From: mort@morts-lair.com Date: 20 Feb 2004 08:20:06 -0800 Subject: [atxc-pi] NEW: Dancing In The Shadows -NC-17- (10/14) Source: atxc Dancing In The Shadows by Mort mort@morts-lair.com Part 10 See part 0 for story information. "If he was planning to open the door, he'd have done it by now," she countered. Only to jump with surprise as the door in question swung open and a polite voice said, "Mr. Skinner? Miss Scully? Do come in." Scully, who had faced murderers and monsters without blinking, swayed almost drunkenly as she identified the speaker. But, except for a momentary start, Skinner didn't even appear surprised. "Mrs. Mulder," he acknowledged dryly. "But.but." Scully stammered. "Indeed," Skinner agreed, using a gentle hand in the small of her back to usher her inside.*** Without the stolid presence of Walter at her back, Scully wasn't sure she'd have been able to hold it together when Teena Mulder - the `dead' Teena Mulder - led her into a wide, comfortably furnished room in which Mulder's bound and gagged body was displayed as a garish center-point. Alex Krycek was sprawled on one end of a large over-stuffed sofa, against the left wall, opposite a roaring open fireplace. He had a gun in his right hand and his prosthetic hand was holding a dripping ice-pack against his face. On the right of the room, next to the fire, a tall young woman, with long brown hair scraped back into a careless ponytail, was holding a rifle with apparent casualness. Neither Alex nor the woman, // It must be Samantha // her mind supplied helpfully, made any move to raise their weapons, but Scully was left in no illusion that both were fully prepared to do so if either she or Skinner made the slightest threatening move. So she ignored them both and rushed, instead, to Mulder. Ignoring his muffled complaints, she wasn't foolish enough to attempt to untie him. She simply ran her fingers over his face, head and upper body, until she was sure his only injury was a nasty swelling on the back of his head. Then she placed her fingers under his chin and tilted his head back to gaze worriedly into his furious eyes. The clarity of anger reflected in the hazel depths satisfied her there was no danger of concussion. Only then did she rejoin Skinner, who had waited in surprising silence for her return to his side. Even more surprisingly, neither Alex nor Samantha had moved during her examination of Mulder, let alone protested it. And when she met Alex's eyes, they looked almost amused at her actions. "Well, we already have the cowardly lion," Samantha sneered, sending a look of such intense dislike in Mulder's direction that Scully's mouth dropped open in surprise. "So I guess red here is Dorothy." Scully stiffened angrily at the scornful jibe; while Alex snorted loudly, flashing a look of amused appreciation in his wife's direction. "Soooo," Samantha continued, with a glare of distaste in Skinner's direction. "Is he made of straw or tin, do you think?" "Oh, he's got a brain," Alex drawled. "Then he must be lacking a heart," Samantha concluded with a solemn nod. She twisted her face into an expression of exaggerated understanding and snapped her fingers. "Of course," she exclaimed. "How stupid of me not to recognize him immediately. He's obviously your father, Alex." Skinner's expression didn't alter, but Scully was standing close enough to feel a tremor of suppressed reaction run through him at Samantha's `joke'. The woman was definitely Mulder's sister, Scully decided, because she clearly shared the same sense of cruel, sarcastic humor. "If you've finished the comedy routine," she snapped. "Perhaps proper introductions are in order. I'm Mulder's partner, Dana Scully. This is Walter Skinner, and you have got one hell of a lot of explaining to do to us both, beginning with why the hell Mulder's trussed up like a Thanksgiving Turkey." "Because we didn't have a fatted calf," Alex said, with an icy glare in Skinner's direction. "That is the appropriate celebration for a prodigal's return, isn't it?" "That's a prodigal son," Samantha corrected. "Oh," Alex said, his face falling into a mock pout. "Does that mean we don't get to put Mulder in the oven?" Skinner sighed loudly and spread his hands in a gesture of reconciliation. "Can't we talk, Alex? Can't you at least give me an opportunity to explain my side of the situation?" Like a spell being broken, Skinner's voice shattered the bizarre atmosphere of sarcastic humor and Alex surged to his feet, his face twisting into a feral mask of sheer hatred as he pointed his weapon directly at Skinner's face. "Just one bullet," he snarled. "Just one fucking bullet in your head. Right between your eyes. Right where you shot me, you fucker." "Alex, why don't you sit down and at least give the man the opportunity to speak," Teena interrupted, crossing calmly over to the sofa, sitting down and patting the empty place next to her as though to encourage him to obey. "Why don't you mind your own fucking business, you old witch?" Alex snarled, but Scully saw some of the tension drain out of his shoulders as though yelling at Teena had allowed him to release enough fury to regain control of himself. And the small, satisfied smile on Teena's lips suggested she'd been fully expecting that reaction. "Mom's right," Samantha said, her tone soothing. "Let him speak. If you don't like what he has to say, you can always shoot him later." Scully felt her eyes widening in shock at Samantha's casual tone, only to see a similarly satisfied smile on her face when Alex growled with disgust, lowered his weapon and slouched back to the sofa, successfully tag-teamed into compliance by the two women. Which, Scully decided, suggested the dynamics in the room weren't necessarily what they seemed to be on the surface. "Why don't you let Mulder go?" she asked, her tone reasonable. "You're armed, we're not." "We know you're not," Samantha smirked. "You wouldn't have gotten through the metal detector on the front door if you were." Scully started with surprise, but it at least explained why neither she nor Skinner had been frisked when they'd entered the room. "So you could let Mulder go," she repeated firmly. "No way," Alex snapped. "He stays just as he is. You think I'm gonna let a nasty violent bastard like him loose around my kids?" Scully opened his mouth in automatic protest, then closed it again. Despite the look of wounded betrayal in Mulder's eyes at her silence, it was impossible to deny the visible evidence of Mulder's temper on Alex's battered face. "Remove the gag, at least," Skinner suggested. At Alex's frown, he shrugged and smiled wryly. "Since you can always replace it, if he pisses you off too much, I'm sure he'll be smart enough, under the circumstances, to keep control of his mouth." Mulder's eyes narrowed with contained fury at Skinner's obvious message, but he nodded his sullen acceptance of the warning. Alex stared intently at the carpet between his knees, then looked up and glowered. "Sit down on the floor, both of you," he snapped. Skinner sank down onto his haunches without even a token protest. After a momentary hesitation, Scully followed suit. As she crossed her legs and tried to make herself comfortable, she gave a quick prayer of thanks for her decision to change into a pant-suit at the motel. Alex gave a small nod of satisfaction. "Okay, Sam. Take the gag off." Scully was reluctantly impressed as she watched Samantha unknot the gag one-handed, her other hand keeping firm hold of the rifle. It was becoming increasingly obvious that Alex wasn't the only member of his family who was potentially lethal. Naturally, the second Mulder's mouth was free, he proved his inability to remain silent."I can't believe you did this to me, Samantha," he protested, his expression a wild mix of bewilderment and anger. "And you, Mom. You let me think you were DEAD. It's Stockholm syndrome, isn't it? The bastard's brain-washed you both or something..." "Mulder, shut up," Skinner barked. "Or I'll gag you myself." His eyes tragically wounded, Mulder let his bottom lip drop into a puppy-dog pout, as though he couldn't face Skinner's apparent betrayal on top of that of his sister and mother. "Fox, you don't understand." Teena began awkwardly, wringing her hands together on her lap. "Of course I don't understand," Mulder snarled. "How could you do that to me, Mom? You pretended you'd killed yourself. You let me think it was my fault you were dead!""It wasn't about you," Alex interrupted, with a cold sneer. "Not everything's about you, Mulder. Come to think of it, just about NOTHING is about you. Okay? Do you get it yet? Wake up and smell the fucking coffee, Mulder. For all your self-centered, egotistical belief that the world revolves around you, when push comes to shove, you're just about fucking insignificant and you always have been. Okay?" Scully flinched at the look of complete desolation that appeared on Mulder's face in response to Alex's cruel words. And she knew, instinctively, that it hadn't been a blinding flash of humility that had put that expression on Mulder's face. Alex hadn't rocked Mulder's belief in his importance in the quest to prevent the alien invasion. The pained understanding in Mulder's eyes was far more personal and tragic than that. What she'd just witnessed was the shattering of any remaining tiny fragment of Mulder's heart that had stubbornly clung to any hope that Alex Krycek had ever given a damn about him. "Well, this is nice. It's kinda like the Addams family reunion," Alex quipped, breaking the stunned silence. "But there's still something missing," he mused. Then he snapped his fingers suddenly. "Jeffrey," he announced, with a cruel grin. "Go call him, Sam. He'd hate to miss out on the fun and he always adds such visual.interest.to parties." Mulder shook his head in disgust. "What?" Alex asked innocently. "You're such an asshole." "Well, you should know," Alex replied easily, with a taunting wink. Mulder flashed a guilty look in Samantha's direction, his face blazing with sudden heat. "Alex, you're not helping the situation," Samantha snapped. "Why don't you go and put the kettle on, or something?" "Oh yeah," he grumbled. "I'm sure the `situation' will look a whole fuck better over a cup of coffee."But, wincing slightly, he rose to his feet and, right arm clasped across his stomach, he moved towards the door. Hating herself for her inability to ignore his obvious discomfort, Scully found herself reluctantly saying, "I could tape those ribs for you and a couple of stitches on your cheek wouldn't hurt." Then she had to stifle a nervous laugh at his look of complete disbelief. "Would you?" Samantha asked, her expression both surprised and relieved. "I'm okay," Alex snapped. "I don't need any favors from her." "I'm a doctor," Scully said. "It's not a favor, it's my job." "You're a pathologist," Alex sneered. "Under the circumstances, that makes me a rather appropriate Doctor for one of the `Addams Family', don't you think?" she retorted dryly. The rest of the room seemed to freeze into petrified silence at her words. Mulder's mouth gaped open, Teena looked like she was about to bolt, and both Samantha and Skinner's faces were pictures of shock. But Alex laughed. He laughed so hard he had to clench his ribs tightly as they ached under the strain. And, when he was finally in control of himself again, he offered Scully the first genuine smile she'd ever seen on his face. "You're okay, Doc," he said. She just grunted and scowled in response but, despite herself, couldn't deny that something in his laughter and his easy smile, had relegated him from `inhuman monster' into a real person. Not a likeable person, of course. But a person, none-the-less.*** Skinner waited until Scully and Alex had left the room before turning his full attention on Samantha. Despite their short, strange acquaintance, her worrying sense of dark humor and the even more alarming way she was obviously comfortable with the idea of pointing a rifle in his face, he couldn't deny actually liking his son's wife. She had spunk. There was something undeniably fierce about her. From what he could see, Samantha shared Mulder's trait of obsession but had clearly chosen to focus it entirely on the protection of her family. He had no doubt she would kill to protect her children. Or her husband. And although the AD in him found that alarming, the idea of such loyalty resonated perfectly comfortably within the core of his being. It touched on a dark, secretive place in his own heart that still believed in true love. Samantha loved Alex. That much was obvious. And, from the easy banter and understanding glances between them, it was equally obvious that Alex loved her.Which was probably why Mulder had given up his cursing in favor of a silent, sulking pout. If it was obvious to him, it must have been equally obvious to Mulder. Alex and Samantha were happily married. Which surely proved Alex's seduction of Mulder had never been more than a cruel means to an end. Skinner felt moderately guilty, as though he was somehow responsible for his son's actions and should, therefore, be offering Mulder some form of comfort over what Alex had done. But he was honest enough to admit that his primary feeling was relief. Because, while he agreed that Alex had carelessly trampled on Mulder's heart for the sake of his own, as yet unknown, agenda, the knowledge settled two things in his mind. Firstly, while he still disapproved of Mulder's propensity for swinging his fists in Alex's direction, he at least could accept the merit of Mulder's violent hatred. Since he genuinely liked and respected Mulder, he was strangely relieved to understand his behavior towards Alex was somewhat justified. Secondly, and more importantly, he wasn't going to have to try and come to terms with the idea of Alex and Mulder resuming their relationship. Now it was no longer a possibility, he could finally face the niggling doubt that had been in the back of his mind for days. The worry that if, no, when, Alex was vindicated, he and Mulder would fall back into each other's arms like two star-crossed lovers in a cheap romance novel. // You're a selfish bastard, Walter Skinner // he told himself, as he glanced over at Mulder's posture of abject defeat. And he felt guilty and ashamed of himself. But he still felt relieved. ***"If you'd asked, I could have found you some wool and a darning needle and you could have really made a mess of him," Samantha snapped, grabbing Alex's chin and turning his face so she could glare more closely at the heavy black stitches across his cheekbone. "Will you get off me?" Alex snarled. "I'm FINE." He pulled away from her and stomped over towards the sofa. "I told him the thread was too thick," Scully said, with a defensive frown. "But he just said if I didn't like it, he'd just stitch it up himself." "He would have," Samantha sighed. "Stupid STUBBORN man." She rolled her eyes in frustration and flashed Scully an understanding look. "I swear that's the stuff Liss uses to plait Dancer's mane," she confided. "So?" Alex argued. "I didn't hear you complaining when I used it to stitch your stomach back together, Sam." "Since the alternative was running four miles with my entrails dragging behind me, I didn't have much choice," she reminded him angrily. "But this is your face, Alex." "Yeah, shame to mar the pretty boy looks," Mulder drawled sarcastically, though he'd paled somewhat at Samantha's casual mention that she'd been so severely injured. "So you're `immortal' too?" Scully asked quickly, before Alex could react to Mulder's taunt. Samantha looked at her in honest surprise, then laughed. "We all are, honey, for what little it's worth." "Yeah, Red," Alex snorted, at Scully's suspicious frown. "Even you." "Me?" she squeaked. "Which reminds me." He moved so fast she never even saw him coming. One moment he was sprawled lazily on the sofa, the next his prosthetic arm had her in a headlock and his right hand produced a plam seemingly out of nowhere. She screamed with pain and shock as she felt its tip sink into the back of her neck. With a howl of outrage, Skinner started to scramble up from the floor towards them, only for Samantha to smash the butt of her rifle into his temple with enough force that he collapsed back to his knees Shaking his head in a pained, angry daze, he attempted to rise again, but Samantha reversed the rifle and slammed the muzzle against the skin between his eyes."Move, and I'll shoot your fucking brains out," she announced coldly. Mulder, meanwhile, was screaming with fury, threatening to rip Krycek's head off and struggling so violently against his restraints that he tipped his chair over and fell heavily to the floor with a resounding crash. "Got it," Alex announced cheerfully, using the tip of the knife to flick out the implant in the back of Scully's neck. It fell to the floor and he ground it under the heel of his boot. Then he released Scully, scooped the crushed implant up with his hand and tossed it into the fire with a grunt of satisfaction. Samantha pulled the rifle back out of Skinner's face and offered him an apologetic shrug as he angrily righted himself. "You've killed her," Mulder howled, banging his head on the floor in frustration. "He's such a fucking drama queen, isn't he?" Alex asked the room in general, before crossing to the small bar in the corner of the room and pouring himself a drink. Wide-eyed with shock, Scully pressed her right hand to the tiny wound at the back of her neck, then brought her hand to her face and stared disbelievingly at the blood on her fingers. "Mom, go fetch Dana a band-aid," Samantha said. "The cancer." Scully whispered. "It's gone," Samantha explained, her face softening into an expression of sympathy. "You beat it yourself, Dana. The way our bodies work, you had to be either dead or at least almost dead before your healing powers kicked into gear. Why do you think you were the only abductee out of all of those women you met who survived the cancer?" "Because we put the goddamned implant back into her neck!" Mulder roared. Samantha shook her head. "Because she's one of us," she corrected impatiently. "The only reason Dad led you get hold of the implant was to make you think it was the implant that saved her." "But why would he do that?" Scully demanded, shaking her head in stubborn disbelief. Alex threw back his scotch, poured himself another, hesitated momentarily and then reached for a second glass. He poured a double measure into it, glanced thoughtfully over his shoulder at Skinner, and added another shot. Then he walked past the fallen Mulder, and pressed the glass into Skinner's trembling hand. "Woman's got one hell of a right-hook, hasn't she?" he asked proudly. "Yeah," Skinner agreed shakily, taking a gulp of the Glenfiddich. He was rethinking his earlier decision to like Samantha, but he was damned well learning to treat her with respect. "It's a tracking device," Alex said, turning towards Scully. "The aliens sweep for your location at least once a day. You were putting us all in danger just by being here." Scully nodded stiffly, her eyes ice-cold. "And you couldn't have just said that to me rather than assaulting me and performing a butcher-act?" "Alex tends to prefer a direct approach to solving problems," Samantha said, with an apologetic shrug. "I see," Scully snapped coldly, though her mind had begun to race. What if they were right? What if she had beaten the cancer herself? Could she finally let go of her secret dread that the remission was temporary? "So it won't come back?" she asked, with a suspicious waver in her voice. "It won't ever come back," Samantha agreed. And, to her horror, Scully found herself bursting into tears. *** Skinner hesitated, his throat tight with emotion, warring between the natural desire to offer comfort to the sobbing, obviously overwrought Scully and the understanding that she would probably prefer him not to acknowledge her distress. Past experience had proven conclusively that, although Scully would gratefully accept a hug when she was distraught, afterwards she would deliberately distance herself from her comforter, as though mortified by what she perceived as a show of weakness on her part.Unless, of course, her comforter was Mulder. But since he was still sprawled face down on the floor, his limbs bound to the upturned chair, there was little likelihood of his intervention in the current crisis. Skinner was still wondering what to do, torn between his natural protective urges and the common sense born of bitter Scully-experience, when Samantha solved his dilemma by handing her rifle to her husband and gathering Scully inside her arms in a warm, almost motherly, hug. Skinner found himself sighing with relief, understanding that Scully would be far more comfortable with the idea of letting down her defenses in front of another woman, even if that woman was a virtual stranger. and, anyway, that was far from the truth. Samantha may not have been a physical reality to them until less than an hour previously, but her existence had been shadowing Mulder for so many years that no one who knew Mulder could claim Samantha as a stranger. And, despite his concern for Scully, he was pleased for the opportunity to see this new compassionate facet of his daughter-in-law . He'd already experienced the spunk, determination and sheer damned ruthlessness that made her such a perfect mate for Alex. Now he saw a little of her softer side, the part of her that was the mother of Lisita and.??? "You have two children?" he asked Alex cautiously. The expression that crossed Alex's face was oddly furtive, as he looked between Skinner and Samantha and then, almost casually, flicked a glance towards the fallen Mulder, before nodding a brief, though strangely guilty, nod of agreement. "We have a.a son," he said hesitantly. "Nicki.Nicholai. he's eleven." Samantha gave him a peculiar questioning look over the top of Scully's head. Skinner watched suspiciously as Alex's eyes flashed her a silent warning, and Samantha's face immediately stilled into an unnaturally blank mask. They were concealing something, that much was clear, but it was hard to focus on trying to figure out the nature of that secret when the knowledge he had a grandson was making his heart pound furiously inside his chest. A grandson. He had a grandson. A beautiful, wonderful, eleven-year-old grandson. "Does he look like you?" he blurted, not sure why it mattered to him so desperately but, since Lisita looked so like Samantha, he had this strange certainty that Nicki was a carbon-copy of his father. Annoyance flashed in Alex's eyes. "Why? You saying you're only interested in him if he looks like a fucking Mulder? Kids aren't puppies, Skinner. You can't pick and choose between `em based on their looks." "I know," he agreed mildly. "I suppose I was just hoping he'd been spared the Mulder nose." Alex's mouth fell open in surprise, Samantha snorted loudly and Mulder cursed something unintelligible into the carpet. Which brought Skinner suddenly to his senses. He rose to his feet, completely ignoring the snick of a trigger being engaged on Alex's lap. "Where the fuck do you think you're going?" Alex snarled. "Sit down." Skinner pointedly refused to turn around. "I'm going to pick Mulder up," he announced firmly. He walked over to the fallen chair and, grunting with the exertion, snapped it upright again. "Thanks," Mulder snapped, his tone anything but grateful. "About fucking time you ." he continued petulantly. Skinner decided he'd had enough. He already had one sulky, bad-tempered brat waving a gun in his back for choosing to put Mulder's comfort over his own safety. So he sure as hell wasn't accepting Mulder's back-talk as his reward for the chance he'd taken. "You want to be back on the floor, boy?" he growled, bending down until his nose was practically in Mulder's face. It was peculiarly satisfying to see the hazel eyes widen with a sudden appreciation of imminent danger and, though Mulder just swallowed silently rather than apologizing, Skinner was gracious enough to accept that Mulder-silence was a hell of a lot more satisfying than any amount of verbal groveling. He turned away from Mulder's temporarily chastened features and noted that Scully was now seated in one of the winged armchairs next to the fire. Samantha had retrieved her rifle, but she was standing behind Scully's chair-back, her right hand gently squeezing Scully's shoulder as the smaller woman wiped her face and struggled to regain her composure. His heart ached for her, his own experiences with the nanos having taught him to appreciate how it felt to live with a constant dark-shadow of your own mortality hovering in the back of your mind. He imagined, if Alex ever freed him of that threat, he too would have an emotional catharsis of wild tears. He could only hope if it happened that Alex would have the good taste to let him experience that break down in private. Which, naturally, brought his attention to Alex once more. It was impossible to sort out the conflicted emotions that Alex wrought in him. At the moment he'd risen to his feet to rescue Mulder from the carpet, he'd been reasonably confident that Alex wouldn't shoot him. He'd made the assumption or, more accurately, the leap of faith, that as long as Alex had the gun and, therefore, the upper-hand, he'd be satisfied with the threat of violence rather than its enactment. To tell the truth, despite his long experience of Alex's lethal capabilities and Samantha's increasingly obvious affinity with her rifle, the atmosphere in the room currently felt far from dangerous. Regardless of the weapons in their hands, and their clear determination to use them if they had to, he was peculiarly certain that neither Alex nor Samantha wanted to hurt any of them. He'd been in enough hostage situations in his life to understand that the vibes in this room were different. But that didn't give him any particular sense of reassurance. His gut told him that the only way the impasse between them all could be breached was if he and Alex stopped pussy-footing around and talked about the relationship between them. Unless they addressed the misunderstandings between them, there was no hope of moving forward. Yet, contrarily, he was equally certain that any attempt to broach the subject would immediately return Alex to his earlier murderous fury. Which left them all facing a very long, very uncomfortable evening. And, speaking of discomfort, he was damned certain that Alex felt like hell. The entire right side of his face was now swollen and discolored, the black stitches across his cheekbone almost invisible now against a garish dark-purple bruise, his right eye was little more than a narrow emerald slit inside puffed tender flesh, and Skinner imagined his stomach and ribs were a similar pinto pattern of bruises. Damn Mulder anyway. The situation was already emotionally volatile enough without this added complication. Sure enough, as Alex shifted on his seat, his face was a controlled mask of obvious pain and his breathing was beginning to sound a little ragged. Skinner was ridiculously touched to notice that the moment Alex exhaled a tiny hiss of discomfort, Samantha abandoned her efforts to comfort Scully and directed her full attention on her husband. "You okay?" she asked worriedly. "I'm fine," Alex snapped so defensively that it was obvious he wasn't. As Samantha's lips pursed in worry, a high-pitched wail from the doorway made them all jerk around in surprise. "DADDY HURT!" "Oh, fuck," Alex cursed. "Get him out of here, Sam." A look of momentary panic crossed her face, then she leapt towards the door in an attempt to catch the carrot-haired, blue-eyed toddler who was charging into the room with a look of determination on his face. Skinner just gaped at the child, his mind working frantically to absorb the obvious, if unbelievable, identity of the little boy. Scully was frozen in place, eyes huge in her abruptly white face, her mouth dropping open in sheer confusion. Only Mulder managed to verbalize his shock with a roaring cry of "WILLIAM." "Daddy," the little boy wailed, his plump legs powering him surprisingly easily past Samantha's frantically grasping arms. For just a second Skinner's heart leapt with an odd, almost pained joy at the look of sheer happiness in Mulder's hazel eyes. Despite his own earlier doubts, it seemed Mulder really did love his son, he realized, and the knowledge was bitter-sweet that he would witness at least *one* happy reunion of father and son.. And in the next second, he saw that happiness in Mulder's eyes crushed into agonized confusion, as William's head-long charge into the room ended in a sudden swerve and a leap into Alex's lap. "Daddy," William sobbed, throwing his arms around Alex's neck. "Daddy hurt." Alex paused long enough to cast a dark, despairing look over William's head, swallowed heavily as he absorbed the horrified disbelief on Mulder and Scully's faces, and then he closed his eyes, lowered his head to the boy's temple and kissed him with undeniable tenderness. "Daddy's fine, slugger. I'm okay." William shook his head in violent disagreement. "Dreamed you, Daddy. Dreamed you hurt," he explained solemnly, then raised a tiny trembling hand to Alex's discolored cheek and stroked it tentatively. "It's just a bruise, honey," Alex explained, in a soft tender tone that Skinner wouldn't have even imagined possible to emerge from Alex's husky throat. "Make Daddy better," William announced, his face screwed up with determination. Samantha gave a little gasp of panic and took a step forward towards them. "No, William," she pleaded. "Don't." But, in front of Skinner's incredulous eyes, he saw a warm golden-glow began to rise between William's outspread fingers until it bathed Alex's face and then, almost in slow-motion, he saw the swollen flesh begin to shrink back to its normal proportions, the dark bruises fading, the slitted eye roundening, and still the glow grew until the pair of them were silhouetted inside it, until they were haloed in light from head to toe. And then, as abruptly as if someone had flicked a switch, the light disappeared and there was nothing except a man and a little boy sitting on the sofa and the whole incident could have been a hallucination except for the undeniable fact that Alex's face was unmarked. Even the black stitches had disappeared. "Oh my god," Skinner breathed. "This isn't possible," Scully stated firmly, though her eyes were swirling with obvious doubt. "You even stole my fucking SON?" Mulder roared, his face so dark with fury that, for a moment, Skinner had the strange illusion that Alex's bruises had somehow rematerialized on Mulder. "I'm going to fucking KILL YOU, YOU BASTARD!" William's mouth dropped open in almost comical surprise. "You cussed." He turned to look at Alex, as though for confirmation. "He cussed, Daddy." "Yeah," Alex growled, his eyes blazing in Mulder's direction. "The bad man cussed in front of you, William." Although it was clear to Skinner that Alex was just warning Mulder to mind his language in front of the little boy, Mulder seemed to take the `bad man' comment particularly badly, as though Alex was deliberately turning his son against him. "FUCKER!" he screamed, struggling wildly against his restraints. "I'm gonna tear your fucking head off for this, Krycek!" he promised. "Oh no," Teena groaned, covering her eyes dramatically. "William. NO," Samantha cried, her tone oddly desperate. Skinner and Scully had a split-second to exchange a confused look and then the chair Mulder was sitting in rose several feet into the air, shot backwards almost too fast for their eyes to follow, and impacted against the far wall with enough force that it splintered apart. Mulder was thrown to the floor, collapsing with a grunt of pain, and he sprawled face-first into the shattered remains of the dining chair. For a moment he just lay there motionlessly, then he groaned loudly, shook his head as though dazed, and struggled with obvious difficulty up onto his hands and knees. "William," Samantha sighed, her tone heavy with both censure and obvious relief that Mulder was relatively unharmed. "Bad man," William replied, with a smug satisfied grin. Alex took a deep breath, held it for a moment, then released it in a heavy sigh. He shook his head at the boy in clear chastisement, though it was obvious to the adults in the room that he was struggling to suppress a smile, and all he said was, "Go back to bed, William. It's late." "But I wanna." "Nana will read you a story," he interrupted, with a sudden glare at Teena. She took the hint and rose to her feet, taking William's hand and tugging him gently out of the room. Like a spell being broken, his exit seemed to shatter Scully's stunned apathy. She surged to her feet, her eyes tracking desperately towards the door as though she'd race after the little boy. "Sit back down," Samantha snarled, jabbing her in the stomach with the rifle. Scully's face contorted with sudden fury. "That's my SON, you bitch!" Samantha shoved her forcefully back into the armchair, her own features darkening with anger. "You gave up the right to call him that four fucking years ago," she reminded her coldly. "Well, this is really turning out to be a fun family reunion, isn't it?" Alex drawled. "Alex?" Skinner said, his tone mild. "I think you should shut up now." And, to his immense surprise, Alex looked more startled than angry at his suggestion. He didn't even protest when Skinner crossed over to Mulder, helped the stunned man to his feet and walked him carefully over to the chair opposite Scully. "You alright?" he asked worriedly, staring deeply into the dazed hazel eyes. Mulder blinked a couple of times, his mouth opening and closing silently, then he shook himself, grunted with pain, and finally found his voice. "Did you. did you see that, Sir?" he asked, with barely contained pride. "Did you see what William did?" Skinner rolled his eyes. Only Mulder was capable of being thrown bodily across a room by his own four-year-old son and ending up clearly more impressed by the child's ability to do it than upset it had happened in the first place. "I can safely say we all saw it," Skinner said dryly. "He might take after Dana in looks, but he sure as hell inherited your temper, Mulder." "Why did you take William off the Van De Kamps?" Scully demanded suddenly. "You've got it backwards," Samantha retorted. "The Van De Kamps adopted him on our behalf. They never intended to keep him. They did want a child of their own, but the salient point is that they wanted a child of their own. They had no interest in raising someone else's child, but since it was well documented that Mrs. Van De Kamp couldn't have children naturally, they needed to be seen to adopt a baby to cover their own tracks. Alex deliberately got himself `killed', so he could drop out of sight and work with the rebel aliens for a few months. The price of his help was a son for the Van De Kamps. Then he exchanged their son for William." "You're saying that's the reason you threatened to kill Mulder in the parking garage?" Skinner interrupted hoarsely, his eyes dark and fathomless as he stared deeply into his son's face in search of the buried truth. "You really did go there with the intention of being 'killed' yourself." "Like I told you before, I needed to be publicly dead," Alex replied, with a casual shrug. "And I was pretty sure you'd be more than happy to do the honors, pop." Skinner winced visibly yet, at the same time, a little of the terrible tension in his spine relaxed a fraction at this first, small vindication of Alex's previous behavior. "You needed me to believe you were dead," Mulder said, with a satisfied nod. "Fuck it, Mulder. How many times do I have to say it's not all about YOU," Alex snapped. "I needed to die in front of Knowle. He'd started to suspect there was something a little too.resilient about me. The replicants knew you and Scully were second gens, but they didn't know about me. That's why I not only had to die in front of him, but then I had to go into permanent hiding after I'd done my deal with the rebels over William." "None of this is possible," Scully denied vehemently. "At the time Walter `killed' you, I was still pregnant. How the hell could you know I'd give William up for adoption? Even I never imagined I was capable of making that choice until the day I actually made it." "I knew you," Alex sneered. "And, more to the point, I knew Mulder. It was obvious he was gonna run out on the two of you. For your `own good', of course," he added, with a sarcastic glare in Mulder's direction. "And you wouldn't be able to handle a kid like William yourself." "How dare you." she began. "Stow it, Red," Samantha snapped. "You were abducted and entombed in an alien spacecraft that wiped out half of Antarctica as it took off over your head, and you still refused to accept the existence of Extraterrestrial life. You made a career out of denying the reality of anything that didn't fit into your narrow preconceived worldview. So how the hell were you ever going to accept a child with William's abilities?" "So you decided to steal him for yourselves?" she demanded. Alex gave a chuff of disgust. "Steal him? We did everything we fucking could to make you accept him. You were his mother, damn you! He belonged with you." Samantha nodded her agreement. "Who do you think sent Jeffrey to give him that injection? We thought if we managed to suppress his abilities, you might accept him after all. But you still found an excuse to give him up, didn't you?" "It wasn't like that," Scully protested, shaking her head in violent denial. "It was the only way I could make sure he was safe." "No," Alex retorted, his green eyes cold. "It was just the easiest way. You just handed your baby off to a pair of complete strangers and went back to living the life his presense had so rudely interrupted." "I LOVED HIM," Scully screamed. "You couldn't have, or you'd have found another way, Dana," Samantha replied, her tone implacable. "Alex and I sacrificed our lives for our children. We never even wanted to have children, but the moment they were conceived we turned our backs on our own selfish hopes and dreams, and made the decision that they were the only thing that mattered. But you chose instead to sacrifice your child just so you could return to your previously comfortable life." "That's not fair," Mulder protested. "All Scully ever wanted, all she ever dreamed of, was to be a mother."But, despite his words, his eyes were filled with old doubts as he watched the mother of his child attempting to deny his sister's obvious unforgiving condemnation. Two such strong women, he thought. So similar, and yet poles apart. Because Scully claimed she had used her strength to walk away from her child, while Samantha had clearly used her strength to keep her children at her side. "So what happened, Red?" Alex snorted. "You changed your mind when you hit the reality of dirty diapers and sleepless nights?" "You bastard," she spat, and her untypical profanity, more than anything else, was like an admission that he'd struck a raw nerve. Mulder nodded sadly, accepting finally the apparent truth of a long-held suspicion - that Scully had liked the idea of motherhood, far more than she'd liked the reality itself. And a strange voice snickered in the back of his head that the puppy she and Doggett were planning to adopt had damned well watch its step. A few too many 'accidents' on the carpet and maybe it too would find itself in a new home.And yet. he couldn't bring himself to condemn her. As Doggett had said, he was equally guilty. He also had walked away. If he hadn't, if he'd stayed, if keeping William had been the price of his staying, he had little doubt that Scully would have chosen to keep William after all. (Continued in part 11) Part 11 See part 0 for story information. //Was that the true reason you asked me to father your baby, Scully? Did you really think you loved me *that* much, that you'd have our child simply in the hope of tying me to you with the chains of enforced responsibility?// He didn't want to believe it, didn't want to accept that even subconsciously - and he sincerely didn't believe it a conscious choice on Scully's part - she might have conceived William primarily as a means to entrap him. It wasn't anger or disgust that made him want to deny the possibility. It was sadness and guilt. The whole damned scenario was too damned pathetic, considering the way he had so easily walked away from both Scully and his son. So his voice and expression were subdued when he deliberately averted his eyes from her grief and turned his attention towards Alex instead. "Why did you arrange for the Van De Kamps to drop off the radar?" It was Samantha who answered, as though she too couldn't bear to watch Scully's angry tears any longer. "So anyone looking for William would hit a dead end. We hit an unforeseen snag when the Van De Kamp's natural, or to be honest very 'unnatural', son was born with brown eyes. Alex and I discussed the situation, decided we couldn't take the risk of someone realizing the babies had been swapped, and gave the Van De Kamps the option of either accepting a new identity and a fat bank account or having an `unfortunate accident'." "You seriously considered killing them?" Skinner demanded, his expression shocked. "They'd seen our faces," she replied coldly. "It might have taken bribes, drugs or even torture, but they'd have given us away under enough pressure. There was no point taking William in the first place if we weren't fully prepared to protect him." "But why did you care what happened to William?" Scully asked, frowning with genuine confusion. Samantha sighed guiltily. "We didn't exactly care about him. Not back then. We just wanted to make sure he didn't fall into the wrong hands. With you two out of the picture, we expected him to be abducted. Either by the aliens, who would have killed him when they recognized the threat he represented to them, or by the Consortium who would have. well let's just say he would have ended up wishing they'd killed him." "Of course, we should have just let the aliens take him," Alex said darkly, shaking his head in apparent self-disgust at his temporary moment of weakness. "It would have been the easiest option." "YOU BASTARD," Mulder howled. "Shut the fuck up, Fox," Samantha growled. "Listen to what he's trying to say to you. We SHOULD have let William die. He wasn't our child! He wasn't our responsibility. We had far less obligation to him than you did, and you just turned your back on him. Besides, just by existing he's a threat to Lisita. So don't either of you dare fucking sit there and condemn us for `stealing' your son, for learning to love him like he's our own, for putting our own lives on the line, time and time again, to keep him safe. You should be on your fucking knees THANKING us for accepting the risk he represents to our own DAUGHTER." "Why?" Skinner barked, his eyes darkening with alarm. "Why is William a threat to Lisita?" "Haven't you worked it out yet?" she sighed. "She's the lock. William's the key. The Consortium want to mate them together to produce the template for the 4th generation." "But they're cousins," Scully blurted, her eyes wide with horrified disbelief. "That's the point," Alex spat. "Interbreeding is the best way to re-enforce genetic anomalies." "They want to force William and Lisita to have a baby together?" Alex laughed grimly. "They just need sperm, ova and a petri dish. They're not trying to create a baby, Red. They haven't got time. William isn't going to hit puberty until about a year before the alien fleet arrives. We're talking about clones. Tens of thousands of cloned 4th Gens created from just one single successful fetus." Mulder frowned thoughtfully and shook his head. "It's not very well planned. Why did the Consortium wait so long to create William? It would have made more sense, given the tight time factor, to get Scully pregnant when she was originally abducted."Scully glared at him in disbelief, infuriated by his ability to temporarily put aside his emotions and consider the situation from a purely logical viewpoint. Samantha sighed heavily. "Because at the time Scully was abducted, there were already over a dozen female 3rd gens. Obviously they wanted a baby from the two of you, but its conception wasn't considered a priority to anyone except Dad. He was arrogant enough to want the perfect 4th gen to be the product of a mating between my child and yours. But the other Elders blocked his attempt at that particular form of immortality. They said there was already enough genetic material to play with in the 3rd gens they already had." "I thought Lisita was special because she was the only 3rd gen female," Mulder replied, with a confused frown.Samantha looked at him with clear surprise, reluctantly impressed he'd reached that conclusion on so little evidence. "She is now," Alex admitted grudgingly. "So what happened to the others?" "A misunderstanding," Alex replied, with a bitter snort of laughter. "A stupid fucking misunderstanding. Kind of funny really, if you think about it." As Mulder, Scully and Skinner all frowned at him in confused annoyance, Samantha hastened to explain his cryptic comment. "The rebels found out the Consortium families were meeting with the aliens. They stormed the building and killed them all." Mulder's eyes widened with sudden comprehension. "Burnt `em to toast," he agreed, with a nod of satisfaction as he remembered the incident. "What they, and obviously you, didn't realize was they `toasted' the entire 3rd generation in that airport hangar. Well, except for Liss and Nicki, obviously," Samantha snapped. "The rebel aliens thought they were killing the conspirators," Alex laughed. "But what they really destroyed was the Consortium's main plan for resisting the invasion. Ironic, isn't it?" "But.but I thought we were all supposed to be `immortal'," Mulder pointed out, with a confused pout. "For fuck's sake, Mulder. We're `relatively' immortal, not fucking indestructible. If I can't regenerate an arm, how the hell do you think one of us could come back from a pile of ashes? You think someone could have scooped `em up, added water and, hey presto, reconstituted humans?" "We were all supposed to be there," Samantha interrupted, before Mulder could respond. "I was driving to the hangar with Liss and Nicki, expecting Dad and Alex would meet us there. I was about a mile away, when Alex called me on my cell and told me to turn the car around and just keep driving. I didn't know what was going on but I trusted him when he said I couldn't go home, so I booked the three of us into a motel for the night. Alex met us there the next day and told me he'd managed to convince Dad we'd died in the inferno along with the others and so what was left of the Consortium believed the Project was over." "You faked their deaths just to hide the fact two of the 3rd gens had survived?" Mulder demanded, with a disgusted sneer in Alex's direction. "I faked their deaths to free my family from that cancer-ridden bastard," Alex growled. "But I assume Spender eventually found out you'd lied to him?" Skinner interrupted. "Yeah," Alex sighed. His expression was bleak for a moment, his eyes darkening with pain, but then he grinned with sudden unexpected pride. "But not for three fucking years, and he never found out where I'd hidden them. He never fucking saw ANY of them again." "You're saying he couldn't find enough `bribes, drugs or tortures' to get the information out of you?" Mulder taunted. "I find that hard to believe, Krycek." Alex just glowered at him, refusing to rise to the bait, but Samantha's face contorted with remembered grief and her eyes, as she looked over at her husband, were soft with obvious adoration. "Alex protected us," she whispered. "They did.they did terrible things to him, to try and make him betray us." "Shut up, Sam," Alex growled, his cheeks flushing hotly. "No," she said. "I want them to KNOW, Alex. I want the three of them to stop looking at you like you're garbage and understand they haven't even got the right to share the same fucking AIR as you do." "Just leave it," he snapped, surging to his feet. "Don't waste your breath. They don't care, haven't you figured that out yet? They see what they want to see, and believe what they want to believe, and it doesn't matter, because I don't give a fucking DAMN what they think of me, anyway." He stood there for a moment, his chest heaving, his eyes so dark they looked like deep wounds gouged into his face, and then he stormed out of the room, slamming the door behind him. *** Samantha watched him go, unaware of the slow tears that were trickling down her face in response to his obvious pain, and then she turned to the others with a snarl of anger. "How dare you come here, with your fists and accusations, and treat him like shit with your demand for answers to questions that are none of your damned business? He's suffered enough, damn you. Don't you understand that yet?" "I can't talk for Mulder," Skinner replied gently, his face softening with compassion for her distress. "But I'm not here for a pound of flesh. I'm not even here for explanations, though I do believe they're my 'business'. The only reason I'm here is the fact I found out a week ago that he's my son." "A week ago?" she scoffed. "I know you don't believe me, that it's probably easier to continue hating me than take the chance I'm telling the truth, but, like I told Alex, I didn't know he was my son, Samantha. I honestly didn't know." She frowned at him, gauging his sincerity, and what she saw in his eyes was convincing enough that a little of her anger seeped away into a wry despair. "It's too late, Mr. Skinner. Even if you're telling the truth, it's too late. The bottom line is you weren't there when he needed you." "Did he need me?" Skinner asked, the four words expressing a world of pain. "You can't even imagine how much," she agreed sadly. "What's broken in Alex isn't fixable, Mr. Skinner. There's no magic wand you can wave now to take away the things that have made him the man he is today. There's nothing you can offer him that will help. The only thing ANY of you can do to help him is somehow convince him it's safe to let you leave this house alive." "You're saying the only reason you care whether he kills us is because you're worried doing it might upset him?" Mulder demanded incredulously. "Fox, you're my brother and, believe it or not, I do love you. I don't actually like you that much at the moment, but I still love you. You're family, and in this house that stands for something. If it didn't, Mom would have been buried in the back yard a long time ago." Mulder snorted, then blushed guiltily at his unintentional disloyalty to his mother. "As for you, Mr. Skinner, I don't know whether you'll believe me, but the three days after Alex `killed' you last week were about the worst in my memory. Alex was. well, the last time I saw him in such emotional pain was when he returned home from Tunguska minus his left arm. Even believing you would turn Lisita in to your Consortium friends without a second's pause, he still mourned your death." "I have no `Consortium friends' and there's no circumstance that would make me even consider betraying my grandchildren. It may be hard for you to believe, but I share your belief in the ultimate sanctity of family," Skinner interrupted firmly, his eyes glistening suspiciously at the suggestion that Alex had actually `mourned' for him. "Forgive me if I choose to reserve judgment on that for now," she replied coolly. And though, from the look in his eyes, the comment clearly hurt him, he grimly nodded his acceptance of her caution. Samantha turned to Scully, her expression thoughtful. "You're William's blood. I suppose that makes you family too, in a way," she admitted reluctantly. "And you're obviously important to Fox for some reason, so I guess that gives you an honorary family status in itself." Scully responded with a mild sneer, making it clear she wasn't particularly impressed by the begrudged concession. "So," Samantha continued, "all in all, no one here would be particularly happy to kill any of you. Which is why it would be in everyone's best interests for you to convince Alex you aren't a danger to us."Mulder shook his head in clear disbelief. "I can't believe you can sit there and say you'd let Krycek." he began. She stiffened, her eyes narrowing into furious slits. "You've already more than tested my patience, Fox. So if you want to sit in my house, and discuss my husband with me, you'll at least give me the courtesy of calling him by his name." Mulder's face twisted as though he'd swallowed something vile, but nodded his reluctant agreement. "Okay. Then at least help me try and understand what's going on here. How did you and . and Alex end up together?" he demanded. Samantha smiled sadly at his bitter tone. "Would you believe it was simply a case of true love at first sight?" she asked wryly. Mulder shook his head in furious denial. "Absolutely not." She gave a half-shrug at his vehemence. "Well, maybe not," she agreed, after a considering pause. "At least not on his part." "You're saying you love him?" Mulder demanded incredulously. "Why wouldn't I love him? He's a wonderful father. He's the only reason Lisita and Nicholai are free. He's a good father to William too. He loves your son, as though he's his own. He's a good man." At Mulder's snort of derision, she stiffened angrily. "I grew up with enough bad ones to know a good man when I meet him, Fox." "You didn't answer my question. Do you love him?" he insisted. "Yes," she said angrily. Mulder winced dramatically at the declaration and her expression softened slightly. "I love him very much. But I'm not `in-love' with him, if that's what you mean. We don't have that kind of relationship." Skinner stiffened in his seat, his stomach churning suddenly as he caught the nuance of Samantha's words, but her meaning seemed to sail right over the top of Mulder's angry head. "Really? You still managed to have two children together," Mulder pointed out nastily. "Yes, well it wasn't a matter of choice," she snapped. Mulder gulped convulsively, struggling to force words out of his throat. "Krycek forced you?" "Dad forced us both," she replied, her eyes distant as she stared into her memories. She shuddered slightly, then offered Mulder a soft smile. "It isn't something we dwell on. We both love our children. We can't afford to look back to the violent way they were conceived." "You're telling me Krycek raped you?" Mulder demanded, a rash of hot angry color staining the cheeks of his otherwise bloodless face. "Alex never raped me," Samantha snarled. "It wasn't what you think. You wouldn't understand even if I tried to explain it to you. Alex is right, none of you are here for the truth. You already think you know all the answers, and god forbid anyone might prove you wrong." "I want to know the truth," Skinner interrupted firmly. "We all do," Mulder agreed. She shook her head, her eyes cold. "No you don't. And you definitely don't want to hear it, Fox. Haven't you learned by now that the truth has a nasty habit of biting you on the ass? Believe me, you'll wish you'd let it drop, Fox." He jumped to his feet, powering out of his chair as though he'd explode if he had to keep still for even a moment longer, and began to pace up and down the room as he replied. "I can't. You're telling me you were forced to have Krycek's children but that you still love him? How am I supposed to understand that if you won't explain it to me?" He halted mid-pace, swinging around to face her, fists clenched, frustration bleeding out of his wounded eyes. For a long moment she held his gaze, her expression as defiant as his was insistent, then she shook herself angrily and, when she finally replied, her blazing eyes made it clear she was capitulating out of temper rather than weakness. "You want the truth?" she snapped. "Fine. But don't blame me, when you can't handle it." "I can handle it," he assured her smugly, dropping back into his chair. "Go ahead and throw it at me, Samantha," he taunted. "Okay," she snarled angrily. "Alex was living with Uncle Edward at the time we met." "Uncle Edward?" he demanded, frowning with confusion. She glared at him for the interruption. "You met him. Edward Mannerly." She sighed with irritation at Mulder's blank expression. "He was English, upper-class, well-dressed," she prompted. Mulder gave a small exclamation of recognition. "I met him," he agreed, with a curt nod at her to continue the tale. "Neither of us figured out what was going on straight away. Alex thought Unc. I mean Mannerly," she corrected quickly at Mulder's glare of distaste, " was just bringing him to our house for dinner. It was one of those tedious formal affairs Dad was so fond of where he'd invite half the elite in some kind of childish-one-upmanship. Alex hadn't much experience of how `families' lived and he was so." She paused, a faint fond smile lifting the corners of her mouth. "He was so shy, it was almost painful to watch." Her eyes darkened, and her smile slipped away. "I didn't understand. I had no conception of what was going on, Fox. At that point I had no idea of the kind of life Alex had led before Mannerly adopted him as his surrogate son." Her mouth trembled a little and her eyes darkened still further, as they gazed inward towards memories clearly too painful for description. Then she shook herself and jutted her chin proudly in his direction, meeting his eyes once more. "I remember thinking he was `cute'," she admitted sadly, "but he was so gawkish and awkward, so clearly out of place at a formal Dinner Party. Mannerly had dressed him in this tailored suit, and he kept pulling at his tie as though it was choking him. It was obvious he was more used to wearing t-shirts and jeans. And he was so clearly discomforted by the other guests, despite the fact they all seemed to know him perfectly well. God, if only I'd known exactly how well they'd known him, maybe everything would have turned out differently," she mused. "Anyway, despite his obvious wariness, his table manners were so perfect he was almost robotic. I felt so damned sorry for him. It was clear he'd been `trained' to behave properly in so-called polite company and was just going through the motions like he was following a script. You won't believe it, considering how flawlessly he learned to blend into any situation by the time you met him, but back then he was just about the worst actor I'd ever met. "After that first night, he starting coming round to the house a couple of times a week for about a month, accompanied by Mannerly at first, and later just by himself, and over the course of those visits I slowly started to fall in love with him." "You fell in love with him," Mulder repeated sickly, his face ashen. She reached out and cupped one of his trembling hands within her own."Oh, it's not what you think, Fox. What you.what you have to understand is when I met Alex it was the first time I thought I was actually being given a free choice. You see, I was always brought up knowing I was to marry Jeffrey . That marriage was never open to discussion. My intended marriage to Jeffrey was always simply a fact of life to me. Although I hadn't seen him since Dad and Cassandra split up, back when Jeffrey and I were twelve, I remembered adoring him, in a childish little-sister way. In retrospect, I suspect a lot of my feelings for Jeffrey were subconsciously twisted with my repressed memories of you. But that's irrelevant. The important thing is that when I was sixteen, Dad sent me to stay with." "Why the hell do you keep insisting on calling that bastard Spender `Dad'?" Mulder interrupted, not even trying to hide his disgust. Samantha's face tightened and her voice dropped several degrees. "Like it or not, he was our father, Fox." She frowned at his startled look, then her expression softened slightly. "Didn't you know he was my father too?" she asked, more gently. "Neither of us were Bill Mulder's children. Dad would hardly have taken me if I `d been Bill's daughter. Anyway, as I was saying, Dad sent me to stay with Cassandra, his ex-wife, and Jeffrey and I started courting and were married on my seventeenth birthday." "You married Jeffrey Spender?" Mulder gasped. "Your own half-brother?" Samantha blushed slightly. "You don't need to sound so horrified, Fox. Our marriage might have been morally and legally wrong, but Jeffrey's still a perfectly decent man. He may not have been the catch of the century but we were just a couple of kids at the time and we thought we were in love with each other. I think, left alone, we might actually have made a go of our marriage. Who knows?" Mulder swallowed that, his expression twisted between relief and regret. A successful marriage with Jeffrey would at least have kept his sister out of Krycek's clutches, but it was still difficult to mourn its dissolution. "So what went wrong?" "The project," she spat bitterly. "In my blissful ignorance, I was completely unaware I was ultimately no more than a Consortium brood mare. My primary purpose was to have `third gen' children. Considering all you already know about the project, haven't you wondered why I didn't have Lisita until I was in my twenties?" Mulder nodded, his eyes troubled. "Because Lisita and Nicki are the product of my second marriage. My marriage to Jeffrey was annulled after I miscarried a second time. That's when Dad finally accepted what the consortium scientists had apparently been telling him all along. Even though Jeffrey was only my half-brother, we were still too closely related to be genetically `compatible'. So he arrived one day, while Jeffrey was at work, packed my bags and told me I was going home. I didn't want to leave Jeffrey, but I was still shaken up from losing the baby, and I was.well, to be honest, I was used to doing what Dad told me to do. "I didn't see Jeffrey again for almost nine years. I suspect that's the real reason he hated you so much when he met you. He still hadn't forgiven me for leaving him. Anyway, Daddy decided I needed to be bred with one of the other second generations. "There were a number of other children who'd been genetically enhanced," she continued. "A whole plethora of candidates to father my all-so-important baby. But Dad's dream had always been to be the primary human genetic source of the perfect supersoldier. He was sure his grandchildren were going to be the key to the whole project but the failure of my marriage to Jeffrey had left me vulnerable to being taken away from him. If that had happened, he'd have lost any chance to use my children for his own purposes. So he decided I had to be married again quickly, to someone under his control, and together we'd produce perfect Consortium babies year after year. His grandchildren had to be seen by the other Elders as part of a family unit that should be kept together, rather than just `merchandise'." She smiled sourly at Mulder's shudder of recognition. "You know the term then. That makes things easier to explain. The other children, the `merchandise', were considered Consortium property, to be used or experimented upon at will by the scientists. So trying to choose one of them as a suitable husband for me was . well, you're a psychologist, Fox. You tell me what happens to children who are brought up without any nurturing whatsoever." "As a rule, they become sociopathic." "Exactly," she agreed. "Almost all the children created by the project were brought up in Consortium crches rather than families. They were clothed and fed, but they weren't nurtured or loved or even socialized. They were never intended to integrate into the general population. As long as they fucked each other on demand so the program could continue, and were available to be passed around like party favors by the Elders the rest of the time, no one cared if they were border-line psychotic. Most of them were `put down' after they'd provided genetic material for the third generation anyway, and the few that were considered too valuable genetically to destroy were given a very specialized form of education." "They were trained to be assassins, like Alex," Mulder concluded, with a grim nod. Samantha shook her head angrily. "As assassins, spies, whores, you name it," she agreed, "but they were nothing like Alex. You still don't get it, do you? Dad chose Alex for me because he wasn't like the others. Despite his upbringing, he had an innate sense of his own humanity. It was Mannerly who identified the difference between Alex and the other `merchandise'. He took Alex in, and tried to undo some of the conditioning Alex had as a child." "So he could marry you?" "No. It had nothing to do with me, originally. Mannerly had personal reasons for getting involved. Alex was ridiculously good-looking, even as a teenager, and although Mannerly was relatively happily married, he had a weakness for pretty boys. It was my fault Dad had Alex tested for genetic compatibility with me."Although his features remained stonily expressionless, Skinner's whole body began to quiver with rage. "Are you saying this Mannerly `abused' Alex?" he growled. Samantha chuffed a bitter laugh. "I don't think Alex saw it as abuse," she replied, her expression wry. "Being claimed by Mannerly was the best thing that had ever happened to him. Up to that point he'd always been considered communal property. So belonging to one Elder was one hell of a jump up the Consortium ladder. And, from what I understand, Mannerly was pretty good to him in his own fucked-up way." Looking sick to his stomach, Skinner surged to his feet and staggered over to the bar. Without asking for permission he poured himself a fresh shot of whiskey and swallowed it down in one desperate gulp. "You're saying Mannerly was fucking him? I thought you said Alex was Mannerly's surrogate son," Mulder protested. At Mulder's confused look, she laughed cynically. "The term `surrogate' had quite a unique meaning within the consortium," she explained. Mulder blanched, his eyes darkening with sudden horrified suspicion. "Did.did Spender." he began, only to trail off into helpless silence as he found himself unable to speak the terrible thought out loud. Samantha shrugged carelessly. "Oh grow up, Fox. Why the hell did you imagine Dad wanted to bring me up in his own house?" Mulder gave a choking gasp of horror, his fists clenching, his face darkening with so much hatred that he was clearly wishing Spender was still alive so he could kill him slowly with his own hands. "But.but he was your father." Scully interrupted, her expression bewildered. Samantha shrugged lightly. "We had a. well, let's just say we were closer than your average father and daughter." "That fucking bastard," Mulder howled. "That.that motherfucking scumsucking MONSTER." Samantha blinked slowly, a genuinely puzzled frown forming between her eyebrows. "Are you saying Bill Mulder never.?" He paled as he understood what she was asking, then shook his head furiously. "Never," he spat. She gave him a surprised look. "I always assumed he did," she said, her expression confused. "Mom said.well, she admitted he abused you and so I naturally thought.well." Closing his eyes, as though to hide himself from Skinner and Scully's sympathetic looks, Mulder took a deep breath then exhaled it in a choking sob. "He hit me," he admitted, in little more than a whisper. "He hit me a lot. But.but he never. never. oh god, Samantha. I can't believe that bastard did that to you." "It doesn't matter." "How the hell can you say it doesn't matter?" he yelled. "It kept me alive, Fox," she snapped bluntly. "If that disgusts you, then tough. I had a choice to accept it and live, or fight it and die. And I chose to live." "When did it. I mean how long did.?" "As far back as I can remember," she told him, her gaze distant. "And I understand if you can't handle it, but the truth is it wasn't that bad. I didn't know any better and he was kind to me, in his own way. I know you can't understand that, but I loved him and I wanted him to love me. He was all I had."She reached for his hands again, but he snatched them back out of reach, tears pouring down his face. "Please don't hate me for wanting to stay alive, Fox," she begged, her voice breaking on his name. He gasped and choked, swiping his face with the back of his hands and tipping forward off his seat to collapse on his knees at her feet. He buried his face in her lap, his tears soaking through the thin fabric of her dress, his arms clutching her desperately around the waist. "Oh god, Samantha," he sobbed, "I don't hate you. I hate me." "Why?" she pleaded, her own tears beginning to fall as she leant down and pressed a tentative kiss on the top of his head. "B.b.bec.because you're a.a.alive," he stuttered incoherently. "And.and.I'm.I'm.." "Shush," she soothed, her frown of confusion clearing. "You hate still being so relieved to find me alive, now you know the life I've led to stay that way?" "Y.y..yes," he sobbed. "Oh, Fox. Welcome to our world. Alex and I are very alike, you know. We both learned very young to accept intolerable choices as the cost of survival." "I understand the choice you made, Samantha," he admitted, in a pained whisper. "And I'm so damned sorry you had to make it, but I'm still glad you were strong enough to decide to live." "Are you?" she asked archly. "If you want to accept me, you have to accept Alex too. It's not fair to condemn him for things you're willing to forgive me for. And no matter what you say, if you can't bring yourself to forgive him, I'll know, in your heart, you can't forgive me either." Mulder nodded. "I know," he whispered reluctantly. "But.but it's hard." "Life's hard, Fox," she said, her tone far softer than her words. Mulder sniffled miserably and sat back on his heels. His eyes were haunted and confused as he stared up into her strangely tranquil face with a kind of wonder. "You're so brave," he whispered. She shook her head, smiling sadly. "Most people would call me a coward," she corrected gently. "I lied when I said I didn't know it was wrong to let Dad touch me like that. I knew. I simply made a choice to accept it." "And Mannerly had the same relationship with Alex?" he asked carefully. "To an extent. Alex was sixteen when Mannerly took him in so, he never made the mistake of believing his `father' loved him. But me? I still actually thought Dad cared about me. I thought the fact I was sleeping in his bed meant he `loved' me. But the truth was, he didn't even really enjoy fucking me that much," she admitted, with a bitter laugh. "I never was anything to him, except a brood mare."She wiped her eyes, visibly shaking herself as though furious at her own emotional loss of control, and continued her tale in a dull, flat voice. "After Alex visited the first time, Dad asked me what I thought of him and I said something stupid like I was surprised such a good-looking boy was so painfully shy. I sealed our fates right then and there. My interest in Alex was like the answer to Dad's prayers. "From then on, Alex was a constant visitor. Daddy always made such a fuss of him. Said he had incredible potential. Made a big deal of how he was much smarter and better looking than Jeffrey. Told me, in front of him, that he had big plans for Alex. Then he started saying how he wished Alex were his son, rather than Jeffrey, so he could make Alex his heir. At the end of the month, Daddy came right out and told us that he wanted Alex to marry me. And .and I was absolutely ecstatic about the idea. I. well, I thought Alex and I would get a house together, like Jeffrey and I had, and that would mean Dad wouldn't.wouldn't." her voice trailed off, and she swiped angrily at her eyes once more.Then she took a deep steadying breath and continued her story. "Alex was.well, a lot less ecstatic. To tell the truth, he looked absolutely scared to death. He made the right noises and then bolted home in a panic. I think he thought Mannerly would protect him. I think he tried to, because I heard Dad having a hell of a row with him over the phone, but the next day Mannerly brought Alex back to our house and left him there. "Dad drove us both to a wedding chapel that same evening and we were married, just like that, with Alex trembling so much he could barely speak and me feeling sick to the gills. But I honestly didn't understand why Alex was so upset about marrying me, until Dad drove us home. I hadn't realized he was gay." She gave a small chuff of laughter, completely misunderstanding Mulder's audible gasp of surprise."I know," she laughed. "That sounds incredibly na