From: attalanta@aol.com
Date: 7 Mar 2002 18:36:08 -0800
Subject: [all-xf] NEW: Interstice: Wednesday (1/7) by Christy
Source: atxc

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

* * * * *

Wednesday, December 26, 2001


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

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


* * * * *

DANA


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Morning."

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

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

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

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

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

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

Scully smiled before taking another slow sip of her coffee.

"Hey, Dane," Charles asked.

"Yeah?"

"Would you do me a favor?"

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

"Could I borrow your car?" Charles asked.

"My car?"

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

"Can I ask where you're going?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Do you have the car keys?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Morning, Mom," Scully said.

"Mrs. Scully," Mulder echoed.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Let's go," Charles said.

* * * * *

MULDER


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

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

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

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

"And Charles?" Tara asked.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tara nodded. "Just about."

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Work?" Mulder asked.

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

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

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

"Promise?"

"I promise," Tara said.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"And you never...?"

"We never found her."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mulder took a sip of coffee. "Tara?"

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

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

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

"Tara, did you ever meet Captain Scully?"

* * * * *

Continued in Interstice: Wednesday (2/7)

* * * * *

DANA


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

* * * * *

BILL


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Do you have any aspirin?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Dana?" Charlie called out.

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

"Is Mulder Jewish?" Charles asked simply.

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

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

"You ready?" Charles asked.

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

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

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

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

"And his mother?" Charles asked.

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

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

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

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

"Samantha?" Charles asked.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

* * * * *

Continued in Interstice: Wednesday (3/7)

* * * * *

MULDER


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

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

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

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

"Informative?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"It didn't?" Mulder asked.

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

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

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

Mulder cocked his head at her, wondering.

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Scu-- Dana?" he asked.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

* * * * *

To Be Continued in Interstice: Wednesday (4/7)

* * * * *

BILL


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

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

I don't really know her at all.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Everyone okay?"

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

"Charles?" Dana asked.

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

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

"Bill, your head," she gasped.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Open it."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"We?" Dana asked.

"Me and Charles."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"I'll be fine," he said.

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

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

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

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

"What?"

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

"And why the hell not?"

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

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

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

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

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

"But--"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Ready, Dane?" Charles called.

"Yeah," she said.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Charles nodded. "One more push?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

* * * * *

Continued in Interstice: Wednesday (5/7)

* * * * *

CHARLES


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

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

"What smells so good?" Charles asked.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Hey, kiddo."

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

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

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

"A car accident?" Maggie echoed.

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

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

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

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

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

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

"But Mommy said when you got back!"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Charlie?"

"Yeah?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"What?"

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

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

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

* * * * *

DANA


"Dana? You need some help in there?"

Scully turned to see her mother standing in the doorway.

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

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

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

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

"What is it, Mom?" Scully asked.

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

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

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

"It's not an engagement ring."

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

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

"Try me," her mother said gently.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Try me."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

* * * * *

Continue in Interstice: Wednesday (6/7)

* * * * *

MAGGIE


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

* * * * *

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

She shook her head.

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

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

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

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

"To give me?"

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

"Mom?"

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

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

"No?"

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

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

"But Bill..."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

* * * * *

CHARLES


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Your favorite," Bill said.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Why, Charles?" the Captain pressed.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Charlie nodded. "Something like that."

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

"Huh?"

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

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

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

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

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

"A long five days," Charles put in.

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

"A pain the ass?" he supplied.

"Literally," Mulder said, and they laughed.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

* * * * *

Continued in Interstice: Wednesday (7/7)

* * * * *

DANA


"Dana?"

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

"D'you have a minute?"

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

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

"So don't."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"What?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

* * * * *


MULDER


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

* * * * *

To Be Continued in Interstice: Thursday