bleeding and I-I thought that was a good story."

He’d stuttered again. Mulder swallowed and exhaled.

She tossed a few used pieces of gauze in the waste bin. The pretty nurse shifted her weight from one foot to the other. She picked up the first suture. "Close your eyes, sir."

He did, gladly.

"First, unless you work in a meat locker or the fish market, there is no ice in New York today. The muscle definition in your shoulders speaks to athleticism or physical labor, but you’re wearing an expensive wristwatch for a butcher or a fisherman, Mr. Martin."

"It was my fathers," he said truthfully.

"Probably not his custom-made Savile Row shirt, though."

Mulder opened his eyes, impressed.

"It's on the label." She nodded to the bloody shirt on his lap. "Henry Poole & Co. 15 Savile Row, London."

He smiled and closed his eyes again. She stood so close that he felt the warmth from her body. He sensed something else, though. The soreness in her feet and the tired ache of her shoulders.

"Second," she continued, "people fall back if they slip, or they have marks on their forearms where they catch themselves if they fall forward.  This was a-" She paused to readjust his head; without his homing breast, he drifted again. "A pipe? A pool cue? I'm going to need a clue, but my money’s on some sort of club."

"I'll have to swear you to secrecy."

"I’ll swear not to tell a soul if you swear to hold still, Mr. Martin."

"Agreed." He looked up at her briefly, and closed his eyes again as he admitted, "My son hit me with a baseball bat. Accidentally. We were at the ballpark after dinner and I was trying to teach him to swing through. He swung hard, let go of the bat, and the bat cracked me in the head. I waited for it to stop bleeding on its own, but it didn't, so I thought I should get it checked out before I drove home. Before I drove him to his mother's apartment," Mulder said for clarity, in case she cared. "I left my son in the waiting room looking remorseful and uncoordinated, yet still convinced this is all my fault."

"What's shameful about a batting accident?"

"With my son, I like to keep things quiet. Out of the papers, especially. He didn't choose what his father does for a living." He added, "I wish his life was easier."

The ice in the ice pack melted slowly. It began to drip onto his trouser leg and, drop by drop, to the turquoise-tiled floor.

She moved away, and he heard her pull the string to open a Band-Aid as she said, "That's understandable. Still, I don't think it necessitates such a conspiracy. But that's it, Mr. Martin," she pronounced. "All done. You can open your eyes, sir."

He opened his eyes and blinked a few times.

"See? The world didn't end."

Liking what he saw - her concerned face close to his - he smiled. The nurse smiled but looked away self-consciously. She ran her thumb over the bandage to smooth it into place, paused to admire her handiwork without making eye contact, and picked up his chart to make notes. Her left hand lacked a wedding band, as did his.

"You get the same bill, regardless of whether the doctor or the nurse sews. You can pay as you leave if you don't want to give a billing address."

"May I get a telephone number to call?"

"For the billing department?" She glanced up as she wrote.

"No, I'll pay my bill as I leave." He grinned again.

She stopped writing and looked at him, her pen poised a few inches above the chart. "No," she said gently.

"Too far from perfect to begin with?" he guessed.

She smiled politely but didn't answer.

"You honestly don't know who I am, do you?" he asked, but wanted to snatch his words back.

"I know you say you're Mr. Marty Martin. That's a bad alias, by the way. Injured in- Do you want to have been mugged or won a bar brawl?"

"Oh, won a bar brawl. Against ten men. I am Superman.” He swallowed again. “Mu-may I get dressed?"

She nodded as she wrote. "Keep the wound dry, ice it to keep the swelling down, and come back to get the stitches out in ten days. If you start to get dizzy or confused or the wound looks infected, come back."

"I don't live in the Bronx." He shrugged on his bloody shirt. "What about my doctor?"

"Anyone can take the stitches out. It was nice doing business with you, Mr. Not-Really-Martin."

"Thank you, Nurse-"

"Scully. Nurse Scully," she answered, and started to walk out of the room. She added crisply, "Or you could come back once you've healed and let me take a look at you."

She was right; the world hadn't ended.

"I could do that," he promised. "Then I get your telephone number?"

"Then I take your stitches out," she said. "No guarantees."

A memory flickered in the perimeter of his mind: a recognition. He had a good memory for people. Numbers. Pretty much anything.

"No guarantees," he agreed. "Nurse Dana Scully."

She looked at him oddly as she left. Mulder fastened the top button of his bloody shirt. His legs remained intertwined with the legs of the steel stool but he noticed the room had warmed considerably.

*~*~*~*

Nurse Scully sat alone at the desk, wearing the same cardigan sweater over her white uniform, with a stack of charts at one elbow and a cup of coffee, a half-eaten sandwich, and an apple at the other. She didn’t look up as she wrote in a chart.

Mulder stopped in the rear doorway of the otherwise empty triage room, winter coat draped over one arm and his hat in his hand, taking stock.

She was a registered nurse, so at least twenty-two years old. Her manner suggested several years of experience as a trauma nurse, though. Now, as well as the last time he saw her, she wore little makeup, and she hadn't worn perfume. She was intelligent, precise, and methodical in her manner. She took pride in being professional, and cared about the patients she cared for. She drank her coffee with real cream - little luxuries were important to her. A small gold cross hung from a chain around her neck, and Mercy was a Catholic hospital. Under her nurse's cap, she had her hair pulled up neatly, but not 'done' in the beauty parlor sense. Her nails were the same way: clean and functional. Her hair looked greenish-brown to him, but he guessed from her complexion it was dark auburn.

She had been an Army nurse, Mulder suspected. She finished college and joined the Nurse Corps to serve her country. Her brothers were servicemen as well - perhaps career military – like her father and grandfather. One of them, or a husband or fiancé, died shortly before she joined the Army, which precipitated her decision. She came from a working class Irish-Catholic family. She paid her bills on time, bought well-made clothes on sale, and went to confession at the same church at the same time each week. She worked nights to be home during the day, and something or someone occupied a great deal of her free time. She'd been a widow long enough she no longer wore her wedding ring, so Mulder bet it a child. Her husband had been a doctor in Korea, but killed, leaving her with an infant. If Mulder surmised correctly, her child couldn’t be older than five.

Nurse Scully said, "Mr. Martin," as she glanced up from her stack of charts. She stood and walked around the desk. "Is something wrong?"

He noticed again how petite she was, even with her white shoes adding a few inches. Mulder could have rested his chin on top of her head, and he had the urge to. He didn't, of course. He shifted his hat to his other hand and answered, "No," trying to sound casual.

"Are you having complications?"

"With my head? No. With my life?" He answered by shrugging one shoulder and gave her a lazy, self-deprecating grin. That was good, he thought. Humble but witty and charming, and without stuttering.

"You came back to get the list. Of meetings," she said obliquely.

"No. No, I found my own way." 

She nodded.

She waited. He waited, trying to think of something witty and humble and charming to say after admitting he'd joined Alcoholics Anonymous.

"It's four in the morning, Mr. Martin," she said.

"I-I couldn't sleep so I went for a drive, and I ended up here and..." He'd sat across the street in his car for twenty minutes while he worked up his nerve. He had, too - gotten his nerve worked up but lost it between the curb and the Emergency Room. "You said you'd take these stitches out. They itch."

"Okay. We're quiet this morning. Come with me and let me take a look at you." She gestured for him to follow her into the main triage room, which Mulder did. He shifted his hat in his hands and kept his eyes open for his mislaid nerve.

She pointed to an exam table, and he sat on it while she tiptoed to reach a bottle on the top shelf. Retrieving it, she snapped on a rubber glove and poured some of the clear liquid into her gloved hand.

Mulder's eyes widened. The last time someone did that, it was during his Army physical. That examination hadn't turned out as he expected.

"The stitches aren't supposed to come out for another few days, but since you're here, it should be fine if the cut has healed."

She knew how long it had been since she'd last seen him.

"I heal quickly. What is that you're doing?" The liquid smelled familiar, but Mulder couldn't place what she rubbed on his forehead.

"Baby oil. The Band-Aid is on your eyebrow. If I rip it off, part of your eyebrow will come with it. If I put baby oil on the bandage first, it comes off easier. Close your eyes in case it drips, sir."

He took a deep breath and tried to relax. “You were an Army nurse?" he asked as she worked the Band-Aid free.

"How did you know?" she responded curiously.

"I'm a good guesser. Korea?"

"I was stateside," she answered. "Where were you?"

"Italy, and Wiltshire before Normandy," he answered succinctly, his eyes still closed. "Through France and Germany as far as Munich."

He didn't offer details and she didn't ask. Soldiers who wanted to brag about the war did so for hours. Mulder saw the monsters, still had the nightmares, and did not care to discuss either.

He noticed she didn't elaborate, either.

"In Wiltshire, my friend – Byers - and I bunked with another captain who, in 1941, met two RAF pilots at the Harvard Club in New York. He said he bought them a drink at the club and, at their request, took them on a tour of Times Square. At midnight, the pilots thanked him, saying they'd wanted to see Times Square before they died, but they'd been shot down over Berlin the previous night. Killed in action," Mulder informed her. "The two pilots turned around, walked into the shadows, and vanished. Captain Banks said he never saw them again."

"Their dying wish was to see Times Square?"

"It does lack imagination," he agreed. "Captain Banks remembered their names - Jones and Taylor - and it was early November when he encountered them. I did some checking after the war. On November 7, 1941, the RAF lost twenty bombers over Berlin. Do you want to guess two of the pilot's names?"

"Those are common surnames," she countered. "Assuming he told you what he thought was the truth, what are the odds of those names showing up by chance?"

"Both names?” he said. “One name is chance; both names with John Byers as my witness deserve less skepticism, I think.”

He felt a dry cotton ball on his face, wiping away the baby oil, and a wet one smelling of alcohol.

"Historically, doppelgangers precede the time of death or coincide with it," he said, "although in 1612, while in Paris, the poet John Donne had visions of his wife crying and carrying a dead baby in her arms. He was too ill to travel, so he sent a message to England asking about her confinement. His visions continued, but it was months before Donne learned she had lost their child in January. His visions were described as doppelgangers, but this sounds like bi-location rather than a doppelganger: his grieving, living wife was bi-locating. If Donne had seen the baby as it died, it would be a doppelganger. Anyway, the British pilots Captain Banks saw weren't doppelgangers because they were dead, and I don't think it can be called bi-location once the person's location is The Great Beyond. I'd say Captain Banks saw honest-to-goodness spooks."

"Are you putting me on, Mr. Martin?"

"It's true. I checked out several books about ghosts and paranormal activity from the public library."

"How would two Royal Air Force - British - pilots get into the New York Harvard Club? Don't you have to have gone to Harvard?" her voice asked skeptically as her hand readjusted his head.

He shrugged one shoulder without moving his face. "Details. Admit it: it is a good story. Better than my last one about slipping on some ice."

"Yet even less believable," she responded, but without malice.

"Is your hair auburn?" he asked. "I'm color blind. I went years without knowing the Wicked Witch of the West was supposed to be green."

"My hair is auburn," she confirmed.

"Why the night shift?" He filled in the blanks of his mental puzzle. “It’s a hard shift for a pretty young woman.”

"I like my days free," she answered vaguely. "The wound has healed well. Very well, in fact. You must be drinking Ovaltine. Let's get the sutures out." He heard steel rattling against steel, and he assumed she picked up the scissors and forceps. "Are you always this curious, or are we playing twenty questions, Mr. Martin?"

He opened his eyes, looking at her. "I'm making pleasant conversation while you dismiss my paranormal anecdote and yank knotted steel threads out of my flesh, Nurse Scully."

She 'hummed' him, seeming unconvinced, but those blue eyes twinkled.

"I have a little girl," she said after a few seconds.

"I thought so,” he said, feeling triumphant. “I thought you were a widow with a young child. Is your daughter four or five years old?"

"She just turned four. How did you know?"

He shrugged without moving his head. "Details. You're a good trauma nurse, but you're not old enough to have been in World War II. The next option is Korea, and they started drafting doctors there in 1948. I was guessing you joined the Nurse Corps after spring 1948 either to be with your husband, or because a man you cared about died, and you married once there. If you had a child after that, she’s no older than four or five."

"Impressive. Unsettling, but impressive. I was in nursing school when John finished medical school. He was drafted, and I joined the Nurse Corps in fall 1948. Emily was born in the fall of 1949. So I was an Army nurse, but not for long." Her hand left his forehead. After an awkward pause, she said, “I left the Army expecting a beautiful little girl; John left in a coffin with an American flag over it.”

For several seconds, Mulder didn’t respond. His triumph evaporated, and he sensed her anger and loneliness. Her emotions had a tired, heavy air, like they stretched back centuries rather than years.

He moved his hand an inch from the edge of the exam table, toward her, but returned his palm to its proper place on the smooth stainless steel.

“I’m sorry,” he said, which seemed inadequate. He racked his brain for something consoling, but still witty and humble and charming. "The label inside your sweater says 'Saks Fifth Avenue.' You bought it on sale, half off, last spring."

"That's unsettling." She pulled the first suture out, and he flinched. "Sorry," she said, and wrinkled her forehead as if to take away the pain. She seemed genuinely sorry, which made her brow wrinkle palliative. "Four more."

"Four more," he echoed. "How many more until I get your telephone number?"

"No guarantees," she reminded him, and he chuckled.

She sighed, put one hand on his cheek, and held his head still.

"I'll remember the baby oil trick," he said. "My son wants to play on his school's baseball team in the spring - and he spoke to me yesterday - so we tried batting practice again. Now he has scrapes on both elbows."

"I've never played baseball, but how did he get batting injuries on his elbows, Mr. Martin?" She still held his face firmly as she started on the next suture. "Don't you just hold the bat and swing?"

Her hand felt warm, and her skin smelled like babies and Ivory soap. He sensed strength from her, and a calm certainty. He had a pleasant sensation in his belly - half butterflies, but half an inexplicable stillness as if, for once, he was exactly where Destiny wanted him.

"He's a Wonder Boy," Mulder said. "He's the best thing to ever happen to me, but sometimes I wonder about that boy, Nurse Scully."

*~*~*~*

This was not low-key - or witty or charming - but it might be humble: chasing a woman through the cold, silent streets of the Bronx before dawn yelling “nurse!” after her. He could keep up with her, but Mulder couldn't get Nurse Scully to stop or listen until she reached the subway entrance and he had her trapped at the turn-stile for a few seconds.

"Leave me alone! Haven't you caused enough trouble for one night?" Her cheeks flushed and her eyes snapped fire at him. "No, you're not going to get my telephone number!"

"I-I am sorry. Go back to the hospital. They'll give you your job back."

Nurse Scully ignored him as she fished through her wallet, then entire purse for a subway token. In exasperation, she dumped the contents of the purse out on an empty bench. A tube of lipstick rolled into the shadows. She didn't bother to retrieve it.

Turned out, Mulder wasn't the only man in the ER who liked Nurse Scully. Ten minutes ago, a young doctor observed them chit-chatting as she removed the stitches and, recognizing Mulder, reprimanded Nurse Scully for being "unprofessional," among other things. Mulder disagreed. The doctor's ego had taken a blow, and things went downhill from there. In the end, Mulder made a few unkind observations about the doctor, Nurse Scully got fired, and the doctor called Mulder a money-grubbing bastard and the worst thing to ever happen to New York City. Then ordered both Mulder and Nurse Scully out of the hospital. Dr. Narcissism must have been a Brooklyn Dodgers fan.

"They will give you your job back," Mulder assured her. "That doctor was out of line. He-he's jealous and neurotic and he shouldn't have talked to you like that."

"You're right; he shouldn't have, but I don't need a hero. Thank you so much, Superman. Not only do I not have a job, I don't have a reference."

"I promise you the hospital will give you your job back. You have a little girl to take care of. I'll talk to the director or the chief of staff or whoever I need to talk to. They'll fire that doctor and rehire you."

"Why? Because you'll tell them to? I don't need a witty mob boss to look out for me."

She found a fifteen-cent subway token and fed it into the turnstile, leaving him on the other side. The turnstile required tokens, the token booth was closed, and the subway had cost a nickel the last time Mulder rode it.

"Hey!" Mulder yelled. His voice echoed through the tunnel over the roar of the approaching train. "Nurse Scully?"

She thought he was witty.

He put a hand on his hat to keep it in place as the subway pushed a wave of warm air past him. "Hey! I'm not a mob boss!"

"Go to Hell, mister!"

"I'm a witty baseball player," he informed her as the doors of the subway car closed. He held up his right hand, showing her the heavy gold ring. "We won the World Series! For the ninth time!"

Mulder leaned over the turnstile and told the back of the subway train. "I was most valuable player three times! But I'm a humble about it!"

The train disappeared from view.

"Shit!" he said to no one in particular. A whole city full of easy, empty-headed, long-legged brunette models and actresses, and Mulder got hung up on one hardheaded, redheaded little nurse.

*~*~*~*

Nurse Scully better show up soon or she’d find a remorseful Mulder-shaped icicle on her doorstep. Mulder glanced up from his seat on the cement stoop and huddled deeper into his winter coat. A few minutes later, he heard footsteps approach and knew without looking it was her.

"Dear God. You don't understand 'no,' do you, mister?" said an unhappy female voice above him. He looked up. The streetlight behind Nurse Scully outlined her head with a halo-like glow.

"I'm not a mob boss. I-I brought your lipstick." His teeth chattered as he stood up and took off his hat. "I got your address from the hospital. I don't mean to bother you; I- I don't want you to lose your job because of me."

"No man drives all the way from the Bronx to Brooklyn Heights out of the goodness of his heart or to return a dime store lipstick, Mister-" She paused expectantly.

"Mulder. Fox Mulder.” He reached for the bags of groceries she held. He remained empty handed. “How did you know I drove?"

With her hands full, she cocked her head in the direction of his shiny, out-of-place black Cadillac wedged into a space far down the block.

"You should work for Hoover."

She looked at him tiredly as she shifted the bags. "Are you a murderer, a rapist, or a thief, Mr. Mulder?"

He shook his head.

"Married, insane, or a communist?"

Another shake. He took off his World Series ring and held it out.

She squinted at the heavy ring, with its intricate gold lettering and diamond. "So you are a witty mob boss?" she said with less malice.

"A humble ex-baseball player."

"Fine. You're a witty, humble, albeit rather quirky ex-baseball player who got me fired. Hold my groceries for a moment and we'll call it even." She maneuvered to give him two bulging brown paper sacks, and balanced the third sack on her hip as she opened the security door. She let him in, and didn't take the bags back.

Not sure what was happening or his role in it, Mulder followed her into the foyer. He ended up holding all three bags along with his hat while she went to the door of the first apartment and knocked softly. He overheard a brief exchange between Mrs. Scully and the old woman in curlers and a robe who answered. A small, sleeping girl in pink footie pajamas passed into Nurse Scully’s arms.

"Put the bags down," she said over the child's blonde head. "I'll get them. Thank you for going to such trouble, Mr. Mulder, but it wasn't necessary. I'm fine. We're fine. You can go."

"I'll carry them upstairs if you want. How could you manage three bags and her-" He nodded to the limp child, "-at the same time?"

"I've had some practice." She waited for him to move, but shrugged. "Fine. Suit yourself."

"Which floor do you live on?" he asked. They reached the third set of steps and she hadn't slowed her pace.

"The top. We have a view." The child stirred against her shoulder and blinked sleepily back at Mulder.

"So do I, but I have an elevator."  

"Well, the building has one. It's been stationary since last summer."

"That's a closet," he told her as they reached the next flight. "An elevator that doesn't move is a closet. Or, in Manhattan, a studio apartment."

She ran out of steps, stopped, and paused to catch her breath and reposition her daughter. Mulder's right knee began to protest. 

Nurse Scully must have difficulty keeping track of things in her purse, because she shifted the girl again and set her down on the mat to hunt for the key with both hands. After unlocking and putting her shoulder against the door to push it open, she herded her half-awake daughter inside the small apartment, pointed her down a hallway, and turned to Mulder to take the bags.

"Leave your door open and I'll carry them to the kitchen for you. I can see it from here."  

She glanced behind her at the racks of children's clothes and her own dresses hung up to dry in the living room, probably decided he'd seen laundry before, and held open the door for him.

He saw a nice apartment: small, but warm, homey. Fresh apples and pears in a bowl on the kitchen table. A child's artwork decorated the side of the refrigerator, and a calico cat slid through the door with him and jumped up on the sofa. Mulder set the groceries on the kitchen table. He tried to figure out another excuse, short of bleeding again, to hang around, when the little girl wandered in and began examining her mother's purchases.

"It's not morning yet, Em," her mother said. Nurse Scully had her head in the icebox as she rearranged the bundles of her waiting-to-be-ironed nurses' uniforms to make room for groceries. Mulder supposed yesterday had been washday.    

The girl stopped. She rubbed one hand against her cheek and scrutinized him so long it became unsettling. "I am Emily. I am four. Who are you?" she asked as she climbed up and stood on a kitchen chair to appraise him from a different angle.

"I'm Mr. Mulder," he replied cautiously, toying with his hat. "I'm thirty-eight."

"Are you a nice man?"

"I-I try to be." That was a subjective question.

She looked him up and down again, her eyes full of serious four-year old thoughts. "You may feed my cat."

Nurse Scully told Emily again it was still nighttime, but glanced at the kitchen clock, which ticked past five, and decided it wasn't worth the effort. "Dry food, honey. I didn't buy the tuna for the cat."

Emily rattled the box of food. The scruffy cat streaked into the kitchen and jumped up onto the table, meowing expectantly.

"You're trouble," Mrs. Scully informed the tomcat. "I only let you in because you're lost and I feel sorry for you."

"I'll take what I can get," Mulder said.

She looked at him tiredly, set a cracked bowl on the table, and poured cat food into it.

"Let me buy you breakfast," he asked as he helped pet Emily's cat. "Both of you. Aiello's will be open soon."

"Aiello's is on Coney Island." A crease appeared between her eyebrows. "It's barely morning."

"By the time we get there, they will be open." 

"I have a daughter," she said, as if he hadn't noticed.

"I have a son. They let children in the restaurant. Even my child. It's Coney Island; they let the Lobster Boy and the Bearded Lady in the restaurant." He watched her internal struggle play out across her face. "It's breakfast," he reminded her before she could decline. "I like you. I think you like me. I'm quirky and witty and not a mob boss, and I carried groceries up all those stairs. Let me buy you and your daughter breakfast with some circus freaks." He wrinkled his brow back at her. "I let you sew my skin up with steel wire and yank it out again. Do you make every man work this hard to get a date?"

She smiled - a genuine, wistful smile. "I have a four-year-old daughter, a full-time job, chronic sleep deprivation, no elevator, and I smell like vomit. Did you see a line of men outside my door?"

The calico cat paused between bites, watching them.

"I have no real job, an ex-wife who hates me, an uncoordinated son who currently acknowledges to me only during the hours designated by the court, and eight days of sobriety. I'll take what I can get," Mulder responded.

She thought another few seconds, but he sensed her answer. He grinned broadly. She flushed like a shy girl would.

"Since there’s no dissuading you, let's hear the pitch, Mr. Mulder," Her poise returned. "Tall, dark, handsome, and obsessive only gets you so far."

"Well, I'm not a mob boss. I-I-I did play baseball, but I retired. I'm, I'm divorced, with a teenage son. I have a captain’s dress uniform from World War II, and medals and nightmares to go with it." He paused to consider what else might be relevant. "On my best behavior, but not perfect. I think that's it. Not a thief, communist, or murderer."

She crossed her arms, focusing her gaze on him until he began to fidget. "An out-of-work, divorced, ex-baseball player?"

"A witty, handsome, out-of-work, divorced, ex-baseball player," he stipulated.

*~*~*~*

Mulder took the steps from the parking garage two at a time. He hurried down the corridor and through the double doors of the main office. Byers' pretty secretary was on the telephone but held one hand up for Mulder’s coat and hat. She waved Mulder on into Byers' office.  

"You're late," Richard Langly said tersely as Mulder burst through the office door. "We were about to start without you."

"Please feel free." Mulder settled into a leather chair and crossed his legs at the ankles. 

"Where have you been?" Frohike asked, as John Byers asked at the same time, "Did something happen?"

"I'm here," Mulder answered evenly. "Please proceed with the dissection of my life." He smelled the salt from the cold ocean spray on his clothes. His mouth still tasted of blueberries, pancake syrup, and coffee. He brushed his fingertips against the healing scar on his forehead, but lowered his hand self-consciously.

His agent, accountant, and attorney exchanged worried looks.

"I'm fine, boys," he said. "I was talking with someone, went for a walk, and lost track of time. Go ahead. I'm sure Byers is uneasy we're behind on his agenda. Heaven knows my life isn't interesting enough we need an agenda, but I know he has one."

Byers frowned. He did have an agenda typed up with mimeographed copies for everyone.

As a real estate attorney, John Byers sealed the deals that built Manhattan's skyline. Byers had a successful practice, an adoring wife, two daughters, a dog, a house with a yard, and a life Mulder envied. He was rigidly conservative, trim, and so clean-cut he squeaked. He parked a Studebaker station wagon with a luggage rack in the Senior Partner space, and always looked like he got a haircut that morning. He and Mulder served in the same Army battalion by chance, and only at Mulder's insistence did Byers now serve as his personal attorney. Byers did fine with meetings and trusts, but developed a facial twitch at a court hearing. Byers had grown a neatly-trimmed beard in the last month - a big leap for him, fashion-wise.

Melvin Frohike, on the other hand, was the antithesis of John Byers. He neared sixty: a dark, squat fellow who appeared in public unshaven and wearing clothing apparently randomly pulled from his closet. Frohike said his scruffiness kept the cameras focused on the baseball players he represented rather than on his handsome face. The strategy worked. Frohike reigned as the best sports agent in the business, but over the years became Mulder's friend as well. Frohike liked the ladies and reported an uncanny ability at charming his way into their good graces. He confided to Mulder once, after a few drinks, his sweetheart died during the 1918 flu epidemic while Frohike fought the Great War. He served in World War II as well, though Frohike was vague about his time in the Pacific. Frohike never married, and lived alone and eccentrically on the top floor of a warehouse downtown. He had his own jukebox, movie projector, and Coca-Cola cooler in his immense living room, and an unending supply of off-color jokes, broken junk, and conspiracy theories. William adored him.

Richard Langly, Mulder knew little about and thought it wise to remain ignorant. Langly wore an ill-fitting short-sleeved white shirt and black tie - the same shirt, with a mustard stain on the front pocket - and looked like he'd dressed up at his mother's insistence. He had thick, black-rimmed glasses, and kept his blond hair very short: again, as if his mother insisted he get a haircut. He worked from his tiny apartment rather than a firm, and shared Frohike’s vague but omnipresent paranoia. Mulder hired Langly at Frohike's recommendation; the two men shared a passion for all things paranoid and knew each other through dealings Mulder suspected weren't entirely legal.

The secretary entered Byers' office bearing a tray with coffee and a single cup of tea for Mulder. As she leaned down to serve him, Mulder whispered to her. She nodded before she moved away.

Most wives would object to a woman so attractive working for their husband. Susanne Byers, secure in the innate sensuality European women possessed, sent her Tupperware containers of homemade Polish crullers. John Byers, after a decade of marriage, remained so smitten with his wife he hired the secretary for her typing and shorthand skills, and wouldn't notice if an ear grew from her forehead.

"Item one: ex-wife," Byers said, his finger on his memo. "Phoebe wants your son for Christmas and says you can have him for New Year's."

"No," Mulder replied. "We have a schedule. He's with me for Christmas and Thanksgiving, and with Phoebe for New Years and Easter. William and I are going to Aspen with you at Christmas."

"I'll deal with it," Byers assured him. "Item two: Phoebe wants you to pay-"

Mulder interrupted. "We do this every time, Byers. I'm tired of Phoebe being items one through five on the memorandum of my life. As long as I get to see William whenever I want, pay whatever she wants."

Byers' secretary set down her tray and opened the liquor cabinet in the corner of the office. As she searched for something in the drawer, Mulder felt the men's eyes move from him to the cabinet and back. If they’d been in Frohike’s office, the cabinet would be fully stocked and have a full bucket of fresh ice at ten AM. The first shelf of Byers’ liquor cabinet had held the same bottle of Pappy Van Winkle bourbon for the past year – still inches from empty, the bottle of Glenmorangie Mulder gave Byers last Christmas, and the Nehi Root Beer Byers’ girls liked.

"Move on, fellows. Item three." Mulder held his tea but didn’t drink it. He uncrossed his ankles and flexed his right knee, which complained about all the stairs.

"Are you sure?" Frohike asked. "Calling a truce with Phoebe doesn't affect me, but Byers has those boat payments."

The secretary checked a few more drawers in the office before she shook her head at Mulder and slipped out of the room. Frohike's eyes followed her hips as she walked away.

"I paid cash for my boat. I do not have a boat payment, Mulder," Byers said earnestly.

"I know, Byers. I'm not willing to give her a blank check, but it shouldn't take three attorneys and four months to determine who pays for school pictures or summer camp. I have better things to do than fight with Phoebe Mulder about money. Langly, as long as it sounds reasonable and it's for William, pay what she wants."

Langly nodded once. "Done."

Frohike still looked skeptical. Byers wrinkled his forehead as he marked through multiple items on his agenda.

"You think I'm being chump?" Mulder asked Frohike, wanting an honest answer.

"Right up until this morning," Frohike answered.

The secretary entered the office smiling triumphantly. She held out a small foil package to Mulder: Rolaids. "My purse," she mouthed silently.

"You have an ex-wife and a teenage son?" Mulder whispered.

"Mother-in-law," she mouthed, and slipped out, closing the door silently.

"You've eaten, Mulder," Frohike said. "Your ulcer is acting up. You're telling us to give your ex-wife whatever she wants, you're sober, and you're eating again? And you've had your stitches out."

Byers stopped revising his agenda and looked up like a curious Irish Setter.

Mulder chewed three chalky tablets and washed them down with a sip of tea.

"I detect a lady in your life," Frohike speculated. "The ER nurse?"

Mulder shrugged and pursed his lips so he wouldn't smile.

"He's in love," Langly said, seeming disdainful.

"Well, it's about damn time." Frohike picked up his fountain pen. He gestured to Byers. "Is there still an item three, Byers?" 

*~*~*~*

Mulder got caught up in the game of street ball and sensed rather than saw Mrs. Scully watching as she approached. He helped Emily swing and sent her running for first base. Her over-sized boots posed an impediment. He was correct; Nurse Scully was an 'it's on sale, you'll grow into it' kind of mother.

From the window of the apartment building, her babysitter applauded. 

"You are like Emily's cat, Mr. Mulder," came a woman's voice from the sidewalk. "I let you in because you looked pitiful and now you keep showing up on my doorstep."  

He handed the bat off to one of the neighborhood boys, took off his hat, and walked to her eagerly. The sky moved from light to dark gray, and the wind felt icy.

"That's what happens when you feed them. Friday night - you said we could have dinner Friday night. It's Friday, it's almost night." He’d arrived at five in case her definition of 'night' was early. What Mulder lacked in tactfulness, he made up for in doggedness. “I-I would have called, but you don’t have a telephone.”

"At breakfast, I thought you meant next Friday." Nurse Scully folded her arms, and he felt a forehead crease coming on. "Two meals in one day? I don't know, Mr. Mulder."

He waited as her gaze shifted between him and her daughter, who waved from first base. He knew he meant next Friday too, but that seemed so far away. Mulder still hadn’t figured out what people did all day if they didn't drink, fight wars, or play baseball.

"I've been at work all afternoon. I'm not sure I'd be much fun this evening if I fall asleep with my nose in my soup."

"Did you go back to the hospital?" Mulder asked. She wore her white cap and the stiff hem of a nurses' uniform peeked out from underneath her winter coat.

"No. One of the agencies needed a private duty nurse. I called and they had a day job for me this weekend. I thought I'd better work now and sleep later. If I don't see Emily tonight, I won't see her again until Sunday. I didn't think you meant this Friday. Could I get a rain check?"

"Bring her."

She rubbed her temples. "Thank you, but no. And thank you for being nice to her, but she's never seen me date. We're used to our lives the way they are. I thought about it today, and I don't want men tramping in and out of her life. You and I can have dinner next week, if you still want to, but-"

"I want to." Mulder spoke so quickly his frosty breath didn't have time to dissipate in the cold air. He might be tramping into her life, but he had no plan to tramp out. "I thought about it today too, and I want to see you again. Tonight, and next Friday night, and as often as you'll let me. Pizza at Grimaldi's place tonight, Peter Luger's and 'South Pacific' on Saturday, or hot dogs and a walk in Central Park. You name it, but I want- I-I want. I want to see you."

The wind shifted, sending autumn leaves skittering across the pavement. She looked up at him. The tendrils of hair escaping her cap blew wildly around her face.

"It'll snow tonight,” he said. “Patsy Grimaldi has a 900-degree coal-fired oven. It takes one minute, forty-six seconds to bake a pie. It sure would be nice to get a table near that oven, order one of his pizza pies, talk about our day, and pretend we're normal for a few hours."

Despite the frigid wind, he felt a thaw.

"I like opera," she said. "I haven't been in years."

"Is there any other place on Earth I could take you on a date besides the opera?" he asked. "Take your time. Think hard."

She smiled at him enigmatically. A warm, fluttering glow formed in his belly and spread until his fingertips tingled.

"I must like you, Nurse Scully," Mulder said, which was the understatement of the century. He liked strawberry milkshakes; he couldn't remember the last time a woman's smile gave him butterflies. "Pizza pie and soda tonight, though. I have to work up to the opera."

"All right."

"All right," he echoed. "Gott wurfelt nicht."

"God does not play dice," she translated. "You know Mr. Einstein."

"Not personally, but I know fate is fate," he said.

"We aren't perfect, Mr. Mulder," she promised him. The season's first snowflakes landed on her eyelashes. "As you said this morning, it is complicated."

"I can live with complicated," he said.

*~*~*~*

The front desk at The Plaza took messages and put calls through to his apartment, but Mulder had a telephone in the living room, one in his bedroom, and a newly-installed phone in Will’s room. Dana Scully used Emily’s babysitter’s phone, so Mulder wasn’t supposed to call while Mrs. Osborne listened to “Guiding Light” or “Perry Mason” on the radio, or she watched “Search for Tomorrow” on her new television set.

Mulder consulted the broadcast schedule in the newspaper, and dialed the operator as soon as his wristwatch and Mrs. Osborne’s ‘stories’ permitted him.

"Mrs. Osborne, this is Fox Mulder. I got a message Mrs. Scully had called. May I speak to her please?"

"Of course. Let me get her, Mr. Mulder. She's about to burst if she doesn't tell you her news, so excuse her for being so forward," Emily's babysitter replied, as though women hadn’t begun to call men left and right these days.  

Mulder held the receiver away from his ear as Mrs. Osborne bellowed, "Dana!" out her apartment door loudly enough to carry up four floors.

As usual, he heard clicks as the other old ladies in her apartment building picked up their phones to listen on the party line. Mulder was, for reasons beyond him, “one of New York's most eligible bachelors”- an endorsement as deep as the society page printing it. Her neighbors seemed to conjure up mental images of a tuxedo-clad Mulder sipping champagne on a balcony in Paris rather than a blue jean-clad Mulder, alone in the corner suite at The Plaza Hotel he called home, wearing an old gray flannel shirt, drinking flat ginger ale he found in the refrigerator, playing the old records Will hated, and picking at the hole he discovered in his sock.

"She's coming, Mr. Mulder."

"Thank you."

He stretched out on the sofa and watched the snow began to blanket Central Park outside his living room window. Will's Hi-Fi played in the background with the vinyl 45's set aside and a stack of Mulder's old celluloid 78's loaded to drop and play one after another. Robert Johnson's smooth Delta blues rolled from the speaker, singing of a world far removed from Mulder's. Mulder’s parents' Colored maid, Rosa, introduced Mulder to 'race music,' as it was called in those days, and this was her favorite: “Kind Hearted Woman.” She gave him the record for his birthday, and Rosa told him a secret one night, while he was home from Oxford for the holidays. She'd 'knowed' Robert Johnson years back, and thought the song might be about her. Mulder remembered how Rosa said it with a Mona Lisa smile and a twinkle in her eyes. He realized how she had 'knowed' the mysterious bluesman some Mississippi night in her youth.

True or not, someday, Mulder had thought - the winter he had turned twenty-two - he wanted a woman to think back to some night with him and smile a secret smile years later.

"Mr. Mulder," Mrs. Scully’s voice said breathlessly. "Hello."

"Yeeesss, Nurse Scully." He let his head rest on the arm of the couch. "I understand you have news. We have an audience, though."

He heard guilty clicks as a couple of eves-droppers hung up, but their conversation continued to be shared with the majority of her Brooklyn neighbors.

"I got the job," she said. "In pediatrics. Regular day shift. No midnights and no weekends. I can be home for dinner every night."   

"That's wonderful," Mulder replied. "When do you start?"

"Monday. They want me Monday." She paused. Mulder heard her take a long, shaky breath. "Did you do this, Mr. Mulder? I don't have any experience with pediatrics. I'm a trauma nurse."

"You think they shouldn't have hired you?" he countered evasively.

“I don't understand why the hospital would even interview me. A well-paying job close to home falls in my lap? This has Fox Mulder-meddling written all over it."

Dana Scully was as independent a woman as he'd ever met. Too independent, he thought sometimes. He admitted, "My son had his tonsils out last year. His doctor is on staff at the hospital. Yes, I- I made a telephone call."

He waited for a response.

"Yes, I meddled," he admitted, picking at his sock again.

Another silence, so loud Mulder heard the traffic from Fifth Avenue far below him as he and everyone else listening in to their private neighborhood soap opera waited.

On Mulder’s Hi-Fi, Robert Johnson's fingers danced over guitar strings, coaxing music like nothing else on the planet. Legend said Johnson met the Devil at the crossroads and, in exchange for his soul, learned to play the blues like a man possessed. The story intrigued Mulder: a young bluesman emerged from Nowhere, Mississippi in 1936 and vanished as mysteriously in 1938 at the age of 27, leaving 29 tinny recordings and a legend behind. No photographs remained of Johnson, and no films. No wife, no children, no written records, no grave. Only the music.

"You don't owe me anything," Mulder said. "I called and got you the interview, but you got the job on your own merits."

He straightened the stack of books on the end table. The top two books were Will's – “Brave New World” and “Fahrenheit 451” - required reading for school. So far, William had read the sex parts of “Brave New World,” but skipped “Fahrenheit 451” and instead wheedled the plot out of his father. Beneath those was “Antwort auf Hiob” by Carl Jung, “Science and Human Behavior” by B.F. Skinner, and the new science fiction novel by Isaac Asimov. Mulder picked up “Brave New World,” fanning the corner of the pages with his thumb.

"Congratulations," Mulder said once he couldn't stand the silence on the telephone line anymore. "Nurse Scully?"

"You can't buy me, Mr. Mulder. Me or my daughter."

"I’m not trying to buy you," he responded. "I’m trying to get you a job where you're free to go on a date on Friday night."

Her neighbor's cuckoo clock announced the hour, and a teakettle and a husband got shushed while the neighborhood held its breath. From beyond the stars, Robert Johnson played on, singing to a woman he loved and left behind.

"Thank you," Mulder heard her say softly.   

*~*~*~*

Mulder lived in The Plaza Hotel. In a corner apartment with a terrace in a world-renowned hotel with a history of paranormal activity, but still in a hotel – something Phoebe’s attorney liked to point out. A valet parked his car, maids pressed his shirts, and his barber worked in the basement. The Oak Room at The Plaza was among the best restaurants in Manhattan. The Oak Room had an impressive and glitzy bar – though the pretty girl Mulder wanted to impress likely cared as much about glitz as she did about Mulder having his own baseball card.

Other people cared, though. Mulder walked into the restaurant with Mrs. Scully on his arm, and every head turned in the smoky, medieval atmosphere. In The Oak Room, New York's old-boys-club shaped history while their wives cast sideways glances and whispered over their cocktails.

If Mulder took Mrs. Scully and Emily out, fans saw ‘a family’ having hotdogs, and minded their manners. People stared or waved or asked for autographs, but nothing obnoxious. Without Emily, though… Mulder warned Dana Scully about reporters and photographers during their first “big grownup date,” as her daughter called it. He told her fans got star struck and forgot their manners. Talked about ‘Fox Mulder’ like he was a character on the radio. Mrs. Scully said she understood.

Mulder hadn’t factored in the rude old gentlemen who intruded on their dinner before the waiter even took their order. The man’s suit looked expensive, and he acted as if he owned the place - or, at least, owned more shares of stock in The Plaza than Mulder. The man planted himself beside their table with his lit cigarette a foot from Mrs. Scully’s face. She looked to Mulder to do something, and Mulder looked to the maître d'. The maître d' looked elsewhere.

"You had a great career, Mulder. I saw every homerun you ever hit at Yankee Stadium," the old man said. He patted Mulder on the shoulder with a fatherly air. "You hit 131 triples and 389 doubles in 6,820 at bats." He paused for a drag from his cigarette. Mrs. Scully leaned back as a cloud of smoke rolled across their table. "I remember that and I forget my wife's birthday these days. Yes, you had your moment in the sun. We're all proud."

Mulder managed a tight smile. It was 6,821 at-bats. Also, he didn’t enjoy being spoken of in the past tense, as though his life ended once he stepped off the ball field.

"Tough to keep up with those nineteen-year old kids, isn't it?" the man continued. Mulder received a few more sympathetic pats as he began to grit his teeth. "No one blames you. You're a legend, Mulder. You quit while you were ahead."

Mulder gritted his teeth harder. People at neighboring tables turned to watch. Mulder reminded himself of Frohike’s rule number 4 – don’t punch people – and raised his hand to signal the maître d'. 

The old man said, "Life goes on, though. It's good to see you have new interests." He gestured with his cigarette to Mrs. Scully. He said, "Lovely," the way soldiers appraised a prostitute, not the way gentleman complemented a lady. “Enjoy.”

Dana Scully flushed and stared at her lap. Rule number 4, Rule number 4, Mulder told himself.

"Excuse us..." Mulder’s chair squeaked back. He stood, picked up her drink, and offered Mrs. Scully his arm. He had no destination in mind except away.

"My apologies, Mr. Mulder; I didn't mean to intrude," the smoking man drawled, not looking the least bit apologetic. "Please, you and Miss Scully stay."

Mulder steered her toward the restaurant’s kitchen and kept walking. Once they stepped through the swinging doors, he stopped. Mulder gave her the martini glass. “Take this before I drink it or go back and throw it at him.”

Through the round window in one kitchen door, he saw the old man in the dining room stub out his cigarette in their unused ashtray. And sit down. People filled every seat in the The Oak Room; Mulder couldn’t request another table. 

Mrs. Scully stood in the Oak Room’s kitchen in an evening dress, holding her cocktail as griddles sizzled and pans flamed and waiters whizzed past with trays.

“Mulder,” the head chef called from a stove. He spoke with a Brooklyn rather than the French accent he usually affected. “Somebody hasslin’ you?”

Mulder nodded. A coach once accused Mulder of leading the league in room service. Now Mulder remembered why. He couldn’t recall the last ‘date’ he’d been on that Frohike hadn’t carefully orchestrated for the cameras.

The chef said, “My maître d' is a moron, but I can’t leave my Béarnaise sauce. You want somethin’ sent up?”

“No.” As much as Mulder longed to invite Mrs. Scully upstairs to order room service and watch television, nice boys didn’t do that with nice girls.

“Take the pretty lady in the back.” The chef waved a big spoon toward the employees’ break room. “I’ll tell your waiter.”

In the back room, the overhead light wasn’t even on. Mulder flipped the switch. A bare bulb lit the room, revealing battered card tables littered with old magazines, coffee cups, and ashtrays. Mulder occasionally wandered downstairs and ate with the kitchen staff, but he’d envisioned this evening going differently.

“Impressed yet?” he asked Mrs. Scully.

To his surprise, she chuckled. “At you not punching him? Yes. How do you stand that?”

He shrugged. “I used to drink.”

Waiters and busboys hurried past them, into the room. With superhuman speed, the overflowing ashtrays disappeared and the tables got cleared. One waiter unfurled a white tablecloth; another laid out china plates and silver utensils. Since the choices were finding another restaurant – at six on a Saturday night in Manhattan, or going hungry, or sitting down – Mulder pulled out a folding metal chair for Mrs. Scully.

The head chef brought a bud vase containing a single white rose. “You’re gonna give this chump a chance, pretty lady,” the chef said. “He’s the last of the true gentlemen ballplayers. Give him a chance, and I’m gonna make you a dinner to die for.”

She nodded and blushed again. Once they were alone, Mulder watched as she tried to arrange her black dress so it didn’t touch the dirty floor.

"I am sorry," Mulder said. "People they don't think about what they're saying."

“I think that man knew exactly what he was saying,” she answered. “Who does he think he is? Doesn’t he realize you can hear him? You’re a human being, not a stud horse?”

Mulder studied his place setting.

Nurse Scully picked up her martini. She contemplated it before she asked, “How much do you think this drink cost?”

“A dollar?” Mulder guessed. He got a detailed invoice every month, but his Scotch generally got billed by the bottle. “A buck-fifty?”

Without comment, she raised the glass to her lips, tipped her head back, and emptied it like a woman who grew up around sailors. Mrs. Scully showed him remaining the olive and said, “Now I’m willing to throw it at him.”

She moved as if stand. Mulder thought she was joking, but he took her hand and pulled her back down. “This is The Plaza, Nurse Scully. We don’t throw drinks at people here; we slip our waiter a five to accidentally spill a drink on him.”

“He was awful to you, and he looked at me like I’m for sale by the pound. Make it a sawbuck and a bowl of mustard in his lap, Mr. Last-of-the-Gentlemen-Ballplayers. A big bowl.” 

“Done,” Mulder promised. He still held her hand. Her blue eyes twinkled mischievously. “I-I could get the valet to tell us which car he’s driving. We could flatten his tires,” Mulder offered. “Steal his hubcaps. Finish our fancy dinner with vandalism and petty larceny before the opera.”

“No, this is our big night out,” Nurse Scully reminded him. “I got eight hours of sleep last night, and I washed my hair this afternoon. I bought a new lipstick. New stockings. Em said I’m the prettiest mommy ever.”

“Emily has brilliant powers of observation.” Her hand felt small in his. He noticed the curves of her upper lip and the contrast of the dark lipstick against her pale skin.

She moistened her lips and leaned toward him. “Mulder, stop being such a gentleman and kiss me.”

“I-I- Okay,” Mulder stuttered before he kissed her. Kissed her back. Her lips felt warm, but her mouth and tongue cool. She tasted of expensive gin. His chair didn’t move, but he heard hers shift against the floor. Her hand touched his face and her fingertips stroked his cheekbone.

Normally, Mulder remembered details to the point Frohike called him “Spooky.” However, if Mulder’s had life depended on it, he couldn't recall what they ate for dinner or recount the plot of the opera they arrived late for, or even what language the performance was in.

He knew he had lipstick on his tuxedo collar and two ticket stubs in his trouser pocket after he dropped Dana off at her apartment that night.

For the rest of his life though, Mulder remembered the softness of her lips and the warmth of her hand and how her skin smelled. He remembered the outline of her shoulders and the hollow of her neck and how her face changed as he watched her watch the stage. She was magical. She was Christmas morning and the top of a roller coaster and new socks right from the store. Butterflies in his stomach and a soft wool blanket on a cold night.

Fate was fate. He bought opera tickets for the rest of the season.

*~*~*~*

William started Packer Collegiate Institute in second grade, when the judge granted the divorce but ordered Phoebe to live in New York rather than London between September and June. After William’s first month in school, his teacher asked for a meeting and - though surprised to see Mulder - told them tactfully Will didn’t read as well as the other students. Phoebe hadn't seemed concerned, but Mulder was. He hadn't realized their seven-year-old son couldn't read.

Mulder never set out to be a stranger to his son. But Mulder had to work, and Phoebe left, and baseball, and the war... And so he was.

"If it bothers you so much, you sort it out, Fox," Phoebe had informed him later that morning, years ago, as she left Mulder’s bedroom. Phoebe felt her conjugal rights continued despite the dissolution of their marriage, and Mulder hadn't yet figured out that was a bad, bad idea. She’d told him crisply, "If you're so keen to be a father, instead of criticizing me, you take care of something for once."

So Mulder had. Every Saturday during the school year, they read. At the public library, in Central Park, and curled up on the sofa in Mulder's old apartment: "Tom Sawyer" and "Huckleberry Finn" and "Gulliver's Travels" and "The Jungle Book." He called Will after dinner every night, even game nights, even trans-Atlantic in the summertime, and Mulder read his copy of the book aloud while Will read along in his.

"Where are you, Daddy?" a little voice with a British accent would ask. "Which state?"

"Missouri," Mulder answered, and waited. He'd bought William a map of the United States to put in his bedroom at his mother's apartment, and Will would move a thumbtack to wherever his father played. "M-I-S-S-O-U-R-I," Mulder spelled out. "Not Mississippi; look for the R toward the end.  Missouri."

Mulder sat in the visiting team's locker room, dressed and warmed up for the game. He kept a picture of Will taped inside his locker: a dark-haired little boy with both upper front teeth missing and a sweet grin. No one else. Just Will.

"It's in the middle, I think. Above Texas. Beside all those square states," Mulder said after a moment. Directions weren't Mulder's strong suit, but he could picture the map in his head. "Do you see St. Louis? That's where I am."

"Oh," Will responded, finding it. "Is the sky gray there?"

"No. It's daylight outside, and it's not raining."

As a small boy, Will was fascinate Mulder could be someplace with a different time of day or different weather, yet a voice over the long-distance line.

"Missouri is gray on the map."

"No. The sky is blue unless it's raining. What color is New York on your map?"

"Blue, of course," Will answered as if Mulder was dim. "The sky is blue in New York."

"I promise the Missouri sky is not gray. Remember the river Huck Finn was on? The Mississippi river runs through St. Louis, Missouri. There's a zoo. Would you and Nanny Marie like to fly on an airplane, see the city with me, and come to the game on Saturday night?"

"I would, yes," Will said excitedly. "I'll bring my new baseball glove."

"All right. I'll have Mr. Byers call Mommy's lawyer. Do you have your book?"

That was Mulder’s first season playing since the war, but he batted .305. He had 102 hits so far, no errors, and 35 homeruns. If he wanted to tie up the locker room phone reading to his son, no one would stop him. The men would smirk behind his back, but they wouldn't stop him.

Mulder and Will had been reading “Journey to the Center of the Earth” that evening. Page 54. 

Mulder read while the rest of the team got ready for the game around him, rough-housing and joking. He read while the locker room quieted and emptied. He had his hat and glove tucked under his arm; all he had to do was walk out onto the field as the players were introduced. Eventually, at the last possible minute, an assistant coach signaled him.

"Daddy's gotta go to work, baby boy," he told Will. "You can listen on your radio, if you want."

"All right. Good luck, Daddy. Hit a homer," Will would tell him. William had loved American slang.

Mulder would mark his place in the novel, put on his cap, and go play baseball for the New York Yankees.

*~*~*~*

The handsome teenager who emerged from Packer, looked twice, and grinned around a mouthful of braces barely qualified as a boy anymore. Will had his mother's dark brown eyes, his father's quick wit, and neither of their athletic ability. William neared fifteen, and they’d had a lesson about shaving. A talk about where babies came from. A talk about girls. Will was a charmer; Mulder had given several lectures about nice girls and not nice girls.

"Father, dearest," William called sarcastically as he approached the car.

"Hello, baby boy," Mulder responded, smiling. "Want a lift?"

Will answered by tossing his book bag into the back seat, getting in, and slamming the passenger-side door so hard the window rattled.

"I'll take that as a 'yes.' How was your day?"

"Hiya yourself, Daddy-O," Will said more warmly. "Nice of you to make the scene, but Mother Dearest will be wicked frosted."

"Parles-tu anglais? S'il-tu plait?"

"Hello, Father. I am pleased to see you." Now Will spoke as if he narrated some British educational film. "Does Mother know you're here, because there will be trouble otherwise?"

"I wanted to talk to you. Byers called your mother. They worked something out, and she said I could pick you up today."

Mulder glanced in the rearview mirror and eased the car back onto the street. He drove slowly as children drifted out of the school and into waiting town cars and limousines.

"Mother's already wicked frosted," Will confessed. "Seeing me today cost you what? Blood?"

"You're worth blood," Mulder answered easily. "Do you want to get a milkshake?"

"I fancy something hot. There's the diner near the bridge."

"Whatever you want. How was your day?"

"Beastly. The whole month has been beastly." Will fiddled with the radio until he found a station he liked and Mulder didn't despise. "Beastly," he repeated, and settled back into the passenger seat. "And no, I don't care to tell you about it."

After a few minutes, they reached a quiet neighborhood of well-kept brownstones, their window boxes empty and the trees lining the street left bare by winter. William stared out the window as Mulder drove. "I'm about to run out of Brooklyn and into the East River, Will," Mulder mentioned, and his son pointed for him to turn right.

"Did you want to talk with me about why you had to marry Mother?" Will sounded carefully disinterested. "Why you left university to play baseball? Is that what you wanted to talk about, because I have been informed."

"No, that wasn't it," Mulder responded tightly. "But thank your mother for sharing that with our fourteen-year-old son."

"Almost fifteen." Will smiled the same tight smile as his father. "Mother Dearest has been on a rant. Safe to say, you shouldn't consider her one of your fans."

"Beastly," Mulder agreed.

Out of the blue, William ordered, "Honk the horn; I know this girl!"

Mulder felt his ulcer awaken as William leaned out the car window to flirt at the stoplight. Trying not to be perverse, Mulder checked his son's interest out of the corner of his eye: tall, buxom, brunette, seventeen, and bright as a burnt-out light bulb. Will had a type, and the type weighted heavily on a father's mind.

"William, sit down and roll up the window, please."

The boy threw himself down on the seat, sprawling long legs and big feet he hadn't quite grown into. He turned up the car's heater and commandeered the rearview mirror to check his hair. "Mother Dearest said to tell you she's taking me to London this summer. She says I can't stay with you for three months because you're an incompetent bum."

The incompetent bum who'd paid her bills since the late 1930's. Mulder turned the rearview mirror back to its proper position. "What are you supposed to say if she tells you to tell me things, Will?"

"To call you or Mr. Byers, and not to put me in the middle of the discussion." He made his 'this is stupid' face. "I don't listen to her. It's the same speech."

"We both love you."

"I am infinitely lovable," William agreed. "Inform the press."

Mulder exhaled through his nose. "Where is this diner? You did mean near the Brooklyn Bridge, didn't you, Will?"

William pointed left. Mulder turned the corner, and spotted the diner's awning down the block. Will was right; they had been there before.

"I don't have to go, do I?" William sounded carefully casual again. "I hate that priggish summer camp. Did you change your mind about me staying with you? I won't be any trouble."

Mulder inhaled a deep breath, keeping his temper in check. For the first summer in fourteen years, he wasn’t playing baseball or in the middle of a war, killing people. Of course Phoebe wanted to argue with Mulder about spending three months with their son, who she didn't spend time with, anyway. "You're staying with me, Will. This summer, I am unemployed and the world is our oyster."

"Good," his son responded, sounding relieved.

"Since she told you, if you want to ask me about your mother and me getting married - or divorced - I'll answer you. But I'd rather not, Will. No, we didn't make the best decisions and no, she and I didn't end in happily ever after, but I wanted you from the moment I knew about you, and I did whatever I needed to do to take care of you. I wouldn't take one moment of that back."

Will's calculated facade faded for a moment but returned. "That is disgustingly sweet," he pronounced haughtily. "Park here."

"It is," Mulder agreed.

*~*~*~*

"You're not to be drinking coffee," William informed him.

"I'm not drinking it; I'm smelling it." Mulder put the cup of coffee down to sign autographs for three teenage girls while Will rolled his eyes, looking like his mother. "Who was the girl on the corner? She seemed, uh, interesting."

"Why did you want to speak with me?" The boy poured so much sugar into his coffee Mulder grimaced. Will wanted to appear he enjoyed drinking coffee more than he actually enjoyed drinking coffee. "The woman in the newspaper pictures with you? Dana Scully. When did you become keen on opera?"

After the girls left, Mulder added more cream to his own cup. Even if he couldn't drink it, he liked having his coffee flavored correctly. "I hate opera; I like Dana and Dana likes opera. I'd like you to meet her, Will. And-" He swallowed. "I want to ask her to come to the Byers' house in Aspen for Christmas. So, yes, I want to talk with you about Dana Scully."

"You're serious about her?" 

Mulder focused on thoroughly stirring his coffee. "I'm serious."

"Would you marry her?"

"I like her much, and I think you'll like her too, but we haven't been dating long. She doesn't ski, though."

As if it was the next logical question, in the same falsely casual tone, the boy asked, “Is she expecting a baby?”

“No,” Mulder said. “No. It’s not like that, Will.”

"The paper says you've been seeing her a few months."

When Will was nine, Mulder moved close enough to Phoebe's building Will could ride his bicycle between their apartments. Saturday was their day together but, except for random weeks Phoebe wanted to fight about it, Mulder saw his son far more. Before Halloween, Will showed up at The Plaza if he needed help with homework or got lonely or hungry or bored or excited about something. Will had a private telephone line in his bedroom and Mulder paid the bill; his son could call him anywhere at any time. But, in the last six weeks, he rarely had. If Will did appear, he had a pack of teenage boys with him - all needing haircuts and all wearing leather jackets, denim jeans, and shirts in colors that should banned. His son suddenly had more friends at fourteen than Mulder had in his entire life, and was far too busy to speak to his father. William spent last Saturday letting his father buy him things and feed him and his hooligan buddies. The rest of the time Will seldom called, and he hadn't appeared in Mulder's apartment once. There was a deafening silence.

"We don't need to keep track of each other through the society page." Mulder tapped his spoon harder than necessary on the rim of his mug. The soda jerk appeared, apparently thinking Mulder wanted something. "You could stop by, you know. You do have a bedroom at my apartment. You could call or answer the telephone when I call you. We could talk to each other. I had to pick you up from school in order to see you alone and awake. I don't want to involve you until I'm serious about a woman, but I'm not the one doing the avoiding, Will."

Will stirred his coffee and didn't look up.

"I'm sorry, William," Mulder said quietly, once the counter boy left. "I had too much to drink, made a bad decision, and I never dreamed you'd show up."

"I should have knocked."

"You have a key, and she shouldn't have been in my apartment in the first place." It was the first time since that October afternoon either of them had mentioned it.

"Was she... The woman asleep with you- Was she Dana Scully?"

"No. No, she wasn't.”

“Dad, you have to be careful,” William advised him. 

Mulder couldn’t remember the young woman’s last name, let alone whether he’d been careful. Instead, he told his son, “Dana was the nurse at Our Lady of Mercy Hospital who patched up my head that night. Dana's a nice lady, Will. You won't see the other woman again. Her or anyone like her. Show up any time you like. I'll be sober and I'll be alone. Bet on it."

Will still stirred and considered.

"I miss talking with you," Mulder said honestly. "I don't know what you've had for dinner or what your homework is or if you hate your math teacher or you asked Judy Monroe to the dance. Are you still in love with Byers' secretary? I don't know."

"My love for Mr. Byers' secretary is eternal," Will insisted.

"I'm sure it is." Mulder lifted his mug and smelled the warm, rich brew. "I am sorry, Will," he said from behind his cup.

"Mother makes it-" William stopped. "I'm not a child. She was pretty, and you were... you'd had too much to drink," his son amended, though he'd formed his lips to say 'pissed.' "It was a mistake, and everyone makes mistakes." Will stirred his coffee again, watching the liquid swirl. "It's difficult to ring from Mother's flat, if she's there."

"Because I'm seeing Dana?"

Will nodded. 

Phoebe probably had plenty to say about Dana, but that wasn't the whole truth. Phoebe was seldom home to know what Will did and, as long as he was safe and happy, her housekeeper let Will do whatever he wanted. Which, previously, was to come see Mulder. "What about you, son? Are you upset I've been seeing someone? Or is it I've been seeing someone and didn't tell you?"

Will's cup of coffee got fully, thoughtfully stirred.

Mulder took a white bundle from his coat pocket and set it on the table. Will watched as Mulder folded back the clean handkerchief to reveal four delicate cookies stolen from the Bergdorf Goodman ladies’ dressing room: two mint green and two cream-colored with blue sugar crystals. "I'm telling you now, Will, and I'm telling you you'll like Dana."

Will tried a cookie. "Nice. Not what I expected, but nice. Did you buy a dress, or is Dana Scully is responsible for these biscuits?"

"I bought three dresses, but Dana's responsible for the cookies." He wished Will would stop referring to Dana by her full name and sounding as if he thought it might be an alias. "I bet they're stale. They're from Friday night, while you were at the movies. I wanted to give them to you this weekend, but you were busy with your friends and I didn’t have enough to share."

Will considered as he reached for a second cookie.

"Dana's not going to be what you're expecting, either."

His son didn't respond, so Mulder waited and tried not to fidget.

After a long pause, Will asked lightly, "So tell me what isn't in the papers about Dana Scully?"

"Well, she has auburn hair. You can't tell in black and white. Neither of us could tell anyway, but she does. She had a relative who was a magician. She can do some sleight of hand – hence the stolen cookies." He stirred his coffee again, trying to gauge the boy's reaction. "She has a daughter named 'Emily.' We've been keeping that out of the papers." 

Will nodded. His father placed one restriction on the press; Mulder did not allow photographs of his son or reporters hounding William. A reporter or photographer who forgot didn't stay employed long. "I would have a step-sister." Will said it as a fact, not a question. "How old?"

"Four. Emily just turned four. You'll meet her?" Mulder asked, and Will didn't answer. "This weekend?"

"Dana Scully's a widow?"

“I know her husband was an Army doctor in Korea, but she’s never said how he died. She doesn’t like to talk about it. I think Dana and Emily have been alone a long time, though."

"All right; I'll think about meeting her," Will conceded.

"Will you think about being nice to her, as well?"

William tipped his head back and forth noncommittally.

"And Aspen?"

"You are real gone," William said.

"What does that mean?"

Will grinned as he teased, "Father likes a girl."

Mulder sloshed coffee over the side of the mug. "Father does like a girl, Will. I really like this girl."

"Oh, bring her, Daddy-O. Bring them. We need more people who don't ski on a ski holiday."

*~*~*~*

"This can't possibly be the most interesting thing happening in New York City today," Mulder told the photographer poised a dozen feet away. "Spencer Tracy? Steve Allen? Yogi Berra? What's Berra doing today? He's always interesting."

Mulder had parked outside the hospital's employee entrance, waiting for Dana to finish her shift so he could surprise her. Several nurses exited. He'd gotten out of his car, buttoned up his coat, and leaned against the Cadillac's fender to make sure she noticed him.

The photographer appeared a few minutes ago and seemed determined to wait. "It's a public sidewalk. I got three sons to put through school, Mulder," he replied, shivering.

"I hope you freeze." Mulder pulled his hat lower on his forehead.

The door opened, and the photographer raised the camera, but lowered it. Mulder didn't move toward any of the women. Mulder gave him an unhappy look, and so at first didn't see the door swing open and Dana emerge alone. He planned on getting in front of her, but the photographer got there first and exploded a flashbulb a few feet from Dana Scully's face.

Dana flinched back, shielding her eyes.

"No," Mulder told the photographer sternly, going to Dana. "Back away."

"Mulder?" Dana still had one hand in the air to protect herself. "What's going on?"

"I'm giving you a ride home, and the AP has decided that's newsworthy."

The photographer backed away but raised the camera again as Mulder took her hand.

"No," Mulder repeated, stepping in front of Dana. "You're frightening her. Back off or find another job."

The camera lowered and the man apologized.

Dana exhaled. Still seeming shaken, she let go of Mulder’s hand to put on her gloves and wrap a scarf around her neck. A half-dozen other nurses also left the hospital, blocking the shot of Dana and Mulder. "That is unpleasant," she said.

"I know. I'm sorry. Let's get out of here."

She nodded and stepped forward to kiss him.

Mulder shook his head. "Wait."

He opened the passenger door for her and, after she was in, closed it, gave the photographer a last resentful look, and got in the driver's side. Mulder started the car, turned the heater up, and pulled away, leaving the AP photographer standing dejectedly on the sidewalk.

A few blocks later, Mulder stopped the car under the awning of a hotel, waved the valet away, and turned to Dana. "Now kiss me," he offered, and she did, lightly, seeming distracted.

Once they were on the road again, he said, "I've found a new career."

"Have you?"

He held her hand as he drove, his right and her left gloved hand resting on the center of the front seat. "I've decided I'm a chauffeur. I bumped into my agent at the bank and drove him uptown. I picked up Will after school, fed him, and drove him back to the city. Now I'm back in Brooklyn for you. I crisscross the island all day long, picking the people up and dropping the people off. I'm good at it. Haven't gotten lost once."

"You do seem to have a talent," she said, as if supplying a line.

"I can drive a truck, too," he said, but she didn't answer. "I am sorry about the photographer."

"I didn't sleep well, and he caught me off-guard. Does, does that happen often? When you're not expecting them?"

"It happens. I've told them my picture is on a Wheaties box and they don't need any more photos of me, but the photographers keep showing up."

"You are New York's most eligible bachelor."

"You've been reading the society page," Mulder responded, embarrassed.

"I read one." Dana turned toward him, tilting her head. "Are you on a Wheaties box?"

"Sadly, yes I am for a few more months," he admitted. "I don't like it, but the notoriety came with the job. Reporters take photos. People walk up and talk to me like they-"

"How do you know the smoking man? The man in The Oak Room that night, and who watched us last Friday?"

Everyone smoked, but Mulder knew which man she meant. "I don't know him. I thought you did."

"I don't think I do. I'm not sure," she responded.

They reached her neighborhood, and Mulder started to look for a parking space. Dana sat quietly and held his hand. She looked through the windshield without seeing anything, the same way Will had.

"The photographer upset you," he commented, sensing her uneasiness.

She smiled quickly and hollowly. "I had a long day."

"That seems to be going around. Is there anything I can do to improve it? Dinner? Pick up Emily and go for a drive?"

"I think I- I want to go home."

"I'm working on it." Mulder started a second lap around the block.

She worried her thumb against his hand for a while, and asked in a neutral tone that would have made Will proud, "What do you think about female doctors?"

"Why? Is there one at the hospital?"

"No."

"Why do you ask?"

"I'm just asking," she said. "Do you think women can be doctors?"

"Obviously, they can." Mulder wrinkled his forehead. "Is this one of those conversations where I end up sounding hopelessly old-fashioned? Because I've done that once today."

"I'm just asking," she repeated, her voice tinged with irritability.

He shrugged one shoulder. "If that's what she wants to do with her life instead of marrying and having a family, I don't see any harm in it. As a man, I wouldn't want a woman as my doctor, but I think some women would." He thought a moment. "Although male doctors deliver babies. It would definitely take some getting used to. In an emergency, though – if I'm sick or pain, I suppose I don't care if my doctor wears a skirt or trousers." That hadn't been the right answer, so he added, "There are lady doctors overseas. In England, especially. There was a lady surgeon at the field hospital. I remember seeing her. And, I was treated by some Army nurses in Italy who might as well have been doctors."

"You were wounded?"

Mulder let go of the steering wheel to gesture to his leg, above the knee. "A mortar in Sicily. There's still a scar."

"You were in Italy initially."

"I was. But I was back in action by D-Day."

She nodded. "Then France, then Germany," she said, repeating what he told her last month. "That was the worst of the fighting in Europe. You were drafted?"

"I enlisted," he answered succinctly.

"You were a baseball player. No exhibition games for the Army?"

"A couple during basic training and OCS. None once I hit Europe. Turns out, I have a talent for being a soldier as well as hitting a baseball and driving a truck," he said glibly. "So, I suppose mercenary would be a third career option."

Dana looked out the window again. "You don't like to talk about the war."

"No." Mulder worried his lower lip with his teeth. "There's the scar on my leg that shows, but others that don't show." He paused. "My mother's a Jew. Her family was in Germany when Hitler was elected. My grandmother, my aunt and her daughter - they were sent to one of the concentration camps." That was as much as he'd told anyone, even Byers. "My cousin was young, blonde, pretty. My aunt was a little older than I am now. Safta Fuch - my grandmother Fox... The Nazis burned the files, so no one will ever know what happened in the camp, but no one survived. Not my family, and not the guards. No, I don't like to talk about it."

She nodded silently. "My father and one of my brothers died in Pearl Harbor. Bill, my other brother, went ashore on leave that day. Dad and Charlie: their caskets came home with flags over them like it was an honor to have been in the wrong place at the wrong time."

After a few seconds, Mulder responded. "The Army has bulldozers. If thousands of bodies need to be buried, they call in a bulldozer and dig a mass grave. I could hear the bulldozer approaching as we left the death camp."

A memory flashed: the endless piles of gaunt, nude female corpses. The guard dogs snarling and barking inside their pen. Seeing a blonde head among the bodies, and just knowing. Looking down at his cousin Ayla’s skeletal shoulders and pregnant belly. And his aunt. And his grandmother. They’d died huddled together, trapped, in the dark. Mulder recalled turning toward the handful of young Nazi soldiers who’d surrendered the camp. The German officers had fled, but the guards remained. Mulder remembered reaching for his rifle.

Her hand squeezed his sympathetically. He pushed the cold rage to the back of his brain where it belonged. Mulder pulled her closer, interlaced their fingers, and rested his hand on his leg, over the old scar. He shouldn’t have her so close, but it felt comforting and she didn’t tell him to stop.

"Let's find another topic," he suggested.

She nodded in agreement. At the stop sign, he turned right and tried a new block in search of a parking space.

"If you won't let me take you out, what if I take Emily for ice cream and let you sleep a few hours?" he offered. "Fourteen years, and Will's still alive. He's even speaking to me today. I think I could amuse Emily for an evening."

"You're not responsible for my daughter, Mulder."

He bit his lip again. He wouldn't mind being responsible for her daughter or having her be responsible for Will.

"Thank you for picking me up," she said absently.

"You're welcome. Dana-"

"I told you it would be complicated - you and I seeing each other," she said. "I think that was an understatement."

He felt his stomach flip-flop. Something was wrong but he didn't know what. "I don't think it's impossibly complicated. It shouldn't be."

"No, it shouldn't be."

Mulder thought she would say something else, but she didn't.

"I talked with William today. He's excited to meet you and Emily," Mulder said, stretching the truth. "If it stays this cold, we could go ice skating on Saturday. Do you skate?"

"Not the last time I tried."

"And you don't ski at all?"

"No." She squeezed his hand. "Maybe you should take that Wheaties box and impress an athletic girl before we go any further," she said as if she teased him, though he didn't think she did. She looked down at their entwined fingers resting on his thigh. "Before it gets any more complicated."

"No, thank you. I don't like girls who can be impressed by Wheaties boxes and Cadillac ads. I like you - stubborn, enigmatic, skeptical, wonderful little thing you are."

He gave up on a parking space within a mile of her door and stopped the car in the street at the entrance to her apartment building. Emily watched from her babysitter's front window. The little girl waved with one hand as she held her stuffed Kitty with the other. Mulder waved back, shifted the car to park, and turned his attention to Dana. "How is it going to get more complicated?" he asked her quietly. "It's not you meeting Will. You'll like Will and he'll like you. What's wrong?"

She hadn't slept, and something bothered her - something besides the photographer, and something besides talking about the war or having her hand on his leg - but he couldn't fathom what.

"I don't expect love to be easy, but it shouldn't be impossible," he said, helping her stare through the windshield. "When it's real, it might be the hardest thing in the world, but it shouldn't be impossible."

"No, it shouldn't be."

"There will be photographers and reporters and rude fans. People will interrupt us at dinner. They will say unkind things. Professional men will talk to me like I'm dim. You're younger than I am and you're beautiful; society will assume things about your morals and motives that aren't true. I have a child, you have a child. I have an ex-wife we haven't even touched on yet." Mulder laid it on the line. "I've made mistakes; probably, so have you. Some of those mistakes still haunt me. You had a life before you met me, and I had a life before I met you. But I like my life better with you in it."

"So do I," was all Dana said, but Mulder knew she meant it.

*~*~*~*

Staying with the Byers family meant an explosion of domesticity neither Mulder nor Will knew what to do with. There were people in the kitchen and children running in and out of the house and a wait for the bathroom. In Mulder’s New York life, restaurants produced food, maids cleaned his apartment and clothing, and Mulder could sleep on the sofa in front of the television set anytime he liked. If William stayed at The Plaza, Mulder slept in the bed, shared the television set, and remembered not to run around in his shorts.

Susanne was a good hostess, and went out of her way to make Dana and Emily feel welcome. Mulder suspected Susanne was playing matchmaker, though Dana flying across the country to spend Christmas with him seemed a clue Dana liked him. After lunch, Susanne had rounded up her husband and all the willing children - which were Emily and the Byers' twins - and headed to the ski slopes. That left Mulder and Dana alone in the house with Will to keep them company. William kept them company by slouching on one of the beds in his and Mulder's room, listening to his records, and rereading the sex parts of “Brave New World.” “Fahrenheit 451,” to be read by the beginning of the spring term, remained untouched.

"Why do you go on ski vacations if neither of you ski?" Dana asked Mulder curiously, as he returned to the living room. They'd found half a bottle of leftover wine in the refrigerator, and Dana sipped her way through a second glass.

"I can ski, but it's painful. William can ski; he finds it beneath him at the moment."

From a room down the hall, William called haughtily, "I can hear you!"

"I don't know how over that music," Mulder called back, and Dana laughed.

Mulder tugged self-consciously at his borrowed black turtleneck as he returned to his place on the couch beside her. William had insisted Mulder couldn't wear an undershirt with it, and Mulder felt half-naked.

Dana shifted comfortably as he wrapped an arm around her shoulders. In Mulder and William's room, the Hi-Fi played a Nat King Cole record. The fireplace crackled. A candle burned on the end table, smelling of vanilla. The Christmas tree lights twinkled. Mulder sipped his tea and envied her wine.

"What's with the snappy new outfit?" she asked.  

"It's Will's. I wanted something warmer. He called my sweater 'square' and said this makes me look like a beatnik." Mulder tilted his head to whisper in her ear. "I don't know what a beatnik is, except it's the opposite of square." He drew out the last word as he outlined the shape in the air as his son had a moment ago.

"Maybe it's a good thing."

"I've never shared a room with William," he confided to her quietly. "Not since he was an infant. He has his own bedroom at my apartment, of course, and I get adjoining hotel rooms when we travel. Here, I sleep in the room you're in. Now I have Tony Bennett and Dean Martin permanently etched into my brain, taking up space reserved for Ella Fitzgerald." William brought his 45's to Aspen and had been playing his Hi-Fi at top volume for the non-skiers for the last two hours. "I like him better without the music."

"You're not bunking with Emily and me, Mister."

"I wasn't presuming. I'm saying I love him, but if he keeps playing the same five records over and over, by tonight that Hi-Fi may meet with a tragic end.

She leaned toward the fireplace, retrieved a heavy brass poker, and pretended to hand it to him. "Go in soldier; I'll cover you."

"That would make me a bad father."

"It probably would." Her eyes danced mischievously as she replaced the poker on the rack. "I sabotaged my daughter's Bouncy Bee buzzing pull-along toy," Dana confessed. "It was Emily's favorite. She pulled it everywhere, and it bounced and buzzed. And buzzed. All day long for months, until I began to hate Mr. Bee. One afternoon during Emily’s nap, I performed a complete buzzer-ectomy on Mr. Bee and told Em his buzzer broke. Which it did, as I put it on the sidewalk and smashed it with a hammer."

He snorted in amusement as she paused for a sip of wine.

"She pulled Mr. Bee around after his surgery, but she left him for stuffed Kitty."

"You are devious."

"We both made it to her third birthday. Mr. Bee was not so fortunate."

"Hum. It would be unfortunate if the needle in that record player broke and I was able to sleep tonight. He doesn't have a spare needle and I can't imagine where we would find another one with the stores closed for the holiday."

She nodded her approval, and Mulder chuckled.

"Or there's the hammer option." He leaned closer. He pressed his lips to hers and placed a series of kisses down her jaw in time with the music. She tilted her head back, giving him access to her pale throat. "You are tipsy," he whispered. "This is shameful."

"It is." She let him continue kissing her neck and across her shoulder to the edge of her sweater. "Stop immediately. Think of the children."

"I'm thinking of children," he assured her saucily.

Mulder heard a man purposefully clearing his throat. John Byers and Susanne came in stomping snow from their boots. Susanne and the girls skied well; Byers strapped on skies, stood on the slopes, and tutted over his wife and daughters. The twins and Emily followed the adults into the house looking like Indian warriors with stripes of zinc oxide Dana painted on them against the winter sun.

Nat King Cole continued to sing over the Hi-Fi. Mulder watched Dana peel her daughter out of her snowsuit - Emily chattering at the same time as the Byers' girls - and mop up the puddles of melted snow they'd tracked in. Byers made several trips to the porch, carrying out everyone's boots, and Susanne returned from the back of the house carrying dry socks and towels.

Mulder sipped his tea and watched. 

Dana and Byers dried the girls off and had them change into dry clothes. Emily ran one way wearing panties, then back across the house in pink footie pajamas. Hot chocolate was promised and, in the kitchen, the stove burner whooshed on beneath a teakettle. Mulder heard pots clinking and Susanne discussing dinner with Byers, her lilting Polish accent sounding musical. William emerged, and all three girls turned their excitement toward him, recounting their adventures on the slope. Will squatted down and listened, grinning and forgetting the cool, disinterested persona he'd been trying to adopt.

This was normal. The American dream: this was Mulder’s shot at it.

He told Dana, "I like this," as she returned to sit beside him.

"I like this too," she agreed. Both of them spoke lightly, but not carelessly.

"Do you think we could do this?"

She picked up her nearly empty glass of red wine and studied it for a few seconds. "Neither of us ski."

"We'll buy a beach house," he promised. "Do you swim?"

"Not since I was a girl." She thought a moment. "My father was a Navy captain. I can pilot a boat."

"A sail boat?"

"Any boat."

"I used to row. In university," Mulder said, happy to have found common ground. "I’ll buy a lake house."

She sipped her wine and didn't argue with him.

*~*~*~*

People called Mulder observant and intuitive, but that the whole truth. In close proximity to some people, Mulder sensed if they were upset. In pain. Frightened. Excited, even. Years ago, he used to wake at night if the baby woke, even if William hadn’t cried. Mulder couldn’t change a diaper or warm a bottle, but he could tell Phoebe if William was wet or hungry or had an earache or a diaper pin sticking him.

Dana had nightmares. Mulder got as far as the doorway of her and Emily’s bedroom before he realized he couldn’t intrude to wake her. Even with her daughter in the same room, it wasn’t proper. The previous night, he’d watched her a few minutes. Dana never woke or cried out. He returned to his and Will’s room, not sure what else to do.

This time when Dana woke, Emily woke with her. Mulder got up and followed them to the kitchen.

"Are you all right?" he whispered.

Dana stood in the dark kitchen, holding Emily on her hip. Both of them wore pajamas; Dana wore white cotton, and Emily’s pajamas were pink with feet.

"Did you have another bad dream?"

Dana paused, scrutinizing him.

"I heard you last night."

She looked away. "I'm fine. I can't tell if Emily is coming down with something or if she's too tired, but she wanted something to drink. Why are you up?"

"My roomy continues to insist he can't sleep without the Hi-Fi playing. It was okay the first two hundred times, but the sofa started to call."

She shifted Emily to her other hip and made a sharp hammer motion with one hand.

Mulder changed the subject. "Emily is sick?"

"She's warm, but I think she's just had too much excitement this weekend.  Would you hold her while I find a cup?"

He stepped close to Dana and maneuvered Emily from her hip to his arms. Emily wrapped her arms around neck and rested her head against his chest. The warmth and trusting heaviness of her reminded him of how he used to hold Will.

He sensed a vague wrongness about Emily. Not tired or sick, but perhaps both. “I think she’s coming down with something,” Mulder said. “Keep an eye on her.”

Dana looked at him oddly, and Mulder didn’t pursue the conversation.

Instead, he carried Emily to the kitchen window to see the lights on the mountain. "Look out there, Em." He pointed. Hopefully, she wouldn't notice Santa and his attorney had visited the living room. "Santa must be getting close. He can't come until you're asleep."

Dana found the bottle of milk and poured a few swallows into a clean mug. The girl finished it. Mulder wiped her chin and asked, "Do you think you can sleep so Santa can come?" 

Emily felt she could sleep - with a story - so he carried her down the hall to Dana's room. Her blue eyes closed as he reached the 'moon on the breast of the new-fallen snow' part for the fourth time. By the time Santa had 'a little round belly' again, Emily was out cold.   

Dana smiled at Mulder from the doorway of the bedroom as he folded the blankets up to cover Emily. "You like being a father," she said softly.

He nodded, standing up from Emily's bed. "Between the war and baseball, I wasn't around when Will was this age. To me, he went from a toddler to being six-years-old. Six or seven was a good age, though. After the war, the major leagues played baseball at night. He'd come to my games but fall asleep in the stands with his nanny. There's an AP picture of me carrying him out of the stadium in my Yankees uniform. He had my cap on and his head on my shoulder, so you couldn't see his face, but I was furious they took it." Mulder raised his hands, still able to feel that little head heavy against his shoulder. "The photograph ran in Life Magazine, and Melvin Frohike said I got letters from women all over the country - half proposing marriage and the other half reminding me a child shouldn’t be at a baseball game at ten o'clock at night."

"You raised a good son."

"I tried. He's growing up. I love him, but I miss my little boy. Though, I have been informed he is no longer a little boy and, out of guilt, I indulge him and tolerate disrespect. I'm working on that." Mulder stepped behind her and put his arms around her shoulders as they watched Emily sleep. "You, however, do an amazing job with her. But-" He kissed the nape of her neck, searching with his lips until he found her pulse. He felt it quicken. "-you're amazing yourself."

Dana turned to face him. Mulder led her into the hallway in case Emily woke. "You keep me in line. You even get Will to be almost polite." He spoke between kisses, his mouth insisting hers open as her arms went around his neck.

His pajama bottoms were thin and she stood against him; Dana pulled back within a few seconds, his cue to stop. He was getting ‘fresh,’ as the teenagers called it. This time though, as she moved away, he moved closer, instinctively keeping the contact. 

"Mulder, this isn't right," she whispered.

"It is." He spoke with certainty, but shifted his body a few inches back. He rested his forehead against hers. "Marry me, Dana. This is right. I love you. More than that – something I don’t even have words for. I know it's soon, but it feels more right than anything I've ever felt in my life. Marry me."

Realizing what he'd said, Mulder punctuated his proposal by pulling her face to his again. He ran his fingers through her hair, and embraced her with a hungry intensity that probably frightened her. The feeling would frighten him if it wasn’t so wonderful, burning the way dry kindling became engulfed before anyone even realized it smoldered. Mulder felt her hands on his neck and back, pulling him closer. His left hand covered her breast. His right unbuttoned her top and slid inside and up her bare back. Her fingers moved down his chest, beneath his cotton T-shirt, and across the dark hair on his stomach. He pressed hard against her, his hands on her breast and her hip, beneath her panties and pajama bottoms. "Marry me, Dana," he whispered hoarsely. "Say yes."

"I can't," she managed to say breathlessly.

"Say yes." If she kept touching him, in about two seconds, he would find a comfortable horizontal surface, strip off those prim pajamas - and then he would have to marry her. “Say it.”

"I can't." She pulled away forcefully. "Not like this, Mulder. I can't," she insisted hoarsely.

He moved back, trying to catch his breath. "Not like this." Not in someone else's house, on some else's sofa, like they were teenagers. She was a nice girl. He wanted her in their house in their bed with their children asleep down the hall. "Sorry. Sorry, Dana. I'm sorry."

She wrapped her white cotton top around her like a robe and leaned back against the wall of the hallway. She trembled; he felt her insides quaking. He shouldn’t have touched her. She’d been married, but Mulder sensed Dana wasn’t as bold or experienced as she tried to appear. He could attest it only took once to make a baby, though.

"Dana, look at me." She glanced up, sniffing. "I mean it. I’m not just looking for a good time. Say yes. Not to tonight, but to forever."

"I can't," she repeated earnestly. "You deserve a normal life."

He stared down at her in disbelief. "Have you seen my life? You’re the only normal thing about my life."

Down the hall, his grandmother's engagement ring sat in a little box under the Christmas tree, resized and tucked behind wrapped boxes of toys and sweaters. There was also a blue box from Tiffany's - delicate diamond and pearl earrings - the Insecurity Fairy's fallback plan.

"Marry me, Dana," he asked again, but she wouldn’t look at him.

*~*~*~*

The moment Mulder closed the bedroom door, William’s voice whispered earnestly in the darkness, "What did she say?"

Mulder stopped. The Hi-Fi had silenced. William lay in bed, but propped up on one elbow and focused intently on his father.

"Did you hear us?" Mulder whispered back. "Were you eavesdropping?"

"No," William lied. "Did you ask her? What did Mrs. Scully say?"

Mulder lay back with his feet still on the floor on one side of the bed as his head hung back off the other. He took one of those deep, calming breaths his doctor harped about. Mulder had a fastball hit him square in the chest once, and the pain felt exactly the same. The team doctor told him to take deep breaths then too, but it never helped one damn bit.

"Go to sleep, Will," he commanded.

"Tell me what Mrs. Scully said, Daddy-O," the boy insisted.

"She said 'no.'"

“No? How could she say ‘no’? Did you say what I told you to say?”

“I’m not discussing this with you. Go to sleep.” 

“Dad-”

“Now!” Mulder barked.

William flopped down. The boy remained silent, but Mulder sensed his misery, like he felt Dana’s ache from the bedroom down the hallway.

*~*~*~*

Emily amused herself in the front seat between Mulder and Dana by having little conversations with her new Mr. Potato Head as they drove back from the airport. Will sprawled across the backseat and made loud, disappointed sighing noises, as he had for the last six hours.

Mulder, trying not to lose his temper with the rush of holiday drivers as he navigated traffic, asked his son for the twentieth time, "Will, you didn't expect me to buy you a car, did you? Next year, once you're old enough to drive, I'll buy you a car."

The reply was another sigh and some muttering.

"I'll teach you to drive this summer, and you can pick out a car for next Christmas." Mulder braked to avoid a pack of shoppers delirious with fresh kill from Macy's. He threw out an arm to stop Emily from hitting the dash. "I'm not buying you a car until you're old enough to drive a car. This is ridiculous!"

"Mother will buy it for me!" Will retorted angrily.

Phoebe wouldn’t buy their son a car, but Mulder managed to keep his mouth shut. His knuckles were white as he gripped the steering wheel, though. Mulder never subscribed to the ‘spare the rod, spoil the child’ approach, but he began to understand why his own father had backhanded Mulder as a teenager a few times.

"I hate you!" his son shouted. Will opened the door as Mulder waited for a light to change.

"Don't you dare get out here. It's another three blocks," Mulder ordered, as though Will hadn't spent a decade of his life in Manhattan and didn't know.

"Since I don't have a car, I'll walk!" Will punctuated his dramatic protest by slamming the door and stalking off.

Mulder rolled down his window and yelled, "William!" His son turned up the collar on his leather jacket and kept walking.  

As Dana reached down to retrieve Mr. Potato Head's plastic lips from the floorboards for Emily, Dana gave him a look between sympathetic and amused. "Why would anyone think you 'indulge him and tolerate disrespect' from that boy?" she teased Mulder. "He didn't notice there wasn't a large, car-shaped package under the tree on Christmas Eve?"

"Maybe he thought Santa would tow it behind the sleigh and park it outside. Good Lord." Mulder watched Will's head bob through the crowd. "What am I supposed to do with him?

"Give him a car key and an I.O.U. redeemable on his sixteenth birthday. He's been talking about a Thunderbird. Make it conditional on getting his license. Studying. Minding his manners. He knows he'll get the car and he can brag, but you can stall until he should be driving."

"That is an excellent idea. How do you know that?”

“If you do all your shopping with a small child, you either learn a few tricks or end up screaming at her in the middle of Woolworth’s.”

Mulder nodded thoughtfully. “I wonder how I get a key for next year's model? I could call Ford headquarters, I guess. After the holidays."

Dana helped Emily climb over the seat into the back so she could stretch out after their long flight. "You try so hard, Mulder."

"I guess I do," Mulder said. He pulled into a space in front of Phoebe's building to wait and make sure Will arrived safely. The kid should have one parent who tried to make him happy.

*~*~*~*

Mulder glanced in the rearview mirror to check Emily was asleep under his coat in the backseat. The little girl’s eyes remained closed. He worried the words around his head and said quietly, before he lost his nerve, "We had to get married."

Dana watched the river as they sat in traffic on the Brooklyn Bridge. She turned her head to look at Mulder.

"I was thinking on the plane home you don't know much about me, and maybe that's why you don’t want to get married yet. My ex-wife: that story’s a good place to start."

Mulder kept both hands on the wheel and focused on the car in front of him, but he felt Dana watching him.

He cleared his throat. "I was a university student. I had too much to drink, and Phoebe was working at the pub that night. I'd talked with her, but she wasn't my girlfriend. I was twenty-three; I'd never-" He stopped, took a breath, and tried for the less explicit version. "I took Phoebe home to meet my parents after we were married, but they were mortified. 'Oxford' my mother kept saying. How could I have thrown away Oxford? It was the last straw for my father. I had a sister who disappeared, and he blamed me. We never found out what happened to Samantha but it was my fault, according to Vater. Marrying Phoebe was my final mistake in his book. My mother has seen Will once, but my father died last year without ever meeting him. Vater never acknowledged his namesake existed and, to him, I stopped existing, too. Phoebe's pretty and she can be fun, but she's not- She had a reputation. My parents, my friends, my professors - everyone thought I should have walked away."

Dana asked slowly, "Oxford University in England?"

He nodded. "I'd finished my four-year, and I was a graduate student."

"Why didn't you walk away? Provide for the baby, if it was yours, but..."

A valid question; nice boys didn't marry bad girls. Mulder shrugged, moving the confession along without admitting how dazzled he'd been at having a family of his own. A normal family, where the mother spoke to the children and the father came home and stayed sober at night. Mulder never doubted he fathered Phoebe’s baby. He just knew. He'd looked at Phoebe on that stormy summer afternoon and knew she was pregnant, and he was the father.

"I’d planned to work part-time and finish school that fall - spring at the latest. The FBI offered me a job, but I had to graduate. Once my father refused to help, I couldn't pay my tuition let alone take care of a wife with a baby coming. The war was brewing in England, so I took Phoebe and came home again - to New York instead of Boston so my parents wouldn't be embarrassed in front of their society friends. Will came. In the middle of winter, in the Lower East Side tenements. We stayed dirt poor and cold, and the baby cried all the time and I worked all the time, and Phoebe was miserable. When Will was a few months old, Phoebe couldn't- She couldn’t do it anymore. She took Will to England and stayed with her mother while I traveled with the ball club. For a while, I spent the off-season in London, thinking we could work things out, but..."

Mulder shook his head.

"We needed more in common than a baby and how we got the baby,” he said tactfully. “But I didn't want to believe it. The war started, and I wanted them back in the States. The Nazis bombed London, but I couldn’t reason with Phoebe. So I insisted. She was my wife and he was my two-year-old son, and the three of us were getting on a plane. My approach ended in an ugly scene, me flying home alone, Phoebe asking for a divorce, and me not seeing Will again until he was six. William and Phoebe stayed in England. I spent the war shooting anything German that moved before it could get to my son, and sure things would work out with Phoebe because I couldn't conceive of being divorced. Nice boys don't get divorced. But nice boys don't get drunk and go home with a waitress they barely know, either."

He took a nervous breath. 

"I ended up a baseball player by chance. I hadn't played since high school. I liked ball, and I was good at it, but I wanted to be a criminal psychologist, not a ball player. The new PONY league had tryouts, we needed money, and baseball paid more than loading trucks at the docks. Turns out, I’m really good at baseball. I spent a month playing Class A ball before the Yankees called me up to the big league. I know you don’t know baseball, but I was their star hitter and center-fielder until, like the smoking man said in the restaurant, I couldn't keep up with the nineteen-year-olds. I can throw and bat, but my knees have had too much abuse over the years and getting shot in Italy didn't help. That's why I don't ski anymore. Or run; I used to run. After I retired, though... I felt cheated. Like I made a deal with the Devil and didn’t like the end result. I wanted to drink and feel sorry for myself rather than to dust myself off and figure out what to do with the rest of my life. I made some bad decisions, my decisions started affecting Will, and I sobered up. Then I met you."

A long silence filled Mulder’s Cadillac as impatient horns blared mindlessly around them on the bridge: drivers furious at having their lives interrupted.

"End of the story, Dana. Pretty much the whole story except for the really ugly parts. Please don't get out of the car and start walking. We're still a long way from your apartment and it's cold."

To his surprise, he saw tears streaming down her face.

"Dana?"

"Was it worth it? Not walking away? Not playing by everyone's rules?"

Mulder pulled her across the seat so she sat beside him. He stroked her cheek anxiously with his fingertips. "I wanted my son to have a father. I won't lie and say it was easy, but how can I miss a life I'll never know? If I had told Phoebe tough luck, finished school, and gone to work for Hoover, I would never have known Will. I wanted to work for the FBI - catch the bad guys, save the world. I never wanted to be a soldier, but when the bad guys threatened my family, I didn't think twice about killing them. I never wanted to be a professional baseball player, but I heard sixty-seven thousand fans cheering as I walked up to bat for the final game of the World Series a few months ago. I hit my three hundred and sixty-first - and last - homerun, and Will saw it. We stayed up too late on a school night and went for strawberry milkshakes after the game. Was it the life I envisioned at twenty-two? No. But yes, I think it was worth it."

*~*~*~*

Dana was naïve enough to think she was subtle. She drank three glasses of champagne in a row and carried a fourth. The New Year’s party continued on the roof of The Plaza Hotel, but Dana said she felt cold. Even with his tuxedo jacket around her. Even near a heater. Even with most of a bottle of champagne in her. She requested they go somewhere warmer. Mulder suggested the ballroom, but Dana asked, “Does your apartment have windows?”

“My apartment has windows and a terrace,” Mulder said. “Your choice.”

She smiled her mysterious smile at him.

Dana swayed against him in her high heels as they stepped off the elevator. Mulder kept his arm around her. If she claimed she felt too warm and asked him to take her to Hell, he'd graciously accept that invitation, as well. Father liked a girl, Will. Father really, really liked this girl. Although the last time Mulder had made love to a woman while sober, Will was an infant. A small infant.

In the hallway outside his apartment door, Mulder rested both hands on her waist, stroking the satin fabric of her dress with his thumbs. The bodice pushed her breasts high, and remained tight down to a tiny waist before the skirt blossomed into yards of luxurious, dark blue satin.

"That's a pretty dress." Mulder ran his hands up the bodice, and across and down her soft, bare shoulders.

"Thank you. I found on my doorstep. It belongs to someone named 'Christian Dior.’ There's a label in it, but Bergdorf Goodman wouldn't let me give it back."

"His loss; my gain." He kissed her. Her lips tasted like champagne, and parted, letting him in. He lowered his head and kissed between her breasts. Her throat, her shoulder. Her skin felt like velvet, and she wore some exotic perfume designed to bypass a man’s reason.

No more nurses' uniforms. No more night shifts or blood and vomit on her clothes or fourth floor walk-up apartments. No more apartments at all, even at The Plaza. Mulder wanted a house and a dog and a family, and he wanted them with her.

"You're sure?" he asked with his face close to hers. "You're tipsy. Is this private party going to seem like a good idea in the morning?”

"The Plaza’s party is private. We had to show them your invitation," Dana said, missing the euphemism and sounding definitively tipsy.

Mulder chuckled and led her inside.

With all but a single lamp off, the foyer and living room were shadowy. Across the room, a Christmas tree still stood beside the fireplace, its white lights glowing softly. There had been a menorah earlier in the month for Chanukah. Will wasn't interested in his Jewish heritage so much as he liked eight days of presents. William slept at his mother’s apartment tonight, though.

Mulder led Dana past the dining room and rarely-used kitchen, down the hall, past Will's room, and into his own bedroom. Dana looked around the dim room, set her glass of champagne on his nightstand, and turned toward him uncertainly. He put one hand on the curve of her waist, leaned down to kiss her, and they never made it to his terrace to watch the fireworks.

He wanted to touch her everywhere at once: her breasts, her hips, her face, her shoulders. He felt her responding, her pulse quickening, her breaths coming faster. Her trepidation, but also the raw want. The passion.

"Last week, you told me 'no,'" he said softly, into her neck. He ran his fingers through her hair. "I'm sensing you've changed your mind."

She nodded, blushing the color of virtue. As he kissed her, she rested one hand on his chest, over his heart. He found the tab of the zipper on her dress and unzipped it down her back. She moved and the expensive blue dress fell to the floor with a sigh. Underneath, she wore a little black strapless bra and panties and a wide garter belt that nipped her waist and held up her stockings. She still wore black stiletto heels.

He stepped back to appreciate her. Those gaudy pin-up girls in the magazines he kept confiscating from Will - they had nothing on Dana Scully. The innocence and honesty in her sexiness made his id lick its lips. One-handed, Mulder untied his bow tie. She came to him and started undoing the buttons of his shirt. He hadn't had any champagne, but he felt drunk himself.

"Do I go undress?" she asked him, and stepped back toward the bathroom.

"I took a correspondence course; I know how brassieres and garters work," he said. "You are beautiful. Come here."

"You aren't so shabby yourself," she whispered back.

Mulder sat on the end of the bed and guided her to sit facing him. He cupped the back of her head with his hand and pressed his mouth to hers. She slid his shirt off, and he pulled back long enough to slip his T-shirt over his head. He toed off his shoes and leaned her back across the blankets, her body underneath his. His bare abdomen was against hers, and her lacy brassier rubbed his chest. She shifted her hips, and he heard one of her high heels, then the other fall to the floor. He felt a silk-stocking-covered foot slide under his trouser leg and up the back of his calf.

The world swirled in an explosion of colors with her at the center. Outside his bedroom windows, the first fireworks exploded over Central Park. It was midnight. 1954.

Mulder grazed his nose down the curve of her ear and whispered huskily, "You didn't say you'd marry me yet."

Her head shook 'no,' barely moving.

“I wanna hear you say it.” He pushed up on his elbow as he ran his fingertips over the swell at the top of her breast. He realized, "You're not saying you'll marry me, are you?"

"No," she said softly.

He continued stroking his fingers across her chest. "Why are you here?"

"I think you know."

"I love you."

"Make love to me," she whispered.

Through some superhuman effort, Mulder answered, "No.” He shook his head. “No, Dana," he repeated with more conviction. He shifted away from her. "I don’t want to wake up tomorrow knowing we've done something wrong. You’re drunk. This is- This is a bad idea."

The fireworks continued and the band on the roof played. With each explosion, cymbals crashed and the crowd at the party cheered. Through the window, blue and yellow light played across the white bedspread and their bare skin. As he looked down at Dana, a hurt crease appeared between her eyebrows.

"You’re a nice girl,” he said. “I love you; I want to marry you. I don’t just want to- Not with you. Is that all you want with me?"

"No." She shook her head. Her hair rustled against the bedspread. "Of course not."

"What do you want?  What is it?" he whispered hoarsely. "I-I can stay sober, Dana. There won’t be other women. Is it that my mother's Jewish? I'm older than you? I'm divorced? I'm not a doctor or a lawyer? Will? What is it about me you don't want?" he demanded.

Her chin started to quiver.

He didn’t want to make her cry; he wanted her to answer. "What, Dana?" he repeated shakily. "Tell me."

"Nothing." She put her hands on either side of his face as she looked up at him. "There's nothing about you I don't want. Make love to me."

Mulder wanted to believe her, and at that instant he did. He believed her with every cell in his conscious mind, but also with the little voice in his head that whispered things like 'here comes the fastball' and 'Dana's having a bad dream' and 'check the boxcars.'

"I don't understand." He loved her, and he felt the ferocity and certainty of her love for him. “Why are you doing this?”

Her breath in his ear made his belly shiver as she whispered, “Maybe I’m not a nice girl.”

The universe began tumbling again, a dizzying kaleidoscope of color and sounds, sensations and smells. Nothing was stable or certain except she loved him. Her mouth opened under his: hungry, inviting, passionate. He unfastened the little brassier and stripped it off. The stockings and garter belt joined it beside his bed. Dana’s hair was tousled and her face flushed, and she did nothing to stop him. Mulder touched her again – her bare breasts, her backside. Between her legs, through her panties, making her gasp. Beneath her panties: a warm tangle of soft hair, slick and hot at the core. He slid her panties off and reached to unfasten his tuxedo trousers. He knew it was wrong, but he didn’t stop. So maybe he wasn’t a nice boy.

*~*~*~*

Ten seconds after climax, since his brain wasn’t fogged in by half a bottle of Scotch, Mulder had to think again. Having just made love to a beautiful woman who’d wanted him, embraced him, let him love her deeply, slowly until he couldn’t wait any longer- Who’d, he was certain, climaxed a second time, gasping his name and begging him not to stop and so he hadn’t- That bought him a few extra seconds.

His shoulders hit the mattress. Mulder tipped his head back until his neck arched painfully. He covered his face with his hands and exhaled a long, shaky breath. As his heartbeat slowed, Mulder didn't breathe for a while. The warmth in his groin and stomach faded and got replaced by a dull ache. Beside him, Dana lay very, very quiet and still.

Eventually, Mulder had to inhale. Uncovering his face, he found the edge of a sheet and pulled it over both of them. The fabric felt cool as it settled against his damp skin. He lay facing her with his head on his folded arm. They looked at each other in the darkness. She lay on her side as well, with one arm folded beneath a pillow and her other hand resting low on her belly. Her face still looked flushed and, in the moonlight, her bare breasts glowed and her tousled hair shimmered.

He looked at the hand on her abdomen, and reached down, covering her hand with his. She ached; he felt it. "Okay?" he asked worriedly. “Did I-”

"I'll be okay," she said softly, reassuring him. "Are you okay?"

"No," he mouthed honestly.

"I did something wrong?"

"I think I may have some internal hemorrhaging, Nurse Scully." His heart, his pride, his conscience - the sum of them took a direct blow.

Mulder didn't ask Dana to marry him again because he knew she'd refuse.

She looked so sad he pulled her to his chest and cupped her head with his hand protectively. "I love you," he whispered, his voice hoarse. "I don't know what else to say to you."

Her head nodded against his shoulder. Mulder reached down again and found the edge of a blanket. He pulled the blanket up and tucked it around her, and replaced his hand on the back of her head. A few floors above them, the New Year's party continued, as did the fireworks outside the big windows.

“That was nice?” she asked in a quiet voice. “For you?”

“Are you serious? Yes, that was nice,” he assured Dana. “Nice for you too, I think.”

She didn’t answer.

“Dana-”

"I should go," she said, and started to untangle her body from his.

He pushed up on his elbows, dumbfounded. “No,” he managed to say. “You don’t do that and get up and leave.”

She blinked. “Mulder, I can’t stay. Everyone saw us leave the party. I have a little girl. People will talk.”

“To hell with them. Let them talk. I don’t want to love you on someone’s damn timeclock.” A second later, Mulder flopped down and covered his face with his hands again, pressing his palms hard against his eyes. “I’m sorry, Dana. I don’t understand.”

He felt her lay down beside him. Her head rested on his shoulder, and her hand stroked his chest. Mulder opened his eyes.

“You’re sorry you did this.” He felt her regret. He also sensed finality. Once Dana walked out of his apartment and away from him, she didn’t plan to return. “I did what you asked, and you’re sorry.”

“Mulder, I’m not. I thought- I don’t know what I thought.”

As he held her, he stared past the fireworks exploding outside. "Do you not love me?"

Dana shifted closer to him. Her breath warmed the skin at the base of his throat as she toyed with the hair on his chest. "Of course I love you."

Mulder took a slow breath and watched the high ceiling. Another slow breath.

Cursing, he grabbed the alarm clock from his nightstand and hurled it across the bedroom. Melvin Frohike claimed Mulder had a million-dollar right arm; the clock crashed into the wall and left a dent in the plaster.

Dana sat up, naked, facing him. “I’ve never been married,” she blurted out. “I’m not a widow.”

He stared at her with his mouth open.

"I did all the right things. I went to the home for unwed mothers. I didn't have a choice. The Army discharged me and I couldn't find a job in that condition. I certainly couldn't go home to my mother. When Emily came though, I couldn't leave her. I never lied to you; I never lied to anyone,” she promised him. “John was a doctor, and he did die in Korea – but he died months before I joined the Nurses Corp. He wasn’t her father. People assume I'm a widow, and it's easier for Emily to let them assume."

Mulder swallowed. "Where is her father?"

"I don't know."

“Why didn't he marry you?"

"It doesn't matter."

“It does matter. I-I don’t care, and Frohike can fix this. He says I’m too boring for his talents, but he does have to know what happened.” Dana started to get up, but Mulder grabbed her wrist. “No. What happened? Who is Emily's father?”

She tried to pull her arm back. “Let go of me, Mulder.”

“Was he married? Did one of the officers force-"

"I don't know who her father is," she blurted out. "There was no one to marry because I have no idea who her father is."

Mulder loosened his hand, and she jerked her wrist free.

Bolting out of bed, Dana wrapped the sheet around her, picked up her dress from the floor, and ran to the bathroom. After the door closed, Mulder heard her lock it.

He stared at the door. She wasn’t like that. She was human and naïve and she didn't hold her alcohol well. Sometimes things happened.

By the time Dana emerged, hurriedly dressed, he'd pulled on his tuxedo trousers and found his grandmother's ring in the pocket where he put it earlier, just in case. He sat at the bottom of the bed, pressing his face into his hands.

"Mulder, I'm sorry," he heard her say.

"Tell me the truth." He didn’t look up. "Whatever the truth is."

There was a pause before her voice said, "Instead of sending me overseas, the Army assigned me to an underground base in the middle of the Nevada desert. They were doing secret experiments with technology like I'd never seen, but I felt proud to do my part. Except my part was a joke. I'm a trauma nurse, but they had me maintaining medical records and storing tissue samples. I never laid a finger on a patient because there weren’t patients. Just files and tissue samples. Within a few months I started getting sick and fainting, and the Army doctor said I was going to have a baby. Of the dozen young nurses and secretaries and clerks on the base, all of us found out we were expecting. I can't speak for the others, but I didn't do anything to get that way. They gave up their babies and I didn't. I couldn't, even though the men from the base tried to insist."

With his feet still on the floor, Mulder flopped back on the bed. He lay on the fitted sheet; most of the covers remained on the rug. "Women do not magically get in trouble. People make mistakes. There is no secret base where the government uses women as broodmares. This is the United States, for God's sake - not Nazi Germany. We don’t do that. I fought for our country. I got shot for our country. I've met the president! There is no illegitimate baby conspiracy, honey.” He pushed up on his elbows. “Maybe you don't remember. Maybe it was so awful you can't let yourself remember."

"Mulder, I know what I know. John had died in Korea. He was twenty-eight years old and brilliant and brave, and he loved me, and he died. I was heartbroken. I didn't so much as look at another man. No one drugged me, no one got me drunk, and no one forced me. I'm not stupid and I'm not a liar. I don't expect you to believe me. I don't expect you to speak to me if you pass me on the street, but you asked for the truth."

"You aren't the Virgin Mary, Dana," he insisted angrily, sitting up. "Something happened."

Her chest rose and fell. She reached down and hurriedly guided her feet into her stiletto heels. "Of course. It sounds ridiculous, I know. Of course, I would make up that story instead of picking a dead husband off a soldier's tombstone.” She snatched up her little purse. “You'll believe ghosts haunt The Plaza's subbasement and dead Royal Air Force pilots tour Times Square. You think President Lincoln's funeral train might still be traveling back and forth in Hudson Valley Railroad purgatory, but you won't believe me. I let into my daughter’s life. I share your surreal life and your bed-”

“At your request,” Mulder countered loudly. “What did you expect me to do? Say no? What would you have thought of me?”

She stood still, seeming stunned.

He told her angrily, “All I did was fall in love with you. Want to marry you. Let you into my son’s life. Tell you the truth – about Phoebe, about Will. You instigated this-” He flung his hands out, gesturing to his bedroom. “You go to bed with me, and you tell me some insane story, and you rip my heart out.”

She ran her fingers through her hair. Her chin quivered and her eyes glistened. “I’m sorry. You’re right. I was selfish. I love you; I wanted to know-” she began in a strangled voice. “I’m sorry.”

Mulder looked away before he started crying with her. "Dana- Don't go. I don't care what happened, don't leave. I can fix this."

Unsteady high heels clicked rapidly across his apartment floor. His front door opened and closed. Dana’s glass of champagne remained on the nightstand. As Mulder sat shaking on the edge of the rumpled bed, the party ringing in 1954 continued around him.

*~*~*~*

Mulder hung up the telephone and told himself he’d achieved an appropriate compromise. He called room service for a breakfast that didn't include vodka in his orange juice, but he wanted coffee, damn it. He deserved coffee.

He should shower. Mulder avoided it, not wanting to wash the traces of her away. Shower, and go after her. Stand in the street outside her apartment building and throw pebbles at the window until she came out if he had to, but he would make this right.

Mulder loved outlandish stories, but eight hours ago he would have said women did not miraculously conceive.

Dana's idea of lovemaking combined nursing textbooks, romantic movies, and good instincts - but no practical experience. After the part where movies faded to black, she’d followed his lead, but she didn’t quite know her line. The more Mulder thought about it, the more the wheels started to turn.

About two in the morning he called Frohike, King of Paranoia, repeating what Dana said. By six, Frohike called back excitedly to report a top secret part of Nellis Air Force Base existed in Nevada. Area 51. Near where a UFO crashed a few years ago, Frohike said, causing Mulder to laugh. Aliens; aliens were science fiction.

Frohike had a source: a civilian on the base willing to talk, for the right price. It all sounded rather cloak and dagger to Mulder, but according to the source, the government had files to do with vaccinations for anyone Frohike thought to ask about: Dana, Emily, Frohike’s sister. Judy Garland. Ed Sullivan. The President, Hoover. Anyone.

“Everyone gets vaccinated, Frohike. Polio. Smallpox. Of course there are records. How much of my money did you wire this source?”

Frohike had countered with, “Doctors and public health departments keep vaccination records, not nurses on a top secret military base.”

More importantly - and rationally – Frohike’s source reported a home for unwed mothers located conveniently close to the base. He still worked the phones, Frohike told Mulder, but Frohike couldn't find any record of those unwanted children ever being adopted. They vanished.

"You mean she's telling me the truth?” Mulder had asked. “How in the world do you get a woman to have a baby without, uh-"

Frohike enlightened him until Mulder asked him to stop out of basic decency. The short version was: yes, during the right time of the month, a doctor could inseminate a woman during what she might assume was a routine physical examination.

"But why? Why create illegitimate children? There's no shortage of them."

Continuing the Nazi experiments, Frohike speculated. Eugenics. An attempt to create a superior human. All the mothers were bright, attractive, healthy young women who should have been shipped overseas.

"There's something else, Mulder. My source found a file with your name. Yours and Samantha's, both."

"I'm not adopted," Mulder replied. "Neither of us are; I remember Sam being born. The State Department transferred my father again and we moved back to Boston. I can remember my mother packing by herself while she was big with Samantha."

"No, not under the adoption or vaccination records. As two of the people they tracked. There are other names: athletes, artists, scientists, and professors. A certain debonair sports agent. Anyone outstanding in their field. Didn't you ever wonder how you could take up professional baseball at twenty-three years old and make $25,000 your second season? Maybe you're genetically predisposed to the game."

"Frohike," Mulder had asked, "Have you been into the Scotch? Why in the hell would anyone want to breed ballplayers?"

"Maybe you weren't supposed to be a baseball player."

That took a full hour to digest. Mulder placed a call to John Byers - still on vacation in Aspen and sound asleep - and ordered him to get his hands on these records: Emily, Samantha, Dana, him. Mulder wanted to know what the government was doing to people. He'd heard his attorney crack his neck, yawn, and ask from whom exactly he was supposed to subpoena these documents?

"Try Hoover," Mulder told Byers. "Maybe Eisenhower. Or the Martians. Just get them."

Someone entered his apartment as he hung up the telephone. The Plaza staff knocked as they brought in meals, but he hadn't heard them. Mulder called, "Thank you," to whoever came in the front door.

He heard no response, so Mulder assumed he was getting the silent treatment from the kitchen for ordering a cup of coffee. Frohike should investigate the conspiracy between his doctor and the chef.

Shirtless, he padded barefooted into the kitchen. He planned to down coffee and toast, and shower before he left to do whatever he was going to do. Beg and plead, probably. His grandmother’s engagement ring remained in his trouser pocket.

"Goodness, Fox; forty-five suits you," came a familiar female voice with a cockney accent.

He turned to find Phoebe Mulder looking him up and down appreciatively. "Thirty-nine next week," he corrected her. "How did you get in here?"  

"I used a key." She held up Will's, looking victorious.

She was tall, gazelle-like, with eyes the color of their son's. Phoebe was carefully pretty these days, with too much coiffed hair and artful makeup and expensive clothes. She wore lipstick too dark for so early in the day, and stiletto heels too high. "What do you want, Phoebs?"

Never having been there, Phoebe took a tour his apartment like she was the Queen of Sheba. She paused to peer into his bedroom, where the top sheet, pillows, and bedspread remained on the floor along with his T-shirt and tuxedo shirt. "Was she here last night?"

Dana’s flute of champagne sat on the nightstand with a few bubbles still clinging to the inside of the glass.

"Was she?" his ex-wife's voice repeated. She gestured to the bedroom. "Here?"

"What do you want?" he repeated. "Why are you here?"

"You don't have to admit it to me. Plenty of people saw you leave the party with her last night. Mrs. Sinclair noticed her leave the hotel later in quite a disarray. I take it things didn't go as you'd hoped?"

"Phoebe..." he said warningly.

"Or perhaps things did. Are you pissing again? Sport with you pissed is such a treat."

"It's not your business," he said tersely.

"It is my business if half of Manhattan saw you. What were you thinking? What if William had been here? He is an impressionable child."

"If you're so concerned about our son, why are you here instead of home taking care of him?" Mulder shot back, his temper starting to get the better of him. "What are you doing here, Phoebe? Does it make you crazy knowing I love a woman and it isn't you? Try this on for size. If she'll have me, I'm going to marry her, so it doesn't matter what Mrs. Sinclair did or didn't see last night."

"Does William know?"

He nodded and felt a wave of smug satisfaction. "See yourself out." He started to step around her, headed down the hall to shower.

"Dana Scully isn't a widow." She sounded as if she told a secret rather than jabbed a knife. "She's never been married."

"What makes you think that?"

"Mamie Lewis' husband is a doctor at The Brooklyn Hospital. He said Dana Scully worked there until two years ago, when he got suspicious about her daughter and asked her about her late husband. She couldn't produce a marriage certificate, and they fired her."

"Mamie Lewis' husband will chase anything in a dress," he responded, but his stomach flip-flopped. The Army Nurse Corps stopped giving dishonorable discharges to unmarried pregnant women in 1945, and that would have been the difficult thing to hide. One call to Frohike would produce a marriage certificate, a birth certificate, even a soldier's tombstone and wedding photos. Mulder could become Emily's father, if necessary. With enough money, illegitimacy was a relatively simple thing to conceal, especially during wartime - but not if people knew. Not if they talked.

If Phoebe knew, Will knew.

Mulder looked at the rumpled bed at the end of the hall again. He remembered Dana's toes curling and feet shifting against the sheet as he touched her. Explored her body. Pushed his fingers inside her. Rubbed that tiny knob of flesh until her body convulsed. He remembered her breasts pressing against his chest and her mouth hungry for his. Her gasping, her pained but wondrous expression as he entered her. Her breath hot and fast against his neck. Her muscles tensing, her fingers in his hair. Her hips rocking up against his as she climaxed. Opening her legs wider for him, telling him not to stop. He’d felt like his body blended into hers, his heart beat in conjunction with hers. His pleasure was hers. No question in his mind: if love was fire, he would have suffered third degree burns.

"I shouldn't have told you like that," Phoebe said in a softer voice. "Fox, I'm sorry."

He put his hand in his trouser pocket, toying with the old ring.

"I think it's sad: sad for her, sad for the little girl. She has my sympathies more than you can fathom." She stepped closer and put her cool hand on his forearm, smoothing the dark hair. "But what's done is done. What you do for sport is your business, but you can't possibly marry her. Fox, dearest-"

Phoebe moved forward with her hand raised to caress his face. Mulder stepped back. How dare she stand there in her Chanel suit, trying to pass for a lady, and judge Dana Scully. He still doubted Dana's version – or at least, Dana’s recollection - of events, but whatever happened that she had Emily, if Dana said she didn’t do anything wrong, Mulder believed Dana. And he believed she loved him. Beyond that, it was no one else's business.

"Watch me," Mulder said coolly. "I have no intention of living my life based on what you or Mrs. Sinclair or Mamie Lewis' idiot husband thinks."

"I won't stand for this."

He pointed across the living room to the tall front door. "Good-bye, Phoebs. Happy New Year."

"I will not have you bedding her with William in the next room," she said angrily. "I will not have my son around her illegitimate child. I'm sure the judge, if we ask him, would agree. You're not the big Yankee baseball hero anymore, dearest. You can't show up in court and dazzle the judge. You're an over-the-hill nobody trying to recapture your youth with a girl half your age."

He pointed at the door again. Just once, he wouldn’t let her play him like a piano. "Thank you for coming. It was a lovely performance; I quite enjoyed it. Please exit stage left."

Her expression hardened. "If that whore or her bastard is in my son's presence again, I'll go to the papers and the court, and you won't see William until he turns eighteen."

Phoebe started to walk away, but Mulder slammed his hand against the wall in front of her so she couldn't, his face hot.

"You say one word and I'll take you apart piece by piece for all your pretty, empty-headed friends to see." He felt another wave of satisfaction as her eyes widened. "I'm 'Fox, dearest,' remember? I'm the chump who's paid for your booze and pills and parties and abortions for the last fifteen years. I've more than done right by you. No one else is going to determine my life for me. You say one word against Dana Scully or her daughter, and we'll go back to court. We'll bring in your nineteen-year old boyfriends to testify to what a swell time you were and whether or not Will was in the next room to hear it."

"You're bluffing. You won't do that to William." 

"You think he doesn't know, Phoebe? You're petrified William might notice I love someone, but you don't care his friends laugh at him because of you?" Mulder's voice remained low, but his face was inches from hers. "If you want to go back to court, we'll go. I can tell the judge I married a bright, lovely young woman who takes wonderful care of her daughter - and of my son - and you can tell him you're still the town pump."

Mulder waited to be slapped, but instead she looked at him steadily and smiled a wicked smile. She put her hand low on his bare abdomen and moved to kiss him.

"Not interested," he informed her, leaning back.

"Liar," she countered.

He dropped his arm to let her leave and turned away, disgusted. As he waited, the atmosphere in the room thickened sickeningly as Phoebe tried another tack.    

"I know how much you want the best for our son, Fox. The best school, the best university, a year in Europe before he marries a nice girl from a good family. I know how much you sacrificed so he could have that. You gave up your dream not for me, but for him."

She ran her nails lightly down his bare back. He shivered involuntarily.

"What's the matter? Banging sweet little I-made-a-mistake left something to be desired?" she asked sarcastically. “She didn’t appreciate that big cock?”

“Get out,” he responded.

“It hurts,” Phoebe said breathily, sounding about fifteen. “It’s too big. Oh God, it hurts. No, don’t stop. Ouch. Oh God. Please - I want you to; it’s just so big.” Her pretty eyes narrowed. “Really, Fox?” she asked flatly. “Did you buy the innocent virgin act?”

He didn't answer except to order her to, "Get the hell out."

"William idolizes you, Fox. He saves those baseballs you give him. He checks The Times and The Post to see if you're in it. You're what he thinks a man is supposed to be, but you'll disappoint our son the same way you disappoint everyone else." The fingernails grazed his shoulder blade as she spoke, carving swirls of parallel lines. "There are girls you marry and girls you don't. Go ahead: teach him to confuse the two like his father does."

After he escorted her out - holding her by the arm and half-walking, half-dragging her as she cursed and threatened - Mulder flopped on the sofa and stared angrily at the ornate plaster ceiling. Fifteen years, and he should still have 'Steinway' printed across his chest.

*~*~*~*

Melvin Frohike looked perpetually disgruntled, and he'd seemed odd. His hygiene and wardrobe left something to be desired, and he was short. Very short. When Frohike herded his ball players around, he looked like a scruffy little terrier among greyhounds.

Both Lou Gehrig and Bill Dickey recommended Melvin Frohike though, which Mulder felt was an adequate endorsement. He wasn't sure why he needed an agent, but he wasn’t sure of many things in 1939. He did know the Yankees were 15-5, he batted .344, and he had a $10,000 season contract. He knew they'd played in Cleveland, Chicago, St. Louis, and Philly in the last two weeks, and he felt damn glad to be off that train.

He'd sent a telegram the previous day telling Phoebe to meet him at the train station. She wasn't there, so Mulder assumed the baby was sick again. Will stayed sick thanks to their drafty, rat hole of an apartment and their perpetually empty icebox. But Mulder was about to fix that. His photograph was on the front page of the paper - thanks to Mr. Frohike - and Will and Phoebe could have anything they wanted.

Even fifteen years later, Mulder could picture Frohike’s face as Mulder grabbed the tenement landlord by his stained shirt front, slammed the big man against the wall, and demanded in German to know where his family was. Frohike's expression had been 'I wonder if this hotshot is worth the 5% commission.'

The Yankees had a party uptown to celebrate their winning streak on the road, and Frohike offered Mulder a ride from Grand Central Terminal to pick up Phoebe and William. Of course your wife is welcome, Mr. Mulder; we'll get a room and you can spend the night. On us. Dinner tonight was also 'on us.' The hotel would provide someone to watch the baby; it's not a problem, Mr. Mulder. Hit a few homeruns for the New York Yankees and everything became 'on us' and 'not a problem, Mr. Mulder.'

His apartment door upstairs had a padlock, and that was a big problem. Mulder hadn't talked to his wife in a week, and he hadn't seen his infant son in three. Another problem. And if William and Phoebe were sleeping under a bridge or in the poor house, the landlord would have an even bigger problem.

"What's he saying?" Mr. Frohike was unfazed by the yelling, the neighbors gathering to watch, or the dingy, Lower East Side surroundings. Frohike waited while a subway car roared past on the elevated line. "Where's your family? Did he evict them?"

Mulder asked again, and the landlord answered the same as the last three times. "She went home," Mulder translated for Frohike. "This is her home!"

"She leave you," the German man spat back, developing a basic command of English. "Big baseball man," he added scornfully.

Frohike caught Mulder's fist as he drew back. "Nope. Rule number four: don't punch anyone, ever."

Mulder knew rule number one was 'don't say anything to the press except what I tell you to say to the press.' Number two was 'don't forget to check yourself in the mirror before people point cameras at you,' and rule three: 'don't be rude to fans.'

"How much?" His agent took out his wallet. "How much does the Mulder family owe in back rent?"

"Is twenty," the landlord answered.

"Is fifteen," Mulder corrected angrily. "I wired her more than enough money to pay you."

Without comment, Frohike handed the German man a twenty-dollar bill. The agent steered Mulder outside and into the waiting town car, saying they would get Mulder’s things another day.

As the driver pulled away from the curb, Mulder stared out the window as if he might spot Phoebe in the crowd, carrying William. He was so frantic his stomach quaked, and yet he felt utterly helpless. His wife and son could be anywhere, and Mulder didn't know where to begin looking. This was not happening.

"Where's home?" Frohike asked, startling Mulder.

"My home? My parents live in Boston."

"Where would your wife think of as home?" his agent asked patiently. "Where did you and she live before here?"

"My flat in Oxford for bit."

"Oxford, New York or Oxford, Massachusetts?"

"Oxfordshire. Southeast England."

Frohike nodded silently. "What were you doing in Oxford?"

"I was a student. She worked. Before we were married."

Frohike continued to nod. "How long have you been married?"

"We got married last summer."

There was a barely-noticeable pause. "How old is your son, Mr. Mulder?"

"Four. Four months."

The nodding continued but the little man's expression changed as if a puzzle piece fitted into place.

Mulder leaned forward and rested his forehead on his palms. "Phoebe doesn't know anyone in the States except me. If she got evicted, there's no place for her to go. Especially not with a baby." He thought a minute, and looked up. "Her mother's apartment in London. 110A Piccadilly. If Phoebs got on a ship after I last talked to her, she could be there. If she's not, though - I have no idea. Maybe her mother will know."

After one more nod, Frohike leaned forward to speak to the chauffeur.

Twenty minutes later, they parked in front of a high-rise building across town. Frohike had an office on the tenth floor, in the corner overlooking the Hudson River. Photos of ballplayers lined the hallway: Lou Gehrig, Bill Dickey, and a half-dozen other Yankees. There were several Washington Senators and a few White Sox and Dodgers. Cy Young, long retired. Babe Ruth. Jesus Christ, Mulder remembered thinking: this strange little man is Babe Ruth's agent.

Frohike pointed Mulder toward one of the leather chairs and sat down across from him. Seeing a telephone on the table, Mulder reached for it. Frohike stopped him. "Tell me what you're going to say to her," his agent requested.

"I'm going to tell her she can come home," Mulder answered irritably. "We can live someplace with heat and where the windows don't rattle. We can buy milk for the baby and..." He trailed off, covering his face tiredly. "Let me use your phone. How is this your job?"

"My job is to look out for my ball players. You'd be amazed at the things that entails, Mr. Mulder."

Frohike removed his hand from the receiver, and Mulder took a deep breath as he picked it up. It took a few minutes for the overseas operator to put the call through, but Phoebe picked up on the fourth ring.

"Phoebs," Mulder said. "Are you okay? Is Will okay?"

"Fox? Where are you, Fox?"

"In Manhattan. In my agent's office. Our apartment is padlocked. What happened? Didn't you get the money I wired?"

"I didn't know what to do," she said over the crackling line. "I didn't know where you were."

"So you took my son and got on a ship for England? If you didn't get the money to pay the rent, how did you pay for the ship?"

"I can't live like that, Fox. It's awful, and it's awful for the baby, and I'm not doing it. I can't understand anyone and-"

He interrupted her. "I know." He'd heard all this before. "The baseball games went well. The team wants me to keep playing. Baseball is an important sport in the States. We'll get a nice apartment. We'll get someone to help with Will-"

"Mum's looking after the baby." He heard her sniff. "She says he hasn't been getting enough to eat, and we should live here."

Frohike still sat in front of him, watching Mulder and listening. 

"I-I can't come to London, Phoebs. My job is here."

His agent scribbled on a notepad. Frohike held it up for Mulder to see.

"I'm sending you a first class ticket to come home," Mulder read, and Frohike nodded. "You and Will." She didn't respond, so he reminded her, "You're my wife. For better or for worse, remember? We're a family. You don't take my son and leave the country because you're momentarily unhappy." She didn’t respond, so he said, "Money isn't a problem, Phoebs; the problem is you're on the wrong side of the Atlantic Ocean. You know I love you. You and Will are everything to me. Come home. Things will be better, I promise."

It seemed like forever before she said, "I'm staying here. This is my home. I don’t like the States. They’re not what you promised."

Mulder scrambled for some solution. “My aunt and grandmother are in Germany,” he said. “Would you-”

“I’ve never been to Germany.”

Before he married her, Phoebe had never been out of southern England. “Germany is nice. My relatives are nice. They’ll take good care of you and Will until I can come. I’ll wire you money.”

“I’m not living with your bloody Jew relatives, Fox. They probably don’t even speak English.”

Mr. Frohike wrote again. This time, the tablet read 'Is there someone else?' Mulder shook his head, refusing to ask. He moved his thumb to toy with his heavy wedding band, but remembered he wasn't wearing it.

"Baseball season doesn't end until fall," Mulder told her. "If you stay in London, it may be November before I see you and William again."

There was another pause, some crackling on the line, and, "All right."

"Phoebe-"

"Why does it matter where we live? You're never at home, Fox. If you are, all you want to do is sleep. Sleep and complain about what I'm doing wrong. You're the one who wanted a baby, and you're the one who wanted to get married. Everything’s about you and your son. What about what I want?"

"What do you want, Phoebe?" he asked, feeling beaten.

She didn't answer.

Frohike held up the steno pad again but Mulder ignored him. He asked about William, but Phoebe answered in irritable monosyllables. He told her he loved her and said good-bye, not sure what else to say. They were okay, he told himself as he hung up the telephone. His wife and son were three thousand miles away, but they were okay. He and Phoebe would work this out - he just wasn't sure how.

On the notepad, Frohike had written 'I want to check the baby's blood type against mine' and a checklist: 'divorce lawyer (US & Eng), private detective (Eng), accountant (Langly), real estate agent, nanny, housekeeper.'

Mulder frowned. "You're not a 'glass half full' fellow, are you?"

"I'm doing my job," Frohike answered. "Though, given my druthers, I prefer happy endings."

"I'll see what I can do," Mulder promised hollowly. He resumed watching the telephone as if it might give him some guidance.

Without comment, Frohike went to his liquor cabinet and returned with a bottle of Glenlivit and two glass tumblers. "Rule number six: don't get drunk in public."

They sat holding their glasses, sipping the good whisky, and watching the sun set over the Hudson River. They should be at the party at the Waldorf Astoria. There would be press, Frohike had said. Cameras and microphones. Mulder had learned his lines and checked his tie. He needed his pretty wife put on her best dress, hold their son, and smile adoringly. Mulder kept looking around at a tasteful office surreally incongruous with Melvin Frohike and hearing his German landlord's voice echoing inside his head: 'She leave you, big baseball man.'

No matter what Mulder did, it was never good enough. He was a day late and a dime short: saving his sister, making his parents proud, making his wife happy, getting home before Will fell asleep. The knack to normal eluded him.

He could hit a baseball. At least that was something.

"What about rule number five?" Mulder asked as Frohike poured each of them a generous second serving of Scotch whisky. "You skipped one. Are there really rules, or are you putting me on?"

"They're 'the don'ts.'" Frohike propped his feet up on the coffee table - wingtip shoes that needed polished and resoled - and looked out at what had to be a $300 a month view. "To be an icon, it's not enough to be good at baseball; you have to remember the don'ts. And you, Fox Mulder, are going to be an icon."

"Someone should tell my wife."

"It won't make a difference," his agent assured him, and Mulder lapsed into morose silence again.

Between them, they finished the bottle of Glenlivit, and Mulder ended up at Frohike's apartment that night, sleeping it off on the sofa. Over breakfast at a downtown deli - coffee, bagels, and a two glasses of orange juice with a packet of Goody's Headache Power stirred into each - he recalled discussing the Chancellor of Germany, Adolph Hitler, who'd been claiming Poland was detaining and executing Germans. Melvin Frohike thought the claims could be a ruse for Germany to invade Poland, and Mulder said time would tell. Hitler promised to build an empire to last a thousand years, but in 1939 all he'd only spewed a lot of anti-Semitic propaganda; that did not make him unique in the world. Mulder remembered being impressed at the breadth of Mr. Frohike's knowledge of all things esoteric - and sometimes paranoid - in addition to his repertoire of off-color jokes.

By the time the Yankees left on their next road trip, Mulder had a three-bedroom apartment three blocks from Central Park, close to a library, and near several private schools. He had a maid who came twice a week. In London, Will had a nanny: a French woman named 'Marie' with excellent references who Mulder was impressed with on the telephone and Phoebe didn't to despise. At Mr. Frohike's insistence, Mulder also had a lawyer and an accountant. Mulder still didn't think those things were his agent's business, but his agent disagreed.

He recalled being grudgingly grateful - for the guidance and for the company - but thinking Melvin Frohike didn't know what the hell he was talking about when it came to Phoebe.

*~*~*~*

An empty baseball stadium reminded Mulder of an empty cathedral; he could still hear echoes of the past in the silence. This part of the American dream didn't make the papers: the winter after the glorious season ended. Mulder could think here. He could shut out the sounds from the stands and focus on doing what came naturally.

The new pitching machine launched a ball, and Mulder swung hard. At the crossroads between Heaven and home plate, wood met horsehide with a sharp crack, sending the ball sailing over the wall a few seconds later.

Maybe Dana was right. They were too far from perfection to begin with.

Maybe Mulder tired of fighting the good fight and losing on a technicality. Being a day late and a dime short.

Maybe he was scared.

Will's voice called to him from the dugout, "That's homer number three-hundred and sixty-two."

Mulder remained at the plate. "Three-hundred and seventy-three. You missed a few earlier. What are you doing up here, Will? Where's your mother?"

"I don't know. You didn't answer when I rang The Plaza. Mrs. Scully said you weren't at her flat. She sounded upset, but like she didn't want me to know it. I wanted to talk to you. Mother made me give her my key this morning, but she hasn't been back. She said... Dad, Mother said some awful things about Mrs. Scully."

Mulder picked up a ball from the bucket. He held the ball to his nose to inhale the familiar, comforting smell. Baseballs smelled like innocence.

"They aren't true, are they? I thought-"

Mulder threw the ball up, this time hitting a line drive past third base and into the outfield in perfect form. Perfect. Uncanny naturalness, the press called it. He'd done everything perfectly, and the reporters said he made it look easy.

He'd like to let the spectators and reporters try it and see if they still thought it was so easy.

Rule number five, which Frohike kindly and nimbly sidestepped telling Mulder all those years ago, was 'don't stick your cock in crazy.' Rule number seven was 'don't lie to your agent,' and eight was 'don't forget who you are and the people who mean the most to you.'

"I thought if you married Mrs. Scully, and I wasn’t any trouble, I could... Perhaps I could live with you instead of Mother," Will confessed. "I suppose I don't care if it's true or not. Everyone makes mistakes, and I like Mrs. Scully. Do you care about her daughter? You must care and it must be true, or you wouldn't be up here hitting baseballs in the middle of winter."

"Do I care?" Mulder talked more to himself than to Will. "It's not that simple, son.

"Mother said Mrs. Scully was with you last night," William said as a fact, and Mulder didn't answer.

In Mulder’s version of the American dream, two people loving each other shouldn't be so scandalous or impossibly complicated.

The Negro groundskeeper carried a bucket of new balls out to the mound and stood waiting in the cold to work the pitching machine. Mulder stared past him, at the blur of the outfield.

"Do you want to know if Dana Scully is a nice lady, Will?" Mulder said. "Yes, she is. What does that make me?"

He heard Will step over the wall of the dugout and amble toward home plate. "Marry her."

"It's not that simple." Mulder still stared past the groundskeeper.

William turned the collar of his leather jacket up against the cold. "Why is it not that simple? Don't you love her?"

"Do I love her? Do you want to know the big secret, Will?" Mulder lowered the bat and looked out at the empty stadium. "Love - when it's real, is everything it's supposed to be: as wonderful as hitting a homerun and as frightening as a roller coaster at the top of a hill. You can’t choose who you love. It happens, and the real thing, when it comes along: that moment is worth the wait. It's worth risking everything for, but it's not like in the movies, son. Everyone doesn’t fall in love and live happily ever after. Love is a feeling, not a choice. Life requires choices. Whether you’re fifteen or twenty-three or turning forty next week, what you do with love isn’t easy or simple. We have all these rules about how life should be if everyone does the right thing, but love doesn’t care about society’s rules. Love is messy. We’re supposed to do the right thing with the most wonderful, terrifying emotion in the world.” Mulder paused. “I’m not sure I did the right thing, Will, but of course I love Dana Scully. And Emily. And you.”

His son had his hands stuffed deep in his pockets. "Did you ever love my mother?"

"I did." Mulder nodded, thinking back. "I remember her carrying you and being miserable and thinking how grateful I was to her. I remember you being born, and looking at you while she held you. I love you, so I think a part of me will always love her in some way."

"But you don't love her. You love me and she's- She's how you got me."

"I never said that, Will. She's your mother."

"You don't have to say it; I know. Everyone makes mistakes, Dad."

"You are not a mistake," Mulder responded.

"I'm not seven-years-old, either," his son reminded him. "I don't expect everything to be sweet and simple." He added, "Frohike says Velveeta passes for cheese if you've never had the real deal. I don’t care about Emily’s father. I don’t care about what Mother said, or what happened last night. If you think Mrs. Scully's the real deal, Dad... For the love of God, swing for the fences."

"If you do, and you miss, there's no going back, Will."

"I don't recall ever seeing you miss."

Mulder took a deep breath. He exhaled, momentarily forming a cloud of white vapor in front of his face. "I'm done," he yelled to the groundskeeper. "Thank you."

The gray-haired Negro man waited beside the pitching machine, looking at them.

"Thanks," Mulder called again.

The groundskeeper stood on the pitcher's mound, holding a baseball under the bleak winter sun and seeming to grow younger and taller. Mulder waved to him and he waved back, smiling the same mysterious smile as Dana.

Mulder shivered, though not because of the January cold.

"Let's get out of here, Will."

Still taller, Mulder slung one arm around his son's shoulders and carried the Louisville Slugger as they walked off the field. He put his hat on Will's head, and his son took it off and smoothed his hair.

"How did you know where to find me? How did you get up to the Bronx?"

"I rang the diner across the street and ask if there was a black Cadillac parked on the players' lot at Yankee Stadium."

"Resourceful young man, aren't you?"

"And devilishly handsome," William said.

"How did you pay the cab?"

"I took the tube." Will seemed proud as they walked through the gate and into the huge parking lot. "It's crazy simple. You buy the tokens, look at the map, and get on the right train. Mrs. Scully showed me."

"When?"

"One day, our housekeeper was sick. Mother didn’t fetch me after school, so I tried to find you. I rang Mrs. Scully's flat, and she came and showed me how to use the subway in case I ever needed to again. I asked Mrs. Scully not to tell you. I thought you'd be angry with Mother."

They stood in front of the car, not looking at each other.

"Here, Will." Mulder slide the spare key off his key ring. "This will be your key. Start the car, and you can drive to the edge of the parking lot. Once you’re sixteen, as long as your grades improve, we'll pick out a car for you, but you can practice with me in my car between now and then."

Will's face brightened, and he bounded into the driver's seat.

Mulder got in the passenger side, saying his prayers. He was fairly sure his son wasn't genetically destined to be a chauffeur.

Christ, he had to stop listening to Frohike. This was ridiculous. 

"Give it a little gas as you turn the key. Don't flood it. A little gas, Will!" he ordered as the big Cadillac engine roared. "Now, put your foot on the brake pedal. No, you use one foot to drive this car; there's no clutch, remember? Foot off the gas and on the brake. Put it in gear."

Mulder exhaled. So far, so good.

"Gently touch the gas and the car will move. If you feel like you're going too fast, put your foot gently back on the brake. Try not to forget to steer, but there's nothing for you to hit."

William floored the gas, squealing the tires as though they were drag racing, panicked, slammed on the brake, and sent Mulder face-first into the dashboard.

"Ah, shit, William Adam!" Mulder rubbed his forehead.

"Sorry," Will said meekly. "It was an accident."

"S'okay. Try again. Easy this time."

"No, I don't think I'm good at driving."

"You can do it, son. Go on," he urged. "You'll do fine. Go slowly. Take your time. We have all the time in the world."

After a few more uneven starts, Will got the feel of things, regained his confidence, and made a victory lap before they reached the edge of the empty parking lot and came to a gentle stop.

"Very nice," Mulder said in approval.

"Where to, Daddy-O?"

Noticing a woman's lipstick and Mr. Potato Head's plastic lips had rolled from underneath the passenger seat during one of Will's braking fits, Mulder replied, "Brooklyn. I should have a nurse look at my forehead. I'll drive, though. You help me think of something to say to Dana."

“Say, ‘Mrs. Scully, I’m an old-fashioned, hypocritical fool with horrid taste in books, music, and clothes,’” William suggested, “but I’m quite wealthy, dolls fall all over me, and I have my own baseball card. Overlook my many quirks and promise you’ll marry me. Also, fix your future, devilishly handsome stepson some lunch.’”

“I can’t say that, Will. Not with you and Emily there. Any sane woman would throw me to the floor and rip my clothes off. I’m going with-” Mulder gestured to his head.

After walking around the car to get in on the other side, and - of course - slamming the passenger door, Will scrutinized his father's forehead as Mulder shifted the transmission into gear. "The bruise isn't bad. She’ll never buy that. I suggest flowers and groveling.”

"I’ll tell her we came to return her lipstick and-" Mulder picked up the plastic lips from the floor. "-whatever you'd call this." He hesitated. “Will, I can’t promise Dana will say ‘yes,’ no matter what I say or do. This woman couldn’t care less about money or baseball cards, and last night... Flowers and groveling might be the best approach.” He pulled onto the empty street, leaving the stadium behind them. "If we get as far as the Brooklyn Bridge without figuring out something, I'll pull over. You hit me with a baseball bat. That worked last time."

“Brilliant. I could drive you to Mrs. Scully’s apartment as you bleed,” Will volunteered.

*~*~*~*

End: A Moment in the Sun, part I

Begin: A Moment in the Sun, Part II

*~*~*~*

According to Frohike, Mulder did not lie; he omitted a portion of the truth. In Frohike's skilled hands, a bar brawl became a "gentleman's disagreement," a drunken night in jail was "an unfortunate situation with the authorities," and a player who retired or got himself fired from the ball club "looked forward to spending time with his family." Melvin Frohike had an admirable liquidity of conscience with press releases, children's welfare, and pretty women.

Mulder pushed the intercom button, had Will speak, and followed his son into the apartment building. A calico tomcat slipped in along with them like a cold shadow, but once inside mewed and rubbed his body against Mulder's leg.

By the time they reached the third landing, Dana leaned over the railing of the top floor. "William?" she called down worriedly. "Will, what's wrong? Are you all right? Where's your father? Is Mulder all right?"

William trudged up the steps. He pointed back over his shoulder. "I was put up to this. I am an impressionable child. I should not be party to deception unless food or love is involved," Will said as he reached the top. "Ideally, I fancy both."

Dana stared past him and at Mulder, who stopped on the top step in front of her with the scruffy cat in his arms and his hat in his hand. She wore loose slacks and a blue sweater and blouse under a white apron. Wool socks covered her feet. She held a potato peeler.

"Hello," Mulder said for lack of anything better. "Hi, Dana."

"Hello," she exhaled.

"Your cat wanted in, and your elevator is still broken." A warm numbness spread through Mulder’s belly. "I had to carry him up."

"He- You- Good thing you were in the neighborhood."

"We weren't even in the neighboring borough," William interjected from the doorway of her apartment.

The door was open, the television set was on, and something cooking on the stove smelled wonderful. The cat jumped down, landing lightly on his feet and inviting himself into the apartment. William followed. Mulder heard Emily's high-pitched voice greeting her cat and Will.

Dana wiped her hands on her apron and seemed not to know what else to do with them. Mulder stood at eye level with her. Her eyes were glistening and beautiful. The force from her pulled at him like the tide.

"He wants a grilled cheese sandwich. With real cheese."

"Okay. I can make that." She nodded nervously. "I have vegetable soup, too. You have a bump on your head. Were you and Will playing baseball?"

"Driving lesson." Mulder chucked anxiously. "Marry me," he said, before he lost his nerve. “Whatever happened, I don’t care. I love you. Marry me.”

"Yes, okay. All right. Yes," she answered quickly.

He nodded back at her. "Okay."

"Yes," she repeated.

"Yes," Mulder echoed.

They looked at each other breathlessly.

He exhaled, laughed, cupped her face with his hand, and kissed her. Mulder closed his eyes, and time stretched out lazily. Like the previous night, he let the current sweep him out to sea with her, far from the rest of the world for a moment.

"I love you I love you don't you ever leave me again," he whispered, putting his arms around her and pulling her close.

"I won't," she promised. "Don't you leave me, Mulder."

"I won't." Those words held more commitment than the most elaborate of wedding vows.

She touched his cheeks with her fingertips, and smiled as she ran a finger across the small scar and the new bruise on his forehead. "I love you," she whispered.

He stepped up to the landing, put his arms around her hips, and lifted her gently, turning her in a slow circle before setting her down and holding her close.

Inside the apartment, Emily coughed, and the tide of the outside world turned to flow over them. Time returned to its normal speed, and he let go of her, still feeling giddy.

"I have soup," Dana said again, seeming dazed herself. She took him by the hand. "Come inside."

In the living room of Dana's apartment, Emily lay on the sofa under a blanket, dully watching Howdy Doody on the television. The calico cat had found a spot at her feet, and her stuffed Kitty was against her chest.

Emily sat up to greet Mulder, looking pale, as he hung his coat and hat on the rack near the door.

"Are you still sick?" he asked, squatting down.

She nodded unhappily.

Mulder gave her a kiss on her forehead, and she curled up again. Making himself at home, William claimed the other end of the sofa and part of the blanket. The cat surveyed the situation, moved to Will's lap, and went to sleep.

His son gave him the subtlest of questioning looks. Mulder nodded, and William gave Dana a warm smile.

"What's wrong with Emily now?" Mulder followed Dana into the kitchen. One peeled and three unpeeled potatoes lay in the sink, awaiting the stockpot.

"She can’t seem to shake this bug. I'll call the doctor tomorrow."

Dana lifted the lid of a stockpot and gave the vegetable soup a stir before starting Will's grilled cheese sandwich. The kitchen radio played jazz softly. Stuck to the front of the refrigerator with a magnet was a note on Bergdorf Goodman stationery in Mulder’s handwriting. 'Thank you for the cookies. Love, Mulder.'

Mulder leaned against the counter and watched her. He wanted to sit down to dinner with her each night, and he wanted to wake up next to her each morning. He wanted to carry groceries in from the car for her and fight about the checkbook and have children and grandchildren with her. He wanted to sit on the front porch with her when they grew old, holding hands and watching the sun set at the end of the world. After he died, when she was impossibly old, Mulder wanted her to think of him and smile. If he had a destiny, it wasn't to play baseball. Or to solve crimes for the FBI. It was to love her. He felt certain of it. He was as tied to her as the buttons on her blouse. He'd known her for 62 days, made love to her once, and loved her for at least five lifetimes.

"Ani l'Dodi, v'Dodi li," he said.

Dana dropped the sandwich into a frying pan and turned toward him curiously.

"It's Hebrew. Song of Songs. Ani l'Dodi, v'Dodi li," he repeated.

"You speak Hebrew? Mulder, how many languages do you speak?"

"A few," he answered, and translated, "I am my beloved's and my beloved is mine.”

She smiled.

As Duke Ellington and his orchestra began to play “In a Sentimental Mood,” Mulder said, “Dance with me."

With slow, elegant jazz playing in the background, he took her in his arms. Mulder guided her in small circles in the triangle between the stove, the icebox, and the kitchen table. If the Russians bombed them tomorrow, or he died in his sleep tonight, he wouldn't regret one second of his life leading led up to this moment. The pale yellow winter sunlight streamed in through the kitchen window, and the smell of frying bread rose from the stove. Dana's wool socks scuffed softly against the floor, and the fifty-piece orchestra played through the radio's tinny speaker.

"Excuse me," William's voice interrupted. "I am young and impressionable and peckish."

"One more minute, Will," Mulder said without raising his cheek from the top of Dana's head.

"Does she know you don't like any music by white people? She's committing to fifty years of hearing scratchy old records they sell in the back of the store?" his son asked. "Miss Scully?"

"One minute," Mulder repeated.

"Did Dad tell you that daft story about Abraham Lincoln's ghostly funeral train leaving New York every April? I don't care if you're getting married; don't let you talk him into staking out the station, Miss Scully. It only encourages him."

Still holding her, Mulder raised his hand and held up his index finger at Will.

One more minute.

*~*~*~*

Mulder put Dana’s newly-installed telephone to his ear as she returned to the kitchen. "You are where?" he asked Frohike over the long distance line.

"Vegas," Dana called over her shoulder.

"Vegas," Frohike's voice repeated, as though it was the most logical thing in the world. "I hoped I'd find you here. How's it going with the tasty little redhead?"

Mulder shook his head. The last couple hours moved much too fast for him. "You're where?"

"Las Vegas, Nevada. Tell me this: do I get to be best man?"

"Or a bridesmaid?" Mulder heard Richard Langly's voice chime in.

Mulder shook his head again. "Why did you take my accountant to Las Vegas with you?"

"I didn't. He was here. I bumped into him at the hotel bar."

"Why was Mr. Langly in Vegas?"

After some indecipherable whispering, Frohike said, "He'd rather not say over a telephone line."

"Am I paying for this? Will! William!" His son's head peeked out from the kitchen. "You've had lunch. Stop eating Dana out of house and home, and get out from under her feet. She's not a short-order cook, and you're not starving."

Will's head disappeared into the kitchen again. Phoebe hadn't turned on an oven in more than a decade, so Will was excited at the prospect of having a stepmother who cooked. Now William requested a pineapple upside-down cake, and Dana explained the 'upside-down' secret as she made it.

"Frohike, am I paying for this?" Mulder asked again.    

"Well, not the shows or drinks." Frohike cleared his throat. 

Mulder heard crackles and thumps as Langly grabbed the receiver. "We're gonna see Sinatra!"

Dear God, he trusted these men with his money and secrets.

"Mulder- damn it, Langly, stop,” Frohike insisted. “Mulder, whatever this is you asked me to check out, it's big. Get out here and tell me how much information you want to pay for, because it seems to be endless and I'm not sure what you want to know."

"Define 'big'?" he asked, and added softly, "Big as in you can tell me what happened to Dana or Samantha? Or why someone has been keeping tabs on my life?"

"Close tabs, Mulder. Remember we are on a party line, but tell me if these names are what I think they are." Frohike read a list of about a dozen women's names beginning with Phoebe Victoria Green and ending with Dana Katherine Scully. Mulder had to think to remember a few nights, both in the States last year and in Europe during World War II. "Tell me I'm wrong,” Frohike said. “Tell me these are random women's names."

"No, I think you're right." Mulder turned his back to Dana and Will in the kitchen. An ugly rubber ball bounced around inside his stomach as he watched Emily doze on the couch. He felt filthy. He and Dana had been together barely fourteen hours ago. In his bed, in his apartment. Alone.

"Marita Isabella Covarrubias? Rita Covarrubias, the secretary at Cadillac?" Frohike demanded. "I asked you about her, and you told me 'no,' you liar. Rule number seven: Don't lie to your agent. Diana Grace Fowley - who is she? I know her name, too."

"Read them again, Frohike," Mulder requested.

His agent stumbled again over the French and German names and read the rest slowly. A couple of the last names were unfamiliar, and sometimes the first name Mulder recalled must have been a nickname, but he could match a woman on the list with every sexual encounter in his memory.

"It's what you think it is, and there's no one missing. No one, Frohike. My God. How would anyone in the government know?"

"More importantly, why would anyone in the government care, Mulder?"

*~*~*~*

Legend said God finished the Mississippi and the Missouri rivers and, pleased with his handiwork, decided to make one last, master river through the Nevada desert. Late in the afternoon, God formed eight smaller rivers, each ending in a lake, for the great Nevada River to flow into. But dusk fell, so God covered the tributary rivers with sand for safekeeping overnight, planning to create the great Nevada River the next day. In the morning though, God became preoccupied with other things and forgot about his master river. Only the eight lakes remained, their sources hidden below the desert and their water sinking mysteriously away. After epochs, even the lakes sank away, leaving the dry lake beds - barren expanses of cracked earth and salt - which the U.S. government used to test the nuclear bombs.

In truth, the eight tributary rivers remained buried beneath the miles of desert sand, and the mighty Nevada River - it never existed at all.

Mulder’s suite was atop the new Sands Hotel, with modern white furniture, a broad expanse of teal blue carpet, mirrors everywhere, and huge windows and a balcony overlooking the frenetic lights of the Las Vegas strip. Earlier, a mushroom cloud lingered in the distance. The maids filled the refrigerator, stocked the bar, and left vases of roses throughout the penthouse. A limousine met Mulder and Dana at the airport, and the hotel manager greeted them and showed them to their rooms. The penthouse was complementary, of course, Mr. Mulder, as was the champagne. The chef will send dinner right up, but please bring your lovely lady friend downstairs to see the show tonight.

At Langly's suggestion, Mulder owned a sizable amount of stock in the place. Mulder didn't gamble, he didn't drink anymore, and he couldn't care less about the Rat Pack, but the hotel made a nice profit. If he wanted to dazzle Dana, this trip should have done it. They passed Yul Brynner and Elizabeth Taylor in the casino.

Dana wasn't dazzled. She worried about Emily, and as uncomfortable with the glitz and hollow glamour as Mulder. They would have both been happier in her apartment watching television.

Some honeymoon.

The penthouse looked untouched since he'd left it. Mulder’s lovely lady friend slept curled in ball on top of the covers, alone, wearing pajamas and clutching the phone to her chest. The tentative plan to get married this evening had been deterred by the absence of a groom: namely Mulder.

Some honeymoon.

Mulder pushed his dirty, sweaty clothes into a pile under the sink and turned on the shower. He lingered under the water, washing off what seemed pounds of grime while trying to think of some way to explain himself to Dana. Hanging on the back of the bathroom door, along with the plush robes, he saw a slinky ivory nightgown. Exactly the type of nightgown a new bride wore to bed.

Some honeymoon.

Mulder sat down on the bed, and Dana’s eyes opened. She sighed, sat up, and kissed the tip of his nose. "Oh, thank God. I was so worried." 

"I am so sorry, Dana-"

"Where did you disappear to?" She set the telephone on the nightstand and crawled under the covers. "Are you okay? What happened?"

He remained seated on the edge of the mattress. "I'm okay. Frohike wanted to show me something, and I thought it would take an hour or so. I thought it was closer, and I lost track of time."

Dana took his hand. "What did he want to show you?"

Windows lined one wall of the bedroom and a wall of mirrors another. Mulder watched his dim reflection as he lay down. He still wore the terrycloth robe over his shorts. "A base. There's a military base out there, Dana. In the middle of the desert. You can't see it from the road, but it's there."

"I know it's there, Mulder," she assured him evenly. "Is that why you wanted to come out here? Not on business or to get married, but so you could check my story?"

"I'm not checking your story. I wanted to know the truth."

"I told you the truth," she said, growing cooler by the minute.

He chewed at his lower lip. "It's not just you, Dana. This involves my sister. It involves me."

Meek Dana was not, and their wedding vows – if they ever managed to take them – should probably include him obeying her wishes rather than the other way around. Most of the time, he didn’t mind. People could joke about who wore the pants at their house, but Dana had a good head on her shoulders, he had a high tolerance for beautiful, bossy women, and at the end of the day, Mulder paid the bills. Still, Mulder standing her up for her own wedding... He hunched his shoulders, anticipating wrath.

Instead, after a long silence, Dana shook her head warily. "Don't do this."

"I didn’t lie to you. It's my business to keep you safe. You and Emily. I want to know what they're doing out there." 

She ran her warm fingers over his cheek and brought her face close to his. "No, you don't." She swallowed and said, "Those men will kill you and not think twice."

"All I did was climb a hill and look at their base through binoculars. I'm not breaking any law."

"Those men are above the law. They will kill you. They will kill me. They will kill our children, our families, our friends, and anyone who gets in their way." Mulder heard certainty in her voice. "If you keep asking questions, it doesn't matter who you are. They will get to you. They will destroy you. Don't do this, Mulder. This isn't some ghost story or folk legend. It's the real deal. Don't get yourself killed because of me."

He opened his mouth to argue but closed it again.

"I shouldn't have told you," she said regretfully. She rolled away from him and toward the windows. He thought for a moment she might get up and leave. She didn't though.

He looked at the back of her head, and past her, at the gaudy teal curtains and the bright lights of The Strip outside. Like the night at The Plaza a few days ago, the rest of the world was innocently attending a party they hadn't been invited to.

"I shouldn't have told you," she repeated to the windows.

"I'm glad you told me." He put his hand on the small of her waist. Their penthouse had one big bed - all white and teal, of course - but the living room had sofas. "I wanted to see it. We couldn't get near the base though, let alone inside it."

"Don't go back."

"I won't."

"I want to go home," she said, still facing away.

"First thing tomorrow morning. This was a bad idea." He hesitated a moment. "We can get married in New York. Next Saturday, so Will can come and Byers will be back from Aspen."

"Okay," she agreed quietly. She rolled to face him.

Mulder put his arms around her and pulled her close. "I'm sorry." He pushed the neck of her pajamas aside and kissed a path down her neck and shoulder. "I didn't mean to worry you. I didn't mean to go off and leave you. You're safe. I'm safe," he told her between kisses. "No one is going to hurt anyone."

After a few minutes, one of her hands slid inside his robe to rest against his bare chest.

He lay with her in the darkness with his heart beating against her palm. Together, they were an island in the center of the huge bed, in the center of the penthouse, in the center of the empty desert. In German, they were wo sich Hase und Fuchs gute Nacht sagen - where the hare and the fox say goodnight: in the middle of nowhere. Except the desert wasn't empty. Two hours outside the city lights, guarded by machine guns and razor wire, was a military base not on any map.

Mulder found himself wondering if someone watched from the other side of the mirrors. Listened on the private telephone line. He wanted to buy a car and get in it with her and drive as far and as fast as he could tonight, leaving Las Vegas behind. He wanted to get out his old service rifle and make sure his aim remained true. "First thing in the morning," he repeated, "we get on a plane and go home. And we never come back."

"Okay."

"Speaking of home - Is there a school you have in mind for Emily?" His voice seemed loud in the stillness. The lights of The Strip were glaring and frenzied, but soundless. "If you want her at Packer with Will, I’ll buy one of those big brownstones in Brooklyn Heights. Find one near the park, with a yard. Emily would be in first grade when Will’s a senior. If I'm lucky, he'll graduate before Em gets to junior high."

"Packer costs as much as I make in a year, Mulder."

He raised one hand, gesturing at the gaudy room. "I'm thinking of selling some stock."

"You're serious?"

"Are you misunderstanding the 'marry me' plan? I spent fifteen years of my life at a baseball stadium, in a foxhole, or on the road. I want to take the next forty or fifty years and enjoy staying at home with you. The Plaza is a hotel, not a home. Homes have dogs, yards."

"An herb garden," she said. "Window boxes."

"I'll tell the real estate agent." He shifted, draping his knee between hers. "When are you giving notice at the hospital?"

After a barely perceptible pause, she said, "I'd miss the hospital. Maybe I could work part-time." Another pause. “While Emily is at school, and while you’re away doing whatever it is you do all day.”

Mulder raised his head, puzzled. “Why on Earth would you need to work at all?” In the interest of not sounding like a dinosaur, he suggested, "Volunteer. I'm sure there are committees." He toyed with the little gold cross on her necklace. "I have a full-time job for you: William wants to live with us."

“Will his mother agree?”

Mulder worried his tongue against his teeth. “Once the dust settles... If I make it worth her while? Yes.”

Her voice sounded cool again as she asked, “If you pay her off, you mean?”

The pillow rustled as he nodded. “Or we battle it out in court with Will in the middle of the fight. He’s asked for years, but now I’d be married. Done with baseball. You’d be home, and you take good care of Emily-” Mulder stopped speaking before he veered into even less romantic territory. “That’s not why I’m marrying you,” he felt compelled to add. Mulder’s pillow rustled again, seeming like cellophane rattling in the quietness. “There’s a boarding school in Millbrook. A good one, Dana. He’d only be home-”

“Write your ex-wife a check,” Dana said firmly. Her body shifted against him. “Write the check and buy a house in Brooklyn Heights and enroll both kids in Packer. I’ll give notice at the hospital, and I’ll show you how to ride the subway train and save green stamps.”

“I don’t think it will come to that.” He kissed her forehead, then her lips. “I love you,” he repeated. “That's a bedroom for you and me, one for Emily, and one for Will. Near Packer, with a yard, a dog, an herb garden, and window boxes." Mulder slid his hand beneath the fabric of her pajama top, over the curve of her waist, across the flat expanse of her stomach, and up to her breast. He felt the life in her, and the quiet strength. "Do we need any more bedrooms?" he asked, pressing his luck as he unfastened the highest button of her pajama top.

"Maybe a few extra," she answered quietly.

He unfastened the second button. "I'd like that. I would."

"I would, too." 

The third button opened, revealing small, lovely breasts. "The other night," he asked softly. "Last week - was that nice? For you? I didn't know- you didn't tell me... I should have done things different. Slower. It hurts at first, doesn’t it?"

"It was nice," she insisted.

He stopped unbuttoning and looked at her steadily. Behind her head, the lights on The Strip continued their frantic, silent dance.

“Mulder, I’ve had a baby. There is no hymen. I’m an adult woman.”

He thought he knew, but in case, he asked, “Which part’s the hymen?”

“The maidenhead,” she said, and he did know that term. “What tears and bleeds. You’ve never been with...”

Mulder shook his head.

There hadn’t been blood on the sheets. He’d checked. Last week, in the last hours before dawn, as he folded together Dana’s bizarre story with the events he’d personally, intimately witnessed, an awful realization had settled over Mulder. Dana Scully didn’t do anything half-way. He’d seen her bake a cake, suture a wound, and sew an ear back on Emily’s stuffed Kitty: all expertly. Dana had been to bed with Mulder willingly and passionately, but not expertly. With his stomach quaking, Mulder had checked every square inch of fabric on his bed at The Plaza, praying he wouldn’t find blood.

His mind had drifted a thousand miles from their Las Vegas hotel room when Dana’s voice said, “I’m sorry.” He looked at her. She looked away. “You’re older than I am. You’re more experienced-”

“Experienced?” he interrupted. “Experienced at what? Aside from my ex-wife, until you, I’d never been with a woman I wasn’t three sheets to the wind. What I’m experienced at isn’t love,” he confessed. “The ‘marry me’ plan, Dana. Once the kids are asleep and the dog’s been out, I want to make you happy. Very, very happy. And I want to do that for about the next fifty years. I’ll send for one of those illustrated manuals through the mail if I have to, but you have to tell me the truth. We can’t build a life together on lies.”

After a moment’s hesitation, she admitted, “At first. Yes, it hurt at first, but either it stopped hurting or I stopped caring. I don’t remember. After, though... I ached.”

“I know,” he said before he thought. He trailed his fingertip down the slope of her breast. Her pajama top remained on by a single little white button at her waist. “I’m sorry.”

“Did I ask you to make love to me?”

“Yes.”

“And did you, sober as a judge and against your better judgment, do as I asked?”

“Dana, this feels uncomfortably like a divorce hearing.”

“Did you undress me, take me to your bed? Kiss me, touch me, and make love to me until I’m pretty sure the Earth moved and angels sang?”

“God, I hope ‘yes’ is the correct answer,” he responded.

Outside, lights danced and gleaming cars rushed passed. The desert stretched out beyond the city, a black expanse with secret bases and watching eyes. Inside the penthouse, Mulder heard Dana’s breathing and felt the warmth of her skin.

In a low voice, she asked, “Mulder, did I once tell you to stop?”

“No.” After some consideration, he said, “I believed you requested I not stop. Emphatically and repeatedly.”

“Then don’t be sorry.” She shifted closer to him. “You know, big guy: I want to make you happy, too. Put the kids to bed and let the dog out one last time, and make you very, very happy. For about the next fifty years.”

He undid the final button on her pajama top. “I’ll let you,” he said, and put his mouth to her breast.

*~*~*~*

Mulder felt the fear before he woke. His heart pounded. He sat up, ready to fight. A few seconds passed while Mulder figured out who thrashed on the other side of the bed. Where he was. What had happened to his shorts. His reflection watched him from a long wall of mirrors, and the neon lights outside the penthouse windows still blinked and flashed. The lights of the Vegas Strip reflected in the mirrors as well. The whole room reminded him of a funhouse.

"Nightmare, Dana," he called to her. "Wake up. You're having a nightmare."

Dana continued to struggle with some invisible monster. Naked, Mulder scooted across the big bed toward her. Another wave of terror passed from her to him. Even though he knew Dana dreamed, Mulder still longed for a weapon in his hand. The threat felt real.

“Dana-”

"Leave me alone! Don't touch me! Emily?" She cried out, "Don't take her!"

"I won't touch you. I'm not touching you. It’s Mulder. Fox Mulder. Emily is in New York with Mrs. Osborne. She's safe. You're safe. We're in Las Vegas and you're having a bad dream.”

Dana opened her eyes. Her breath came in gasps. He wasn’t certain she truly saw him.

“You’re safe,” he repeated. Mulder started to stroke her face but pulled his hand back. "My God. What were you dreaming about?"

Dana shook her head, still seeming disoriented. She pushed herself up on her hands and looked around. The sheet covered her hips, but the lights outside danced blue and green and white against her bare breasts. Her hair was tousled, and looked snarled in the back. "I don't remember. Lights, men, tests."

"You’re in Las Vegas.” In case she didn’t remember why he was naked in her bed, he added, “We’re getting married. Tests like math tests?"

"Medical tests." She wiped her eyes with her hand. "Awful tests. A needle going into my belly. A drill like a dentist would use."

Mulder clinched his stomach muscles in sympathy. He’d been so gentle earlier, and Dana was a quick study, but any Freudian worth his salt knew what would trigger a dream like that. Mulder pulled a blanket over them both and left a large no-man's land in the middle of the bed. He lay down again and found her staring at him.

“Dana, I tried- I thought...” Shit. For a guy with most of a degree in psychology from Oxford and a love life interesting enough for the US government to spy on, Mulder had no idea how to fix this. He would need one of those mail-order illustrated marriage manuals. “We’re getting married. I’m not going to hurt you again, and I’m not going to let anyone else hurt you again, ever.”

She moved closer. Her hand reached out, and her fingers ran delicately over the angles of his face. "I love you. You are-" Her voice hesitated. "You are precious to me. I have a beautiful little girl who adores you and who you adore; that's all the matters. No more trips to the desert, no more asking questions, please. All you're going to do is get hurt. Promise me," she insisted. "Leave that base alone. Don't go out there anymore. Promise me."

Taken aback, he insisted, “Someone did something to you, Dana-”

“Promise me.”

"I promise," he agreed quietly, as the neon lights flashed outside.

Mulder put his arms around her. Her head fit beneath his chin. He felt her relax. Not the tension of her body, but inside her mind. The frantic lights continued outside, but the fear inside her subsided.

“I love you,” he told her.

Dana kissed his neck. Her cool fingertips trailed down his arm. Down his backside. To his groin, cupping, exploring. Without speaking, he put his hand over hers, showing her what to do as he became erect.

As she touched him, he kissed her forehead, her earlobe. Caressed her breasts. Took his turn at touching her. As her breathing became ragged, she rolled to her back, inviting him to love her again. Slowly, gently. One last time before they boarded a plane and returned to the real world.

Mulder hadn’t lied to Dana; he omitted a portion of the truth as a means to an end. If Mulder got his version of the American dream, he wanted to know what the government's version was, as well. Dana, Emily, Will. A family, a yard, and a few more kids to run around the yard - he couldn't protect his family unless he knew what he protected them from. He'd been a good soldier, and 'know your enemy' was the first rule. Mulder would never go near the desert base again, but the truth was out there - either on the barren lake bed or buried secretly beneath miles and miles of sand.

*~*~*~*

For the first time, Mulder got a parking space within fifty feet of Dana’s front door. Pleased with himself, Mulder closed the car door and crouched down, his arms wide, to pick up Emily as she ran across the street to hug him. The little girl wore denim overalls and a sweater, but no coat, hat, or mittens.

He swung Em around and set her down. "Where's Mommy?" Finding Emily outside without a coat or supervision surprised Mulder. Dana didn’t let her daughter run loose, and Em was so sick two days ago they had to postpone getting married yet again. The nocturnal practicing at being married, however, continued until they verged on waking neighbors and he couldn’t imagine how Dana sat without wincing. "Is she busy packing? Did you sneak out, little one?"

Emily knew how to work the buzzer to let people into the building -sometimes to her mother's chagrin. Dana had told her not to push the button anymore, so perhaps Emily spotted him through the window and, applying four-year-old logic, come downstairs to let him in herself.

Mulder pushed the intercom button to Dana's apartment but got no response.

He pressed it again.

"Mommy had to go," Emily informed him. She stood on tiptoe to press the buzzer for Mrs. Osborne to let them into the building, instead.

“Okay.” Perhaps Mrs. Osborne was supposed to be watching Em, but got caught up in one of her television ‘stories.’ Again, that seemed odd. If Emily was outside, Mrs. Osborne sat in a chair near her window, listening to the radio but watching Dana’s daughter.

"Where did Mommy go?” he asked. “I think I found a house for us, and I want her to look at it before I sign the papers."

Emily shrugged, so he followed her inside and up the squeaky steps. Mrs. Osborne didn’t come to her apartment door. On the top floor, Dana's door stood ajar, and half-packed boxes sat scattered around the apartment.  

Mulder put his hands on his hips. "Em, where is your mommy? Where did she have to go?" 

Whatever Dana needed, she could have waited thirty minutes and he could have driven her. It seemed illogical she left her daughter with a sitter if Mulder would be back any minute.

He looked around Dana's apartment, trying to glean some clue. Wherever Dana went, she didn’t take her purse or winter coat. He wondered if Emily fibbed or teased him. If someone would pop out and yell “surprise.” A January version of April Fools. It wasn't a big apartment, though, and Dana wasn't there.

"Where is Mommy?" he asked again. “Is she in the basement, doing the washing? Did she run to the little store down the block to get sugar or eggs or something?”

"She had to go," Emily repeated. The little girl wiped her nose on her sweater sleeve and sniffed.

Mulder’s stomach dropped like it did if a plane hit turbulence. Dana wasn’t in the basement or up the street. He felt the emptiness.

His heart beat faster.

"Go where? To get more boxes?" Mulder asked, but he knew that wasn't the answer.

Emily sniffed again. "She had to go with the men."   

*~*~*~*

Eight o'clock arrived with no sign of Dana. Mulder left a note and took Emily back to The Plaza with him. By ten, Mulder carried the phone as he paced so he didn't have to stop pacing to check it still worked. For the two and a half months he'd known her, Dana Scully's life consisted of her daughter, home, work, him, and lately, trying to civilize Will. She went to the market, the park, and sometimes the library. She didn’t spend afternoons casually shopping, or attend ladies' teas or bridge clubs. The woman didn't even have her hair done, for Christ's sake.

The police searched her apartment building, the neighboring buildings, even the storm drains and trash. None of the old ladies in her building saw or heard anything unusual. If pressed, they told the police Mulder was there last night and again early this morning, but they'd seen no one else. Without fail, each of her neighbors, after she admitted seeing Mulder enter or leave Dana's apartment after dark, added earnestly, “But they're getting married.”

“You should see the rock on the girl's finger,” the Yiddish widow who lived across the hall had rasped. She took a drag from her cigarette and assured the police officer, "Forty years ago, I'da let that handsome baseball fella shtup in, too."

Dana's wallet and keys were in her purse, which hung over a kitchen chair. Her clothes were folded in the dresser. She'd washed his teacup and put it on the dish rack; her coffee cup sat on the counter, the contents cold. The indention of Mulder’s head remained on the bed pillow beside hers. Dana, normally a neat housekeeper, had elected not to change the rumpled sheets. The police detective didn't miss that.

Mulder went over every detail in his mind, trying to find something to help the police, who did him a 'special favor' by searching for Dana so quickly. A 'special favor' after Mulder called the mayor at home.  The police detective asked if Mulder was missing any cash or jewelry. In other words, had his girlfriend stolen whatever she could lay her hands on, abandoned her daughter, and taken off? Even if Dana had a reason to run away - which she didn’t - she never would have left Emily.

The detective asked if Mulder paid Dana's rent and didn't seem to believe he didn't. Mulder knew what it looked like, but that wasn't the case. Damn it, if it was a love nest, he'd pay for something nicer, with an elevator.

Mulder and Dana were getting married on Friday afternoon, come hell or high water. Mulder had called the judge. Byers could be there. Will could leave school early, and Emily could be sick in the judge's chambers as easily as she could be sick at home.

They were getting married.

Emily insisted she saw 'men' 'Mommy had to go with.' The detective talked with her, but Emily offered as much information as any other four-year old. Grandma's name was 'Grammy' and Grammy lived 'in a house.' Mulder knew Dana kept in touch with her mother and sister, but he had no idea how to contact them or, given what they probably thought of Dana, if they wanted contacted at all.

The policeman asked if Mulder was Emily's father. Mulder admitted he wasn't. The detective frowned and wrote that on his little pad of paper.

A search of Dana's apartment turned up a carefully balanced bankbook, Emily's birth certificate with a strange man's name listed as the father – Mulder guessed she had to name someone - and Dana's diploma from nursing school. Beyond that and some random pieces of mail, Mulder found nothing. He left Dana and Emily to pack their things while he went to look at a house with the realtor. Three hours later, Dana had vanished.

No one seemed to care.

Mulder called Frohike. Frohike made some calls. Within the hour every policeman in the state cared, as well as an FBI Special Agent named Arthur Dales.

*~*~*~*

"Mulder," a little voice said from beside his bed. Mulder opened his eyes. "Are you awake, Mulder?"

Emily stood clutching her stuffed Kitty. She wore one of Will's old T-shirts, which reached her knees, and her hair was still damp from a midnight bath. It was more of a soak than a bath. Mulder didn’t know what parts he should wash and which parts he shouldn’t, but she'd turned out clean enough.

"Are you sick again?"

She shook her head and sniffed.

"Thirsty?" he guessed. "A bad dream?"

"When is Mommy coming back?"

"I don't know, honey. The policemen are looking for her."

Everyone from the maids to the concierge had offered to take Emily home or to call a nanny to take care of her. Frohike had a sister in Queens who had kids and grandkids; she would be delighted to watch Emily. Byers said Emily could stay with his family; he and Susanne could make room and she could play with their girls. They had a yard and a dog.

Hell would freeze first.

No, Mulder hadn’t thought to grab a change of clothes for Emily. He could buy her clothes though, or get them from Dana's apartment. He could feed Em and take care of her and keep her safe - even if he couldn't keep Dana safe.

"May I sleep with you?" the girl asked.

He got as far as saying, "Emily, I don't-" before she climbed into his bed and curled up against his chest in a warm ball of white cotton. "Okay," Mulder amended.

"I miss Mommy," Emily told him.

"I do too."

Mulder put his hand tentatively, then more firmly on her back. He put his chin on top of her head and breathed deeply. She smelled like Dana.

"Dad?" Will asked from the doorway, a tall, lurking silhouette.

"Are you okay, son?"

William should be at his mother's apartment, but he didn't want to go, and Mulder lacked the energy to argue. "Have the police rang?" Will loitered in the doorway. "Is there any word about Miss Scully?"

"No," Mulder answered softly. He rubbed Emily's back. "No word yet. Are you okay?"

"It's too hot in my room."

"Do you want me to call the desk?"

"It's cooler in here. Below roasting, anyway. I heard Emily get up." Will flopped across the foot of Mulder’s bed with an 'ooph.' "I was checking on her."

"Here." Mulder tossed a pillow to him. "Join the slumber party."

"I'm going back to my room so I can roast to a tempting, even, golden brown. I was..." Will exhaled loudly. "Who would take Miss Scully, Dad?"

"I don't know, son."

"Do you think she's all right?"

"I don't know," he answered quietly.

"She’s pretty. Would they-" Will realized Emily was listening. "Dad?"

Mulder's throat tightened as he answered, "I don't know, William." He took a slow breath. "The police are looking. Everyone's looking."

William shifted restlessly, seeming unconvinced. He toyed with Emily's foot, shifted again, sighed, and snapped at his father to stop kicking him in the kidneys.

"It's okay, Will," Emily assured him in the darkness. "My mommy will come back, and she'll marry your daddy, and it will all be okay."

She sounded so sure, in that moment, Mulder believed her.

"You'll be my brother. My big brother," she added as if to clarify.

An eerie silence seemed to last minutes rather than seconds.

"Okay," his son agreed quietly. "It's a deal."

Mulder swallowed. "The men who took your mommy - are they hurting her, Em?"

After a pause, Emily answered in the same certain voice, "She's sleeping."

"Okay," he answered, as Will had. "We should sleep, too."

*~*~*~*

Each day of anxious, impotent waiting lasted a century, yet the universe stopped each time the telephone rang. No ransom demand came. No witnesses stepped forwarded. No one called about the missing person posters. Every fingerprint in Dana’s apartment belonged to Dana, Emily, Mulder, or Will. In Mulder’s apartment, after they returned from Las Vegas, Dana had taken off her gold cross necklace to shower. She’d left it in his bathroom, and he hadn't hurried to return it because he knew she’d be back. Dana’s cross remained in the hinged wooden box on his dresser along with his old wedding band, World Series rings, and a dozen pairs of cufflinks. Mulder couldn’t bear to open the box, so he’d worn the same cufflinks for days.

Special Agent Arthur Dales worked in the FBI’s DC office but arrived in New York two days after Dana disappeared and hours he’d been assigned the case. Agent Dales seemed rough around the edges but dedicated to his job. He was head of his division – though his division consisted of himself. Dales said he’d worked other cases in which young women mysteriously vanished, endorsement enough for Mulder.

The police showed Agent Dales Dana’s apartment. Then, at The Plaza, Mulder told Agent Dales word-for-word what Dana had said: the base in Nevada, the young women inexplicably getting in trouble, the babies disappearing rather than being adopted. Agent Dales asked why Mulder believed Dana. Mulder’s face grew hot, but he answered. Agent Dales scribbled a note in the FBI file. With Emily napping and Will at school, Mulder sat in his living room and answered whether there was blood on the sheets the first night and how many times they’d had been together and if Mulder had been with many other women and if he knew anything about Dana’s menstrual cycle. Dales asked if Mulder ever woke to find Dana missing from their bed or inexplicably undressed or oddly dressed. If he knew or suspected any of his sexual partners fell pregnant. How those pregnancies ended. If he’d describe William or Emily as unusual in any manner. Mulder answered every question. Dales wrote all that down in a new manila file with a battered fountain pen. He took a few photographs of Mulder’s bedroom and terrace. Agent Dales tracked snow from the terrace across the carpet, and he helped himself to an apple from the bowl of fruit in the kitchen. Dana had the grocer deliver the apples and oranges last week because vitamins A and C are important for growing children and “they can’t live on scrambled eggs, Mulder.” And Agent Dales left.

Another day passed. And another. The police didn’t call. Agent Dales didn’t call. Dana didn’t call.

Mulder’s heart felt like a skinned knee. And no one did anything.

"I don't think that's the best plan," Frohike told Mulder again. Frohike sat behind the wide desk in his fancy corner office looking like a displeased hobbit. "I don't think it will help."

Mulder paced the length of the room, unshaven and wearing yesterday’s shirt and trousers. Emily waited in the lobby with Frohike’s secretary. "Do it. Offer a bigger reward. Have Langly transfer the money. The police will start to lose interest, so we need to monitor the hospitals and-" He took a shaky breath. "-th-the morgues."

"I have that covered, Mulder. She's not-"

"Flights. Flights out of New York." Mulder still paced. He reached a wall and turned. "Train passenger lists. Any-"

"Mulder," Frohike said sharply, "We’ve had this conversation a dozen times. You pay me to know what I'm talking about, and I'm telling you she's not in New York. Not her, not her body. There's no record of Dana Scully or any woman fitting her description leaving the city. Either she's run so fast and so far I can't find her - which would be unlikely for several reasons, not the least of which is she adores you - or-"  

"Or the men Emily is talking about are military men and they took Dana because she told me about her daughter," Mulder finished for him.

Frohike tilted back in his big swivel chair and nodded.

Mulder stopped pacing. He leaned against the top of one of two wingback chairs that faced his agent’s desk. "Why leave her daughter?"

"Emily doesn't know where she came from, but Dana does?"    

"So do I.” Mulder threw his hands wide. “Why am I still here? Why am I not missing?"

"You and me and Langly and probably Byers," Frohike answered. "We all know something is happening out there in the desert. I'm not sure, Mulder. I know they’re keeping millions of vaccination records and tissue samples, but I don’t know why. Then the files. They’re tracking civilians, and your file had something not in mine: a list of women. Then, there are top-secret aircraft and technology, which makes sense given it's a secret military base. How it all ties together, I have no idea, and my source has vanished."

"Agent Dales says the FBI doesn’t keep vaccination records or files on anyone except criminals and crime victims. Byers said he went in circles with the military."   

"So did I, but I'm still looking. Someone’s willing to talk for the right price."

Mulder ran his fingers through his hair. He needed a haircut. "Frohike, what if it's not that Dana told me? What if it's that I'm asking questions? Doing the opposite of what I promised her? What if they took her to get me to back off?" He leaned on the upholstered chair again and tried to get his brain to focus with the three hours’ sleep he'd had in the last three days. "Stop looking into the base. Have Byers reverse everything he's done legally and you stop everything you've done illegally."

"But-"

Mulder shook his head. "No. Stop looking. If you can't find Dana, at least stop antagonizing the men who took her."

Frohike’s eyebrows drew closer together. "Something is happening to the women on that base!"

"Dana’s not on that base anymore!" Mulder shouted back. His knuckles whitened as he gripped the top of the chair. "Someone else can spend his life chasing after Martians or Nazis or conspiracies or whatever you think is out there on that base. You work for me, and I want Dana back."

Frohike’s chair creaked. He got up, walked around his desk, pointed sternly to one of the armchairs, and ordered, “Sit, Mulder.”

Out of years of habit, Mulder sat. Frohike’s leather desk chair swiveled a few times in his absence.

Frohike sank into the other upholstered armchair with a weary grunt. "Mulder, I’ve said you don't get your money's worth out of me. You have to be the most decent, brilliant professional athlete I've ever known. When my source read me the list of women, I was surprised it was that long."

"Do you have a point, Frohike?"

"All professional athletes are genetic anomalies, but you could have as easily become an Olympic skier or ice skater or a marathon runner if those sports had paid you. You're naturally lean, muscular, agile. You're in better shape than most twenty-year-olds. You can run and not get tired. You sleep less than most people. You can eat less. You can drink more alcohol. Byers says you're an uncanny marksman. The U.S. Army would love a whole battalion of soldiers like you."

Mulder slouched forward and rested his elbows on his knees. "And I'm hardly ever sick at sea. Are you flirting with me or are we still getting to the point?"

"You're bright, too. You could have been a professor, a scientist - anything you wanted. And sometimes, Mulder, you're spooky. I think about calling you, pick up the telephone, and you're on the line. There's the memory thing you can do: names, numbers, languages. What if you'd never met Phoebe, Mulder? What if that fluke caused you to do something with your life you were never meant to do?"

"My son is not a fluke," Mulder said through clenched teeth.

"I understand. I understand you're a good guy and a good father and you did what you had to do, but what if this is a second chance? What if you're supposed to ask questions about what the government is doing?” Frohike leaned closer. “Because I promise our government is doing something. You are different, Mulder-"

"Yes, I'm different.” Mulder let his head hang. His eyes burned, his temples throbbed. “You're right. Take away baseball and I'm the weird, brainy rich kid with the missing sister. With the drunk father and the crazy mother. The kid who lives inside his own head and stutters if he gets nervous. I finally got more, and I'm not losing it because of some foolish quest."

"What if there's a reason for that, too?"

Mulder raised his face to peer at the little man. "I don't follow."

"A reason you're different. Let's say the U.S. government continued or even originated, the Nazi eugenics experiments. They choose the smartest and the healthiest men and women and make sure they have children together by whatever means necessary. Their children have children and they start to create a superior race. I think you're one of those 'arranged' children, like Emily is."

"I think you're insane." Mulder was out of the chair. He stood over Frohike with his hands on his hips. "The U.S. government wants colorblind alcoholics with bad knees and no sense of direction?"

"They're building a better human: smarter, healthier, more athletic. And they're doing it against people's will. Dana was easy; the government had no trouble with her. You are more difficult to control, so they keep track of the women you're with, probably even arranging a few and hoping they'd conceive."

"First of all, Dana is not easy.” Mulder’s voice grew increasingly loud. “Don't you dare say that!"

Frohike opened his mouth but didn't get a chance to speak.

Mulder paced again. "No one 'arranged' for me to be with any woman. Aside from the one I married and the one I'm gonna marry, I was either drunk or in the middle of a war scared to death I would die." He reached a wall, gritted his teeth, and gave the plaster a few threatening taps with his fist. "So Emily and I are superior humans, but William is a fluke who screwed up my life?” He flung his hand angrily in Frohike’s direction. “Go to Hell!"

“Mulder-”

The office door opened. Dana’s daughter carried stuffed Kitty and ignored Frohike’s secretary’s plea to come back. Emily had taken off her shoes, and her new white socks had dirty black soles. Despite Macy’s selling Mulder a bouquet of little dresses, Em wore the overalls and sweater she had on when Mulder found her outside Dana’s apartment.

He picked the child up. Her skin felt less fevered. The pills Will’s doctor prescribed were working, but Em still wouldn’t eat. This morning, Mulder had offered a sliced apple and an orange. Both were declined, and Emily had donated her scrambled eggs to Will.

Frohike’s secretary stood in the doorway ready to take Emily. Mulder shook his head, and the door closed.

Mulder exhaled, gave Emily’s blonde head a kiss, carried her to an armchair, and sat down.

Emily asked in a raspy whisper, “Did you find Mommy?”

“Not yet.” Something sticky made a matted tangle above the girl’s ear. Mulder examined the stiff strands of hair, but let the spot stay. “Does your throat still hurt?”

The girl nodded miserably.

Glass clinked against wood. Ice rattled. Mulder looked up. Melvin Frohike poured a can of pineapple juice from his liquor cabinet into a highball glass of ice. He added a little straw and brought the glass to Emily. Putting Kitty aside, Emily held the glass with both hands and took a sip. She grimaced as she swallowed, but she sipped again. Frohike brought Mulder club soda over ice. Mulder’s glass remained on the coaster.

“I’m sorry,” Mulder said wearily. He rubbed Emily’s back. “I know you’re trying to help. I know everyone’s trying to help. I...” He had no idea how that sentence ended.

“I know.” Frohike leaned back against his desk, facing Mulder. On the wall, a framed photograph of the Yankees’ 1927 lineup bore every players’ autograph. “I’m calling a doctor. You need to sleep, Mulder. He’ll give you some pills. I’ll get Will after school, and my sister can watch Emily for a few hours.” 

Mulder shook his head. He didn’t want to sleep. During the day, if he kept busy, a minute might pass without worrying about Dana. If he slept, he dreamed, and every crime scene photo of any woman he’d ever seen formed a kaleidoscope of horror in his head.

The memory thing Mulder could do: he remembered every monster he’d studied at Oxford. His mind pasted Dana’s face into photographs of mutilated women all the way back to Jack the Ripper. Mulder knew the chances of finding a missing woman alive after more than 48 hours. He even recalled himself as a university student standing in a padded white room and trying to interview a woman the London police had found alive. Years after the monsters who kidnapped, raped, and tortured her were hanged, the woman had still huddled in the corner wearing a straightjacket and watching Mulder with dead eyes.

“He had brown hair,” a little voice rasped. Mulder looked down. Emily said, “One of the men who took Mommy – he had brown hair.”

Frohike stepped toward her. “Brown hair?”

She nodded. “Like Mulder.”

Mulder asked, “Can you remember anything else about the man, Em?”

She blinked a few times but shook her head ‘no.’

“Anything, honey? What the men wore or if they had a car or- Was there anything about the men who took Mommy you didn’t tell the police?”

Another wide-eyed shake of her head.

Mulder started to speak again, but Frohike beat him to it. “That’s good, Emily. I’ll tell the police detective.”

Mulder said quickly, “Em, there are artists who work with the policemen. You could talk with one, and he might be able to draw the men you saw.”

“Mulder,” Frohike said warningly. His agent furrowed his brow. The chances of a four-year-old – especially a sick, frightened four-year-old who’d been quizzed repeatedly – providing anything useful to the police were slim-to-none.

“I know,” Mulder responded. “I’ll pay. Find a sketch artist who freelances.” 

Frohike sighed unhappily but picked up his telephone.

Emily took another sip of juice.

The sketch artist arrived within twenty minutes and worked with Emily for over an hour. The end result were two $25 sketches. One looked vaguely like Mulder or Will, and other like a grim Boris Karloff. Frohike had the sketches sent to the detective. Or, at least, Frohike told Em he sent them. The NYPD neglected to send a thank-you note.

Emily did drink another can of pineapple juice, at least.

Another day passed.

And another. Mulder put on Dana’s delicate cross necklace. His shirt collar hid it, and he knew the cross was safe. Mostly, he wore the necklace so he didn’t have to look at it.

The sketches hadn’t made a difference. A larger reward hadn’t helped. Private detectives hadn’t found any leads. Even Mulder admitting things to Agent Dales that would have caused Frohike a conniption fit, had his agent known, hadn’t done any good. Drag the rivers, sift the beaches, shout to the heavens - no amount of money or manpower could find a woman not there to be found.

*~*~*~*

Will fidgeted if he was in Big Trouble, like his mother did, which meant it doubly annoyed Mulder. As Mulder drove, William banged his knees into the dashboard, jostled Emily beside him in the front seat - which he had been warned twice not to do - and started to change the radio station. After a glance at his father's face, Will elected to suffer through music from the Colored station. After meeting with Will's school principal thirty minutes earlier, Mulder's face achieved a shade seldom seen in humans.

"I'm sorry." Will crossed his arms on his chest and slouched down. "It's not as if we did anything."

"Don't-" Mulder looked at him and held up one finger. "Don't speak. In case you don't realize it, you're about two words away from a boys' school in Siberia, so do not say a word!" That order lasted three minutes before Mulder exploded. "What were you thinking, son?"

His son managed to look even more miserable. "I'm sorry," he insisted yet again.

"Did you even think about the consequences?"

Will shrugged and looked puzzled.

"Can you imagine the telephone call I'll get from her father? He's the commissioner of the Bureau of Internal Revenue. You and I are going to get audited on our income taxes every year for the rest of our lives. I'd love to be able to claim his fast daughter talked my innocent son into it, but I'm betting that's not the case. What if one thing had led to another? Did you think about that?" Mulder demanded angrily.

"I'm not daft, Dad."

"Neither am I, Will," he snapped back, but wished he hadn't.

Before he could say anything else, Emily sniffed and wiped her nose. "Mulder?" she said uncertainly. Her hand came away bloody. "Will?"

"It's okay, honey." Mulder reached for his handkerchief and passed it to Will. "Pinch her nose shut." He tried to watch them and the mid-morning traffic at the same time. He had no place to pull over. "Gently, Will. It's just a nose bleed, Em. It's okay. It'll stop in a second."

"It's okay." Will added his handkerchief to her nose as the first one soaked through. Emily started to cough and cry, and Will glanced at his father.

"It looks like more blood than it is," Mulder said, though it looked like a lot to him, too. "See if there are paper napkins in the glove box."

One handed, Will fished out a stack of napkins Dana had stowed there, and added them to the wad against Emily's nose. After a tense minute, the bleeding subsided. Will cleaned off her face and his hands. He pulled Emily onto his lap. He wiped away her tears and draped his coat over her, looking like a good big brother. "You sprung a leak," Will said as she leaned her head against his chest. "I should call you 'Squirt.'"

Emily sniffed miserably. Her chin quivered, and she’d left a bloody handprint on Will’s school shirt. She'd felt awful for days but the doctor couldn't figure out the problem. The doctor kept running tests and scheduling appointments with specialists, but didn't do anything to make her better.

"It's okay," Mulder promised. "We're almost there."

"I want Mommy," Emily managed tearfully.

"I know. Me too, honey." Mulder couldn't remember the last time he'd slept more than an hour. His churning stomach and burning chest indicated he should consume something besides coffee. At a stoplight, Mulder reached over and touched Emily's face. "Everything's going to be okay. It's all under control. It just doesn't look like it."

Will rubbed her back. The boy watched his hand and looked embarrassed.

Emily sniffed again.

"Dad, I am sorry," William said after a few more blocks, sounding as if he honestly might be. "You have enough trouble; I didn't mean to cause more. I do want to live with you and Miss Scully. I know that wasn't right - at school. Or respectful. I-I wasn't thinking. I should have told her not to. She's a nice girl."

"She's not a nice girl," Mulder responded obliquely, given their miserable four-year-old audience. "or she wouldn't have been doing that. We've talked about this, Will."

"I wish you wouldn't say that," Will answered in a careful tone. "She's my girlfriend. I let her do something I shouldn't because I love her and she loves me. I wasn't thinking. I made a mistake, and it's my responsibility, but that doesn't change that she's a nice girl."

Mulder worried his upper lip between his teeth. "Where did a nice fifteen-year-old girl learn to do that?"

"She's had other boyfriends. But I don't care. You don't care."

"What do you mean I don't care?"

"About-" Will cut his eyes silently down at Emily.

"It's not the same, William."

"Why is it not the same?" his son asked. "Everyone makes mistakes. Love is wonderful and thrilling, and sometimes people in love make mistakes. They don't always do the right thing."

"They aren't supposed to purposefully do the wrong thing," Mulder responded angrily. "You know right from wrong. And just because you or she make one mistake doesn't mean it's okay to keep making mistakes."

"You are a hypocrite," Will accused him.

"You are fifteen years old!"

"Pot, kettle, black," his son shot back.

"It's not the same," Mulder repeated angrily, his face flushing again. "Dana and I are adults. We're getting married. We want to have a family. Can you say that?"

"Can I say I want a normal family? Damn straight I can," Will said coolly. "See what you can do about that, Daddy-O."

Mulder gritted his teeth so hard his jaws ached. His knuckles were white on the hand on the steering wheel. The radio played but the car was otherwise silent except for Emily's sniffs.

Will muttered, "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have said that."

"Okay," Mulder managed to say.

"I do like Miss Scully. I miss her too."

"I know."

Will slouched down in the seat. "Fine. Send me to Siberia."

"I'm not sending you to Siberia, Will," Mulder answered, his voice falsely calm. "I don't want you to make the same- I want you- I want you to get to be a child a little longer."

"Okay," Will agreed emptily, and rubbed Emily's back again.

Mulder knew Will didn't understand, but Mulder didn't say anything else because he couldn't think of anything else to say.

Ten minutes later, Mulder got out of the Cadillac in front of The Plaza before the valet even neared the door. "Come on, Em," he said, and reached back to pick up the child, who still wore pajamas and hadn’t yet brushed her teeth today.   

"I don't get to drive to the car park, do I?" Will asked from the passenger seat. A pile of bloody napkins and handkerchiefs lay at his feet. "You mean it this time."

Parking the car had been a perk of turning fifteen, but any perk not a mandatory bodily function got revoked the moment the principal explained to Mulder what his son and some tramp had been doing while skipping second period.

"Out, William. Get out, go upstairs, go in your bedroom, and don't come out for a long time."

*~*~*~*

Despite Mulder knowing he’d left Frohike, Langly, and Byers sitting at his dining room table, their presence momentarily surprised him. Their monthly meeting had been relocated to Mulder’s apartment so Emily could rest and so Mulder would home if Dana or the police or FBI called. 

Instead, Will’s school principal had called.

Mulder carried Emily inside the apartment, tossed his hat toward the coatrack, and pushed the door shut with the heel of his shoe. Will slung his book bag across the floor of the foyer. He stomped past the business meeting on hold in the dining room without acknowledging any of the men. 

"What did he do?" Frohike asked.

"He made a mistake," Mulder answered crisply.

Will's bedroom door slammed.

Mulder sighed. He put Emily on the couch and turned on the television set. After draping a blanket over Em and stuffed Kitty, Mulder resumed his seat. "Thank you for waiting."

Byers tapped a pile of typewritten pages into a neat stack against the tabletop. "A few more things, and we'll be out of your hair." He looked at Frohike reluctantly.

Frohike gave ‘go ahead’ nod. Langly turned to a fresh page on his steno pad and slowly leaned back from the table. Mulder sensed there’d been a tense and lengthy discussion during his absence.

"The children, Mulder.” Byers cleared his throat. “You don't have custody of Emily Scully or William. Phoebe's attorney is calling. You can't keep Will, not if she wants him. We can get a court date and try to change the visitation schedule, but you can't just keep him."

Langly focused intently on the blank, green sheet of paper.

"They're okay. Em's okay." Mulder spun a paper clip nervously. Dana's definition of 'okay' would not include Emily staring at the television in her pajamas all day or Will getting caught half-naked with a girl in the boys’ locker room. "I could hire a nanny. I could get Nanny Marie. Why can't I keep Emily until Dana comes back?"

"I found a grandmother in Washington D.C.," Byers said quietly. "Dana's mother. I should have contacted her months ago, but - well, you know why I didn't. She wants to talk with you, and it sounds like she might be willing to take Emily. Talk to her, Mulder. Margaret Scully sounded like a nice lady and concerned about her daughter. If nothing else, she would take Emily for a week."

Frohike said, "You're coming apart at the seams, Mulder. Let Mrs. Scully take care of Emily while you find Dana. As soon as Dana's back, Emily comes back."

Langly picked little pieces of paper from the metal rings at the top of his steno pad.

Mulder held out his hand for the phone number. He crumpled and shoved it into his pocket. "And Will?" he asked tiredly. "I'll pay Phoebe whatever she wants, but I want Will. He doesn't want to live with her. He wants to live with Dana and me."

"Dana's not here, Mulder." Byers still sounded like he soothed a child. "It's you. I spoke with co-counsel. We don't think you could get even joint custody of him. We recommend you follow the schedule the judge set, and when Dana's back and things settle down, we'll go back to court."

"I'm his father." 

"But she's his mother. You know what Phoebe's going to say." Frohike spoke even softer than Byers. "You didn't see William again until he was six. Don't tell me that wasn't your fault, because I know it wasn't, but it's still true. Phoebe's attorney will say you're a playboy with a history of alcohol problems - which means 'a drunk' to a judge - who's rarely spent more than a few days at a time with his son in fifteen years. This is the only time you've ever taken care of him on your own, and Will's getting in fights, he's skipping school-"

Mulder opened his mouth, but Frohike held up his hand. Langly didn’t look away from the notepad.

Frohike said, "It's Byers' job to tell you what would happen if you go back to court. Aside from seeing it in the papers, she'll make that boy testify. You know she will. He's seen you drunk. He's walked in on you with a woman. He knows you and Dana spent nights together. He'll have to admit all that on the stand."

Mulder's mouth remained agape. He had no idea Will told Frohike those things.

"Byers or the judge will ask him what he's seen his mother do, what she's said to him, and that's not pretty either," Frohike said. "I'm certainly not saying he's better off with Phoebe, but I'm saying a judge might. Phoebe's attorney will say Dana abandoned her daughter. An illegitimate daughter you let your impressionable young son be around. It would be a long, nasty, public custody fight, it will be horrible for Will, and I'm afraid you’d come out of it not being able to see him at all. Leave the schedule the way it is, and he'll be over here all the time anyway."

"Listen to him, Mulder," Byers urged. "He's right."

"Will's not going back to her," Mulder insisted. "Her housekeeper takes care of him. Phoebe doesn't know where he is half the time, and she doesn't care. As long as I keep paying her, why does she even want him?"

Frohike leaned forward, both hands pressed against the tabletop and his brow furrowed. "Phoebe doesn't want him, Mulder," he said angrily. "She's never wanted him. She doesn't want him with you. She couldn't care less about hurting that boy as long as she can use him to-"

Langly cleared his throat and looked toward the hallway. Where Mulder saw William standing.

Mulder’s heart pounded. "You're supposed to be in your room, William," he said shakily. "I told you to stay in your room."

"I-I came to see if I could watch the telly." A hurt crease appeared between the boy’s eyebrows. "I guess not."

"No."

Will turned away and walked quickly to his bedroom.

Mulder laid his head down on the cool table and closed his eyes. "Shit. He heard that."

"I am so sorry, Mulder," Frohike said quietly. "I'll talk to him. I'll call him-"

"Out." Mulder didn’t look up or possess the energy to yell and cry at the same time. It was one or the other, and Mulder leaned toward crying. "Everybody out. We're done. Get a court date, Byers. He's not going back."

Frohike chair squealed against the floor as he stood. Byers and Langly followed his example.

"Come to dinner tonight," Byers offered. "I'll send our nanny over for the kids, and Susanne can get some food into you before your clothes start falling off."

"Get out," Mulder ordered.

*~*~*~*

Mulder had insisted Emily wear a dress instead of her denim overalls, and he regretted his decision as soon as they left The Plaza this morning. Her thin tights and dress shoes – both of which she despised - offered little protection against the cold, while her new winter coat was more pretty and itchy than warm. Mulder kept his trench coat around her as she slept on his lap during the flight, but a cold, raw wind sliced at them as soon as they stepped off the plane in Washington, DC. William shivered morosely in his denim jeans and leather jacket. Emily’s forehead felt hot again, so they waited inside the terminal and away from the doors.

Mulder shifted Emily on his hip as he looked around the airport, trying to imagine what Margaret or Bill Scully might look like.

He knew as soon as they stepped through the terminal’s front doors: a small, composed brunette woman with a tall, powerfully built man with Dana's coloring. Margaret Scully touched her son's shoulder and had him to wait at the entrance. She walked toward Mulder and Emily alone. Behind her, Bill Scully leaned against a wall and folded his arms unhappily.

"Mrs. Scully?" Mulder asked to make sure. "I-I'm Fox Mulder. Look, honey: Grammy." Emily kept her head buried against his shoulder. "She's shy. She's not feeling well."

"Thank you for bringing her.” Margaret Scully said awkwardly, “She's gotten so big.”

Mulder smoothed Em's blonde hair. "It's Grammy. Grammy doesn't know Kitty. Show her Kitty?"

Emily shook her head. She clutched the threadbare stuffed cat and sniffed. "Thirsty," she croaked in a little voice.

"Does your throat hurt again?"

She nodded but still kept her cheek against his coat. Mulder signaled Will, who left his assigned seat across the terminal and came to take Em.

"Get her something cold to drink while I talk with Mrs. Scully," Mulder told his son. "Juice." He set down Emily's new suitcase to dig out his wallet. "Go with Will, Em."

Will betrayed his cool exterior by taking Emily’s hand and saying, "Come on, Squirt."

"She's sick?" Mrs. Scully watched them walk away.

Mulder realized he hadn’t introduced William. "She's been sick since New Year's. That was my son. William. There's um-" He pulled the envelope out of his coat pocket. "I-I-I took her to my son's doctor, who sent her to a specialist in Allentown, Pennsylvania. She's been to see him once, but Dr. Scanlon thinks something is wrong with her immune system. He wants her to see a Dr. Klemper, who's a genetics doctor. They're still running tests, but their cards are in here. Her appointment with Dr. Klemper is in a week. There's also a number for Richard Langly. He's an accountant. He'll take care of her medical expenses, your travel arrangements, and anything else she needs; call him or send him the bills."

Mulder examined the polished floor closely for any flaws.

"You don't need to pay me to take care of my granddaughter, Mr. Mulder. Dana can be a willful, spirited girl. She’s too smart for her own good, sometimes, but we’ve always been proud of Dana. Whatever mistake she made, it's not the child's fault."

He shifted his feet and shoved his hands deep in his pockets. "There's a card from an FBI Agent named Arthur Dales here in D.C. He's been working with the NYPD to find Dana, so if you can think of anything helpful-"

As if he hadn’t spoken, she asked, "Are you Emily’s father, Mr. Mulder?"

"No.” He glanced at Will and Emily at the counter of the airport cafe. With all the other tests going on, Mulder had Dr. Scanlon check his blood type against Emily's and Dana's in case there was a match. No match. “I’ve known Dana a few months. We’re engaged to be married."

She took the envelope.

“I know. Dana called me on New Year’s Day.” Mrs. Scully stood ramrod straight. “I recognized your name. My husband hated the New York Yankees.”

“They just paid me to hit baseballs.” He shifted his feet again. “I love your daughter, Mrs. Scully. And your granddaughter. If you change your mind about wanting Emily- If I could convince a judge I was Emily’s father, I wouldn’t be standing here.”

Mrs. Scully looked both disapproving and unconvinced.

"William and I will be at my mother’s house in Boston for a few days,” Mulder said, “then back in New York. Sometimes Em likes to talk on the phone, so call and reverse the long distance charges. There's a book she likes at bedtime; it's in her bag."

Will returned, leading Emily across the terminal as slowly as possible. "I bought her a grape Nehi. They don’t have juice."

Mulder squatted down. He buttoned Emily's coat and put on her mittens. "You're going to stay with Grammy. Remember, we talked about it?"

Emily nodded with her purple-stained lips pursed. The furrow between her eyebrows made her look exactly like Dana. Mulder frowned back, shoving his lower lip out clownishly as he reached in the pocket of his trench coat. As he put his old Yankees uniform cap on her head, he whispered, "You have my hat and I have Mommy's necklace. When Mommy comes back, we trade. I get my hat back, and what does Mommy get?"

"Kisses." Her chin started to tremble. Emily pulled his shirt collar to the side, looking for the gold chain he'd shown her earlier. "Mommy gets kisses."

"Big kisses," Mulder said softly. He pressed a kiss against her warm forehead. "Go with Grammy. Hurry, before it starts raining again."

"You'll find Mommy?"

"I'll keep looking." He blinked quickly and sniffed. Emily’s chin continued to tremble. Mulder amended, “I’ll find her. I will. I’ll find her and we’ll be a family and William will be your big brother, like you said.”

Behind Mulder, Will cleared his throat. The intercom announced their flight to Boston was boarding.

"Ready, Emily? It's time for him to go. You may call Mr. Mulder tonight. Is that all right, Mr. Mulder?" Margaret Scully asked.

Mulder nodded. He stood up and blinked again as Emily took her grandmother's hand. Bill Scully walked over and picked up Emily’s suitcase. Bill made a point to glare at Mulder before he turned away.

*~*~*~*

The sky over Boston was gray as Mulder and Will landed, dark gray during their taxi ride, and now a solid black layer of clouds blocking the moon and stars. His mother’s new maid had a fire going in every hearth and clean linens on the beds and dinner waiting. Mulder’s mother emerged briefly from her bedroom to acknowledge their presence.

Will sat at a table looking studious, and Mulder was three-quarters of the way through his third long-distance reading of “The Velveteen Rabbit” when Mrs. Scully picked up the phone. 

"She's asleep, Mr. Mulder."

"Good. Is she okay?" Mulder rolled his neck from side to side.  

"Considering the situation, I think she's doing well."

After several seconds of silence, Mulder opened his mouth to say goodnight.

"I don't think I said 'thank you,' Mr. Mulder. I appreciate what you've done. You must care for Emily and Dana very much."

He worried his lip until it started to throb. "I do."

Another pause. "We'll call for a story tomorrow night, all right?"

"That would be great. Goodnight." 

Mulder replaced the receiver on the phone and stared at the logs burning in the fireplace across the room. Despite seeing the fire, he couldn't feel the warmth. From the time he was a teenager, there was never any warmth. His parents owned a lovely house in a lovely section of Boston, but it was hollow. After Sam vanished, his parents' souls left as well, leaving their bodies behind as placeholders.

Mulder would not be hollow. Even if he never found Dana, he would not be hollow.

"Daddy-O? Are you okay?" William looked up from the homework he had to do during his expulsion from school.

Mulder exhaled. He ran his fingers through his hair and got up from the couch. Going to the mantel, he looked over the framed photos, noting they all predated Samantha's disappearance. Life had stopped after Samantha.

He would not be hollow. Will needed a father. Emily was in Washington and she needed a bedtime story. Mulder could not be hollow.

He felt the frigid winter wind blowing inside him.

“Dad?” Will repeated.

"I was getting Em to sleep. It sounds like she's doing fine. Yes, I'm okay."

"Good." Will closed his textbook. "It shows." A moment later, his son asked, "What happened to your sister, Dad?"

"We never found out. Like Dana, she was just gone."

After he said them, the words echoed inside his mind: like Dana, she was just gone. The police searched for months but found no trace of Samantha. Mulder’s father began to drink more, and his mother spent days locked in her bedroom. Though pictures of Sam hung everywhere, Samantha wasn't mentioned, she wasn't mourned - she was just gone.

"How old was she?"

"Nine."

No pictures of Mulder alone rested on the polished mantel. He saw childhood photographs of him with Samantha, and of Samantha alone, but none of Mulder alone. He knew they existed; he remembered posing. The photos weren't on his parents' mantel. As if Mulder was an afterthought - unimportant except for his sister.

He’d been a high school baseball and track star. Highest marks in his class and admitted early to Oxford. He’d been a decorated army officer, but Mulder wondered if his parents ever wanted him at all.

"You never found her?" Will asked, as the fire crackled in the hearth. "Not even her body?"

"No," Mulder answered softly. "No, we never did."

*~*~*~*

"Try it again." Mulder reached in to re-tighten the plug wires. It was fruitless. Mulder knew little about auto mechanics, and the exotic Porsche engine baffled him. Luckily, his son hadn't seen his perplexed expression when Mulder first opened the hood and found nothing; the German engineers had put the engine in the trunk.

Will turned the key and got a sluggish coughing noise from the engine. He conveyed that information to his father by yelling, "It's still not turning over!"

"Are you giving it enough gas?"

"Was I supposed to be giving it gas?"

Mulder looked at his son suspiciously. He'd spent the afternoon trying to get his father's sports car to start: another in a series of projects his mother assigned him the moment they arrived in Boston. Teena Mulder didn't want to talk, but she could still make a to-do list.

Will got out of the driver's seat. He came back to lean on a fender and watch Mulder tinkering. "I've passed peckish and am rounding the bend to starving. How much longer before you tell Grandmother you have no bloody idea what you're doing?"

"About ten bloody seconds." Mulder gave the distributor cap a whack with the wrench. "We tackle the dripping bathroom faucet after dinner. Bring a mop."

"You are not able to fix it, Fuchs?" Teena Mulder said worriedly as she entered the carriage house the Mulders used as a garage. She wore her robe over her house dress, and her house slippers, even in the snow.

Mulder wiped his hands on a rag and rolled his shirtsleeves down. "I think it's sat too long, Mutter. It's practically new but it needs plugs, hoses, belts, a battery. I'd rather a mechanic did it so nothing gets missed. Vater loved his cars." 

"You will call someone, yes?" Despite leaving Germany forty years ago, her pronunciation and bearing retained the elegance of the old world. "Your father took care of these things."

"Ja, Mutter," Mulder said soothingly. "Hast du Hunger? It's dinner time. May Will and I take you out?"

She looked tired, and shook her head slowly. The overhead light glinted off her coiffed sliver hair. "Nein. I do not think so, Fuchs."

"We could bring something back? From the deli, maybe?"

"As you like. Do you need the money?"

Mulder laughed before he could catch himself, and tried to conceal it with a cough. "Um, no. I think I can cover it."

"Have a good time." She turned and made her way across the snow-covered backyard and into the big, empty house without ever acknowledging Will.

"Wait, Mutter-" Mulder hurried after her, catching up as she reached the back porch. "What should we bring for you?"

"I am tired. I will go to bed. You have a good time with the boy," she said dismissively.

"You said I could come. You said I could bring William. I don't understand what's wrong or why you're avoiding us. He's your grandson. Give him a chance. He's a good boy."

"I am sure he is." Teena patted his shoulder and put her hand on the doorknob. "It is nice you spend time with him."

"He's my son. Of course I spend time with him," Mulder answered irritably.

After a frantic electrical whirring from the garage and two mechanical coughs, he heard a warm purring ignition sound as Bill Mulder's sports car came back to life. Mulder turned. Will appeared in the back yard, ankle-deep in the snow and grinning.

"Yes!” Mulder raised his arms in triumph. “Good job, son. What did you do?"

"May we please go to dinner?"

"With all due haste. Mutter-"

The back door closed, leaving Mulder alone on the cold porch.

*~*~*~*

"What about a cannon?" Will asked as he scanned the menu board.

"I said, don't take it as canon, but the last time I was here, everything was good. Twenty-some years ago, though. Twenty-three." Mulder looked around at the familiar deli. At less than two miles from his parent's house, many meals during his last years in Boston got ordered at this counter.

"You would have been sixteen. What happened? I know you didn't learn to cook."

"I graduated early from high school." Mulder decided Dana would like fruit salad and a turkey sandwich, but quickly pushed the idea out of his brain in order to remain sane. “I left for Oxford.”

"It took you seven years to not finish university?" Will asked skeptically. "You should lay off me about my grades."

"What?"

"You left for Oxford at sixteen; you and Mother got married when you were twenty-three. That's seven years."

"I have my AB: my four year. I was working on my doctorate." He said quickly, "How 'bout a Reuben, Will?"

Will raised his eyebrows. "Doctor Mulder?" 

"Isn't that funny?" he said lightly.

"How close were you to finishing?" Will moved down the counter so they were next in line.

"A long way," Mulder lied. "Hey - they still have milkshakes. They have the best strawberry-"

"You quit because of me."

"I quit to play ball for the Yankees," Mulder said. "Come on, Will. Figure out what you want to eat. We need to get home; Emily's going to call in half an hour."

"How is it your American League batting stats start when I was three months old, but your and Mother's wedding was six months before I was born?"

"Tell her what you want." Mulder gestured to the cashier.

As they waited for their food a few minutes later, William said quietly, "I'm not going to see her when I go back to school: the girl I got in trouble with. I'm not going to cause any more trouble."

Mulder had been scanning the room for something to talk about. For the first few seconds, he only heard 'girl,' and 'in trouble.' "You what?" he said sharply.

"I'm not going get in any more trouble at school. Or at home. I promise. May we go back to New York?"  

"We'll go back in a few days. I'd like for you to get to know Grandmother."

"Oh, she bloody hates me." Will said. "She treats me like I'm invisible. She's worse than Mother."

"She doesn't hate you. Last year, my father had died. Now she's... She's been like this since my sister disappeared."  

"Daddy-O, I know Mr. Byers and Mother's attorney met today. About me."

"You should go to work for the FBI, William." Mulder grabbed a few napkins in anticipation of whenever they got their food.

"What do you think anyone could say about you or Mother I don't know?" Will pleaded. "I don't care. Miss Scully isn't in a South End deli, Dad, and she's not in Grandmother Mulder's garage. I can't live with you unless Miss Scully comes home and you get married. How will you find her if you're not looking?"

Mulder stared at the short-order cook, psychically willing him to hurry, and he didn't answer Will. In truth, Mulder had no place left to look. No place to even begin looking. Like Samantha, Dana vanished without a trace.

The bell on the foggy glass door jingled, and a woman’s voice asked, "Fox?" sounding surprised. "Fox, so good to see you again."

Mulder blinked; he couldn't place her. Fans assumed he knew them because they knew his face, but few people called him 'Fox.'

"Diana," she said. "Diana Fowley. We met last year."

Mulder thought another moment. He nodded uncomfortably. "Diana. Good to see you again. It's been a long time."

"It's been too long," she said, sounding too warm. "What brings you to Boston again, Fox?"

"The same as last time; I'm visiting my mother." Mulder glanced again to see if their food might be ready. "Diana, this is my son, William."

"Hello, William."

"I am pleased to meet you, Mrs. Fowley."

"Miss." She turned her attention and bosom toward Mulder. Behind her, Will made a rude face at his father. "We should get together, catch up, Fox."

"Oh, not much to tell." Mulder gratefully grabbed the bag of soup and sandwiches off the counter. "It was good seeing you again, Diana."

"You know where to find me if you change your mind. I'm staying at the same hotel." She smiled and turned to get in line.

Mulder nodded hastily, and backed out the door and into the snowstorm.

*~*~*~*

"Take your foot off the gas before you flood it." Mulder watched through the driver's side window of the Porsche to see what the boy might be doing wrong. "Is the clutch in-"

"I know how to do it, Daddy-O," William shot back. "It won't start!"

"It was running fine. Let me try."

Will skulked out of the driver's seat and stood in the snow beside Bill Mulder's silver sports car with his arms folded. Mulder turned the key several times with his numb fingers, not even getting the engine to turn over.

"It won't start, Will."

"You don’t say?"

"Yes, I do say," Mulder answered with an equal amount of sarcasm. He opened the trunk so he could stare at the engine before he gave up and they walked back to the house.

"Are you having car trouble?" the woman from the deli asked, clutching a steaming cup of coffee. "What a beautiful machine. Is this yours, Fox?"

"It was my father's. Will and I had it running this afternoon, but-" Mulder leaned over the engine, looking for things to fiddle with. He had no idea, but he wanted to be anywhere else.

Diana lingered, watching over his shoulder. Will glanced at the engine was well, checked a few things, and shrugged, which meant they were doomed.

"I think the fuel line is frozen," Mulder announced and slammed the trunk down.

Will mouthed silently, “Are you daft?” from behind Diana.

"I have a car." Diana gestured across the street.

"No, it's not far. Come on, Will." Mulder pulled his gloves on and buttoned up his coat. He picked up the bag from the deli and locked the car. "We'll call a tow truck tomorrow."

"It's no trouble." She leaned close to Mulder, whispering. "No hard feelings, okay?"

Mulder would miss Emily's call if they had to walk home. He weighed the options and decided Diana the lesser evil. "Um, okay. Thanks. It is just a few blocks."

Will put his hands on his hips, looking like he smelled something rotten, but slunk after his father.

"Would you mind driving, Fox?" Diana handed him the keys to a new Chevy. "I'm afraid to drive in the snow."

Glancing in the rear view mirror as he slid behind the wheel, Mulder saw Will doing his swooning heroine impression in the backseat. Mulder mouthed, “Stop it.”

"The main roads are clear." Mulder eased the car onto the slippery street. "There's a service station near the house. I'll stop there."

"You can't drive me back to the hotel?"

Mulder felt a nudge in the small of his back from a William-sized sneaker.

"No, I’m sorry. I have date with a four-year-old who can't go to sleep at Grammy's house without her story." He looked back again to see Will, who must have thought his father fell off the turnip truck, giving him a ‘thumbs up’ gesture.

"How sweet. I didn't realize you had a little girl, Fox. William, your father talks about you, but I didn't realize you had a sister."

"Stepsister," Will piped up. "She will be soon, anyway. Right, Daddy-O?"

"As soon as possible," Mulder replied, and made a slow turn onto Columbus Avenue.

"I have a son who does the same thing: not going to bed," Diana said. "I hate work taking me away from Gibson, but there isn't a choice."

Mulder hadn't known Diana had a child, but wasn’t much talking that weekend, either. She was a model flying up to Boston to work, he booked the same flight to go check on his mother and feel sorry for himself. The Scotch flowed on the airplane and overflowed at her hotel. Of course, they said they would 'get together' once they both got back to New York, which never happened. Instead, a few weeks later, Dana Scully happened.

"It's hard," Diana continued sadly. "I know he's fine with my mother when I'm working, but that little face in the window watching me leave..."

"How old is he?" Mulder asked. He stopped the car on the snow-covered lot of the closed filling station.

"He’s six. He'd love to meet you, Fox. He's a big baseball fan. It would be a thrill, and there haven't been many of those since his father died." 

Will was out of the car. The kid held the sandwiches and looked in a hurry to get anywhere else.

"You're sure you'll be okay, Diana?" Mulder asked. He watched the heavy snowflakes reflecting in the headlights. "If you have chains, I'll put them on before I leave."

"No, go on." She leaned over and kissed his cheek. She slid across the seat and behind the wheel as he got out. "You can't keep your little girl waiting. I'll be fine."

"Okay. Let me know where to find Gibson and I'll teach him how to hit a curve ball some afternoon."

"He'll be so excited."

Mulder held open the driver's door as she put the transmission in gear. He made sure Will couldn't hear him before he said, "Diana- I want to apologize. Dana, my fiancée: she's good for me. I was drinking and I did some things before her I'm not proud of. I'm sorry if you got hurt."

She smiled accommodatingly. "I told you: no hard feelings."

He nodded. Mulder closed the door and watched as she drove away.

From six feet behind him, Will breathed an audible sigh of relief.

*~*~*~*

"You know," Frohike muttered, sounding like he'd scrambled for the phone in the dark, "I do have office hours, Mulder."

"You might be busy if I called you at the office," Mulder responded. He flipped through the book he had confiscated from Will, trying to find the objectionable parts - because a good father needed to know these things. 

"Well, I might be busy at eleven-thirty at night, too."

"What are the odds?"

"Tall, dark, handsome, wealthy, athletic, brilliant, and tongue-tied doesn't do it for every woman, Mulder."

"So short, furry, tenacious, paranoid, and shifty does?" Mulder asked. "I'm glad he's willingly reading something, but should the Wonder Boy be in possession of a novel called 'Lolita?'"

"Yes. Absolutely. But he shouldn't let his father catch him with it." Frohike yawned. "How did it go talking to your mother about Samantha? Would she tell you anything?"

"Well, she told me hello, asked me if I was still playing baseball and married to ‘die Hure,’ and she gave me a list of chores."

"Not well, then?"

"No. How did it go today?"  

"We got nowhere negotiating until Byers presented his witness list, and Phoebe's attorney almost had a stroke. She’s forgotten to mention a few facts I happened to come across. I think Phoebe may come around before the hearing."

"You're an evil little troll, Frohike, and I'm grateful to you."

"I'm an evil little troll who takes this boy's life personally."       

"So do I." Mulder fanned the pages of the book with his thumb. "Thank you. I know this goes above and beyond."

"Don't thank me yet. It could go either way if she doesn't back down. If we go to court, it's open season on Fox Mulder."

"Still, thanks anyway."  

"Go to sleep, Mulder."

"Did you find anything new about-"

"If I find out anything about Dana Scully, I will call you," Frohike assured him.

"You're still looking? You've talked to Agent Dales at the FBI?"

"I'm still looking."

They had this conversation every night for the past three months. The script never changed.

"Agent Dales is paranoid, but he’s the only one still willing to help."

"I don't know. Some of what he says makes perfect sense to me, Mulder."

"And they let you walk around on the streets?" Mulder said sarcastically. "‘War of the Worlds’ wasn't real, Frohike. It's a radio show and a metaphor for the Russians. And ‘The Creature from the Black Lagoon-’"  

"Goodnight, Mulder."

"I don't want to find the Gill-man on my payroll."

"Goodnight, Mulder."

"You know, even Frankenstein’s monster got a bride."

"Goodnight, Mulder."

"Night."

Will, eavesdropping in the next room, appeared in the kitchen to check for news. Finding none, he proceeded to assemble the most elaborate roast beef sandwich in history while he stalled.

Mulder opened his mouth to tell Will to go to bed when the phone rang.

"My God. Who calls people at midnight?"

"You," Will answered. The butter knife clinked repeatedly against the inside of the mayonnaise jar in a way seemingly calculated to annoy his father. "Me. And tall, long-legged, busty brunette pin-ups who can't find their hotel in the snow without a big, strong man to help them, Fox."

Mulder made a snorting noise as he reached for the phone.

"Hello, Mrs. Scully." Mulder tried to ignore Will doing his hair-flipping, doe-eyed Diana impression. "No, I was awake. Is Emily all right?"

As Mrs. Scully spoke, Mulder waved Will away and listened closely.

"How is she?"

Will stopped his sex-kitten posing against the counter and stood still.

"I will be there as soon as possible," Mulder said. He hung up the receiver and sat in stunned silence. His fingers felt numb and his palms damp. Lights, sounds, even his son all seemed oddly distant.

"Dad? Is Emily okay?"

"They, um, the police found Dana. She was- She was beside the tracks at a railroad switching station.” He stared at the telephone. “She's in a hospital in Washington, D.C. Mrs. Scully is leaving for the hospital."

"Where was she? What’s happened?"

"They don't know. They don't know what's happened to her," Mulder said shakily. He looked at Will. "She's unconscious. She has a fever. The doctors aren't sure... Mrs. Scully said I should come now. Tonight."

"We'll never get a flight out of Boston in this snowstorm."

"We aren't.” He took a breath. “I am."    

*~*~*~*

Someone pulled a plug inside Mulder. He felt his universe bleeding away, drop by drop, second by second. "Nothing?" he asked again, leaning over the counter in case there might be an airplane hidden on the other side.

The woman at the airport counter said, "The next flight isn't until morning, and tentative, based on the storm."

"It doesn't have to be a direct connection to D.C. Get me out of Boston and I can go from there."

"Nothing is taking off or landing in Boston at this time due to the storm," she said tiredly, not grasping the gravity of the situation.

"What about a private plane? Can I charter a flight?"

"There is nothing taking off or landing-"

"I heard you! Find something! I don't care if I'm sitting on a stack of airmail."

"There is-"

He braced his hand on the counter and took a deep breath. "I am Fox Mulder. I've flown all over the country with the New York Yankees, and I know there's some fool willing to take off for the right price. My fiancée is in a hospital in Washington. Waiting for the eight A.M. flight is not acceptable. You have carte blanche: anything the pilot wants. Find a plane and a pilot, and get me off the ground so I can tell her goodbye before it's too late."

The woman's face softened. "I will see what I can do, Mr. Mulder. If you'll wait in the lounge, I will come get you."

"Thank you," he said, and turned away.

Mulder looked around the bar as he sat down in the empty lounge. He spun his stool restlessly from side to side. So late at night, the room had no bartender. The bottles lining the wall contained various levels of warm, soothing, amber love: the kind that burned going down and was gone by morning.

The wrong kind. Not the kind he wanted. Deciding he shouldn’t test his resolve tonight, Mulder moved across the room to the huge glass window. He sank into an overstuffed leather chair and propped his feet up on a low, stylish table. He watched for a while as the snow melted off his shoes and made puddles on the expensive wood, probably leaving water stains. Someone should think to put down heel coasters. His mother would have heel coasters. Dana would have the kind of table that didn't get watermarks.

He couldn't breathe in a world without her in it. Dana Scully gave him a place to stand, and without her, he was in free-fall.

The clock on the wall marked one, and two. The seconds echoed in the empty, over-decorated room. Mulder flipped through a few magazines. He tried Will's "Lolita" novel until the words started to blur. He was hemorrhaging; he felt certain of it. He needed a nurse.

Mulder stared out at the blowing snow as he waited and, as the clock edged toward three, rested his elbows on his knees, covered his face with his hands, and cried.

*~*~*~*

Mulder squatted down and stroked Emily’s hair as she dozed amid a patchwork of winter coats on the waiting room sofa. "Hello there, little one."

Emily opened her eyes. "Mulder," she said, sitting up. She wrapped her arms around his neck and nuzzled against his five o'clock shadow. "You're scratchy."

"Yes, I'm scratchy, honey." Mulder put one arm around her and closed his stinging eyes. "Where's Grammy?"

"With Mommy and Uncle Bill." As if remembering her news, she said, "Mommy's back, Mulder. She's very sick, but the doctors are trying to help her."

He nodded. Emily fished through scarves and gloves for the Yankees’ cap. She put it on before she lay back down. He draped his trench coat over Emily. She held the stuffed Kitty, now missing an eye and part of an ear, clutched tight.

The hallway stretched infinitely long as he walked. Each room was a held breath, a skipped heartbeat, and another name not 'Scully.' His shoes echoed obscenely quickly on the polished floor, the inevitable Truth with a capital 'T' rushing at him much faster than he could manage it. He wanted to snatch it back and have time slow into a lazy Saturday afternoon: to have one more sci-fi matinee with Emily holding the popcorn and dozing in the seat between them, or to sit silently with Dana in Central Park and watch the snow cocoon the city.

"Fox Mulder." Bill Scully stepped out of a hospital room and closed the door behind him. "What are you doing here?"  

"Your mother called me last night. How is-" 

"Mom made a mistake, Mr. Mulder," Bill said coldly. "Obviously, so did Dana."

Mulder started to go around him, but Bill moved with him as though they were dancing, blocking his path. A pair of policemen down the hall started walking toward them.

"Look, my sister's nothing special to you, but she is to us. You've had your fun. I'm asking you nicely: leave her alone."

"I don't understand. She's very special to me."

"I'm sure." Bill folded his arms and looked away. "Mr. Mulder, the doctor said Dana's recently been, uh, she's been with child. The hospital didn't tell Mom last night, so Mom didn't know when she called you."

Mulder blinked. An orange numbness formed at the crown of his head and spread through his body until his fingertips tingled.  

Faltering, Bill continued, "They're saying Dana didn't lose the baby, that, uh, someone has... She's had an abortion, something went wrong, and she was left to die. The police have arrived. When she wakes up, if she wakes up..." He looked away again.

Mulder stood in the middle of the hall shaking his head from side to side. This was not real; this was not happening. There was a mistake. "Why would she do that?"

"You tell me." Bill addressed the floor as he said angrily, "Dana called Mom in January, saying she was getting married. A nice man with a teenage son. 'Used to play baseball,' she said. I've seen the tabloids. My sister's a nice girl, and she thought you would marry her. Finding a decent doctor would be pocket change to a man like you. How could you let her do that? How could you let my mother wait and worry all this time? Mom thought someone kidnapped her."

"I didn't know-"

"Bullshit you didn't know! You knew you were fucking her, and the doctor says she was at least five or six months along. You knew when Dana took off in January." 

"No, I didn't. She shouldn't b-be- We'd, um-" It took Mulder several seconds to put all the pieces together. "The baby wasn't mine."

Bill looked up. He jammed his hands in his pants pockets and met Mulder’s gaze. "Of course it wasn't. It never is. You're free to go, Mr. Mulder. Just walk away. Thank you for all you've done for my sister," he added sarcastically.

This was not real, this was not real, this was not happening. He'd fallen asleep on the plane and this was a nightmare.

"I-I want to see her," Mulder stammered. "I want to talk to her doctor. I want to know what happened."

"You can leave or I can kick your ass myself, you selfish, lying son-of-a-bitch," Bill hissed. "How dare you! She's my baby sister, you bastard. Make a move, because I'd love to have a reason."

Bill Scully was ten years younger and forty pounds heavier.

The policemen stood ten feet away.

Mulder made a move.

*~*~*~*

Not surprisingly, Frohike had a rule number nineteen: Don't expect your agent to use his money to post your bail.

"Or to pay your bar tab, marker, doctor, lawyer, drug dealer, hotel bill, or working girl," his agent had clarified over the telephone. "Any pornography I have to pay for becomes part of the Melvin Frohike Private Library. And if you try to go back to the hospital, Mulder, I told the chief of police to lock you up again and leave you there. There's no press. Keep your head down, your mouth shut, and get in the car. I'll meet you in a few hours."

Mulder sat in the back seat and stared out the window as the silent limousine glided north. It was morning again, but the tinted windows made the winter sun even fainter, like some of the life drained from the world. Mulder’s knuckles looked like he'd punched a cheese grater, and he had marks on his wrists from the handcuffs. The car passed through a tunnel and he saw his reflection in the window. His eye and cheekbone looked as bruised and swollen as they felt.

North of Baltimore, the limo driver said, "I'm to tell you her fever's down, sir. She was awake earlier. She'll live."

Mulder nodded at the window.

"Your son is on an afternoon flight out of Boston."

Mulder waited for the chauffeur to say something else, but the young man didn't. The naked tree limbs blurred past, the tires hummed against the wet highway, and his head throbbed. The limousine's wet bar was stocked with juice and ice, but no liquor. His handlers had added a bottle of Aspirin, but Mulder decided he'd rather hurt.

He still waited to wake up from the nightmare.

Five hours later, the limo stopped in the empty, snow-covered parking lot of the Amtrak train station in Newark, beside Frohike's old red pickup truck. His agent kept a driver and a showroom-condition town car for business, but in private, Frohike drove the same Ford truck the whole time Mulder had known him. That meant a personal errand, not a business one.

"You look like Death warmed over," was how Melvin Frohike greeted him. Frohike handed Mulder a strawberry milkshake and opened the passenger-side door of the truck. "Get in. It's freezing."

Mulder got in the beat-up truck stiffly. He leaned his head back against the top of the seat and put the cold paper cup to his jaw.

"If you won the fight, I'd hate to see the other guy," Frohike said as he started the engine. "Those are the only charges I haven't been able to get dropped yet. Her brother doesn't know the phrase 'quid pro quo,' but he had several colorful names for you. He's a sailor, I gather."

Mulder closed his eyes and focused on not crying.

"I don't know," Frohike said, answering the question Mulder didn't have the energy to ask. "I don't know about the baby and I don't know what happened to her. But I'll figure it out," he assured him.

*~*~*~*

"No. Absolutely not, Mulder. This is a horribly bad idea." Frohike put his hand over the living room telephone so Mulder couldn't pick up the receiver. "It doesn't add up to me, either, but you are not calling her."

"You put the call through and let me talk to her."

"Custody hearing. Assault charges. I told you: let me handle it."

"Dial," Mulder ordered, He perched on the edge of his sofa at The Plaza and chewing the skin off his lower lip. Room service brought up an ice pack, but he held it rather than kept it on his face. "Will's flight lands in an hour."

"If Phoebe's attorney or the press gets wind of this, you won't stand a chance in court. You're going to throw your career away and give John Byers a heart attack."

"Dial," Mulder repeated. "If she's awake, I want to talk to her. If not, get her doctor on the phone."

"Has this telephone rang? Has she left messages for you downstairs?" Frohike asked and answered, "No. She doesn't want to talk to you, Mulder."

Mulder pointed at the telephone.

"You will lose Will if anyone finds out," Frohike argued. "You've done what you can. I'll make sure she's okay, but you can't be involved. Let me do my job. Maybe there's some explanation - and I hope there is - but we go with what we know. You need to walk away and pretend it never happened, pretend you never met her. You are sorry for her misfortune, but you have your son to think about. If she would call you, I want you to politely hang up."

Mulder shook his head. He pointed at the phone.

"No."

"There's a telephone in my bedroom too, and a whole row of telephones in the lobby. What are you going to do? Stand guard? Ban me from Ma Bell? Do you want to fight about it? Dial, Melvin."

"This isn't a game."

"No, it's my life," Mulder shot back angrily. "She's my fiancée and she's in a hospital bed and I want some answers. I want to know what happened."

"Jesus Christ," Frohike said slowly. "Do you still think you're marrying her? What are you thinking? Are you thinking?"

Mulder stared stupidly at his agent before he admitted, "I don't know."

"You are such a brilliant, good-hearted man. I know you love her, but do you have to get your nose rubbed in it before you learn?"

"Either you dial, or I dial."

Frohike muttered but he dialed the telephone.

Mulder held his breath as Frohike bluffed his way expertly through the hospital's front desk, through the nurses' station, and to Dana Scully's bedside. Frohike waited a beat and handed Mulder the telephone.

"Mr. Marty Martin," Dana's tired voice said, "That's a lousy alias."     

"I'm not very creative. God, it's nice to hear your voice." Mulder stabbed the rug with the toe of his shoe. It soothed him to know for certain she was alive. He chose the optimistic "Do you feel like talking?" over the more appropriate 'do you want to talk?'

"I want to apologize," she answered quietly. "Mom said you and Bill got into a fight."

"We had a gentlemanly difference of opinions. It included an unfortunate encounter with the local authorities."

"Mom said you've been taking care of Emily."

"Yes." Mulder found a loose piece of skin on the inside of his lower lip and set about slicing it away with his teeth.

"I'm betting you're behind the police dropping the charges against me." 

His agent, hovering close enough to hear, gestured like he was having a seizure while being attacked by bees.

Mulder put the ice pack on his jaw and said, "My handler is advising me not to comment. Or he wants me to steal second base. Or bunt. It's hard to tell."

"Thank you."

"I missed you, Dana. I still miss you. Whatever happened, I'm glad you're okay. Are you- um- When do you get to go home?"

"In a few days. I'm going to spend some time with Mom in D.C. until I'm up to chasing Emily again."

"You could come-"

"No," she said quickly. "No, I can't."

He swallowed but the lump in his throat wouldn’t go down. He tilted his chin upward with the effort. "Okay."

"I'm sorry. Mulder, I am."

"So am I. Dana, I don't understand-" 

"I have to go."

"May I call you?" he asked, and found himself talking to a disconnected phone line.

After listening for a moment, Mulder handed it back to Frohike, who set the receiver back on the cradle without comment. Mulder moved the damp ice pack to his eye and, wrapping an arm across his sore ribs, sat back carefully on the sofa. He couldn't tell if his heartache radiated out or the bruises grew roots, but he hurt. He needed a nurse.

"Take care of her hospital bill," he told Frohike from under the ice pack.

"Are you suicidal?" his agent's voice said in disbelief. "Bent on self-destruction?"

"Anonymously," Mulder conceded tiredly.

*~*~*~*

"I thought you were room service," Mulder muttered as he walked back to the living room in his sock feet. He’d gotten a haircut two days ago, but his grey flannel shirt was on its third or fourth wearing. Mulder left his agent standing in the foyer.

"You're looking better,” Frohike called. “That's good."

"How is that good?" Mulder turned up the volume of the game show on television before he flopped down on the sofa. "Who cares how I look?"

Frohike invited himself in. "You're not drunk. You're not picking up women in the bar downstairs. You're not standing at home plate in Yankee Stadium making that poor old Colored groundskeeper work the pitching machine in the rain."

"It's still early, Will's still here, and it's not raining." Mulder helped the contestant on television by suggesting, "Belgium."

“Belgium,” the TV host announced.

Mulder nodded in approval. "What do you want, Frohike?"

Frohike set his briefcase on the coffee table and snapped the locks open. "To show you something. You know, Agent Dales in the FBI says this game show is rigged."

Mulder scratched the stubble on his jaw. "Agent Dales in the FBI also thinks space aliens are among us."

There was another knock at the front door. Will's door opened, revealing a bedroom that looked like a tornado blew through it. The Plaza maids took pride in their hotel, and his son took pride in horrifying the maids at the moment. Will waded through the dirty laundry and stacks of records, looking morose. The room service waiter left a tray and made a hasty retreat.

"Don't take that to your room. We have a table," Mulder ordered from the sofa. "We aren't animals-"

William complied by taking the tray to his bedroom and slamming the door behind him.

"Cute kid," Frohike commented, sorting through his files.

"He's a peach. Handel," Mulder informed the television, and frowned when the contestant guessed, ‘Bach.’

“Mulder, what did you tell Will about Dana?"

"She's back, she was sick but she'll be okay, and we won't be seeing each other anymore. And he needs to go back to his mother's apartment tomorrow morning or else I go to jail."

"How's the wonder boy taking it?"

In answer to Frohike's question, Will reappeared. The boy held his plate in front of him as though it held roaches instead of an uneaten sandwich. Making sure his father watched, he carried the plate to the kitchen and loudly dumped the sandwich – china plate included - into the trashcan.

"What's wrong, William?" Mulder asked. Will would eat anything as long as he could add some combination of pickles, mayonnaise, vinegar, and ketchup to it. "It's one of the best restaurants in the city. How was that not up to your standards?"

"That's not how Miss Scully makes grilled cheese sandwiches.” Will added, “Hello, Frohike."

"Do you want something else?"

"Yes. I want to ring Brooklyn and tell Miss Scully I'd like a grilled cheese sandwich. Real cheese; not the fake stuff you have lying about. Sober up, shower, and see to it, Daddy-O.”

“It is not your business, Will,” Mulder shot back. “Get the plate out of the garbage.”

“It is my life, Father.” The boy made no move toward the discarded plate. “Which you have ruined. Goodbye, Frohike." Will stalked to his room, slammed his bedroom door again, and turned his Hi-Fi up full blast.

"Any questions?” Mulder asked Frohike. “This has been a good week; he was only expelled for two out of the five school days. Those discipline slips are like green stamps: one more expulsion and he can trade them in for a new school."

Mulder got up from the sofa. Cursing, he fished the china plate out of the kitchen waste bin to nick his index finger and find the plate in three expensive pieces. Mulder dropped the shards back into the trash. He opened Will's door, said something sharp, and the volume of the record player decreased.

Returning, Mulder nodded to Frohike’s file. "What did you interrupt your Saturday to show me?"

"Dana Scully's medical records."

"Frohike, I told you to leave it alone. It's been a month. She's won't talk to me, she won't see me. Trust me, I’ve-”

Frohike interrupted. “Tell me you haven’t tried.”

Mulder looked at the old man steadily. “Whatever happened, it's over."

"Phosphorated hesperidin," Frohike announced.

"Gesundheit."

"A synthetic combination of estrogen and progesterone. It's a contraceptive still in the experimental stage. It showed up in her blood, along with a dozen other bizarre substances. That's why the doctors couldn't figure out what was wrong, and why she was so much sicker than she should have been, even with the infection. She'd been given something convincing her body it was super-pregnant."

"A contraceptive?" Mulder echoed skeptically. He examined the cut on his finger. It hurt, but no blood welled up.

"Birth control. 'Put it on before you put it in.' Didn't the Army show you those VD films?" Frohike asked. "Same idea, but in chemical form. Anyway, it should never have been in her bloodstream. Not in those extreme levels. Did you know she wasn't necessarily five or six months along? The doctors guessed by the size of the uterus. She could have been carrying more than one baby. Twins."

Mulder thought for a few seconds. "Okay. Are the doctors sure she, um, about the, um... She didn't miscarry? Women miscarry," he added, allowing a little flicker of hope to ignite. “It happens all the time.”

"She didn't miscarry, but that's another interesting tidbit. The doctor said she had an abortion, but what he means is the babies were removed carefully, like they were delivered rather than miscarried."

"Why won't she talk to me?" Mulder ran his fingers through his hair and scooted to the edge of the sofa. "What are you telling me?"

"She was kidnapped, which you believe, and she was carrying your children, which you've said was possible. I'm saying someone gave her drugs that did God-knows-what to her body and to the babies, and surgically removed the fetuses. Once they had what they wanted, they left her to die, except she didn't. She survived and got away. So, they're threatening her: with Emily, with her family, even with you. It's like before. Dana kept Emily, but she paid a price. Now, they'll let her live, but she can't see you."

"Say that's true - which is saying a lot - who are 'they?' Who would know she was expecting before she did? Who would want aborted babies? Those evil aliens in Roswell? Were there mind control rays? UFO's? Don't forget those super-humans they're breeding. This isn't some secret government plot for you and Langly to speculate on; this is my life. Was my life. I think you're reaching, Frohike."

"I think you're afraid to look any further. I met this woman. She's isn't Phoebe, Mulder. Aborting your baby isn't even on her radar."

Mulder watched him for a few seconds. He leaned back, propped his feet back up on the coffee table, and crossed his arms. "Not my baby.”

"Who are you taking about?"

"Joe Lewis." Mulder stared at the television and the new game show contestant. He balled his hands into fists. The little cut on his finger smarted. He pressed his thumb against it so it smarted more. Still, it didn’t bleed.

"Come on, Mulder."

"A boxer who started fighting in 1937? It's Joe Lewis."

Frohike sighed and closed his briefcase. He stood, and picked up his coat and hat. "I'm not dropping this. There's something here, and I'm going to figure out what it is."

"The Dutch West India Company," Mulder responded, answering the $64,000 question.

"If they send you a check, I get five percent," Frohike reminded him, and closed the door behind him as he left.

*~*~*~*

Mulder knew it was a dream but he didn't care. In his dream, it was still perfect.

Maybe a man got one great love affair per lifetime. Mulder thought their love could outlast death, but for this round, this was all he got. Maybe love got doled out like bowls of soup, one per man. If those few winter months with Dana were his ration, he wanted one more moment of it, damn it. Mulder wanted to collect the shards and clutch them to his chest, ignoring the stabbing pain.

The evening had been cold but not yet frigid; lazy snowflakes drifted down and sparkled silver in the streetlamps. Christmas would come in a few weeks, and velvet bows and balsam wreaths and mistletoe decorated the shops. People carried Christmas trees and packages home. Around Mulder and Dana, the city hummed with preparation and anticipation, but they were quiet together, strangely comfortable for two people who'd known each other six weeks. In his dream, Mulder saw her hair - a dark, beautiful auburn with strands of copper and gold. He saw the pink of her lips and cheeks, and the hints of violet in her blue eyes. She was the color of treasure.

They'd never made love. Never been past a goodnight kiss, in fact. She was wary of letting him into her life; he felt it sometimes. He liked the dichotomy of Dana Scully. Her rational mind liked a safe bet but got overruled by the passion in her heart. He compared himself to Emily's stray cat; Dana fussed about him, but she let him in every time he showed up. Actions spoke louder than words.

Mulder had no doubt he loved her. He thought she loved him.

"Which one is yours?" Dana asked as they walked back down Fifth Avenue, hand in hand. They’d dressed for the theater. Mulder asked if her feet hurt in those high heels, but she'd assured him she was fine.

Mulder pointed to the corner of The Plaza, the lights of the upper floors still visible through the snow. He'd been in her apartment a few times during the day but she'd never been in his. She had a daughter who lived with her, and they could leave Dana’s apartment door open. Mulder’s floor was private; he could meet her in the lobby but he couldn't invite a nice girl up. "Tenth floor. Can you see the turret and the terrace?"

"I've watched you eat blueberry pancakes with circus dwarfs. An apartment at The Plaza doesn't fit you, Mulder."

"It's an investment and it's close to Will's mother's apartment. I wasn't there much until this fall," he explained, and added, "Will was in his castles and wizards stage, and he liked the turret. My barber's in the basement. Plus, there's a secret tunnel and a ghostly presence reported in the subbasement."

"Now that fits," she said. "Have you seen either?"

"I've seen the tunnel. It's how they used to smuggle in alcohol during Prohibition. My investigation of The Plaza subbasement ghost is ongoing."

The fluttery skirt of Dana's black silk evening dress peeked from beneath her winter coat and swayed as she walked beside him. Her cheeks were crimson in the cold, her breath white, and her gloved palm felt warm against his. They'd left his car with The Plaza's valet and gone for a stroll before dinner, and decided on continuing their walk rather than having dinner. They ambled in and out of the stores along Fifth Avenue, stopping at FAO Schwartz to shop for Will and Emily. The larger packages he had sent across the street to The Plaza's front desk, but Mulder carried a shopping bag in one hand. Now they neared missing the show, but it didn't matter. There were no photographers or reporters or fans - just the two of them on a beautiful, snowy December night, doing normal things and lost in the crowd - and it was perfect.

"Do you want to hear a good ghost story?" Mulder asked.

"If I said 'no,' would it dissuade you?"

"Probably not," he answered honestly.

"Go ahead."

"President Lincoln's funeral procession went down Fifth Avenue April 25, 1865," he told her as they crossed 58th Street. "Right past where we are now. The train bought his body from Philadelphia to New York, and the casket was transferred to a black hearse for the procession to city hall. After the public viewing, that afternoon, the procession looped through the city again, down Fifth Avenue and over to the Hudson River Railway Depot where he got reloaded onto the funeral train to go to Albany." He stopped walking and grinned at her, swinging the FAO Schwartz bag back and forth playfully. "There's a legend that Lincoln's funeral train still leaves the station. Every April 25th, at dusk, a ghostly black train draped in crepe leaves New York and runs along the Hudson River to Albany, forever bearing the slain president's body home."

Dana gave him a skeptical look and took the shopping bag. "Where does the train go once it reaches Albany?"

He shrugged. "I don't know."

"Lincoln is buried in Springfield, Illinois, not Albany, New York. Does another ghost train take over for the rest of the way, or does his body travel back and forth in Hudson Valley Railroad purgatory?"

"Details," he said dismissively, and started walking again. "We could check it out. April 25^th. We could stake out the station and see for ourselves. Provided the funeral train leaves New York this year, next year we stake out the Albany station, see where it goes from there."

She studied him, her eyes full of promises. No doubt. He loved her and, beneath her calm, rational surface, he knew she loved him whether she wanted to or not.

Maybe love was more ethereal than he'd thought. Less durable. Maybe she changed her mind. Or he was wrong.

"Is it a date?" he asked.

"April 25th is months away."

"Do you have something better planned for that Sunday?"

"You mean something better than standing outside a train station at night, waiting for a figment of someone's overactive imagination?"

"Well, yes."

"No," she admitted.

"Keep the date in mind, Nurse Scully."

She smiled. He kissed her, and her lips felt warm and soft. Even in the chaste kiss, he sensed the draw of her, the passion kindling. She was fire and he edged dangerously close.

He felt an odd sensation in the base of his brain, and looked past Dana to see the same man who had interrupted their dinner in The Oak Room a few weeks ago. The old man stared at them from across the street as he smoked a cigarette. Something about the man was unsettling. Dana was right; he looked at them as if they were merchandise and he was a buyer appraising them. Dana turned. The smoking man tipped his hat as if he knew her.

Mulder sighed. The last thing he wanted was that creepy old man intruding into their evening again.

"We need cookies." Mulder stepped toward the entrance of Bergdorf Goodman, pulling Dana with him. "I know a secret. Are you interested in a covert pastry mission, Nurse Scully?"

Dana looked at him quizzically, and at the old man who still watched them from behind a cloud of cigarette smoke. Bergdorf Goodman sold the most stylish - and the most expensive - women's ready-to-wear fashions in New York. "If I said 'no,' would it dissuade you?"

"My son's nanny once told him they have the best cookies in the city in the ladies' dressing room here. Being the less-fair sex, we've been unable to confirm this." Mulder gave her a clean handkerchief. "Only you can help us. Smuggle some out if possible, but at least try something on, sample, and report back."

"The dresses in this store cost more than my apartment," she protested.

"You don't have to buy anything. Just get to the ladies dressing room. I'd do it, but they don't have any gowns in a forty or forty-two long."

"Can't we ask them?"

"Where's the fun in that?" he responded.

A uniformed Colored man smiled and held open the door. As soon as they stepped into the warm lobby, two pretty, well-dressed salesgirls approached.

"You're serious?" Dana asked Mulder under her breath. "You want me to pilfer cookies from Bergdorf Goodman?"

"Or, we could go outside and listen to Smokey critique my career." A nearby mannequin displayed a low-cut, blue satin dress with a tiny waist and an enormous skirt. Mulder tilted his head not-so-subtly toward it a few times.

She sighed, gave her coat to a salesgirl, the shopping bag to Mulder, and, tilting her chin up, graciously asked about the blue dress. As Dana vanished into the back of the store, a second salesgirl took Mulder's coat and hat and the bag, and escorted him to a sofa area near the front door. She asked if she could bring him anything. He asked for a pen and paper.

As he wrote, the first salesgirl reappeared and took the blue dress off of the mannequin. "We need the size six," she told the other clerk. "Would you bring the new gold Dior as well, and the long cream satin one? And the cream and copper Balenciaga? Also the dark blue silk, I think."

The blue satin dress on the mannequin got replaced with a pink taffeta monstrosity, and an armload of dresses was collected from the showroom floor and carried out of sight. Outside, across the street, the smoking man was nowhere to be seen.

The salesgirl returned, and Mulder handed her a sheet of paper with Dana's address on it. "If she likes any of the dresses, don't tell her, but bill me and send them to this address. Don't let her return them, either." He gave the woman a second sheet of stationery, this one folded closed. "This goes in the box with the dresses."

Fifteen minutes later, with Dana still absent, the first salesgirl gestured to him from across the room. She silently held up three fingers. Mulder nodded and hoped she meant three dresses, not three grand.

Twenty minutes later, Dana appeared in the same black evening dress she wore into the store. He’d taken her on several formal dates; Dana wore the same black dress.

The salesgirl brought their coats.

"Nothing you liked, honey?" He stood up. "After all those dresses? You tried on half the store."

"I'm sorry," Dana said casually.

He looked for some package but she was empty-handed. "The Plaza has a New Year’s Eve Party. Keep looking; I can wait."

"I'll wear what I have. Where is the bag with Emily's tea set?"

"I got tired of carrying it. They'll send it to your apartment on Monday."

"Okay," Dana looked like butter wouldn't melt in her mouth. "Let's go to dinner."

Once they bundled up, Mulder escorted her outside and across the street to The Plaza. Instead of going inside though, she continued walking up Fifth Avenue. She crossed 59th street with her high heels clicking purposefully, and reached the cobblestones along the southern edge of Central Park.

He grinned, sure she was up to something.

"Keep walking, big guy," she advised him quietly and calmly. "I'm not going to jail for stealing cookies. You're never to mention a word of this to my daughter."

A hundred feet inside the park, the sounds of the city started to fade, and the smoking man was long forgotten. The snow-covered trees were wrapped in lights, with scarlet ribbons around their trunks, like the entire city night was a gift. Few people visited the park so late in the evening and they seemed to step from the bustling streets into a private, magical world.

Dana bit her lower lip as if trying not to smile, and undid the clasp of her velvet purse. Inside a purse no bigger than his fist, she’d secreted a dozen dainty pink cookies. He'd thought the cookies mint green but, in his dream, they were pink.

"Wow," he said, reaching for one.

Dana held up one finger, wanting him to wait.

She turned away, unbuttoned the top of her winter coat and, apparently forgetting he stood tall enough to see over her shoulder, reached down the front of her evening dress and extracted a little bundle wrapped in his handkerchief. She turned to him, folding back the fabric to show him a collection of cream-colored cookies, their tops decorated with blue sugar crystals. Her eyes sparkled with mischief.

"I didn't expect there to be two kinds. Thank goodness there weren't three."

"Thank goodness," he echoed softly. "Where is your lipstick, compact, mad money, and apartment key?"

"My mother would die if I told you."

He licked his lips and kissed her long and deep. He put his free hand on the back of her head, pulling her closer and forgetting the rest of the world for a time. Eventually, he heard footsteps, opened his eyes, and they parted. Her lips looked redder and her breath white.

I love you, he thought, wanting to tell her. Now and forever, for better or for worse, as certain as the laws of physics.

"Did you eat some cookies already?" He tasted vanilla and sugar in his mouth. "I thought this was a joint mission."

"I palmed more than would fit in my cleavage. It's not an exact science, Mulder," she insisted as he laughed.

"Let me see." He pulled back the collar of her winter coat about two inches, barely enough to see her neck. "How many diamonds do you think you could fit in there, Artful Dodger? The market is down, I can't convince Will he isn't getting a car for Christmas, and Tiffany's is still open."

"I'm on a covert pastry mission, not a crime spree."

He kissed her again, lightly, wiped an inch of snow off a wooden park bench, and invited her to sit down. Will's nanny had been right; the cookies were excellent. Once Dana had a few of each kind left, he folded them in his handkerchief and tucked them in his pocket.

"For William?" she asked.

He nodded. "Would you like to meet him?" He took her hand as they sat and watched the snow fall on the dark, silent park.

"I would," she said after a few seconds. "Would you like William to meet Emily?"

"I would."

He proposed and she accepted. The intent was there, if not the words. He couldn't date her and not become acquainted with a four-year-old. To Emily, Mulder was a nice friend of Mommy's; to Will, things wouldn't be that simple. If they involved his son, they committed for the long term.

"You're going to watch for Lincoln's funeral train with me, aren't you?"

"I am," she said, and Mulder believed her. The snow drifted down, covering the world in a soft white blanket. They'd missed their dinner reservation, missed "South Pacific," and he didn't care.

"Are you still hungry?"

"No," Dana answered.

"Cold?"

"Not one bit," she said with her warm hand in his. They sat together, watching the snow fall for a long time, letting the world revolve around them. It was magical - the two of them. All of Gotham was their playground. On other nights, they went dancing and to parties and fancy restaurants. That December night though, all she wanted was to be with him. All he wanted was to be with her, and they must have sat in Central Park for half an hour.

Afterward, they both had to report for parent duty. Mulder kissed her goodnight a second, then a third time, not eager to go back out in the cold or home alone. If he hadn't needed to pick up Will and his friends at the movies, Mulder might have asked her if he could stay. He suspected, if he'd asked, she might have let him. If he stayed - made love to her that night - he wouldn't have regretted it.

He didn’t stand dangerously close to the flames. He was engulfed.

Back at The Plaza, late that night, as Will and his friends slept and the snow fell, Mulder went out on his terrace. He looked down at the white night and yellow lamp lights glowing in Central Park, and he made a decision. He’d have his grandmother’s engagement ring resized. Ask Dana at Christmas. If she said yes, they’d be married by spring.

The sound of a ringing telephone intruded into his dream: his wake-up call from the front desk. Mulder woke alone, nude. His temples pounded. He opened his eyes to two empty old-fashioned glasses on the nightstand beside a bottle of Scotch - empty - and a prophylactic - still in the foil wrapper. Dana's dainty cross necklace still hung around his neck.

Will was gone. Mulder's head hurt, and he had to think to remember what day it was. Sunday, April 25th, he realized, and closed his eyes again.

The art of staying sane lay in the balance between holding on to the past and letting go of it. He needed to let go of her before he went crazy or put a gun to his head. He needed to buy a new bed, sell this goddamned gilded apartment. Get out of the city. Get up, sober up, and get on with his life.

Maybe it hadn't been perfect, Mulder tried to tell himself. Maybe it hadn't even been close. It hadn't even been true, he thought.

But it had been: all of those things. His heart and soul knew it, even if his brain couldn't accept it. Dana Scully had been his one great love. Mulder was thirty-nine years old, and he wouldn’t get another. The telephone kept ringing, insisting he had some reason to get out of bed. Eventually, Mulder stumbled to the bathroom and stood under the scalding shower as if he could wash memories and sin away.

Maybe it wasn't the length of love, but the depth, he told himself. The truest love burned the hottest. Maybe he'd get another chance in some other lifetime. Maybe a man should only hope to end up with the right regrets.

*~*~*~*

Mulder’s father claimed some things looked better in a catalog than in real life. Later, the advice had been 'Nachts sind alle Katzen grau:' all cats are gray in the dark. That had been his father's opinion of women; in bed, one was a good as another.

Mulder sat, fiddled with the baseball, and wondered what in the hell he was doing there. Objectively, he watched little Gibson feed bread crusts to the eager ducks while Diana went to "freshen up." This was someone's life, and it didn't look bad in the pictures: a nice Sunday afternoon picnic in Central Park with a beautiful woman and her eerily silent son. It seemed a perfectly acceptable life that didn't feel like his. 

Life went on, Mulder told himself, looking for comfort in clichés and trying to fill up space in his head. He continued drawing breath after Dana Scully. It was, excepting Will, like storing a single leftover pea in a one-gallon Tupperware container: a vast waste of space. That was it, Mulder decided, waxing philosophical; he constituted a mostly-empty, over-sized waste of space in the rusting, tepid Frigidaire of life.

He hated himself.

He watched Diana sauntering back from the public restroom, flashing her thousand-watt smile at him.

He hated himself.

He picked up his glass so he could hate himself more. Her picnic basket included three deli sandwiches, a blanket, a grape Nehi for Gibson, a bottle of Mulder’s favorite Scotch in a paper bag, and two glasses. Mulder brought a bat, a few balls, and two gloves from his apartment, all unused so far that day. He decided this morning he wasn't drinking anymore, but by noon the Scotch bottle once again took one for the team.

"There isn't any more, honey," Diana told Gibson when the boy ran back to get more bread. "Did you want your sandwich, Fox?"

"No, the ducks can have it."

Gibson looked at the two of them curiously from behind his glasses, and turned away without comment to hurry back to the pond. Mulder supposed meeting the big baseball man wasn't nearly as fascinating as feeding the ducks.

"Is it Miss or Missus?" Mulder asked as Diana sat down on the blanket beside him. She smoothed her skirt underneath her shapely legs and looked Life-magazine-perfect.

"Hum?" She leaned back, bracing herself on her hands and tilting her face toward the sun.

"I'm curious, Diana. You told Will to call you 'Miss' this winter, but you talked about being a widow."

Diana blinked, hesitating. "It's easier to get work to use my maiden name and not mention ever being married. My husband died in Korea. Gibson was a baby, and I had to go back to work."      

"No one ever questions you and your son having different last names?"

"I don't exactly bring it up."

He took another drink. "You were never married, were you?"

"We were engaged." She turned to study Mulder, and continued quietly, "Look, I know you had a bad experience. I know what happened with Dana Scully. I can't imagine being betrayed like that. We all have our secrets. You know I'm not an angel. I like to have a good time. I don't spend as much time with Gibson as I'd like, but my mother takes good care of him. Beyond that, I'm as boring as I say I am."

"Me too," Mulder answered casually. He found her face so close he smelled the traces of soap and makeup on her skin. "I'm even less interesting than a duck."

She smiled invitingly.

Mulder cleared his throat and moved away. "Where did Gibson go?"

"Are you okay, Fox?"

He nodded, basing that judgment on some outlandishly liberal definition of 'okay.' "I'll go see where Gibson went. He must have wandered off."

"I'm sure he's fine," Diana answered, which struck Mulder as an odd answer for a parent to give. Dana would never have let Emily out of her-

He quashed that thought, stamping it out before it spread. Mulder took a deep breath and tried to think simple, sober thoughts as he searched for Gibson.

After a few minutes, he spotted the boy near the empty ice skating rink, waiting his turn at the water fountain. For an instant, Mulder thought he saw Dana and Emily in front of Gibson in line. Mulder saw Dana everywhere these days, to torment himself. She was the pretty face in the crowd, the petite woman in the distance, and the voice at the edge of his dreams, out of reach.

He blinked, but they lingered, looking deliciously imperfect with Dana's wind-blown hair and grass stains on the knees of Em's denim overalls. Emily couldn't reach the fountain, so Dana boosted her up, balancing Em on her thigh and reaching across her awkwardly to help hold the button down. Water arced fitfully, and Emily chased it up and down with eager lips. It was a snapshot out of any happy family album, lacking only Norman Rockwell's signature in the lower right hand corner. 

Mulder saw Emily spot him as Dana put her down. Emily smiled and wiped her dripping mouth on her sleeve. While her mother tried her turn at mastering the hydraulics of the fountain, Emily ran to Mulder. She leapt into his arms in a frenzy of worn, butter-soft denim and sun-warmed little girl scents. She was real. He could feel her and smell her and his tired heart missed a beat as he hugged her to him.

Dana looked around, calling for her daughter. Mulder watched her start toward them but stop. Her mouth still open, lips damp, Dana stared at him as though she didn’t know if he was real, either. Perhaps she saw him everywhere, too.

“Mulder?” she mouthed, looking like she might cry.

Einstein was wrong. Time paused, and the world became a single precious soap bubble moment Mulder could hold in his hand.   

"I-I found something of yours." Mulder let Emily slide down as he stared at Dana. Dana's face and hips seemed rounder - because she'd been pregnant not so long ago, he realized. An elastic bandage covered her right wrist and hand. She tugged her sleeve down over it.

"Thank you." Dana pulled Emily in front of her and put her left hand protectively on her daughter's shoulder. "I'm sorry she bothered you."

"No bother," Mulder heard his voice say, amazed at how steady it sounded. "How are you?"

"I'm fine," she answered, admirably keeping up her end of the inane conversation. "We're fine."

"What happened to your hand?"

"A hairline radial fracture. The doctor thinks I fell and tried to catch myself."

Mulder nodded stupidly. "You don't know what happened?"

"No," she answered, condensing an entire conversation into one word.

"Uncle Bill took my cap," Emily informed Mulder, as if expecting Mulder to do something about that. "He says you're a sorry S-O-D."

"I'll get you another cap. Come on, honey," Dana said. Neither Dana’s feet nor daughter moved. 

"I want my real story," Emily said, but no one answered her.

It was no accident they both chose this corner of the park; they took Emily ice-skating on Wollman Rink during the winter. Dana had met Will there, and they’d played in the snow with Will and Em. This was where, one night, Mulder and Dana sat watching the snow glisten silver in the streetlights and enjoying the solitude. This part of Central Park was full of happy memories from a time he categorized as 'before.'

Mulder was hemorrhaging, and he desperately needed a nurse before he bled out.

"Dana-" He put his hand on her upper arm. "Please talk to me. Tell me what happened. What changed? I thought you wanted marriage, children. I, I thought you wanted me."

"Nothing changed." She looked past him. Mulder glanced over to see Diana approaching and Gibson close by. "Be careful, Mulder."

"No, um, she's not- Her son wanted to meet me," he tried to explain, but Dana looked away. He was drunk too, or at least on his way to drunk. Shit. He dropped his hand. "Dana, don't do this. I was thinking of going to the movies this afternoon. Come with me. You and Emily. It's either 'Abbott and Costello Meet the Mummy,' or 'Revenge of the Creature.' Considering what happened to the creature in the last movie, his revenge should be pretty good."

She shook her head and turned to leave. "Take care of yourself."

"What about Lincoln's funeral train?" Mulder asked quickly. "It's, it's tonight. Meet me at the station. Seven o'clock."

She looked so sad he thought he might break. The muscles in his abdomen quivered dangerously.

"I can't." She gave Emily's hand a determined tug and didn’t meet his eyes.

"Okay," he said, barely breath with words.

"I want my real story," Emily protested, refusing to move. "Mulder!"

He knew Dana struggled not cry in front of him or Diana or a park full of strangers. He tasted Dana’s pain in his mouth like peppery gunpowder.

"I will read you a story," Dana promised Emily, her voice wavering.

"I want Mulder's real story!"

"She wants ‘The Velveteen Rabbit,’" he said. "We read it together. While she was at your mother's, I'd read it over the telephone at bedtime."

He still did, but Dana didn't know. A few weeks ago, Mulder called, Dana had been asleep, and Emily picked up the telephone at Mrs. Scully's house in DC.

He swallowed. His chest ached and his throat felt tight.

"Okay," Dana managed to say. "We'll get ‘The Velveteen Rabbit,’ okay?" She urged Emily desperately, "Let's go get it."

"Dana-" He ran out of breath.

She picked Emily up, and turned to Mulder long enough to say, "Goodbye," softly.

"Goodbye," he said automatically, and watched her walk away with Emily looking back at him. He raised his hand, and Emily raised hers, waving. Em thought he'd call tonight to read to her, but he wouldn't.

Mulder should go after her - offer to carry Emily since Dana's wrist was injured. Ask to drive them home, buy them lunch, or accompany them to the bookstore. Anything except let her walk away. Instead, he stood as the soap bubble moment continued to quiver in the spring breeze, reflecting a warped pastel version of life, and vanished.

"Are you okay?" Diana asked from behind him, making Mulder jump and allowing life to return to normal speed instead of playing in vivid Technicolor slow-motion.

"I'm fine," Mulder answered tersely, and sniffed. "Why wouldn't I be?"

"That was Dana Scully, wasn't it? Dana Scully and Emily?"

Still upset and looking for a target, he demanded, "How did you know?"

"I saw the pictures in the paper. Calm down, honey."

Mulder turned, looking critically at Diana. "How did you know her daughter is 'Emily?"

Diana shrugged, casually tossing her hair back from her shoulders. "You told me."

Mulder folded his arms and stepped away. "No, I didn't, and her name wasn't in the papers."

"Of course you told me. What are you getting so upset about?" She moved like she would take Mulder's hand, but didn't.

Gibson ambled back, except he ambled back to Mulder rather than his 'mother.'

Mulder had been intimately acquainted with two women who had children, and he'd bet money Diana had never been heavily pregnant. She was a model, though. He'd seen her in a few ads in Life and Look, but also in Will's cheap stag magazines. As she'd said, she wasn't an angel.

"Diana, I didn't tell you Emily's name. I'm sure of it."

"Then how would I know?"

Mulder stepped back, tilting his chin up. "I don't know, Diana. How would you? Why would you drive to the South End of Boston for a cup of coffee if your hotel was across town? Were you following me? Having a child, being a widow, being unwed: you keep remaking yourself into what you think I want. You even smell like Dana. How do you manage that?"  

"Do you have any idea how insanely paranoid you sound, Fox?"

He wet his lips, trying to put the pieces together, but not quite succeeding. "Yes, I do. But I didn't tell you Emily's name, Diana," he said firmly.

Diana folded her arms over her chest unhappily. With her long, dark hair and dark eyes, she reminded him of what Samantha might have looked like as an adult. His id might have a few wires crossed, Mulder realized.

“What did you mean ‘Dana betrayed me?’” Mulder demanded. “She was kidnapped. How is being kidnapped a betrayal?”

Gibson headed toward the ducks again, but Diana didn’t seem to notice.

"Fox-" She started again to take his hand.

“Yes, Dana and I dated for a few months, and I care for her and her daughter. I can’t begin to express my gratitude to the policemen who found her, and the doctors and nurses who saved her life.” The doctors and nurses and D.C. police developed convenient memory lapses in exchange for cash. No one knew about the abortion. Frohike had covered up the truth better than any military bulldozer. He’d even provided a gallant cover story which Mulder had been required to memorize. “Yes, we’d talked about getting married, but she’s experienced a horrible ordeal. She doesn’t need flashbulbs popping in her face and strangers following her, and that’s what dating me involves. That’s not betrayal; that’s survival.”

“Of course it is.”

“Why did you say that? What is it you think you know?”

"Nothing. Fox, you're upset. Let's go back to your apartment and-"

He shook his head. “How do you know her daughter’s name, and why would you say Dana betrayed me?”

He'd steered clear of the young women obsessed with baseball players. The baseball Annies, reporters called them, after Annie Steinhagen, a nineteen-year-old girl who invited a Phillies first baseman to her hotel room and shot him in the chest. Eddie Waitkus almost died of the gunshot wound, Annie Steinhagen spend the past three years in a mental asylum, and Mulder’s wiser teammates became more judicious about taking female fans to bed.

Diana didn’t remind Mulder of those women, though. She was promiscuous and either a liar or a bad mother, but he wouldn’t win the Father of the Year award, either. Something about Diana wasn't right, though. Everything about her wasn't right. Mulder might be hollow, and he might be self-destructive, but he wasn't stupid. He was a big boy; he could destroy his life without her help, thank you very much.

"Fox-" she said again.

"No," he said, and stepped away. "I don't know what this game is, but I don't want to play anymore. Goodbye, Diana."

He turned and walked away, never looking back. Within a few minutes, the winding path crested the little hill and brought him near the entrance to Central Park. The bench was empty - the bench where he and Dana had sat that winter night. Mulder stopped, staring at it drunkenly.

He left Diana behind. Dana and Emily were long gone. Will was gone. Even Phoebe wouldn’t speak to him. In a city of seven million people, Mulder was alone.

*~*~*~*

Mulder had spent entire afternoons leaning on the call button, trying to get Dana to buzz him in, so he didn't bother. Fortunately, she'd chosen an apartment building full of trusting old ladies, and he had no trouble shoving his foot in the security door and stumbling in after one of them. 

"Mulder?" Dana pulled her robe closed and starred at him. As though intoxicated, estranged, ex-fiancés didn't break into her building and show up on her welcome mat every Sunday night at ten o'clock.

"I, um, I-I have a splinter," Mulder bumbled and wondered how no one had ever revoked his English language privileges. He held out his thumb as proof, stretching the skin taut for her inspection. "Hi, Dana."

"Have you been drinking?"

"Oh, I-I have been drinking." He poked at the sliver of wood in Mr. Thumbkin to make sure it still smarted. It did. "I was, uh, sitting around this evening - alone - fiddling with the phone, so I could call you again and you could not answer-"

"You need to leave." 

"So, I started fiddling with the phone-" Mulder leaned against the door jamb to help keep the room level and tried not to lose his place in the story. "-and I, uh, unscrewed the little cover on the receiver." He pantomimed unscrewing the top of his thumb for clarification He reached in his pocket and handed her the small electronic device. "I don't think that's from Ma Bell."

Dana examined the bug, and gestured for him to come in. She closed and locked the door behind him.

"The woman in the park today: I thought she told one lie and got a carried away. But she bugged my phone. She spied on my life and set herself up as someone different than she was, but I don't know why. You weren't a set-up, were you?"

"No, I'm not a set-up," she said quietly. Dana steered Mulder to the kitchen, parked him in a wooden chair, and turned on the burner under the teakettle awkwardly with her left hand. A calico cat strolled in, hopped up on the table, and arched his back to be petted.

"Em's cat came back," he mumbled, stroking him. "I couldn't find him."

"He keeps showing up." Dana rummaged through the kitchen cabinets.

"That's what happens when you feed them." He pursed his lips, making sloppy kissy-faces at the cat, who looked at Mulder with disdain.  

"You're drunk, Mulder. Once you sober up in the morning, you're going to realize how bizarre this all sounds."

"I know now how bizarre it all sounds now. How. Now." Mulder blinked, sensing something wrong with the sentence. He formed a few more silent 'ow' sounds with his mouth for the pleasure of it and the cat's amusement.

Dana sighed. She turned away, but he caught the sleeve of her robe, pulling her back to him. "Tell me 'bout the babies, Dana."

"Babies?"

Still holding her left cuff so she couldn't escape, he ran his fingers over the front of her robe, over her soft, flat abdomen. "Babies. Baby. I wanna know."

"I don't remember. It's a blur."

"Tell me about the blur. Tell me-" He pushed aside the soft fabric of her robe and pajama top so his palm was against her bare stomach. "Tell me why."

She stood in front of him, as still as a statue.   

"I saw the, um... I picked up your mail, made sure the rent and bills got paid. In March- I thought it was something from nursing school, but you start this fall. Georgetown University Medical School. I didn't think about it until Bill said you'd, uh, you know... You couldn't go to doctor school with a baby coming." He exhaled and leaned his head into the curve of her waist. "Babies. With babies coming."

"Is that what you think happened?"

"I thought it was. I told myself it was." Mulder nuzzled against her. "I told myself a lot of things. I'm not sure of any of them. I don't know what to believe." He let his head fall back. He rotated it, trying to redistribute the thick liquid in it. "Ah, Jesus, Dana. I'm not crazy, am I?"

"Not crazy: inebriated. You need to go."

"I don't have anywhere to go," he told her emptily.

"What do you mean?"

"I don't."

"Go home."

"I don't have a home. I have an empty apartment in a hotel with a bugged telephone."

She stroked his hair. "I wasn't going to go, Mulder. To Georgetown. I didn't tell you I got into medical school because I wasn't going to go." He reached up and across his chest to take her hand, knowing it would be there. "I was going to marry you."

"I was going to marry you," he said sadly.

"I don't know what happened."

"I don't know either," he agreed, not sure if they were even having the same conversation. "I don't know what to do." He looked at her: one part lost, one part drunk, and three parts empty. His heart beat out of habit.

Dana let go of his hand and stepped away. Her bandaged right wrist rested across her stomach. "I don't answer the phone because I don't know what to say to you," she confessed. "I don't have any answers. I didn't answer the door because I knew I couldn't stand having to face you. I'm sorry, Mulder."

The teakettle gurgled purposefully and Dana hurried to soothe it. Her back to him, she went about the business of making a cup of tea he wouldn’t drink.

Still posted on the front of her refrigerator, beside Emily's drawings, was a note on Bergdorf Goodman stationery with 'Thank you for the cookies. Love, Mulder' on it. Nearby hung a second, hasty one on a yellow pad also in his handwriting: 'Dana, I'm taking Emily back to The Plaza with Will and me. Please call. I'm so worried about you. Love, Mulder.' He wrote it in January, and it must have still been there when Dana returned to her apartment a few weeks ago. Seemed as if she would have thrown it away. Seemed as if, since she didn't want him - or want to see him or talk to him or have children by him - she'd take down notes from him as well.

"I'm sorry, too, Dana," Mulder said. "For whatever my part in this was."

She'd lost the sugar, and conducted a thorough, focused search of the kitchen cabinet without looking at him. She checked a second cabinet, and a third. Still not finding it, she closed the final cabinet door hard and braced her hand against the counter, her back to him. He felt her aching.

He stood up, uncertain what to do, but before he could think of anything, Emily's voice called out.

"It's okay, honey," Dana called back, her voice wavering. Mulder started toward the hallway out of habit, but Dana held up her bandaged hand for him to stop. "Everything's okay. Go back to sleep."

There was a cough from the back of the apartment. He and Dana stood frozen, like thieves caught red-handed. After a minute, Dana went to check. She returned to the kitchen, nodding Em had fallen back to sleep.

"Is she feeling better?" he asked softly. "Did the doctors figure out what's wrong?"

"Auto-immune hemolytic anemia. Her immune system is malfunctioning, attacking her own red blood cells."

"That doesn't sound good."

"It isn't. Today was a good day, so we went to the park. The doctors say they can help her, and I want to believe them." She swallowed. "She waited for you to call even though I told her over and over you weren't going to. She misses you. She keeps asking when she'll see Will and Mulder."

"Will and Mulder miss her."

"You can... Come on, she's asleep." Dana took his hand, leading him silently down the hallway and to the first bedroom.

Dana had a vaporizer going in Emily's room, and the comforting scent of menthol filled the air. The calico cat slipped past them and leaped up on Emily's bed. He made a few laps across her feet, and lay down, keeping a wary eye on them. Emily shifted, her mouth moving in innocent dreams. A new, souvenir Yankees’ cap sat on the nightstand, along with a library copy of “The Velveteen Rabbit.”

"She looks fine."

"She's not."

He put his arms around Dana's shoulders as they watched her daughter sleep. She put her hand over his again, and the world grew steadier.

"How's Will?" she asked quietly.

"In trouble at school, most of the time. Angry. Full of questions I can’t answer."

"Is he living with you?"

"No. When Phoebe showed up with police, Will went back to live with her during the week. There is no chance of me getting custody of him, so I told Byers to drop it. But I've pissed Phoebe off. She doesn't want me seeing Will at all, and with everything that's happened... We have a hearing at the end of the month."

"Your plan is to drink yourself to death between now and then?"

"That's my plan, yes." He slurred the /s/. "I think I'm doing well, don't you?"

He stepped back, guiding her into the hallway and turning her toward him.

"Stay with me," she said, barely audible. She closed her eyes as though she made a wish and with more conviction asked, "Will you stay here tonight?"

His head started shaking 'no' before his mouth formed the words. "My car's parked outside. What will your neighbors say?"

"You mean the neighbors who babysit my illegitimate daughter? The ones who sent me get-well cards at my mother's house while I recovered from an abortion? I think my reputation's shot. No nice boy will marry me."

"Jesus, Dana..." He swallowed. "I've had too much to drink." Even if he swore it wouldn't, mixing alcohol and sex made him a rough, impetuous lover. Phoebe and Diana might like it, but he doubted Dana would. "Too much to be nice."

"I don't care. I don't want nice." She stepped closer, resting her hands on his hips and her forehead against his chest. "I want you. Please. Stay with me. But don't be here when Emily wakes up. Don't let her see you. And I'll come to you and I won't let Will see me."

"You have no idea-" He put his arms around her, trying to protect her from this unnamed, unformed 'them.'

Mulder followed her into her bedroom. He stepped out of his shoes as he told himself what an amazingly bad idea this was. "Dana, I want to be careful about another baby. I don't mean to insult you, but I-I-I can't... Not again. I can't."

She slipped her robe off and helped him with the buttons on his shirt before they lay down face to face. "The doctor said I can’t have any more children. You don't need to worry about being careful."

Mulder stared at her, suddenly a lot soberer.

"I'm sorry. That's all I can tell you," she whispered, avoiding his eyes.

His face and chest felt hot, and his stomach tightened. "What happened?" Damn it, he needed his old Army rifle and someone to point it at. "If you didn’t do this, who did? Who's responsible?" he demanded, his blood boiling. "Because I want them to pay."

"No." She shook her head, seeming frightened. "You promised me. Do you know how quickly you could become a communist? Or a homosexual? A pedophile? It doesn't matter who you are, they will get to you."

"But I'm not a communist, homosexual pedophile."

She held his gaze. "You are if they say you are. They will chip away at you until there is nothing left. Like they have with me."

"Dana-" he started hoarsely but didn't know what else to say.

He lay still as she kissed him, moving her lips across his jaw and down his neck. She put his hand on her breast, encouraging him, telling him it was okay. He wanted so much to close his eyes and get lost in her, one more or a thousand more times. If there was nothing left, why the hell not, he told himself.

His lips found hers, hungry and careless. He pulled her against him, pushing her legs apart with his knee. He ran his hands over her roughly, and felt her fingers in his hair. She invited, so why not. If that was the kind of girl she was, he could certainly be that kind of boy.

Time became disjointed and the rest of the universe faded away. His rational mind began to shut down as his instincts took over, but even his instincts couldn't hate her. He couldn't get dressed in the dark in an hour, sore and battle-scared and satisfied, and walk away hating himself. Not without putting a gun to his head.

"Dana-" He pulled back. She stopped moving as well. She looked at him, two sad blue eyes in the darkness. "I can't," he said.

She trailed her fingers low across his abdomen, still inviting. He obviously physically could. "You're sure?"

"I can't- It's not... I'm sure. I don't think there's nothing left." He touched her cheek before he rested his hand on her waist. "Maybe it looks like it, but I'm not going to believe that."

"Will you stay? Like you used to?"

There had been a handful of nights last winter they'd made love and he stayed with her while Emily slept or dawn came. He'd lay awake, holding her and keeping watch as she slept.

He nodded again. "I'll stay. Go to sleep. I'll be gone when you and Emily wake up."

"And then?"

"I don't know," he told her honestly. "I'll call you as soon as I buy a new telephone. Sleep," he repeated.

She shifted several times, trying to find a comfortable position that included him. Her bedroom window was open and the night breeze blew in, making the curtains flutter. Winter had ended. Spring arrived, and he hadn't noticed.

"There will be a price, Mulder," she promised him in the darkness. "If you stay."

She didn't mean ‘stay the night.’ She meant stay with her.

"Everything has a price." He put his arms around her, closed his eyes, and felt breeze from the open window on his face. It was baseball season. "The trick is knowing what's valuable, what's worth it."

"What do you think I'm worth?"

"Anything I have."

"You have a great deal, Mulder."

"I know," he said. But being not dead wasn't the same as being alive. He couldn't dictate his life, but at least he could be available for it.

*~*~*~*

End: A Moment in the Sun, Part II