From: attalanta@aol.com
Date: 5 Oct 2003 07:50:27 -0700
Subject: [all-xf] NEW: Song of Experience (9/?) by Christy
Source: atxc

Title: Song of Experience (9/?) 
Author: Christy (attalanta@aol.com) 

* * * * *

It hadn't happened in a long time.

In fact, Scully was hard-pressed to remember when the last time had
been, the  last phone call from Will's school suggesting that "maybe
you ought to come  pick him up, Dr. Scully." It had been so long that
she'd thought maybe Will had  outgrown this, the emotional fits that
frightened teachers and students and  never failed to prompt a call to
her at work.

A seemingly incongruous thought came to her mind then, and Scully
remembered  something her mother had told Will once years ago, while
they were watching  the Padres, her mother's favorite team, thump the
Orioles. Never talk up the  opposition's slumps, her mom had said; it
was bad luck to mention that their  batter was hitless in his last
twenty-five at-bats because, before you knew it, he  would be
launching the next pitch into the bleachers.

Scully found her son's classroom with ease, but when she peeked in
through  the small window in the door, she saw that Will's desk was
unoccupied. When she  reached for the doorknob, she heard a soft voice
calling her from down the  hall. Scully turned to see Maya, the
graduate student who helped out with Will's  class, poking her head
out from a door halfway down the hall. Scully hurried  over to meet
her.

"Thanks for coming so quickly, Dr. Scully." Maya stepped into the
corridor  and closing the door behind her.

Scully nodded anxiously, trying to peer around the young woman and
into the  classroom she was effectively guarding. "What's going on?"
she demanded. "What  happened to Will?"

"I'd like to explain that," Maya continued in a gentle voice, "but I'm
afraid  that, right now, it's all something of a mystery to us."

"A mystery?"

The younger woman nodded. "The class was doing groupwork when all of a
sudden  Will jumped up from his seat and ran out of the classroom. I
found him in  there--" Maya gestured to the classroom behind her. "--
and I've been trying to  get an explanation out of him for the past
hour," she said.

"But he won't tell me what happened, and he's refused to return to his
classroom. He insists that he's not sick and doesn't want to go to the
infirmary.  The only time he gave me an answer other than yes or no
was when I asked him who  to call to pick him up."

Scully nodded. "Thank you."

"I just hope he's okay," the younger woman said, stepping around
Scully and  back toward Will's classroom. "And I hope we see him back
here tomorrow." Maya  gave Scully an encouraging smile, then slipped
back into Will's classroom.

Scully took a deep breath, then turned to look through the window and
into  the room in which her son had taken refuge. But the view behind
the smudged  glass told her nothing: all she could see was Will
sitting at the end of a long  table, head in his hands. She opened the
door.

He didn't move at the sound, and Scully called out, "Will?"

Finally he turned to face her, the expression on his face blank and 
unhelpful. "Will, what's wrong?" she asked, closing the door behind
her and coming to  sit beside him at the table. Scully reached out for
her son's shoulder, and as  soon as she made contact, he collapsed
against her, his fingers clinging  desperately to the sleeve of her
coat.

"Mommy," he cried out, and Scully scooted her seat closer to his, so
that he  was nearly on her lap. Slowly she stroked his head, his arm,
his back.  Eventually Will was able to calm himself, though his
breathing was still erratic and,  from the wet spot soaking through
her sweater, Scully suspected that he was  still crying.

"What is it, baby?" she asked softly, her lips against his ear.
"What's w rong?"

"I can't--" He stopped to take a deep, congested breath. "I can't tell
you."

"Of course you can," she insisted. "You know you can tell me
anything."

He shook his head against her chest, and Scully said nothing more,
just  rubbed his back while Will finally caught his breath. "I can't
help you if you  won't tell me what's wrong," Scully whispered.

At last Will turned his tear-streaked face up to look at her, his eyes
bright  with a familiar stubbornness. "Not here," he said.

"In the car?"

He shook his head.

"At home?" she suggested, and Will nodded. Together they stood and,
with Will  still clinging to her coat, Scully maneuvered them out of
the room and down  the hall, her son's sniffles echoing off the
cinderblock walls and the  construction-paper art-class creations
tacked to them.

* * * * *

717 Locust Street
Georgetown

She had gotten Mulder's voicemail when she'd called his cell phone on
the way  home, so Scully was surprised to see his car already in the
garage when she  pulled into the driveway. Her message had been
cryptic, just that she had  picked Will up from school and that Mulder
should meet them at home as soon as he  could. It wasn't that she
didn't want to worry him, but, really, she hadn't  known what else to
say.

Mulder was in the kitchen, two cups of decaf already poured. Standing
at the  counter surrounded by the makings for dinner, he was adding a
generous amount  of milk to her mug when they walked in. He had yet to
change out of his work  clothes, but the knot of his tie was askew,
and his jacket was draped over the  back of one of the kitchen
chairs.

"What is it?" Mulder demanded, setting the milk jug down. "I thought I
was  supposed to pick Will up today. What happened?"

Scully filled him in on what little she knew as she took off her and
Will's  coats and hung them on the hooks near the back door. "And he
promised he'd tell  me what happened when we got home," she finished
with a pointed look at her  son, who was occupying himself with the
glass of milk that his father had  poured for him.

"Come on, Will," Mulder urged. "Maybe Mom and I can help."

"What if you can't?" Will asked softly.

"Why don't you let us be the judge of that?" Mulder suggested.

"Just tell us, sweetie," she said.

Finally Will took a deep breath and nodded. "There was a new girl in
class  today. Joy. She was in my writing group."

Will looked up at them then as if expecting some sort of reaction.
Scully  simply nodded, encouraging her son to continue.

"I sort of couldn't help it," he said, eyes downcast once again. "I 
recognized her from before. She was in our class in the fall and she
left, but now  she's back. I was curious; I wanted to know why..."

"So you read her thoughts," Mulder finished, and Will nodded, eyes
wide.

Scully waited, but apparently Will was finished. He slumped back in
his  chair, sighing deeply. "And then what?" she probed. She couldn't
imagine what awful  sorts things this little girl must have been
thinking to send Will running  out of the classroom "What was she
thinking?" she repeated.

Will looked between her and Mulder, his fright evident by his
expression. "I  don't know," he finally admitted.

"You couldn't read her thoughts?" Mulder asked, and Will nodded.

Something inside Scully softened. That's it? she wondered. That's what
had so  frightened Will? She knew he'd encountered that before, being
unable to get a  handle on a person's feelings. It occurred most often
with people he didn't  know very well, and Scully remembered more than
one time when he'd later  slipped easily into that same person's
thoughts.

Scully remembered these times well; it was these experiences that had
first  given her the idea that perhaps there was something she could
do to keep her  own thoughts private.

"Why did you leave the classroom, Will?" Scully asked.

Will chewed his lower lip in a worried, pensive expression that
reminded  Scully of Mulder. She glanced over the table to her husband,
who, oblivious to the  likeness, was tuned into their son.

"I felt something," he said. "I could feel my own thoughts, but they
were  coming from her... She was doing it, too."

"Doing what?" Mulder asked.

"She was reading my thoughts, too."

This time Mulder did meet her gaze. For a long time their
communication was  non-verbal, both of them staring, surprised and
worried. What the hell does  that mean? Scully wondered. Who was this
girl? How was it that she could do this?  And, most importantly, why?

Finally Mulder glanced over to Will. "Are you sure?" he asked.

Will nodded.

"Has this ever happened before?"

Will shook his head.

"Even with other people whose thoughts you couldn't read at first?"
Scully  clarified, and again Will shook his head.

"What did you do?" Mulder asked.

"I got scared," Will admitted. "So I just... I left."

"You didn't say anything to this little girl? To Joy?" Scully
questioned.

"No," Will told them. "I didn't know what to do."

"Do you think she felt it, too?" Mulder asked.

"I think so," Will said. He looked at them in anticipation, as if
waiting for  their instructions, no doubt expecting them to be ripe
with wisdom, and  Scully was struck with how much their son expected
of them. Though reluctant to  tell them what had happened, he now
seemed confidant that they would know exactly  what to do. Scully only
wished that were the case.

"Maybe you should ask her about it," Mulder suggested.

"But you always said not to tell anyone," Will said, almost
accusingly, to  Scully.

"I did," she admitted. But never had she anticipated that there might
be  anyone out there like Will. Of course, she'd wondered about Gibson
Praise more  than once over the years, but Scully could never bring
herself to search for the  boy. If he was safe, she didn't want to
bring any attention to him; and if he  wasn't safe... Well, Scully
wasn't sure that was something she wanted to know. 


"So you think I should ask her, Mom?"

Will was staring up at her trustingly, and Scully could feel Mulder
tense  slightly, even from across the table. Will seemed skeptical of
his father's  advice, and from the look on her son's face, Scully knew
that he would do whatever  it was she suggested.

She nodded, hoping that she was not making a mistake.

* * * * *

Oak Hill School
Georgetown


"Can I sit here?"

Joy looked up, startled by Will's voice. From what he could tell after
a few  days of observing Joy, none of the other kids wanted to be her
friend. He had  watched her at the after-school program they both
attended at Georgetown, plus  at his regular school after discovering
that Joy was in his same grade but a  different class. In fact, she
had gotten into a fight with Paul Dade during  gym the day before,
which had only interested Will even more in this mysterious 
new girl. Will didn't get along with any of his classmates, really,
but Paul  Dade was the meanest of them all.

Joy just shrugged at him, her gaze returning to the toes of her dirty
purple  boots, which were kicking a small hole in the rubber chips
under her swing.

Will sat in silence for a minute, not sure what to say. He knew he had
to ask  Joy about what had happened on her first day. That's what his
mom thought,  and, deep down, it was what he knew was right as well.
Joy had felt it, too --  whatever *it* was -- Will could tell that
much from the look on her face before  he ran out of the room. He had
to know more.

"My name is Will," he offered.

"I know. You're the one who ran out in the middle of class," she said,
squinting at him. "The kid who's always by himself."

Joy narrowed her eyes, as if she were Superman and were trying to use
her x-r ay vision on him. It looked to Will as though she was trying
hard to look  mean, but instead she just looked kinda scared.

"You have no friends," Joy stated plainly.

Neither do you, Will thought angrily as a large piece of his hope for
her  friendship died at her words. But Will wasn't ready to give up
yet; he just  couldn't. So he ignored her and forged ahead.

"You're Joy, right?"

She said nothing, so Will started to swing, his legs pumping slowly as
he  rode higher and higher, toward the wintry gray sky. He looked over
at her  invitingly, but Joy did not join him, so Will slowed and came
to a rest beside her.  Unsure of what else to say, how else to try to
get close to her before he  broached the inevitable, Will watched as
Joy kicked the toes of her boots at the  blacktop.

Finally he asked, "How long have you been able to do it?"

She turned to face him, a defiant look in her narrowed eyes. "Do
what?"

"Do it," Will said softly. "You know. Like on your first day."

Joy turned away from him, her light brown ponytail whipping around to
smack  against her earmuffs. "I don't know what you're talking about,"
she insisted.

"I've been doing it forever," Will told her. "I'm trying to learn how
to turn  it off now."

There was a long pause. Maybe that interested her, Will thought, that
he  could turn it off. He waited, breath held in anticipation. Then,
"I said, I don't  know what you mean."

"I bet I can get you to do it," Will challenged. "Tell me what I'm
thinking."  He closed his eyes and concentrated on his name, William
Mulder. Will filled  his whole mind with it, imagined it spelled out
in tall white letters against  the black of his closed eyelids.

"Stop it," Joy hissed, but her voice had lost most of its anger and
now  sounded almost desperate. "Stop."

William Mulder, he thought. William Mulder. He heard the words echo
through  his brain, heard them in different voices: his own, his
mother's and father's,  his grandma's, even their classmates'.

Will's eyes were still closed, but he could feel Joy tense beside him
as  surely as he could hear his voice in his own head. William Mulder,
he thought at  her desperately. Say it!

"William Mulder," Joy spat. She scrambled off her swing and stomped
over to  the other end of the snow-crusted playground. Will leapt off
his own swing and  chased after her. Joy wasn't running, so Will
easily caught up to her and  matched her strides, keeping pace with
her.

"I told you," he insisted. "I told you you could do it."

"All I did was say your name," Joy argued. "I don't know what you're
talking  about."

"But that's what I was thinking about," Will said. "I was thinking my
name,  and you said it." He lowered his voice. "You knew what I was
thinking."

"I already knew your name," Joy told him. "Mrs. Freedman said it when
you ran  out of class that day."

Oh. Right. Will turned and realized that Joy had stopped walking, and
he  ground to a halt, then dashed back to her side. "I'll think about
something else,  then," he told her, stepping around to her left when
Joy turned her head to  avoid his gaze. "I'll think about something
that you don't know, something  nobody knows."

Joy said nothing, just stared at him with her cool, daring gaze, so
Will  scoured his brain for something to think about, a secret that
Joy couldn't  possibly know. Then it came to him, and he concentrated
on the thought of his sister,  on the feeling he'd had when his mom
told him about the baby. I'm going to  have a little sister, Will
thought at Joy. I'm going to have a sister.

This time he kept his eyes open and watched Joy's face as she resisted
his  thoughts. Her lips were pursed and her jaw clenched. Will could
feel the  struggle she was having: her own stubbornness against the
truth. He watched her eyes  flicker toward him and then away, then
finally close. He concentrated his mind  on his to-be sister, forcing
his attention inward, away from Joy's rapid  thoughts.

Finally, the truth burst from her lips. "You have a sister," she
shouted, her  voice loud enough to earn the attention of a couple of
kids playing kickball,  who shot Will and Joy annoyed glances before
returning to their game. Joy  sniffled loudly and wiped her nose with
the back of her mitten.

"Or maybe you don't," Joy said, softer this time. She sounded almost 
confused, and still she refused to meet his gaze. "I don't know. I
can't..."

"You can," Will insisted. "You're right. My mom's going to have a
baby; I'm  going to have a sister. But nobody knows yet. Just me and
my mom and my dad;  not even my grandma."

Finally Joy turned to face Will, and he could see tears welling up in
the  corners of her eyes. "How did I know that?" she asked in a small,
scared voice.

Will smiled, opened his mouth to answer her. But then they heard the
voice of  the recess aide, calling them back inside. The two of them
stood there for  another minute, staring at each other, Joy's gray
eyes feeling as though they  were boring right into him.

"Let's go," the recess aide yelled out, and together they clomped
through the  rock salt-coated playground toward the warmth of their
classroom.

* * * * *

End Part 9. Continued in Part 10.

Title: Song of Experience (10/?) 
Author: Christy (attalanta@aol.com) 

* * * * *


Will didn't see Joy again until Thursday. On Tuesday, the day he had
forced  Joy into reading his thoughts, Mrs. Freedman had kept him
after the rest of the  students had left. Was he okay? she'd wanted to
know. Was he sick? Was that  why he'd run out of class the other day?
Will had stared at the clock behind  his teacher's head as she talked,
half listening to her and half hoping that  Joy's mom might be late
picking her up she they could talk some more.

But when Mrs. Freedman finally took his word that, yes, he felt fine,
Will  had grabbed his coat and backpack, and sprinted outside, only to
discover that  Joy was already gone.

He'd spent all that night thinking about what he was going to say to
her,  about all the questions he had that maybe she had, too.
Questions that maybe she  had answers to.

The next day arrived all too slowly for Will, who'd convinced his dad
that he  had to get to school early. Will ended up being the first
person in class  that day, and he'd felt butterflies in his stomach
every time another car pulled  up and another student tumbled out.
Would this be Joy? What would he say to  her? Would she approach him?
Would they have time to talk before class or would  they have to wait
until recess? Will's leg twitched nervously as he watched 
the seconds tick by.

But Joy never showed. Will's stomach dropped when the bell rang for
class to  begin. As his teacher took roll, Will continued to watch the
second hand creep  around the clock, constructing all sorts of stories
as to why Joy might be  late: traffic, a car accident, a broken alarm
clock. He had even composed an  exciting adventure about UFOs
descending from the sky to hover in a ring of white  light, sucking
Joy out through the sunroof of her mom's car as her body hung 
limply in the air.

Eventually Will accepted the fact that Joy was just plain old absent.

It took him until recess to remember Joy's first time in the
Georgetown class  that fall, how she'd gone home just like everyone
else, just like an ordinary  day, but how she'd never come back. Will
wondered whether that was the case  again, whether Joy was just a
sometimes-visitor in their class. Maybe even a  spy, he thought with
wonder, a special spy trained by the government to find out 
secrets. And, stupid him, he'd told her his, without her even having
to ask  for it.

But she could do it, too, Will argued with himself. If she was looking
for  information about reading people's minds, she would have to
search no further  than her own brain.

Nevertheless, Will didn't know what to expect on Thursday. He'd
constructed  so many fantasies about what might have happened to Joy
that he was almost  surprised to see her sitting at her desk, staring
blankly out the window as though  she had never left. Before he knew
it, a big smile broke across his face, and  it stayed there while Will
passed Joy's desk on the way to his own. She  looked up at him, eyes
wide and scared-looking, but then she gave him a reluctant 
smile, and Will felt better.

Class seemed to last forever, and more than once while he was staring
at he  clock, Will could've sworn that time was standing still.
Finally it was time  for their break, and Will held back while the
rest of the kids sprinted toward  the door. He could feel his heart
pounding in his chest as he watched Joy  slowly put her supplies back
in her desk.

He walked unhurriedly past her chair, and, without a word, she rose
and  joined him. Together they pulled on their coats and hats, then
headed outside,  still silent. Finally they reached the end of the
blacktop, the farthest point  from the rest of the students, and they
stopped. When Joy turned to face Will, he  knew that she had been just
as excited as he.

"What's it called?"

"Huh?" he asked. Of all the questions he had imagined her asking and
all  those that he was burning to ask her, this was not one of them.

"What's it called?" she repeated. "This thing you -- er, we -- can do?
Does  it have a name?"

Will shrugged. "I don't know if it has a real name," he told her.
"Sometimes  I call it legilimency."

"You call it *what?*"

"Legilimency," Will pronounced carefully, the word feeling foreign on
his  tongue. It was nothing he'd ever said out loud, even when he
talked to his  parents about it. It was his own secret word, for his
own secret ability, but now it  felt right to share it with Joy.

"Legilimency," Joy tested out. "How come you call it that?"

"Have you ever read Harry Potter?" Will asked. Joy shook her head.

"Not any of them? Never?" Will asked, disbelieving. He thought
everyone had  read Harry Potter. Even his cousins had read the series,
despite the fact that  Patrick typically read only comic books.

"Never," Joy said. "My mom doesn't like fantasy books; she says they
only  confuse kids, and that real life is complicated enough."

How sad, Will thought; his favorite fantasies were very important to
him --  Harry Potter and Star Wars and so many others. He knew how
they could be true  even if they weren't real. Suddenly Will was very
grateful for his own mom, who  read Harry Potter with him and even
told him all sorts of cool bedtime  stories that sounded like fantasy
but, she insisted, were all too real. Not to  mention the stories his
dad told him...

"Well," Will continued. "It's a word in the Harry Potter books.
Legilimency  means that you can remove feelings or memories from
someone else's mind. Harry  can do it," he offered, and for some
reason saying that felt like he was  bragging.

He decided to change the subject. "How long have you been able to do
it?"

Joy shrugged. "I didn't even know I could until the other day," she
said.  "But now I think maybe I could always do it; I just didn't know
what I was doing.

"I've always known things," she explained, "things no one else knew,
like  what someone was going to say before they said it, or how they
were feeling.  Things like that. At first I thought everyone could do
it. But I found out... I  found out they couldn't, that I was the only
one.

"How 'bout you?" Joy asked. "How long have you done it?"

"As long as I can remember," Will told her. "Since I was a baby, I
think."

"Do you know anyone else who can do it?" Joy asked, hope evident in
the  excitement in her voice.

Will shook his head. "Not anymore."

"Not any... But there were?" Joy pressed. "There were others? Who?
When? How  come--?"

Will heard footsteps then, crunching against the icy blacktop, and he
whipped  around, toward where the other kids were playing. But it was
only Eric, one  of the boys in their class, chasing after a runaway
kickball. Will watched as  he ran back to the game, the ball under one
arm.

"We have to be careful," he urged Joy, grabbing her arm to guide her
further  from their classmates' game. "No one else can find out."

Joy nodded impatiently and yanked her arm away. "But we aren't the
only ones?  Who else can--?"

"No one else," Will said. "Not anymore. My dad could, a long time ago,
before  I was born, but he can't anymore." It had made him sick, Will
thought,  remembering the memories he'd inadvertently skimmed from his
father so many months  ago. His dad had been forced to explain then,
to tell Will all about how that  ability had made him so sick that he
had to be sent to a hospital and tied up,  and how it had put Gibson
Praise in so much danger that he had to hide  somewhere where no one
could find him anymore.

Joy's eyes grew wide. "He could?"

Will nodded. "And he told me about someone else who could, too. A
boy."

"A boy our age?"

He shook his head. "Probably he's a grown-up now." If he's still
alive, Will  thought chillingly. "He disappeared."

Joy sighed. "So it's only us?"

"I guess," Will said.

"I wonder if *my* father could do it," Joy said dreamily.

"Are your parents divorced?" he asked.

She shook her head. "My father died when I was a baby," Joy explained.
"I  don't remember him."

"You could ask your mom," Will suggested.

Joy shook her head almost violently. "I can't," she insisted. "She
doesn't  like talking about him at all."

Will could understand that. If Joy's dad was dead, it probably made
her mom  sad to think about him. It had made his own mom sad to think
about Will's dad  sometimes, too, and he hadn't even been dead, just
away. But that had never  stopped her from telling Will all sorts of
great stories about him.

"It's not because she's sad," Joy continued, and Will wondered whether
Joy  realized that she'd answered a question he hadn't asked. "She
gets really mad  when I mention him. I used to think maybe they were
really divorced and she only  told me he was dead. Maybe he was really
alive somewhere, and he was looking  for me. But my aunt said that
he's really dead, and that I shouldn't ask my  mom about it because it
was a tragedy."

Then Joy seemed to realize something else. "Your dad knows?" she
asked. "He  knows what you can do?"

He nodded. "Him and my mom and my grandma." Will paused, and Joy
looked  awestruck. "Doesn't your mom know?"

She shook her head. "Huh-uh. I can't tell her. She... she won't
understand."

"How do you know?" Will pressed. "Maybe she will. My mom does. She
helps me a  lot, and she even--"

"How do you do it?" Joy interrupted. "I mean, it looks easy for you.
And you  said you can stop it..."

Will nodded, not understanding why Joy had changed the subject but
going  along with her anyway. "I'm trying to stop it," he told her.
"And I can sometimes,  if I force myself to think hard about something
else.

"But I don't know how I do it," he said. "It just happens. And it's
easier  with some people than with others. It was always real easy
with my mom, but now  I think she figured out a way to block me."

Will expected Joy to be excited by this, at least surprised, but she
said  nothing for a long minute. Will waited, listening to the cheers
and boos of the  kids playing kickball behind them. The wind whipped
up with an especially  violent gust, and Will reached up to anchor his
hat to his head.

Finally Joy asked, in a very small voice, "Why us? How come we can do
this?  And how come we're the only ones?"

Will exhaled sharply, watching the ice crystals of his breath
dissipate and  then disappear into the cold winter air. "I don't
know," he told Joy.

* * * * *

717 Locust Street
Georgetown


"There you are," Mulder said when he found Will in the study. He was
sitting  cross-legged on the couch, a blanket tucked around him and
Phoenix sitting  beside him, his chin resting on the dark leather
upholstery. Will had a textbook  open on his lap and he was so
engrossed in whatever he was reading that he  didn't notice when
Mulder stepped into the room.

"Time for bed," Mulder called as he sunk down onto the couch next to
Will.  "Whatcha looking at?"

Mulder leaned forward to catch a glimpse of the book, his eyes
widening when  he made out the photos on the page. "What is that?"

"One of Mom's books from medical school," Will answered, eyes still
glued to  the page.

Mulder scanned between the photos on the page. All infants, or perhaps
miscarried fetuses: babies with cleft palates, missing limbs, extra
fingers, tumors  the same size as their heads; plus defects that he
couldn't even begin to put  a name to.

"Look at this," Will said, flipping forward to a page half-filled with
photos  of Down Syndrome infants and children, and half-filled with a
line graph, of  which Will placed his finger in the center.

"Maternal age dependence of incidence of trisomy 21," Mulder read
aloud.

Will's finger trailed along the exponential curve of the plot,
stopping when  he reached the high point of the line. Then he traced
back down to the x-axis,  pausing on the maternal age of 45.

"Forty-five years old," Will read. "Down Syndrome incidence at birth:
one in  28."

"That doesn't sound like a lot," Mulder offered.

Will's finger ran further down the page. "'The incidence of Down
Syndrome  rises significantly after a maternal age of 35,'" he read,
"'as is evidenced by a  comparison of the low incidence of one in
1,530 live births at a maternal age  of 20.'

"There's more," Will said, slowly paging through the chapter. There
were  additional photographs, children and babies with obvious
physical deformities, and  ideograms of infants, labeled with hidden
symptoms: mental retardation,  hypotonia, renal defects, congenital
heart defects, failure to thrive.

Staring at these photographs, Mulder felt a chill rush over him. He
and  Scully had been so concerned about what their ages might mean in
terms of  exhaustion and appearance and stamina, but never had they
discussed the effects of  their ages, in particular Scully's age, on
the physical well-being of their child.

What if something went wrong, something genetic or even environmental:
he and  Scully had both been exposed to chemicals and entities that
they couldn't  even begin to understand. Sure, Will was healthy, but
what about this baby? What  if they had been exposed to toxins that
needed time to incubate or multiply,  poisons that would hurt the baby
or hurt Scully? What if...

"You were supposed to help Will get ready for bed, Mulder, not aid and
abet."

Mulder looked up to see Scully standing in the door of the study, a
smile on  her face that faded as she took in the serious expressions
of her husband and  son. "What's wrong?"

Will held up the textbook, opening it to the page with the photograph
of a  girl with Down Syndrome and the maternal age chart. "Is the book
right?" Will  asked. "Is there going to be something wrong with the
baby?"

Scully came over to the couch and squeezed between Will and Mulder.
She took  the book onto her lap and paged through it, then shut it
resolutely.

"The book is correct," she told them. "When a woman gets older,
there's a  greater chance for her baby to be sick or have problems.
But you have to look at  these numbers the right way," she cautioned.
"Maybe the chance for an older  mom to have a baby with Down Syndrome
is greater, but most babies are completely  healthy, whether their
moms are fifteen or forty-five.

"And that's why I'm going to have the amniocentesis," she reminded
them. Dr.  Speake had suggested the amnio at Scully's last visit, the
first time they'd  brought along Will, all three of them awed into
silence when the baby's  heartbeat filled the exam room. "The amnio
will tell us a lot about the baby: if it's  a boy or girl, if it's
healthy or not."

"What if it's not?" Will asked, and Mulder was glad for his son's
courage; he  couldn't quite get the same question past his lips.

"I don't think we should worry about that now, Will," she said. "But
if the  baby isn't healthy, then we'll have to do the best we can and
look for a way to  help make her better or take care of her. Okay?"

Will nodded, and Mulder found himself nodding as well, comforted by
Scully's  words. Will leaned his head against his mother's shoulder,
and Scully slipped  her arm over his shoulders, then found Mulder's
hand with her warm fingers.  She smiled up at him, then leaned over to
kiss the top of Will's head.

"I'd tell the two of you not to worry about that," she said, "but I
know that  you're both so good at worrying that it won't stop you from
thinking about it  until we get the results of the amnio."

Mulder chuckled and Scully squeezed his hand.

"Remember, though, that I was thirty-seven when you were born, Will.
That's  over thirty-five, which is the age that doctors consider
high-risk, and you're  perfectly healthy."


But not normal, Mulder couldn't help thinking.

* * * * *

Georgetown University

March, 2009


"Mom, this is Joy," Will said shyly as Scully sat down on the stairs
beside  her son and his friend. Joy smiled up at her, her gaze quick
and assessing as  she studied Scully through her wire-rim glasses.

It was her turn to pick Will up at school that afternoon, but her real
purpose was to meet Joy's mother. For the last week Will had been
asking to go over  to his new friend's house to play or else to have
her over to his, and Scully  had insisted on meeting Joy's mother
before trusting her son to the woman's  care. More than her mother,
however, Scully was interested in meeting her son's  first friend.

Will had shared with her and Mulder what little he had learned about
Joy's  abilities, but Scully was not satisfied. Irrational though she
knew it was, she  had a burning desire to interrogate this girl like a
suspect, to come to learn  how and who and why and what, as well as to
understand this girl, to make  sure that Will was not putting all of
his hopes for friendship in someone who was  going to disappoint or
hurt him.

"It's nice to meet you, Joy," Scully said as she offered the girl her
hand.  Joy took it and they shook, gently but firmly.

"How was school?" Scully asked as Joy's hand slipped from her grip.

Will just shrugged. "Okay."

Scully nodded. Yes, school was always okay. Will rarely had good news
to  share and, like his father, was sometimes reluctant to share the
worst of his news  in order to spare her secondhand hurt. But, also
like Mulder, eventually she  drew it all out of him, anyway, the
teasing and the jokes and the loneliness.

"How about you, Joy?" Scully asked, turning to study the little girl.
"Did  you have a good day?"

"I guess," Joy said, worrying her lower lip with her teeth. She
shrugged,  tossing her light brown hair over her shoulders. She was
tiny and small-boned,  but there had been nothing diminutive in her
grip when they'd shaken hands.

Joy shot Will a look, and Scully glanced between them, curious. Will
had  never had a friend before, and this fact alone intrigued her
about Joy. Add to  that Joy's apparent similar abilities to Will, and
Scully's curiosity was pushed  to its limit. She wanted to talk with
this girl, to understand who she was and  where she came from, but
Scully also knew that this was neither the time nor  the place to
delve into Joy's life. So, despite the couple dozen questions 
burning in her brain, Scully held her tongue and remembered why she
was there.

Then there were footsteps, hurried and closely spaced, and a voice.
"Sorry  I'm late, honey."

Scully squinted in the sun as she gazed up at the woman standing over
her.  She stood, Will and Joy rising with her, and Scully watched Joy
hang by while  her mother squeezed her shoulder and gave her a big
smile. Then she turned to  Scully.

"Patti Gillen," the woman said, offering Scully her hand. They shook.

"Hi. I'm Dana--"

"Dana Scully," Patti finished softly.

"Yes," Scully said, pulling her hand out of the other woman's grasp.
"How did  you know that?"

Patti's face broke into a huge grin. "Federal Grounds coffee shop,
your  apartment, a train station..."

Scully's mouth fall open in surprise as she felt the pieces of the
puzzle  fall together. Of course, she thought, remembering her vague
recognition of Patti  at Will's class play in November; thinking back
further, to a scared mother  whose husband had snatched away her baby,
then to a grieving widow huddled over  her husband's body in the train
station. 

And this was the girl who shared Will's abilities? Scully felt a 
once-familiar prickling run down her spine as she glanced between
Patti, Joy, and Will.  Hell of a coincidence, her investigator's mind
told her, but with her heart, all  she could think was that this girl
had done the seemingly impossible: she'd  befriended Scully's son.

"Patti. I remember," Scully said. "You're okay; I always wondered."

Patti nodded, then pulled a surprised Scully into a desperate embrace.
"We  should talk," she whispered into her ear, her voice low so that
Will and Joy  could not hear her, though Scully knew this gesture was
useless. "Without the  kids."

Scully glanced over to Will and Joy, who were watching them carefully,
knowingly, as though they had expected this. Even so, Scully nodded.
"You know," she  said pensively, "there's a park just a block from
here. We could walk over  there." She looked down at Will and Joy.
"Would you two like that?"

Will's eyes narrowed at her and she raised her eyebrows in a desperate
hope.  Maybe he knew that something strange was happening, she
figured, but he must  not understand everything. Certainly he and Joy
could not have known of their  mother's meetings so long ago. Or could
they? Scully wondered.

Finally Will acquiesced and shrugged. "Okay," he said.

All four of them were quiet on the short walk to the playground, and
when  they got there, Scully and Patti brushed a thin layer of snow
off a pair of  swings for the children before doing the same to the
benches of a nearby picnic  table. The kids climbed on the swings, not
giving their mothers a second look.

"I don't know where to start," Patti admitted with a slow smile as
they sat  on the slightly damp benches.

"Start with the train station," Scully said. "What happened after the
train  station?"

"The train station," Patti said slowly, leaning back against the
picnic table  and allowing her gaze to drift over to where Will and
Joy were swinging,  their legs pumping in rhythm.

"I was scared to death after that," Patti admitted. "After we buried
my  husband, I packed up Joy and moved to Chicago. I figured... Well,
I knew that it  wouldn't take much for them to find us there, but I
just had to get away from  DC. I'd gone to college in Chicago, so I
knew the city and I had some friends  there. It felt safe; it *was*
safe."

"But now you're back," Scully said.

Patti nodded. "I liked Chicago, but Joy... Joy did not like Chicago;
Joy  didn't like anything. She was in trouble at school -- fights with
the other kids,  talking back to teachers. Last year, she refused to
go to school for nearly a  month; I was worried that she'd have to
repeat first grade, but she was  already ahead of her class. She's
always been smart," Patti said, and Scully tried  to ignore the niggle
of worry that was working its way up her spine as Joy's 
story began to sound more and more familiar.

"Then, in September, she ran away from home." At Scully's incredulous
expression, Patti nodded, a grim look on her face. "That's right.
Seven years old and  she's running away from home. She didn't get far
-- a policeman saw her  walking down the street with her little pink
Barbie suitcase and brought her home."

"Where was she going?" Scully asked.

"She wouldn't tell me," Patti said. "She wouldn't talk to the cop,
either; he  had to go through her suitcase to find her name and phone
number. She  wouldn't speak at all, and we ended up in the offices of
every child psychiatrist in  Chicago. Joy's got a medical file almost
as tall as she is: attention deficit  disorder, mild autism,
oppositional defiance disorder, conduct disorder,  Asperger's... I've
heard 'em all.

"After Joy ran away," Patti continued, "I decided to move back to
Washington.  I have family here -- my sister and brother-in-law and
their kids -- and I  thought it'd give Joy some grounding, a better
family life, you know? My  sister's got five kids and she offered to
watch Joy after school."

"You weren't worried about returning to Washington?"

Patti shook her head. "It's funny," she said, a reluctant smile
teasing the  corners of her lips. "At the time, it never occurred to
me that my husband  might not be right about all that crazy
supersoldier crap; I bought right into the  stories he spun, hook,
line, and sinker. I didn't know very much about his  job -- national
security, he always said when I asked -- but I trusted him, fool 
that I was," she said. "Almost cost me my life, and my daughter's.

"At first I thought they'd follow us to Chicago. I was paranoid; we
moved  from motel to motel the first few weeks we were there. I was
afraid to leave Joy  with anyone, even college friends who'd never met
my husband. But once we'd  been away from Washington for a while and
experienced nothing more suspicious  than a hang-up phone call...
well, I started to doubt him."

"And now?" Scully asked.

Patti's eyes narrowed. "Now I think he was full of shit," she
announced. "I  can't find any reason to believe what he said. Not
one."

"But what about the things you saw," Scully pressed. "You told me that
when  Joy was a baby she could move things with her mind. How do you
explain--?"

"I don't," Patti told her. "And I've stopped trying. I probably
imagined it;  I was so exhausted trying to take care of a newborn and
keep together a  marriage that had been on its last leg for months.
And with my husband's  suggestions... well, I was just ripe to see
something like that. Whatever it was, real or  imagined, I'm not
losing any sleep over it anymore.

"Joy's given me enough normal problems to worry about," Patti said.
"She  doesn't like school, hates the other kids, and can't stand her
teachers. The  administration at her school here in DC insisted on
testing her to make sure she  belonged in second grade, what with her
extended absences last year, and they  told me she should be in the
Georgetown program. They said that she might just  be acting out
because she's bored with school, and that a more advanced class 
could help her. She might make friends being around other kids like
her."

Scully nodded. More familiar territory, she thought, remembering the 
suggestions made by Will's first grade teacher, whom Will had hated
with a passion  that had reminded her of Mulder's disdain for Kersh.

"But it hasn't been the savior I was promised it would be," Patti
said. "She  went for a week, then refused to go back. I was so angry
with her; the program  isn't exactly cheap, as I'm sure you know, and
I couldn't get a full refund.  But I thought it would be easier not to
fight with her about this, too, so I  told her she didn't have to go
to Georgetown if she went to her normal school.  I thought maybe she
could spend more time with my sister's kids, maybe make 
friends with her cousins.

"And then, the other week," Patti continued, "all of a sudden she
wants to go  back to Georgetown. No explanation, just 'I want to go
back to the other  class.' So here we are."

Patti sighed. "And here you are. How have you and Will been? I was
worried  about the two of you, after that night at the train station.
Whether you were  safe."

Scully nodded, running her fingernail along the grain of the wooden
picnic  bench. What to tell Patti? She had made a mistake trusting
this woman once, but  that had turned out worse for Patti than for
her. And, she reminded herself,  Patti hadn't said anything about Joy
being able to read minds; clearly it was  best for Scully to keep that
development to herself. 

"We stayed in Washington," she started. "Will's been going to Oak Hill
since  kindergarten, and he started the Georgetown program this fall.
We... we've had  some of the same issues you mentioned. Problems with
other children --  difficulty making friends, mostly. I had such
hope," she admitted, "when Will first  mentioned Joy. We thought maybe
he had finally found a friend, his first  friend his own age." Scully
allowed herself a smile, which Patti returned with no  small measure
of desperation.

"Joy didn't mention Will until yesterday," Patti told her. "Just like
all of  a sudden she wanted to go back to the Georgetown class, all of
a sudden she  has a friend. At first I wondered whether she was lying;
it certainly wouldn't  be the first time."

As tough as things had been for her son in the past, Scully felt worse
for  Joy. Clearly this little girl had had a more difficult time than
Will, her  loneliness manifesting itself in aggression and rebellion,
and her own mother  refusing to see the truth. Scully sighed softly
and looked over at Patti, only to  see that the woman was focused on
Scully's left hand.

"You've married," Patti said, noticing Scully's wedding ring. "So Will
has a  stepfather; I've always wondered if Joy would be having all
these problems if  her father were around. If she had siblings, maybe.
But who can blame a guy  for not wanting to stick it out with the
single mom of a problem seven year  old?"

Scully's thumb ran over the cold metal of her ring. "Not a
stepfather."

"Mulder?" Patti asked after a beat, her shock evident in her voice.
"Mulder  came back?"

Scully nodded.

"My god, I never thought..." Patti gazed off in the distance, watching
as  Will and Joy launched themselves off their swings in a
synchronized, seemingly  choreographed leap, then scampered over to
the merry-go-round.

"What?" Scully prodded.

"I never imagined he'd return," she admitted. "My husband said...
Well,  clearly he was mistaken. I suppose that shouldn't surprise me
after all that's  happened, after all his worries about Joy have
turned out to be nothing but  overreaction and paranoia."

Scully nodded, but she wasn't so sure. So much of what Patti was
saying was  familiar: enhanced intelligence, problems making friends,
loneliness and  isolation. Certainly Patti had to realize that there
was something to her daughter's  problems beside a slew of trendy
diagnoses... didn't she?

Scully had learned little more about Joy's father after the man's
death, but  she did know that he had been deep in NSA, that his death
had been covered up  expertly, his body already gone when Scully,
Doggett, and Reyes had returned  to the train station after venturing
into the quarry to search for Mulder. Even  the train operator had
claimed not to know what they were talking about when  they asked
about the man who had been shot there less than an hour before.

"Funny that our children managed to befriend each other," Patti mused.
Scully  just nodded as she watched Will and Joy huddled together near
the monkey  bars, whispering to each other. Funny, indeed.

* * * * *

End Part 10. Continued in Part 11.

Title: Song of Experience (11/?) 
Author: Christy (attalanta@aol.com) 

* * * * *

717 Locust Street
Georgetown


"And don't forget Phoenix's towel," Scully called after Will as the
back door  slammed shut. He turned around and waved the old dog towel
at her before  dropping it on the back stoop. She watched for a minute
as her son and his dog  romped through the mud, squinting to make sure
that Will had remembered to change  out of his dress shoes.

Scully turned back to the stove, lifting the lid off a small steamer
pot  sitting on the burner. A plume of steam issued from it and Scully
backed up a  half-step before seasoning the green beans with a squirt
of lemon juice and a  generous dash of pepper.

"Need any help in here, Dana?"

Scully turned and smiled. "When did you get here?" she asked, crossing
the  room to greet her mother with a hug. "I didn't hear your car pull
in."

"Just now." Margaret Scully grabbed an apron from the hook on the back
of the  pantry door. "And I brought dessert," she told her daughter,
nodding toward  the living room as Mulder entered carrying a stack of
Tupperware containers.

"It's just the four of us, Mom," Scully laughed. "How much dessert do
you  expect us to eat?"

Maggie just smiled. "Will's a growing boy, Dana, and he loves my 
strawberry-lemon pie. And so do you," she added with a smile as Scully
turned back to the  stove.

"So, how can I help?" her mother asked, crowding next to her to watch
her  daughter's progress with their Easter dinner.

"You can let me handle dinner," Scully instructed. She was determined
to make  this meal special, the first holiday dinner she had prepared
since Mulder's  return.

And Scully wanted it to be special for another reason. She and Mulder
had  decided to tell her mother about the baby today, their first of
many  announcements. They had even solidified their plan by telling
Will of their decision at  breakfast that morning. He'd been ecstatic,
and frankly Scully was surprised  that he'd kept quiet about it this
long. Will was good at keeping secrets, but  this had been a doozy and
he'd had to keep it for so long that Scully wouldn't  have been
surprised if he'd let it slip to her mother.

"Look at that dog run," Scully's mother said as she peered out the
window at  her grandson and Phoenix. "Those two are going to wear each
other out!"

"I hope so," Mulder murmured as he carefully arranged the contents of
the  refrigerator to fit Maggie's desserts.

Scully laughed. "Mulder and Will took the dog for a run in the park 
yesterday," she explained. "And guess which one of them came home
hobbling?" Scully  gave Mulder a gentle push on his shoulder as he
joined them at the back window.

"Hey, I didn't see you chasing those two through a creek and up the
side of a  cliff," he said as Maggie chuckled. "I don't think I did
too badly, anyway. I  have a good forty years on Will, after all."

"Didn't do too badly? You were sure singing a different tune when you
got  home yesterday. 'My back hurts, Scully,'" she mimicked in a low,
whiny voice.  "'Have some pity and rub my back, will you?'"

"You really should consider obedience classes," her mother advised. 

"For Mulder or the dog?" Scully teased, and Mulder squeezed her
shoulders.

"Funny," he said.

Maggie smiled at them. "They've got them at the Y near my house
and--"

"Already done, Maggie," Mulder said. "They start in two weeks."

"They?" she repeated.

Scully nodded. "Phoenix and Will."

"Will is taking the class with him?"

"Yeah," Mulder said. "We thought it was best. Phoenix is his dog,
after all."

"I didn't know they allowed children," Maggie said, watching as Will
tossed a  ball to Phoenix, who leapt high in the air to catch it then
ran around the  tiny fenced-in yard when Will tried to retrieve the
toy.

"They do," Scully told her. "As long as an adult attends with them.
The man  who runs the class said he's had kids as young as five."

"Well, let me know if you need an adult," Maggie volunteered. "I know
you two  are busy with work."

"We're okay, Mom," Scully said. Thankfully, Mulder's usually flexible
work  schedule made that possible, and he was planning on taking Will
to most of the  classes, which began after school but before Scully
typically got home. Plus,  Scully didn't know if her mother could
handle both a seven-year-old boy and an  exuberant puppy; sometimes
Scully wondered whether she herself could.

"Well, give me a call if he ever needs a ride," her mother said,
removing a  handful of silverware from the drawer and heading into the
dining room to put  the finishing touches on the half-set table.

When her mother was well out of earshot, Scully stepped up against
Mulder,  tilting her head up at him as she spoke. "Wanna tell her
now?" she asked, a  smile glinting in her eyes.

He grinned back at her. "Sure," he said, "but I thought you were going
to do  it during dinner."

She shook her head. "I think you should tell her." 

Mulder looked back at her in surprise. "Me?" he repeated. "She's your
mother."

True, but she would have a host of people to tell: John, Monica, her 
brothers. And, although they had both been there, she had been the one
to break the  news to Will. Plus, it was she who had told her mother
about their decision to  get married. It was Mulder's turn, Scully
reasoned; she wanted him to have  someone to share the good news with
as well.

"I think you should," she told him.

His gaze was puzzled as he regarded her carefully, and she nodded,
feeling  his excitement in this small thing she had given him. He
leaned down and kissed  her forehead, lingering there for a minute,
his lips pressed warm against her  skin. "Okay," he whispered,
planting another kiss between her eyebrows. "If  you're sure."

An amused laugh preceded her mother's return to the kitchen, and
Scully  quickly stepped away from Mulder, grabbing the spoon from the
spoon rest on the  stove and fussing over the pots.

"Are you sure you don't need any help in here, Dana?" her mother
asked. "You  seem to be a little distracted... I wouldn't want dinner
to burn."

Scully felt her cheeks redden as she concentrated on the bowl of
mashed  potatoes warming on the back burner.

"You know, Maggie," Mulder began casually, "we might need you to take
Will to  a few of those obedience classes after all."

"Oh?"

"Yeah," he continued. "That is, if they conflict with this other class
we're  taking. We don't have a schedule for that one yet, but--"

"Another class?"

"Mmm," Mulder said, and out of the corner of her eye Scully saw him
lean back  nonchalantly against the counter. Boy, he was really
drawing this out, wasn't  he? Scully suppressed an amused laugh.

"There's this Lamaze class," he continued. "But we don't know when--"

"Lamaze?" Her mother's voice was a delicate balance of shock and hope.
"Dana?  Does this mean... Are you...?"

Scully turned away from the stove to smile at her mom. "Pregnant," she
confirmed as her mother hurried across the kitchen to hug her.

"My baby girl," Maggie gushed into Scully's ear as she squeezed her
tight.  "Oh, Dana!" Finally she pulled away, only to turn toward
Mulder, enveloping him  in a strong embrace. "Fox," she exclaimed.
"Congratulations, both of you."

"Thanks, Mom," Scully said as her mother released Mulder, only to pat
him  affectionately on the arm. She smiled at her mom's fondness for
Mulder, a feeling  that had grown stronger during the time Mulder had
stayed with her when he  was released from the hospital early the
previous fall.

"When are you due?"

"August," Scully said.

"August?" Maggie repeated, hurt and puzzlement now evident in her
tone. "And  you didn't you tell me until now? Dana! Is everything
okay?"

She nodded. "Everything's fine. But we weren't-- it was unexpected,"
she  explained. "And I'm on the high end of high-risk, so..."

Her mother sighed with relief. "A baby. That's wonderful news," she
said,  looking between them with a big smile. "I'm so happy for the
two of you." A  movement in the backyard caught her attention then,
and she turned to see Will  trying to lead Phoenix back toward the
house, waving the towel at the puppy. "Does  Will know?"

Scully nodded. "We told him when we found out. We didn't want him to,
uh,  pick it up on his own," she finished uncertainly. Even after all
these years, her  mother still wasn't at ease talking about her
grandson's abilities. Her  mother typically took these types of
discussions in stride, but Scully could tell  that they made her
uncomfortable, that her mother worried about what these 
abilities meant for Will, about why he had them and what would become
of them and  who might be interested in them, about their effect on
his ability to have a  normal childhood.

"Yes," her mother said thoughtfully as the back door creaked open. "I
imagine  that would be a concern."

Scully stepped quickly toward the door to see Will squatted on the
small slab  of stone patio. He was holding Phoenix still with one arm
looped around the  dog's belly, while he used the other to aim the
towel at the puppy's muddy  paws.

"Need some help?" she asked, turning the apron so it hung on her
backwards,  like a cape.

"He keeps squirming," Will said as Scully crouched down beside him,
taking  the towel. With her son holding the dog, she wiped his paws
clean, then handed  Will the dirty towel. He paused to slip his shoes
off, leaving them outside.

"Wash up, Will," she told him. "We're eating in a few minutes."

"'Kay," he called as he took off for the bathroom, the dog hot on his
heels.  Scully reached outside and banged Will's shoes together,
knocking off the  largest clumps of mud, then decided they were clean
enough to set them near the  door inside.

"What does Will think?" Maggie asked as Scully returned to the
kitchen, going  to the sink to wash her hands before returning to her
dinner preparations.  "Is he excited about the baby?"

"He's ecstatic," she told her mother as she transferred the green
beans into  a serving dish, which she handed to Mulder to place on the
table. He returned  to the kitchen with Will, and Scully squinted at
her son's hands.

"That was quick. You washed?" she asked, and he nodded earnestly.
"With  soap?"

"Ye-ess," he said, and Scully shot him a look. "Yes, I used soap," he
repeated more politely as Mulder grasped his shoulders gently and
pulled the boy up  against him.

Grinning, Mulder dropped his head and said in the general direction of
Will's  ear, "We told Grandma."

Will twisted to look up at Mulder, who nodded at him, then turned to
face his  grandmother. "Isn't it cool?" he asked as he threw his arms
around her. "I'm  gonna have a sister!"

"You know the sex, Dana?" her mother asked, hopeful, looking at her
daughter  over Will's head. "It's a girl?"

Scully traded glances with Mulder. "Will thinks it's a girl--"

"I *know* it's a girl," he insisted.

"-- but we haven't gotten the results of the amnio back yet."

"It's a girl," Will assured them, taking the basket of rolls Scully
handed  him and heading into the dining room.

* * * * *

Georgetown


Mulder couldn't think of anyone else to call. He had tried her office
number,  her cell number, and her mother's number. He had tried the
Pathology  Department secretary and a colleague with whom she
sometimes ate lunch. Scowling at  his cell phone, Mulder punched in
his last hope and waited through three rings  before the call was
picked up.

"Doggett."

"Agent Doggett, it's Mulder," he said into the phone as he braked at a
stoplight. 

The other man's surprise was clear even through the staticky
connection of  Mulder's cell phone. But that did not surprise Mulder;
his contact with John  Doggett was typically limited to polite
greetings or, if it was absolutely  necessary to spend prolonged time
with the man, heated discussions about baseball,  the only thing the
two men were willing to admit they had in common.

"Mulder. Hey."

"Have you seen Scully?" he asked the agent.

"No, I haven't. What's--?"

"When did you see her last?" Mulder pressed. "Do you know?"

"Uh, it's been a while, Mulder," he said. "Monica and I have been away
on a  case for nearly a week. Somethin' wrong?"

"I can't get a hold of her," Mulder told him. "She's not answering her
office  phone or her cell. She was supposed to pick Will up at his
friend's house,  but she's late." Forty-five minutes late, he thought
with a check of his  dashboard clock. "Is Agent Reyes there with
you?"

"Yeah," Doggett said, and Mulder could still hear him even though his
voice  took a slightly muted tone. "Monica, you seen Dana lately?"

"No," she said. "Why?"

"It's Mulder," Doggett's voice replied. "He can't reach her."

There was a scraping sound then, and Reyes's voice became clearer as
she took  the phone. "Mulder, it's Monica. You can't find Dana?"

"No," he said. "She was supposed to pick Will up and she never showed.
And  she's not answering her cell phone."

"I haven't seen her in over a week," she said. "Maybe two. But I
talked to  her this morning and we made plans to have lunch on
Wednesday -- Dana wanted you  to be there, too, John," Mulder heard
Monica say in a more muted voice.

"Mm hm," Mulder said, turning onto Joy's street. Scully had planned to
tell  them about the baby during that lunch. Just the previous night
while they were  dressing for bed, Mulder had commented that they
couldn't put it off much  longer; Scully was starting to show. She'd
brushed him off, recalling that he'd  pointed out the new roundness of
her belly over a week ago. But you weren't  dressed then, he'd argued
back. I wasn't showing this early with Will, she'd  maintained. But
then he'd impressed her with the wealth of pregnancy knowledge he'd 
accumulated by reminding her that women started showing earlier in
subsequent  pregnancies than in their first, and--

"Listen, Mulder," Reyes continued. "I'm sure it's nothing, but I'll
check  around and see if she's helping anyone with anything around
here. I know Agents  Veronne and Mickelson were looking for someone to
do a rush autopsy; maybe they  called Dana."

"Maybe." But Mulder didn't think Scully even knew Agents Veronne and 
Mickelson; at least he'd never heard her mention them. And that
wouldn't explain why  she had forgotten about Will and hadn't called
Mulder or her mother to get  him...

"I'll call you if I find anything," Reyes told him, and Mulder recited
his  cell phone number for her.

He hit the END button and then punched in another familiar number. He
hadn't  wanted to worry Maggie Scully, but Mulder didn't know who else
to call. He'd  tried her once already but gotten her machine. Mulder
waited through six rings,  then left a message this time, simply
asking her to call his cell phone when  she got in. No need to
frighten her if Scully turned out to be caught in a  meeting without
her cell phone.

Mulder pulled into the parking lot of the building where Joy lived,
catching  a glimpse of two small, worried faces in the front window of
Joy's apartment.  The window was partially fogged up from their
breath, with Joy's glasses  reflected back as round little lights. But
it was the expression on Will's face  that worried Mulder: his son was
scared.

* * * * *

Will was quiet on the drive home, staring through the windshield with
unf ocused eyes. Mulder asked him about school, about what he'd done
with Joy, but  Will answered as briefly as possible. He'd seemed
grateful when Mulder gave up on  the conversation and flicked the
radio to an all-news station with the idle  thought that perhaps
Scully had been derailed by a traffic jam... without her 
cell phone, he added with a sinking feeling in his gut.

Then his cell phone trilled. Mulder fished the phone out of his jacket
pocket  and hit the TALK button. "Mulder."

"Mulder, it's John Doggett. Have you heard from Dana?"

"No," Mulder said. "And I take it you haven't, either."

"Sorry. What I can tell you is that she's not working with any of the
agents  that Monica and I've spoken to, and we've spoken to several. I
called the  Pathology Department secretary after I talked with you and
she hasn't seen Dana,  either, not since this morning. She even had
her paged."

"And?"

"No response," Doggett said. "So I checked with Security at Quantico.
Her  car's still there, and she hasn't run her parking pass through
the garage  scanner."

"Shit," Mulder muttered. Then, after a glance toward Will, who was 
pretending, poorly, not to be interested in the phone call, he added,
"You didn't hear  that." Will just stared straight ahead and ignored
his father.

"Anything else?" Mulder said into his cell.

"I'm at her office now. I thought I'd check it out, try to find a
calendar or  day planner maybe, but her door's locked. And the
department secretary  must've just left, because there's no one around
to unlock it for me."

"Security?" Mulder asked.

"I was thinkin' more of you," Doggett said. "I've dealt with Quantico
Security, and I can tell you that unless Dana keeps a spare key at
home, you'd better  bring a lock pick."

Mulder sighed. "She does have a spare set at home. I'm headed there,
but I've  got Will with me. It might take me--"

"That's okay. I can poke around, see if anyone around here's seen
her."

"I'll meet you there," Mulder told him before ending the call and
handing the  phone to Will. "Here. Call Grandma, see if she can come
stay with you."

Will took the phone but just stared at the display. Then he looked
over at  Mulder. "You don't know where Mom is?"

"We're trying to find her," he assured his son. "John and I are
looking for  her. Monica, too."

"But you don't know where she is?"

Mulder paused, then, "No."

Finally Will punched Maggie Scully's phone number into the cell phone.
"No  answer," he told his father. "Leave a message?"

"No." He had already left a message; two would certainly panic her. 
Especially if he found Scully in one of the labs at Quantico, having
lost herself in  work. Mulder tried to ignore the ache in the pit of
his stomach at the growing  unlikelihood of that scenario. "We can try
her again later... What about the  Gordons next door? Do you know
their number?"

"No," Will said. "How come?"

"I need to find someone to stay with you. I suppose we can go next
door and  check with them when we get home."

"I can come with you," Will offered.

"I don't think that's such a good idea, kiddo."

"Why not? I've been to Mom's office a bunch of times," Will told him.

"Yeah, I know," Mulder said. But he didn't know what they were going
to find  at Scully's office, and Will certainly didn't need to be
there to see it.  Whatever it was. "We'll try the Gordons, okay? Then
we'll see."

* * * * *

FBI Academy
Quantico, Virginia

No one answered the door at the Gordons' house, so Will was still
riding  shotgun when Mulder pulled into the Quantico parking garage
and found an empty  spot in the visitors' section. They walked past
Scully's car on their way inside,  and Mulder stopped and peered into
the window.

"Mom's car," Will whispered. "How come her car's still here?"

Mulder said nothing, just examined the exterior of Scully's Accord.
Nothing  out of the ordinary. Same with the interior, from what he
could see. He had her  second set of keys on the chain in his pocket,
but Mulder was more anxious to  get into Scully's office; he could
always send Doggett out to check on her  car.

"Let's go." Mulder guided Will away from the car and toward the
elevator, one  hand on his son's shoulder.

When they got to Scully's office, Doggett was leaning against the
doorjamb,  paging through several sheets of paper. He looked up when
they approached,  surprised at the double-time squeak of Will's
sneakers that accompanied Mulder's.

"I couldn't get a hold of Maggie," Mulder explained as he slipped
Scully's  spare keys from his jacket pocket. "Wait here," he told
Will, planting him in  the doorway to the hall.

"You haven't spoken to Mrs. Scully?" Doggett asked. Mulder knew what
he was  thinking: maybe Scully was with her mother. But that still
didn't explain why  Scully wasn't answering her phone, why she had
forgotten to pick Will up.  Unless something was wrong with Maggie...

"I left a message on her machine," Mulder said as he unlocked Scully's
office.

Mulder pushed the door open and the two men stepped cautiously inside,
Doggett reaching over to flip on the light switch. Mulder went around
the desk to  plop down in Scully's chair, eyes riveted to her desk
top. He sorted through the  papers stacked there, trying not to upset
their organization. He found a  desk-top day-planner but, comparing
that day to the previous several Mondays, he  could find nothing out
of the ordinary.

Then he flipped through stacks of papers and used the four-digit
voicemail  code penned on the bottom of the February 23 page of her
day-planner, thankful  for Scully's predictability. But her messages
proved less than helpful, and  Mulder slammed the phone down in
frustration.

"Mulder?"

"What?" Mulder asked, unable to keep the aggravation out of his
voice.

"Mulder."

He looked down at Doggett, who was squatted beside him, sorting
through  Scully's open desk drawers. The agent reached into the deep
bottom drawer and  produced the bag Scully used as a purse. Mulder
looked between Doggett's startled  expression and Scully's bag, the
black leather satchel she carried with her  everywhere.

"You wanna do the honors?" Doggett asked him, holding out the bag.

Damn right, Mulder thought. He took the bag, cleared a spot on
Scully's desk  top, and dumped out the contents.

"Shit," Doggett muttered. "Her wallet."

Mulder snatched up the wallet and opened it. Nothing out of the
ordinary: her  credit and ATM cards were all there, in addition to her
driver's license;  Will's school photo and a tiny picture of the three
of them, taken on the beach  after their wedding ceremony;
approximately $50 in cash; and a random  collection of plastic cards
for Blockbuster, the public library, the grocery store they 
frequented.

"Checkbook's still here," Doggett said.

"I don't think anything's missing from her wallet, either." Mulder set
the  wallet back on her desk and pushed past Scully's cell phone for
the smaller  version of her day-planner that she carried with her. He
flipped open to that day,  noting that "Will, 4:00," was indeed
penciled into this afternoon's slot.  Then Mulder paged forward and
back several weeks, but nothing seemed out of the  ordinary. Of
course, he couldn't translate all of Scully's shorthand notations, 
but from what he did understand, her day had been utterly
nondescript.

"Can I come in now?"

Both men turned at the slightly whiny voice that drifted in from the
doorway.  "Yeah," Mulder called. "Come in."

Will stepped into the office, his eyes rapidly scanning the small
room.  "Will, you've been in here before. Anything look out of place
to you?" Mulder  asked.

"No." Will's eyes stopped at the two framed photographs on Scully's
desk, and  he turned them around so he could see them.

"Mulder, you know what this is? It slipped outta her date-book."
Doggett  offered him a tiny photo printed on glossy computer paper.
The picture was grainy,  black and white blobs, but Mulder recognized
it immediately: it was a  duplicate of the ultrasound photo tacked to
their refrigerator at home.

"It looks like an ultrasound." Doggett squinted at the image. Will put
the  picture frames down and crowded in for a look.

"Yeah," Mulder said.

"Is this from a case she's workin' on?"

Mulder looked over at Will, who stared at him, his eyes big and
scared. "No,"  Mulder told him. "It's hers."

"Hers? Do you mean...?"

"It's ours," Mulder clarified. "She's pregnant."

Doggett looked up at him, eyes wide. "You're not serious?"

Mulder nodded somberly. Doggett looked back and forth between Mulder,
the  fuzzy ultrasound photo, and Will, the agent's mouth open in
surprise. He shook  his head, one hand coming up to swipe across his
worried brow.

"Shi-- shoot," Doggett murmured with a sideways glance at Will.

"Yeah," Mulder agreed. "Shoot."

* * * * *

End Part 11. Continued in Part 12.

Title: Song of Experience (12/?) 
Author: Christy (attalanta@aol.com) 

* * * * *

717 Locust Street
Georgetown

"What's all this?" Mulder asked as he opened the door to reveal a
handful of  agents waiting on his front stoop, a collection of black
suits and  conservative ties more effective than a handful of meds in
bringing back bad memories.

"Just a precaution," Doggett said.

"Why? What did you find?" Mulder asked Monica Reyes, who led the pack
of  agents into the house.

"I still haven't been able to get a hold of her," Reyes said as she
closed  the door behind them. The suits trailed inside, stopping to
scan the foyer with  critical eyes.

"Damnit." Mulder spun on his heel and paced across the foyer. He
brought the  heel of his hand to his forehead and pressed hard, taking
a deep, shaky  breath. "Damnit!"

"Look, I talked to the Deputy Director," Doggett began.

"Skinner?" Mulder asked. "You called Skinner?"

"I called him." Reyes laid a gentle hand on his arm, but Mulder jerked
away.  "I thought maybe he'd contacted her for help with a case. I
know that isn't  protocol, but he might have had something sensitive
he wanted her to--"

"But he didn't," Mulder filled in.

"No," Reyes said. "But he wants us to call him if you don't hear from
her.  Given Dana's history, he thought it best to assign a few agents,
just to be  safe. These are Agents Klein, Bradley, and Glauss."

Mulder nodded at the agents. Reyes's voice was light, almost cheery,
but it  set his nerves on edge. He didn't want empty assurances from
Reyes or Doggett,  or from the Deputy Director, no matter whose name
was currently attached to  the title; all he wanted was Scully back.

"If it's okay with you, Mulder, we'd like to set up home base here for
the  time being, in case Dana or her mother calls," Doggett said. "You
haven't heard  from Mrs. Scully yet, have you?"

"No," Mulder said. It was his last hope, morbid as it was, that Maggie
had  had some kind of emergency and Scully was with her. Unlikely
though it had  become, Mulder clutched the frail thread of that one
final hope with both hands. 

He followed Doggett and Reyes into the living room. Klein, Glauss, and
Bradley settled on the couch, opening matching briefcases to remove
notepads and  pens. The agents had identical detached expressions on
their faces as they cast  critical gazes around the living room.

"I've brought the agents up to speed on what's happened," Reyes
informed  Mulder. "Is there anything else you can tell us about her
plans for the day,  Mulder?"

Mulder shook his head. "Only what I've already told Doggett. She had
two  classes this morning, then a department meeting after lunch. She
doesn't have lab  on Monday afternoons, but I think she has office
hours scheduled."

"No cases she's working on?" Doggett prompted. "No projects with
anyone in  the field? No special autopsies that she's mentioned?"

"No."

"What about old cases? She been looking into anything that the two of
you  used to investigate? She bring any work home?"

"No," Mulder said. "Unless you're interested in the exams she's been
grading  or her lesson plans, she doesn't bring work home."

Doggett droned on, but Mulder was past the point of listening. He was
still  stuck on Doggett's question about old cases they had
investigated together. Why  would he ask that? Was there something he
and Reyes were looking into,  something that could be hazardous for
them? Something that could endanger Scully?

Frustrated at his fruitless questions, Doggett turned his attention to
the  eager agents looking out of place on the couch, their hands
folded identically  in their laps. As Reyes passed out copies of the
notes she had made thus far,  Mulder left the agents alone in the
living room. He had to get out of there,  had to get away from the
cluster of overeager agents and the xeroxed copies of  Scully's Bureau
ID they held in their sweaty little paws.

* * * * *

His dad had forgotten all about him.

Not that Will was surprised about that. Not after the look on his
dad's face  when Will and Joy watched him climb slowly out of his car
and trudge up to her  building. He'd waited patiently enough through
Joy's mom's chatter as Will  pulled his jacket on, but Will knew that,
inside, his dad's mind was going a  mile a minute with worry.

So Will hadn't really expected his dad to say much about where his mom
might  be or how they were going to find her. Will had just gone up to
his room,  wanting to avoid the agents that Monica had brought,
needing to escape from the  pitying looks directed at him. After
taking Phoenix outside, he took the dog up  to his room and closed the
door. Will hadn't done anything, just curled up in  the small space
between his bed and the wall, halfheartedly petting Phoenix.

"There you are."

Will started at this voice, so loud and close to his closed bedroom
door.  Phoenix's ears perked up at the sound, and he looked to Will
for reassurance. One  hand on the dog, Will scooted further from the
door. Leave me alone, he  thought angrily as the unfamiliar voices
continued.

"Had to find another bathroom," another man answered. "The downstairs
one was  occupied." A pause, then, "Why, you find something new?"

"Nah, nothing. I'm still digging through her personnel file from when
she was  in the field."

"Good read?"

A deep chuckle resonated through the hall. "Hell, yeah. What it lacks
in  brevity it makes up in creativity; her medical file alone's a few
inches high, and  I think I've only got the first volume, through
'97."

"She injured on the job a lot?"

"From what I can tell, they both were."

"Both?"

"Her and Mulder. Hospitalizations up the wazoo: strange viruses,
unexplained  attacks, shootings -- hell, she even shot *him* once."

"You're kidding?!"

At this Will smiled. He remembered his own wonder the first time he'd
seen  the scar on his dad's shoulder. He'd always known that his mom
was strong and  brave, and he'd always thought it was so cool; he
didn't know any other kids  whose moms took target practice. But she'd
never told him that she'd shot her own  partner; it had taken his
dad's return for that story to come out.

"There are several appended files as well," the voice continued.
"References  to Mulder's hospital records -- which make for a novella
in their own right --  plus records for her sister."

"*Her* sister?"

"Yeah, her sister was shot and killed because someone mistook her for
Agent  Scully. Awfully dangerous to be a member of this family, if you
ask me."

Will's heart pounded in his chest. All he'd known about his Aunt
Melissa's  death was that she had been shot. There's no story there,
Will, his mom had  always insisted when he asked what had happened to
her sister. Then she'd change  the subject, sharing a story about her
and Aunt Melissa when they were young.

Will knew that his dad's father had also been shot. Were these men
right: was  it dangerous to be in his family? Maybe someone was after
his dad, too, or  even Will himself. Or maybe his grandma. After all,
she was missing, too; she  hadn't been home when Will had called her
earlier...

"Anything in those records related to her disappearance?" one of the
agents  continued.

"Hard to tell. There's so much in there, it's gonna be a bitch to
tease it  all apart. Maybe we'll get lucky and the mothership'll
return her and I won't  have to do it."

"So you think that's what happened? She was abducted?"

"Course not, but ten to one that's the story she'll come back with."

"Where is she, then? What do *you* think happened to her?"

"I'm still working on that one, but I will tell you this: I'm planning
on  having a good long chat with the husband tomorrow."

Will clutched tighter at Phoenix's fur, causing the dog to whine
softly. He  muttered his apology, and Phoenix nudged his nose at
Will's leg with easy  forgiveness.

"Shit! You think he's involved?"

"Wouldn't surprise me. They've got a damn interesting history there,
and he  seems more than a little unstable to me... Of course, Agent
Doggett'd just love  that one."

"What do you mean?"

"You don't know Doggett very well, do you?" the other man asked, his
voice  slightly lower.

"Not particularly."

"He's hot for her. Has been for years, but I don't think he's ever
done  anything about it."

"Really?"

"No question, the way he talks about her. Plus, there're some
interesting  dynamics going on between him and Mulder, that's for
sure."

The men chuckled. "I guess I gotta do a better job of keeping up with
Bureau  gossip," one of the men said. "I always thought it was Agent
Reyes that  Doggett was after." The men's voices faded away, but Will
sat stick-still against  the wall, Phoenix's head pushing insistently,
almost worriedly, at his knee.

Will didn't understand: what did these agents think had happened to
his mom?  That she had been taken away by aliens? Out of everyone in
the world, why  would aliens want *his* mom? And it didn't seem like
these agents were trying very  hard to find her, Will thought angrily.
They sounded like they didn't know  what to do or where to look, like
they were just waiting for her to show up on  her own, when the aliens
finished with her or something.

And his dad. His dad was more upset than Will had ever seen him, and
more  scared. He couldn't remember ever seeing his dad scared before.
Sure, he'd only  known him for a few months, but his dad was usually
so strong and brave. Will  remembered the videotape his grandma had
given him, his mom and dad in Los  Angeles looking for a werewolf,
guns ready and flashlights blazing. He thought of  the look on his
dad's face at the wedding, like he had just gotten the 
biggest, best present ever. And the look on his face this
afternoon...

Will was unable to stop the tears.

* * * * *

Mulder watched as the agents took over his house, setting up laptops
on the  dining room table, gearing up the coffeemaker, commandeering
the living room to  make phone calls from their cell phones to keep
the land line free in case  Scully were to call. He was so busy pacing
and racking his brain for any hint as  to what cases Scully had been
working on that Mulder didn't even notice the  time until a pizza
delivery man showed up with a stack of boxes, demanding to 
be paid. Half-dazed, he slipped his wallet out of his pocket, but
Agent Klein  beat him to it, signing the credit card slip the delivery
boy handed her.

"These guys eat like there's no tomorrow," she said with a smile. "If
you're  planning on joining us, you'd better find your son and get
back down here  before it's all gone."

Damn, Mulder thought as he went upstairs to retrieve Will. He had
nearly  forgotten about Will in the chaos of the afternoon. Plus, Will
had been quiet ever  since Mulder had picked him up from Joy's, saying
little in the car and at  Scully's office and even less once they'd
gotten home. As he paused at his son's  closed bedroom door, Mulder
tried to remember whether Will had even come  downstairs when Doggett
and the other agents had arrived.

"Will?" he called out as he pushed the door open. Will was sitting on
the  floor and leaning against the foot of his bed, knees tucked up to
his chest. Pup  was cradled against his chest like an infant, and
Phoenix sat next to Will,  his head pressed against the boy's hip. 

"Will, dinner," Mulder said.

"I'm not hungry," the boy murmured, still not looking at Mulder.

"Neither am I." Mulder slid down to the floor beside his son. They sat
without speaking for several minutes, the only sounds the hum of
conversation and  clang of silverware and plates from downstairs, and
Phoenix's steady breathing.

"When's she coming home?"

Mulder closed his eyes. "I don't know."

"Where is she?"

"I don't know."

Will was quiet for a moment, then, "Dad?"

"Yeah?"

"I'm scared," Will whispered.

Mulder slipped an arm around Will's shoulders and pulled the boy
against his  chest. Will came easily, finally turning to face Mulder,
his eyes puffy and  red-rimmed from crying.

Me, too, Mulder thought, and Will's soft nod against his chest told
Mulder  that he didn't need to speak his feelings aloud for his son to
understand them.

Only the stiffness in Mulder's knees told him that he had been sitting
with  Will for some time when he heard the front door open, followed
by a familiar  feminine voice. He and Will traded glances, both their
heads cocked to better  hear the voice. Their shoulders slumped in
tandem as they both realized the  identity of their visitor.

After a soft pat on his son's back, Mulder left Will and went
downstairs to  meet Maggie, whose voice by that time had gained a
nearly hysterical volume.  "Where are they?" she demanded. "I had a
message from Fox to call his cell  phone, but he isn't answering."

As he hurried down the stairs, Mulder reached into his jeans pocket
and  removed his cell phone. BATTERY LOW, the display read, and he
grunted in  frustration as he stuffed the phone back into his pocket.
Idiot, he thought; what if  Scully had been trying to call? He could
have missed her. He might have...

"What's happened?" Maggie demanded. "I need to talk to--"

"Maggie," Mulder called, and his mother-in-law turned toward the
stairs.

Though he had just seen her the previous day, to Mulder, Maggie Scully
looked  as though she'd aged years. Her face was screwed up with
worry, providing  additional wrinkles across her forehead and around
her eyes. Her hair, a soft  brownish-gray, had been mussed by the wind
outside, but she took no notice of it,  her hands clenched tightly in
front of her chest. 

She's old, Mulder realized for the first time. Maggie didn't need this
kind  of worry. Not at her age. Not ever.

"Fox," she exclaimed, hurrying up the last few steps to meet him.
"Fox,  what's wrong? Your message sounded urgent but you weren't
answering your phone. And  then when I got here, all these agents... I
had to park down the street. I  didn't know what--"

He took her hand and guided her upstairs. "What's wrong, Fox?" she
demanded  as he closed the study door behind them. "Where are Dana and
William?"

"Will's in his bedroom," Mulder told her.

Mulder glanced away from Maggie, ashamed as she understood his
half-answer.  "I don't know where she is," he admitted, feeling like
he was once again facing  his father after Samantha's disappearance.
He was unable to meet Maggie's  gaze. "She was supposed to pick Will
up this afternoon and she never showed. I  haven't heard from her
since she left for work this morning, and she's not  answering her
phone.

"I was hoping she might be with you," he admitted.

Maggie shook her head. "Are you sure, Fox? Maybe she got tied up at
work or  stuck in traffic or--"

"I've been to her office," he said softly. "Her bag is there: her
wallet, her  phone, everything. Her car is still there, Maggie."

Then Mrs. Scully sunk down onto the couch, her head in her hands. "Not
again," she moaned, head downcast.

Then she looked up at him, fury in her eyes, and when she spoke, her
voice  was tight with anger. "What do they want with her, Fox? What do
they want with  my daughter? Haven't they taken enough from her
already?"

Mulder ached for Maggie; she had already lost her eldest daughter, and
at  such a young age; and she had been through so much with Scully, so
much of it his  fault. Mulder shook his head and stood there wallowing
in his own guilt until  a voice broke through.

"Mrs. Scully?"

John Doggett stood at the door looking wearier than Mulder had
previously  noticed. The man's white dress shirt was wrinkled, the
knot of his coffee-stained  tie askew. "Mrs. Scully, I'm sorry." He
joined them in the study, shutting  the door behind himself. "I have
to ask you about Dana."

Mulder shot the agent an irritated look. "Doggett, can't this wait?"
He  glanced back at Maggie, who had regained her composure, her back
ramrod straight  and her shoulders squared. Mulder exhaled sharply as,
at that moment, he saw  more of Scully in her mother than he was
prepared for.

"It's all right, Fox," Maggie assured him, reaching for him. Her grip
was  strong and sure as she squeezed his hand. "If I can help in any
way..."

Doggett nodded and took a seat at the desk chair. "When was the last
time you  spoke with your daughter?"

"Yesterday. We had Easter dinner here, and..." Maggie gasped with a
sudden  realization. "Oh, goodness, Fox... No. Is that what they want?
Is that why--?"  She glanced at Doggett, then back at her son-in-law,
worried that she'd  revealed too much.

"What?" Doggett pressed. "Mulder, if there's something I should
know--"

Mulder shook his head. "We told her about the baby yesterday," he
explained.

Maggie turned to him, wide-eyed. "Is it the baby; is that it, Fox? Why
would  they want her baby?"

"I don't know," he admitted softly, staring down at the floor. His 
mother-in-law's gaze felt almost accusatory, and Mulder couldn't quite
bring himself to  meet her eyes.

* * * * *

End Part 12. Continued in Part 13.

Title: Song of Experience (13/?) 
Author: Christy (attalanta@aol.com) 

* * * * *

It wasn't until after midnight when the house finally emptied out.
Doggett  had kept his cadre of agents working long into the night, not
seeming to notice  the lateness of the hour until Klein complained
that she had missed putting  her kids to bed. After that, the agents
had filtered out slowly, with Doggett  the last to leave. He wandered
around downstairs, looking half-heartedly for his  car keys, as though
he were afraid to leave for the night without tangible 
results.

"How's Will doin'?" Doggett asked as he gathered notes and computer 
print-outs into labeled folders.

"He's worried."

"Yeah," Doggett agreed. He jammed his arms into his jacket, then
finally  found his keys in the inside pocket. "I think we all are."

Mulder walked the agent to the front door, pausing there and turning
to face  Doggett. "I want to thank you," Mulder said. He held out his
hand, and Doggett  shook it, surprised.

"No need." Doggett ducked his head as he contemplated his keychain.
Then he  looked at Mulder, his face set in determination. "We'll find
her, Mulder."

We found you; we'll find her: it was the unspoken sentiment between
the two  men, and Mulder wanted to say that this time they didn't have
the time it had  taken to locate him. They didn't have the luxury of
finding her and burying her  and then resurrecting her and their child
months later. Mulder had the  feeling that he and Scully were running
out of miracles.

"Yeah" was all he said as he watched Doggett walk out to his car.
Mulder  stood at the door and waited while the agent backed out of the
driveway, part of  him dreading returning to the echoing quiet of the
house. Finally, when he  could no longer follow Doggett's taillights
down the street, Mulder shut the door  and locked it, then flicked off
the outside light.

He leaned back against the door, staring up the dark steps. There was
a light  on upstairs, shining from the left side of the hall, so Will
was likely still  awake. Mulder walked slowly through the downstairs,
turning off lights and  double-checking locks. He sighed at the pile
of coffee-stained mugs and dirty  dishes in the sink, promising
himself that he'd take care of them first thing in  the morning.

Finally Mulder stood at the base of the stairs again, his body too
heavy to  climb them. He knew he needed to go upstairs and face Will,
but for the first  time he was afraid of his own son.

Will probably already understood what it meant that Scully was still
missing;  they were all still haunted by Mulder's seven-year absence,
in subtle yet  persistent ways that never quite seemed to fade. If
Will were any other child,  Mulder could have easily lied to him, told
him not to worry, that Mom would be  home soon and of course she would
be okay. But Will would know.

Finally he gathered the strength to climb the stairs, flicking on the
light  in the master bedroom and not even bothering to close the door
before he  shucked his jeans and slipped into sweatpants and an old
t-shirt. He put on a pair  of thick winter socks before venturing into
the bathroom. Spring was coming on  strong now, overpowering winter's
damp chill, but it was still cool out at  night, and Mulder had been
chilled all day.

It wasn't until he stood at the foot of the queen-sized bed that the
full  impact of Scully's disappearance hit Mulder. He had never
realized just how large  their bed was, how empty, until he was faced
with climbing into it alone.  Most nights Scully went to bed before he
did, or they went together; rarely was  Mulder the one to pull down
the covers, toss aside the extraneous pillows, and  slip between the
cool sheets.


So he stood there now with his hands on his hips, staring at the bed.
He  supposed he could always sleep on the worn leather couch in the
study, but Mulder  knew that it would be even colder than the bed. It
may not so obviously remind  him that Scully was missing, but
certainly it would remind him of a time when  he was, nevertheless,
alone.

"Dad?"

Mulder turned to the door, where Will stood, dressed in his pajamas
and  holding Pup in a chokehold that looked almost painful. Phoenix
was beside him, eyes  glowing in the dim light and his head pushing up
against Will's hip. The  dog's tail wagged lazily from side to side.

"Yeah, Will?"

Will eyed the big empty bed as he worried his lower lip between his
teeth.  "Can I sleep with you tonight?"

Mulder nodded, then padded toward the bed and pulled down the quilt
and  sheets. Will climbed in beside him, on Scully's side. "Phoenix,
too?"

"Yeah, Phoenix, too."

Will patted the bed and, with only a bit of assistance, the dog
clambered up.  Scully didn't let the dog on any furniture, claiming
that it was setting them  up for problems when the puppy reached his
full size, and now Phoenix stepped  carefully on the soft bed, pausing
to sniff at the sheets with curiosity.  Finally he found an adequate
spot at the foot of the bed, plopped down, and  curled himself into a
ball. 

For his part, Will kicked his feet at the tightly tucked sheets to get
comfortable. Finally he stopped fidgeting and Mulder turned off the
bedside lamp,  pulling the sheets high around his shoulders to keep
warm. Will was close but  not touching, and Mulder could feel the heat
radiating off his son's small, warm  body. 

"Dad?"

"Hmm?"

"I prayed for Mom to come home."

Mulder waited a long beat, then finally, "Okay."

"Did you?" Will asked, and Mulder opened his eyes to see his son
staring at  him from across their pillows, wide-eyed and hopeful.

Mulder didn't know what to say without hurting his son. Religion was
Scully's  department; he figured his role would come if and when Will
started to  question the Church's dogma and his mother's devotion to a
religion that she  obviously did not follow to the letter. 

"No," Mulder said finally.

"How come?"

He sighed, shifting his feet to fit against Phoenix's warm belly.
"Will,  we've talked about this." He tried to keep his tone patient.
"I don't go to  church--"

"But you don't have to go to church to pray," his son insisted.

"True."

"Then will you?"

Mulder looked past his son's concerned gaze to the bedstand on
Scully's side  of the bed, to the gold cross embossed on the leather
cover of her Bible. He  remembered Scully's own admission when he had
been missing so many years ago,  when she had been pregnant with Will:
she had prayed for him. Every night and  at mass on Sunday mornings,
she had told him, plus the dozen or so  please-God-let-him-come-homes
that she had muttered throughout the day.

A wave of inadequacy flooded over Mulder. "I don't know what to say,"
he  admitted.

"Please?" Will tugged on his father's hand to get his attention. "Just
think,  'Please let Mom come home.' That's all you have to do."

Mulder studied his son's hopeful expression, Will's lips pressed
together  with worry. "I don't think that's going to help anything,
Will."

"But can't you just do it anyway? Please?"

"Okay," Mulder acquiesced finally. He closed his eyes, picturing his
wife as  he'd seen her last, dashing out the door that morning, hair
still wet from her  shower, fitting the lid on her travel coffee mug,
reminding them that she  would pick Will up from Joy's on her way
home. Will squeezed his father's fingers  desperately. 

Please, Mulder thought. Please let Scully come home.

* * * * *

"No! Stop! Mommy, help! Mommy!"

Mulder was pacing in front of the microwave when he heard the screams.
He  bolted from the kitchen and took the stairs two at a time, his
heart pounding in  his ears. Will's voice was thick with terror, and
he kept crying out as Mulder  ran down the hallway, his hand clutching
impotently at the seam of his  sweatpants as he remembered that he no
longer carried a weapon, and certainly not  while wearing his
pajamas.

"Will?"

The little boy was thrashing about in the bed, his feet kicking at the
tangled sheets binding his ankles. At the foot of the bed, Phoenix's
head was raised  in alarm. When the dog spotted Mulder in the doorway,
his tail gave a single,  pathetic wag before he pushed his head
against Will's struggling feet.

"Will," Mulder called, louder this time, and finally his son turned to
face  him.

"Dad?"

"I'm right here." He crossed the room in three steps and dropped onto
the bed  beside the boy, Will climbing into Mulder's lap before he was
even sitting  down. "Shh, it was just a dream, Will. You're okay.
You're safe."

He didn't know whether the wetness pressing against his t-shirt was
from his  son's tears or his sweat, and Mulder rocked Will while his
breathing calmed  and his shaking subsided. "They were coming to get
me and you weren't here."

"I'm here now," Mulder assured him, damning the timing of Will's
dream. Five  minutes earlier and he would've still been in bed with
his son. "Look, I'm  right here. You're safe now, Will. It was just a
bad dream."

"No, you were gone," Will insisted as his fingernails dug into
Mulder's arm  like tiny claws. "You were gone like Mom, and they were
coming to get me, too."

He kept his voice calm. "Who was coming to get you?"

"Bad men," Will said. "Lots of them. They were coming to get me, and
you  weren't here."

Something tightened inside Mulder, an old fear, but he said nothing,
just  rocked his son. It was not a new nightmare: someone coming for
Will, bad men who  were going to take him away and hurt him. Idly
Mulder wondered whether it was  possible that, deep in his
subconscious, Will held some memory of his own  birth; after his most
vivid dreams it was not unusual for him to scare Scully with 
strangely accurate descriptions of a dark, deserted farmhouse and bad
men who  wanted to hurt him. Mulder and Scully had discussed this on
more than one  occasion, with Scully claiming that Will could not
possibly recall his own birth  and Mulder assuring her that he had
once read an article about children who  remembered traumatic births.

"I'm scared, Dad," Will whispered into Mulder's shoulder.

"It was just a dream, Will," Mulder reminded him. "I'm right here now.
And no  one's coming to get you." I promise, he thought, but he could
not bring  himself to profess the words aloud.

Just then Mulder's stomach growled, and Will pulled away from his
father's  chest with a tearful giggle. "I don't know about you,"
Mulder said, offering his  son a smile, "but I'm starved. There's
leftover pizza in the fridge. Want me  to heat some up for you?"

Will nodded, then followed Mulder downstairs, Phoenix at their heels.
The  timer on the microwave dinged as they entered the kitchen, and
Mulder slipped the  heated plate onto the counter. Phoenix pushed his
head against Mulder's leg,  sniffing at the pizza-scented air.

"Is there any pineapple?" Will asked as he wrinkled his nose at the
slice of  pepperoni and green pepper his father offered him. Mulder
went to the fridge  and pulled out the half-empty box, opening it for
his son. After a long  deliberation, Will picked out a piece with
mushrooms, and Mulder slid the slice onto  a plate and popped it in
the microwave.

They ate their pizza in silence, their chairs pulled up next to each
other at  the table and Phoenix at Will's side, his curious nose
poking up onto Will's  lap.

* * * * *

End Part 13. Continued in Part 14.

Title: Song of Experience (14/?) 
Author: Christy (attalanta@aol.com) 

* * * * *


Doggett found him in the study.

Mulder had needed some time away from the bustle of the agents
downstairs,  with Doggett and his cohorts thinking aloud, running
through what-ifs that  Mulder could not stand to hear vocalized. So he
was lying on the couch upstairs,  one arm thrown over his eyes, trying
to give the three Advil he'd swallowed time  to fight his monster of a
headache, when he heard a soft knock on the study  door.

"Come in," he called, thinking that it was Will until he heard his
visitor  settle onto the desk chair. Mulder opened his eyes and
squinted at John Doggett.

"You okay?"

Mulder didn't acknowledge the question. "Do you need something?"

"Yes." Doggett refused to meet the other man's gaze. "You're familiar
with  the protocol, Mulder; you know why I'm here, what we need from
you."

"Yeah," he admitted, closing his eyes for a brief respite from the
light.  "Maggie should be here soon. She can take Will out somewhere;
I will not do this  with my son in the house."

"Fair enough." Doggett rose from the chair and crossed his arms over
his  chest. "I'll be back when she gets here."

"Fine." Mulder wanted nothing more than to sink back into the worn old
couch,  but he knew that he needed to make a phone call first. So he
grabbed the  phone off the desk and punched in a number he knew by
heart. It took just a minute  for him to explain the situation and
another minute for her to agree to come,  and then Mulder was back on
the couch.

He slipped the pillow out from behind his head and set it over his
eyes.  Neither he nor Will had had much sleep the night before; Will
had woken three  times with nightmares, each one worse than the last.
Finally, sometime after 4 AM,  Will had fallen asleep clutching his
father's t-shirt, his heart racing even  in his sleep. But Mulder had
remained awake until the alarm clock buzzed  needlessly less than
three hours later.

So he must have fallen asleep on the couch because, before he knew it,
Doggett was back in the study, standing over him, arms crossed over
his chest.  "Mulder?"

"Yeah." He sat up, rubbing the sleep from his eyes. "Maggie here?"

"Here and gone," Doggett said. "She took Will to get lunch. He wanted
you to  come, too, but we peeked in on you and I convinced him that
you needed your  sleep."

"Thanks," Mulder said. "Where are we doing this?"

"Why don't we go downstairs," the agent suggested, and Mulder rolled
off the  couch, straightening his wrinkled t-shirt as he followed
Doggett into the  dining room. Seated on one side of the table was
Agent Bradley, looking every inch  the part of FBI Golden Boy. A clean
legal pad, three pens, a glass of water,  and a stack of file folders
were lined up neatly in front of him. The seat  opposite Bradley was
pulled out in invitation.

Mulder sat down, nodding at Alice Rosen, his attorney, who sat primly
on a  dining room chair that had been pushed back against the wall. He
knew Alice  well, and it gave him considerable comfort having her
there now. She had seen him  through three deaths (one of them his
own), multiple will signings and  amendments, and more brushes with
the law than he could remember. Literally.

Alice nodded at him, her cropped white hair shining in the light
coming in  through the window, and Mulder felt a little less like he
was facing the firing  squad. He tried to manage a smile for her but
failed miserably.

"Skinner's letting me run this inquiry on one condition, Mulder, and
that's  that I let someone else question you," Doggett explained as he
took the chair  next to Alice. "He wants this by the book, and you
know I'm too close to the  two of you to be the one doin' it."

Mulder nodded; he had figured as much. He turned to face Agent
Bradley, who  uncapped a pen and cleared his throat. "Well, then," the
young agent said, his  voice cracking. He coughed. "We all know each
other here, Mr. Mulder, so we  might as well begin. 

"First I'd like to discuss some of your wife's history, if we may." He
looked  up from his notepad and pinned Mulder with his gaze. "But
Agent Doggett tells  me that you've had some memory troubles ever
since you returned to Washington  last summer."

Mulder nodded.

"Are you sure, Mr. Mulder, that you haven't missed something in your
comments  to Agent Doggett regarding your wife's disappearance?
Perhaps something she  said or did, something suspicious or unusual
that you might have blocked out?"

"My short-term memory is fine," Mulder said, his voice tense. "The
problem is  with old memories. Certain past cases I've investigated,
some events from my  childhood."

Bradley nodded, apparently satisfied. "Okay, then." He paused to uncap
his  pen. "This wasn't the first time your wife disappeared, was it,
Mr. Mulder?"

"No," Mulder said. Cut right to the chase, don't we, Bradley? he
thought.

"Why don't you tell me about what happened in the fall of 1994."

Mulder sighed. "We were separated," he began, but Bradley stopped him
with  one hand.

"I wasn't aware your personal involvement with your former partner
dated back  to 1994."

"We were separated at work. Reassigned," he explained. "But she was
helping  me with a case, a hostage situation with a man who claimed
he'd been--"

"Abducted by aliens, isn't that right, Mr. Mulder?" Bradley's grin was
condescending, and Mulder wanted to reach across the table and tighten
the knot of  the man's tie. Slowly.

"Yes," he said flatly. "The man was injured, escaped from the
hospital, and  broke into Scully's apartment. He believed that if he
took someone else to the  location where he'd previously been abducted
that they would take the other  person instead of him."

"And they did?"

"She disappeared," Mulder said.

"But she returned, correct?"

"She *was returned* several weeks later, unconscious."

"And after she recovered from that," Bradley continued, and Mulder's
chest  tightened at the casual way Bradley brushed past the days
Scully had laid  unconscious in the hospital, some of the worst of his
life. The agent slipped  through several more sheets of what was
likely Scully's file from Personnel before  looking up at Mulder. "In
1998, she disappeared again. To Antarctica, this  time?"

Mulder clenched his teeth. "Yes."

"It says here that you found her, Mr. Mulder."

"Yes."

"And how, may I ask, did you know where to look?"

"I was given a tip," he said tightly.

"A tip?"

"Yes."

"From whom?"

"I never learned his name."

"Do you suspect he might be involved in your wife's current
disappearance,  Mr. Mulder?"

"No," he said.

"And why is that?"

"Because he's dead."

Bradley cocked an eyebrow at him. "That's very interesting, Mr.
Mulder. You  don't know this man's name, yet you seem certain that
he's no longer alive. How  would you know that?"

"I saw his car explode."

"You were present when this man's car exploded?"

Mulder nodded.

"And how did that happen, Mr. Mulder?" Agent Bradley pressed. "Did you
happen  to see who caused this explosion?"

"No," Mulder said.

"Were you involved in this man's death, Mr. Mulder?" Bradley asked,
drawing  out the question dramatically.

"No."

Bradley nodded slowly, tapping his pen against his notepad. "Let's
move on,  then, why don't we," he said, frustration seeping into his
voice. "I need you  to tell me everything you can about your wife's
disappearance. Starting with  the last time you saw her."

"Yesterday morning," Mulder began. "She was late leaving for work, and
she  didn't have breakfast with us like she usually does."

"'Us'?"

"Will and me," Mulder clarified.

"Will is your son?" Bradley asked, and Mulder nodded. You know he is,
he  thought; you met him here yesterday. What a prick.

"And why was she late?"

"She was sick," Mulder said softly, remembering. He had suggested that
maybe  Scully should ask Dr. Speake about it at her next visit. Wasn't
morning  sickness supposed to be over already? No, she'd said with an
amused grin; I was sick  with Will for nearly five months. I'm fine,
Mulder. Fine, fine...

"That's right," Bradley said, paging through a paper clipped sheaf of
papers.  "Your wife is pregnant."

Mulder nodded, barely able to hold his tongue. He didn't care for
Bradley's  tone, the way he insisted on calling Scully 'your wife'
instead of 'Agent  Scully' or 'Dr. Scully'; nor the way he clarified
facts that everyone present knew,  as if they were in court and he was
stating it for the record. No, Mulder did  not like Agent Bradley.

"So she was sick," Bradley prompted.

"Yes. She was late leaving for work. She grabbed her keys and some
coffee,  told me that she would pick Will--"

"Decaf?"

"Excuse me?"

"I asked if the coffee was decaf," the agent repeated calmly.

What the hell difference does it make to you, Mulder thought at
Bradley. But  all he said was, "Yes, it was decaf."

"Mmm," Bradley noted, scribbling something on his notepad.
"Continue."

"That's all," Mulder said. "She took her coffee and her bag, and she
told me  that she'd pick Will up at his friend's house on her way home
from work. And  she left."

"And did you talk to her during the day?"

"No," Mulder said. He and Scully did not typically phone each other
during  the day, not unless one of them was going to be late or early,
or otherwise  needed to make a change in plans. Every once in a while
he phoned Scully out of  boredom, when he was working from home and
fed up with the little blinking  cursor of the computer rebuking him
for not being more productive. But he hadn't  talked to her
yesterday.

"And how did you realize she was missing?" Bradley asked.

"Our son called me and said that she was late."

Bradley nodded. "And it's unusual for her to be late?"

"Scully is always on time," he told the agent. "Will gets anxious when
she's  late, and she knows that."

Bradley glanced up at him with a challenging look in his eyes. "You
call your  wife by her last name, Mr. Mulder?"

Asshole, Mulder thought; you know I do. "Yes."

Again the agent scribbled something on the legal pad, which he'd
angled so  that Mulder couldn't read it. "Is there anything else that
happened yesterday  morning?" he asked. "Anything out of the ordinary
that might aid us in locating  your wife?"

"No," Mulder said.

"Where were you when your wife disappeared, Mr. Mulder?"

"After I drove Will to school, I went to work. I got home around
4:30."  Mulder kept his tone even; he had known this question was
coming. It was rule one  in the disappearance of any adult: Suspect
the spouse.

"Well, then, let's move back a few days, shall we? In the last week,
has  anything unusual or suspicious happened? Any strange phone calls
or visitors? Did  your wife mention anything unusual at work?"

Mulder shook his head. "Nothing."

"And how would you classify her home life?" Bradley asked in a bored
tone  that Mulder remembered from making phone calls during his and
Scully's  shit-patrol while they were still under Kersh's thumb. "A
demanding job, a new marriage,  one child and another on the way: I
imagine that things at home must be  stressful. Difficult to handle,
perhaps."

"Scully was not overstressed," Mulder answered.

"And your marriage?" the agent pressed. "I understand you were married
rather  recently. The first few months can be pretty rocky; I know."
Bradley flashed  an understanding smile, and Mulder almost laughed at
the man's pathetic  attempt to empathize with him. "Any arguments
lately?"

"No."

"None at all?"

Mulder shook his head. Of course there were disagreements, you ass, he
thought. It was the way he and Scully loved each other, challenged
each other:  heated words and fervid debates. But their disagreements
were not the kind Bradley  was interested in, and, besides, his
memories of these disagreements were  colored over by their fervent
making up.

"Children can be awfully perceptive about these kinds of things, you
know,"  Agent Bradley was saying almost conversationally, and Mulder
felt the sharp,  bitter rise of bile in his throat. "They do tend to
worry when they overhear  their parents argue... I'm sure you know all
about that, don't you, Mr. Mulder?"

"But of course we'd get the same answer if we were to speak to your
son,  wouldn't we?"

Bastard, Mulder thought as his mouth snapped open to reply.

But his attorney beat him to it. "Drop it," Alice Rosen snapped. "We
all know  you have no reason to speak to the son, Agent Bradley." She
directed a stern  look at the agent.

"Not yet," Bradley agreed nonchalantly. Then he turned and pinned
Mulder with  his gaze. "How old is your wife, Mr. Mulder?"

"I believe the answer to your question is in that file you've got open
right  there," Mulder said, his voice even as he nodded at Scully's
personnel file.  Bradley had pushed his folders toward the center of
the table in order to fit  all of them, and Mulder could see the
Bureau insignia and Scully's original FBI  photo, her face almost
unfathomably young and innocent.

"There's no need for an attitude, Mr. Mulder. Just answer the
question."

"She's forty-five," he said, eyes narrowing at Bradley as he spoke.

Bradley located something on the top page with his index finger,
tapped it  twice, then glanced up at Mulder. "I believe that's
somewhat older than most  expectant mothers, Mr. Mulder."

It was not a question, and Mulder did not offer a reply.

"How would you classify your wife's reaction upon learning of her
pregnancy?"

Mulder sighed, meeting Bradley's gaze with a warning look. "We were
surprised  at first," he admitted, "but excited. Scully had been told
that she couldn't  have children."

"And your reaction?"

Under the table, Mulder clenched his hands into fists until his
knuckles  started to ache. "As I said, we were surprised. Both of us.
But we were also happy  at the news."

"But there was also some anxiety, too, wasn't there, Mr. Mulder?"
Bradley  pressed. "Imagining myself in her place--" Mulder shuddered
in horror at the  image that brought to mind. "--I would certainly be
anxious. Forty-five years old,  newly married to a man who has a knack
for disappearing when she needs him, a  man who couldn't handle
fatherhood the first time around--"

"What the hell are you implying?"

Bradley just shrugged nonchalantly. "Perhaps this new development was
the  straw that broke the camel's back, so to speak. The last of many
changes in your  wife's life in the past year, too many for her to
handle," he suggested. His  expression grew cold.

"Or perhaps she was just tired of being the one who gets left."

Mulder shot a furious glance at Doggett, who was staring down Bradley,
his  eyes narrowed and his jaw clenched. But the interrogating agent
was studiously  avoiding Doggett's gaze.

"No," Mulder growled as he looked back to Agent Bradley. At that
moment, he  wanted nothing more than to throttle Bradley, but the
reasonable part of  Mulder, small as it was, knew that an emotional
reaction wouldn't help matters, not  for him or for Scully.

And certainly not for Will, Mulder reminded himself; he had to do this
right  for his son. Will didn't need his father arrested for
assaulting a federal  officer, even if the guy was a jackass.

Bradley just nodded, his attention focused on his notes. "Just one
final  question, then, Mulder," the agent told him. "There are a few
dates I'd like to  make sure I have straight."

Mulder nodded tightly.

"You were returned... when?"

"Last August," Mulder told him.

"And the two of you were married in...?"

"December."

"December," the agent mused. "That was rather impulsive, wasn't, Mr.
Mulder?  Four months after your mysterious, unexplained return, after
a stay in the  psychiatric ward of Georgetown Memorial Hospital, and
you and Agent Scully are  rushing down the aisle?"

"Agent Scully and I have known each other for fifteen years," Mulder
growled.  "So, no, I don't see our marriage as 'impulsive.'"

"I see," Bradley said. "And, as I understand it, your wife is due in
August.  Correct?"

"Yes."

"August," the agent commented lightly. "Married in December, baby due
in  August... If I may, Mr. Mulder, how certain are you in the
paternity of the child  your wife is carrying?"

The room erupted into a frenzy of angry words and jerking movements. 

"You son of a--" Mulder roared before his attorney reached his side
and  drowned the rest of his words with a jumble of legalese that
Mulder hoped was a  threat. At the same time, Doggett jumped from his
chair to Agent Bradley's side,  gripping the younger man's upper arm
so tight that Doggett's knuckles were  white. 

"Dad, we're home!"

Mulder stiffened at the sound of his son's voice, his eyes darting
between  Doggett, Bradley, and Alice Rosen. His attorney shared a
regretful look, and  Doggett couldn't meet Mulder's gaze. Even Agent
Bradley looked mildly repentant  at the interruption.

"Shh, Will," Maggie's voice answered as Mulder heard the front door
shut  softly. "Your dad might still be asleep."

"Dad," Will called, quieter this time. "Grandma and I have a present
for  you."

"In here, Will," Mulder called out as he rose from his chair. He
leaned over  the table at Bradley. "This is finished," he hissed at
the agent. He pushed  the chair back, then went into the living room,
leaving the chair tottering on  two unsteady legs before it crashed to
the floor.

Will and Maggie were taking off their coats, Maggie hanging both in
the foyer  closet, and Will rushed over to greet him. "You're awake!"

"Yeah," Mulder said, slipping his arms around his son. He closed his
eyes and  inhaled deeply, gathering comfort from Will's clean,
little-boy smell and  trusting embrace. He had to force himself to let
go, not wanting to scare his  son. "How was your lunch?"

"It woulda been more fun if you came with us," Will said. "But John
said you  needed to sleep, so Grandma and I brought something back for
you."

Will handed him a brown take-out bag, and Mulder unrolled the top.
"What's  this?"

Maggie chuckled and Mulder turned to face her. "William was insistent
on  bringing you lunch," she told him. "And then he saw this on the
menu and knew  you'd love it."

"What is it, kiddo?"

"A cheeseburger with mushrooms and onions and--" Will stopped and
smiled  broadly, "--and sunflower seeds on it!"

"Sunflower seeds?"

Will nodded, his eyes bright with excitement. "I know how much you
like  sunflower seeds."

"I do," Mulder said, ruffling Will's hair. "And I've never had them on
a  burger before. Thank you."

Will smiled at him, then ran off, calling out for Phoenix.

"Are you all right, Fox?" Maggie asked, a familiar suspicious look on
her  face.

He nodded. "Fine," he told her. "Thank you for taking him."

"No problem." She patted his arm before heading toward the kitchen.
"I'm  going to make myself some tea. Would you like some with your
lunch?"

"Yes. Thank you," he said, watching as she and Doggett nearly collided
as the  agent wandered into the living room. Mulder jerked his head at
the front  door, stepping outside into the cool spring air. He
clenched his fists at his  sides, the take-out bag with his lunch
still in one hand.

"What the fuck was that?" Mulder demanded as Doggett joined him on the
small  front porch. "Am I a suspect; is that what you're trying to
tell me? Or do you  think that Scully left me? Left *Will*? That the
baby's not mine? Godamnit,  Doggett, just what the fuck is going on
here?"

"Mulder, calm down--"

"I will not calm down. I think I have a right to be upset when I'm
treated  like a suspect in my wife's disappearance when you know damn
well--"

"I had no idea Bradley was going there," Doggett insisted. "You have
to  believe that, Mulder; I know you have nothing to do with this. And
I know that Dana  would never leave Will. Or leave you for anyone
else. Christ, I *know* that."

Mulder watched the wistful, almost regretful expression on Doggett's
face for  a moment, then turned on his heel and stepped as far away
from the agent as  he could. He was besieged with old, familiar
feelings, and was suddenly not  sure who to trust with Scully gone.
And most of all, he was sick of this shit.

You've let down your guard, he told himself, trusting Doggett and
Reyes, and  these other agents you don't even know. Scully is the only
one you could ever  trust. Only Scully. Mulder gripped his hands into
tight fists, feeling his  wedding band dig into the palm of his hand.

Doggett laid a hand on Mulder's shoulder, but Mulder pulled out of the
agent's grip. Doggett sighed. "Look, Mulder, I'll talk to Agent
Bradley, get him  straightened out. You know some of those questions
were valid, but he stepped way  over the line.

"Let me do my job here, Mulder. Just trust me."

Mulder said nothing, just stared off the porch and down the street at
the  rows of houses. Doggett stood with him another minute, then went
back inside, the  door slamming shut behind him.

Mulder's gaze was caught by the line of Bureau-issued cars parked in
the  street in front of their house, and he remembered when half his
time had been  spent in cars just like those, passing endless miles
with Scully and a bag of  sunflowers as his only companions.

Only Scully, he thought. He could trust no one but her.

* * * * *

End Part 14. Continued in Part 15.

Title: Song of Experience (15/?) 
Author: Christy (attalanta@aol.com) 

* * * * *

"Damn, I must really be in trouble if they're sending the big man in
to  question me," Mulder said as he crossed the kitchen to meet Walter
Skinner. The  elder man cracked a rare smile, wrinkles breaking out at
the corners of his mouth  and eyes.

"You here to arrest me, copper?" Mulder held out his hands, wrists
together,  as though Skinner were about to slap a pair of cuffs on
him.

"You're not in trouble, Mulder," Skinner assured him, pulling the
other man's  hand into his warm grip. 

"Someone should pass that on to Agent Bradley."

Skinner nodded and took the seat that Mulder indicated at the kitchen
table.  "Yes, I heard about that; your attorney was very...
persuasive. She may look  like somebody's grandmother, but she
certainly doesn't act like one." He shook  his head. "I am sorry about
that, Mulder. Agent Bradley--"

Mulder clenched his jaw and sucked in a tight breath. "If Bradley even
approaches my son..."

Skinner held up one hand in surrender. "Bradley was out of line; I've
already  spoken with him. If he talks to William without my
permission, he'll be off  this case and investigating mail fraud in
Montana before the week is out."

Mulder managed a smile at Skinner's loyalty. "Thank you, sir."

Silence fell over the bright kitchen, and Mulder took the opportunity
to  glance out the side window to check on Will, who was playing in
the backyard with  the dog.

"Not that it isn't good to see you again, sir, but--"

"What am I doing here?"

Mulder nodded, and Skinner set a thick manila envelope on the table
between  them, nudging at the cup of coffee Mulder had poured prior to
Skinner's  arrival.

"I received the surveillance footage from Quantico Security." Skinner
nodded  at the envelope, and Mulder tugged open the flap of the
envelope to remove a  slim, shiny DVD case and a sheaf of papers. "The
relevant footage -- and a  complete transcript of Agent Scully's
comings and goings yesterday."

"Relevant?"

"They tracked Scully from her office, to the classroom, to the lab,
then back  to her office, ostensibly for lunch. After lunch, she
attended a Pathology  Department meeting, then returned to her office.
At approximately 3:00, she left  her office again, this time taking
the elevator down to the basement. All she  had with her were her
keys; the surveillance footage clearly shows her  locking her office
door before going downstairs. Then she disappears. A camera in 
the basement picked her up as she stepped off the elevator; she turns
the  corner, but then she's gone."

"Gone?" Mulder repeated. "How can she be gone? Wasn't there another
camera?  What about--?"

"There should have been," Skinner admitted. "But that morning there
was a  technical problem with that camera. The Head of Security called
for a repairman,  but he was told that they couldn't get anyone until
mid-week."

"And that's it?" Mulder asked. "The camera's out of commission, Scully
disappears, and that's the end of it? Case closed?"

Skinner shook his head. "I went down to Quantico myself to talk to the
Head  of Security. We found a closet in the basement, near where the
broken camera  was located. The lock on the closet door was busted.
There was a bottle with  traces of chloroform: no idea how long it's
been there and no prints.

"And we found this." Skinner took the envelope from Mulder and tilted
it,  allowing its final contents to spill out into his hand. Mulder
leaned over the  table for a better view, then gave a swift intake of
breath when he saw what lay  in the palm of the Deputy Director's
hand.

"Her necklace," Mulder exhaled, plucking the plastic evidence bag from
Skinner's hand. He loosened the ziplock on the bag, then looked up at
Skinner. "Can  I...?"

The elder man nodded. "It's already been checked for prints and trace
evidence."

Mulder waited, looking at Skinner expectantly.

"They didn't find anything."

Mulder nodded; he'd figured as much. He opened the plastic bag and let
the  delicate gold chain slip into his palm. Its clasp was broken, and
Mulder had to  shake the baggie to dislodge the tiny cross as well.
With his other hand, he  worked the thin chain slowly around his palm,
molding it into a lopsided  S-shape before closing his fingers over
it.

"Thank you, sir." Mulder understood that, as the Deputy Director,
delivering  a useless bit of evidence to the husband of a missing
agent was not exactly  part of Skinner's job description. And, despite
the years since he last worked  with Walter Skinner, Mulder was
grateful to have the man there with him.

"You sure you're all right?" Skinner asked, studying Mulder through
his  wire-rim glasses.

Mulder nodded.

"And William?"

Mulder exhaled slowly, sneaking another peek out the window to check
on his  son. He could see the flash of Will's bright blue windbreaker
out of the corner  of his eye. "We're okay, sir."

Skinner nodded then, though his face belied his disbelief. He looked 
thoughtful for a minute, then, "Speaking of William... Is he at
school?"

Mulder shook his head, rising from his chair and stepping toward the
window.  "No, it's his spring vacation this week." Mulder nodded at
the scene outside,  and Skinner joined him at the window.

The older man let out a surprised breath. "Well, he's certainly
grown," he  said. "I think the last time I saw him, he was in
diapers."

Mulder smiled then, and went to the back door and opened it. "Hey,
Will," he  called as he stuck his head out. "Come in here for a
minute."

"You don't have to--" Skinner started, but Mulder shook his head.

"I think he'd like to meet you," Mulder told him. "Scully's told him
about  you."

"*Scully* has?" he asked. "Maybe I should leave now..."

Mulder chuckled. He understood Skinner's uncertainty -- certainly
Scully had  not been his biggest supporter over the years; a certain
gunpoint incident in  Mulder's apartment stood out in far memory --
but Mulder was fairly certain  that Scully had only shared good
stories with their son.

"Dad, you should've seen Phoenix," Will said, panting as he ran into
the  kitchen, pausing at the door to keep the dog from coming inside.
"He's getting  real good at sitting and stuff. I bet he'll be the
smartest dog there when  obedience classes start."

"I'm sure he will," Mulder told the boy as he noticed the man standing
in  their kitchen, his hands clutched in front of him nervously.
Mulder almost  laughed aloud at the sight of the Deputy Director of
the FBI uneasy at meeting a  seven-year-old boy.

"Will, this is Mr. Skinner. He used to be Mom's and my boss when we
worked  together." Mulder watched as Will nodded and squinted at
Skinner, waiting a long  second before taking the man's proffered hand
in a tentative shake. The  Deputy Director's hand dwarfed Will's tiny,
paler one as they slowly shook.

Suddenly Mulder realized what his son was doing, that he was reading
into  Skinner. Mulder was torn between trying to stop Will somehow,
not wanting his son  any more involved in this dangerous situation
than he already was; and  wanting Will to get a good long look inside
the mind of a man whose allegiance had  been in question more than
once in the past.

"Are you gonna help find my mom?" Will asked, blinking up at Skinner
with  eyes that suddenly resembled his mother's.

Skinner's gaze darted to Mulder, then back to Will. "That's why I'm
here."

Will held Skinner's glance for another minute, then stepped away and
turned  to his father. "Can I go back outside now, Dad?"

"Go ahead," Mulder told his son, and he and Skinner watched as Will
rejoined  the dog in the backyard. The boy ran from one side of the
small patch of grass  to the other, Phoenix trailing half a step
behind him. The dog gazed lovingly  at his boy, tail wagging and
slobbery lips seeming to form a smile as Will  turned around to praise
him.

Mulder turned to Skinner. "Looks like Scully, doesn't he?"

"Actually, Mulder," Skinner said, "I was thinking that he reminds me
of you."

* * * * *

"Mulder?" Doggett asked as he stepped into the kitchen some time
later.  Mulder turned from his perch against the kitchen counter,
where he had spread out  the papers Skinner had brought him that
morning. "You okay?"

"Just dandy," he said, meeting Doggett's gaze.

Doggett nodded. "I thought I'd let you know what we found." Doggett
had  relocated his cadre of agents from the Mulder home that
afternoon, sending two back  to Headquarters and one to Quantico to
question possible witnesses to  Scully's disappearance. Doggett
himself shown up with Skinner, remaining after the  Deputy Director
had left.

"Agent Klein's finished with the check of Dana's car. She called to
say that  she found, uh..."

"What is it, Doggett?" Mulder asked. He was in no mood for guessing
games.

"She found an ATM receipt," Doggett said. "Sixty dollars, dated
yesterday  morning. Looks like she went to the bank before work.

"Look, Mulder, you know it's protocol. Klein had to check," he said, 
apologetic, his gaze darting away.

Mulder sighed. Yeah, he knew all about protocol. So they had to check
for any  recent large withdrawals from their accounts. So what,
Doggett? Mulder wanted  to ask, his frustration escalating. Clearly
Doggett thought this line of  investigation meant something; it only
mattered enough to mention to Mulder if he  really expected to find
something there. "So what'd you find?"

"Nothing helpful," Doggett said, and Mulder wondered what the man
would have  found helpful: an empty account? "That morning's
sixty-dollar withdrawal was  the only activity on the account in over
a week. Last thing before that was the  direct deposit of your
paycheck. So looks like we struck out on that front."

"There are other accounts," Mulder said softly, and Doggett looked up
at him,  surprised. He would find out anyway, Mulder reasoned, and it
would look less  like he had something to hide if he was up-front
about it from the start.

"Other accounts?"

"Yeah," Mulder said. "I'm assuming you're gonna want to check those,
too."

Doggett nodded and grabbed a pen and notepad off the counter.
"Shoot."

"There's a joint savings account," he said. "And another account in my
name,  but she has access." Doggett shot him a questioning look.
"Family money," he  explained, and Doggett nodded.

"Anything else?" Doggett prompted.

"Well, the house is in her name, but it's mortgaged. There are other 
properties -- homes in New England that belonged to my parents. Those
are in my name,  too. And there's a savings account for Will."

Doggett nodded. "And she has access to that?"

"Yeah," Mulder said. "It's not as much as the other accounts, but--"

"How much are we talkin' here?"

Mulder burned at the question even as he understood Doggett's need to
ask it.  "I don't have an exact figure," he admitted. "It's whatever
my accountant  estimated would be the cost of college in the year
2020."

"And total?" Doggett pressed.

Mulder sighed. "I could give you a ballpark, but you'd have to talk to
my  accountant."

Doggett said nothing for a minute, just studied Mulder with a critical
expression. Finally he tossed the pen on the counter and pulled the
top sheet off  the notepad. "I appreciate your honesty, Mulder," he
said before he left the  other man alone in the kitchen.

So John Doggett appreciated his honesty. Woo hoo, Mulder thought as he
shook  his head; under other circumstances, he would've been amused at
the man's  comment. Of their own accord, Mulder's hands clutched the
handle of his coffee  cup, and he imagined that they were around
Doggett's neck. Despite everything  that had happened, Doggett still
had reservations about him. Appreciate your  honesty, my ass, he
thought as he snatched the coffeepot from the machine and 
poured himself a fresh cup.

* * * * *


Will looked everywhere: upstairs, downstairs, even the basement. He
was  quiet, tiptoeing through the house, careful not to wake his dad,
who had fallen  asleep on the couch in the study again. Will knew he
hadn't slept very well for  the last few days; he could hear his dad
sometimes, the TV on low and tuned to  CNN, the crunch of sunflower
seeds, the creak of the floorboards in the study  as he paced. Five
steps across the room, then spin and five steps back.

At night Will counted the steps, tapping evenly like a metronome, as
he lay  in his bed. Like counting sheep, he told his stubborn,
sleepless brain. Just  count them and fall asleep. But his brain
refused to listen, and last night Will  had counted 175 steps before
he gave up. 

"Phoenix," he hissed as he crept down the upstairs hall. Will checked
his  bedroom again, even peering under the bed, but the dog wasn't
there. He found a  tennis ball next to his dresser and bounced it on
the floor. "Phoenix, ball!"

Still no Phoenix. Will dropped the ball, which rolled into the corner
of his  room, then stepped softly into the study. His dad was still
sleeping, covered  with an old striped blanket, his neck bent at a
funny angle and his head  leaning up against the armrest.

He looked very old like this, Will realized. The gray in his dad's
hair shone  brightly in the early morning light, and his face was
tense, even in his  sleep. He muttered something unintelligible, then
shifted on the couch. The  blanket slipped down to his waist, exposing
something shiny hanging along his  collarbone.

Will crept closer to the couch to get a better look at the chain
around his  dad's neck. It was gold, and there was something... His
dad moved again, and  now Will could see what was attached to the
necklace. His mom's cross. Where had  his dad gotten his mom's
necklace? Will couldn't remember her wearing it when  she left Monday
morning, but she rarely took it off.

Will stepped away from his dad and searched the room, then dropped
down onto  his belly to check under the couch. He was pretty sure that
Phoenix was too  big to fit under there, but it had been one of his
favorite hiding spots when he  was a new puppy.

Then Will tiptoed out of the study and into his parents' room,
checking under  their bed, behind the door, even in their bathroom,
which Phoenix usually  stayed out of because his paws always slipped
on the tile. Then he heard a  whining sound coming from the closet,
and Will pushed open the half-closed door.  There was Phoenix,
standing in the middle of a pile of laundry, a wadded-up piece 
of something in his mouth and the empty laundry basket upturned next
to him.

"Phoenix," Will scolded.

This was one of the dog's new favorite games: find the laundry. He
somehow  managed to locate their dirty-clothes baskets, no matter
where they were hidden.  Will had kept his laundry basket under his
bed for a week, until he found the  puppy's backside sticking out from
under the bed, tail wagging gleefully as  he pawed through Will's
dirty clothes.

And he never took the normal stuff, either. Not t-shirts or even
socks.  Always underwear. It was his newest way to get attention,
which meant that whenever  they had company, Phoenix always found
something really embarrassing to take.  Like Will's old Superman
briefs when John had stopped by to drop off  something for his mom a
couple weeks ago.

Now Will stood, hands on his hips, staring at the dog, who was looking
at him  with such a sad expression that Will almost felt bad for him
instead of being  angry.

"Phoenix," he hissed softly. "What did you take?"

The dog cocked his head, eyes wide and wet, and his tail wagged once
as if in  apology. I'm sorry, Will imagined him saying. But I'm a
retriever; I'm only  doing my job.

"Give me that." Will snagged the elastic waistband of whatever Phoenix
was  clutching, but the dog wouldn't give it up. Will's feet slipped
out from under  him and he plopped down on his backside amidst the
pile of laundry.

"Bad dog," he said sternly, and the puppy finally relinquished the
slobbery  piece of cloth. He laid down next to Will, set his head on
the boy's lap, and  looked up at him with a contrite expression. Will
shook out the wet piece of  cloth, straightening it. Then he realized
what it was: his mom's underwear.

Will dropped the underwear on the laundry pile and leaned down to lay
his  head against his knees, his face close to the dog's. "I miss her,
too, boy," he  said, and Phoenix wagged his tail in agreement. 

* * * * *

The bright blue FBI warning was flashing on the TV screen when his dad
joined  Will on the couch. He set a bowl of popcorn on the cushion
between them, then  held out his other hand, in which he carried two
Cherry Cokes, the glasses  clinking as Will took one. 

"Thank you," Will said. He held the glass up to his face, letting the
fizzy  carbonation bubbles tickle his nose. Although she didn't
disallow it outright,  his mom discouraged Will from drinking soda.
Until his dad had moved in, they  hadn't even kept any in the house.
Will had been unfolding the envelope of  microwave popcorn when his
dad took two cans of Coke out of the fridge and asked  if Will wanted
one. Feeling vaguely guilty, Will had nodded. It was strange 
the ways he felt as though he were betraying his mom.

Now Will took a handful of buttery popcorn and chewed thoughtfully as
the  blue screen switched over to a familiar preview. Will had always
found comfort in  repetition: he had read the Harry Potter series more
times than he could  count, and the case of his Star Wars DVDs was
bandaged with heavy packing tape to  keep it from completely falling
apart.

On the screen, the close-up of a kiss dissolved into mayhem, a black
and  white police car chasing a souped-up truck through heavy city
traffic, taking out  lampposts and fire hydrants and the tables of an
outdoor caf, nearly missing  a woman slowly pushing a stroller,
unaware of her near-fate.

Will turned to look at his dad, who was staring not at the television
screen  but above it, at Will's latest school photo, which sat, framed
and slightly  dusty, on the shelf atop the television.

"How come so many people want to hurt you and Mom?"

His dad didn't turn to look at him, but his gaze did shift to the
screen. He  stared unseeingly at a humungous explosion and two figures
running from the  wreckage, a man and a woman, pulling each other
along by their joined hands.

"Why do you ask that?" his dad said finally.

"You had to leave when I was a baby -- because it was dangerous, you
said --  and now Mom..."

"Now Mom's gone, too," his dad finished for him. He snatched the
remote off  the coffee table and hit PAUSE, freezing the scene in
place. On the screen, the  man and the woman, hair mussed and
cinder-speckled from the explosion, gazed  at each other with a shared
understanding, knowing they had narrowly escaped  their demise.

"Yes," Will said.

"Mom and I have both told you about when we worked together, how we 
investigated crimes and helped catch criminals," his dad continued.
"Of course none of  the criminals wanted to get caught. Sometimes they
were angry at us for doing  our job."

"Didn't they go to jail?"

<Not the kind we caught,> Will heard his dad think, and he looked at
him  curiously. His dad shook his head then, a rueful smile on his
face as he realized  that Will had most likely caught that last
thought.

"Some of them do," his dad told him. "But not all. There might not
have been  enough evidence for the courts to convict, so they were let
free. And  sometimes... sometimes they got away."

Got away and came after his mom and dad? Will still didn't understand.
If he  was a criminal, he'd want to get as far away as possible from
the police and  the FBI and everyone who was trying to catch him,
instead of going *looking*  for them. Dumb criminals.

"Is that where Mom is?" Will asked in a small voice. "That's why
you're  looking on her computer and reading all her old notes? Because
you think an old bad  guy came to get her?"

He could tell from the look on his dad's face that he hadn't realized
that  Will knew what he was doing in the study every night, when Will
was supposed to  be in bed asleep but was in reality lying there,
worrying about his mom and,  yes, his dad, too. Wondering when his mom
would come back and, if she never  did, when his dad would start
acting like normal again.

"That's one possibility," his dad said. "I'm looking through our old
cases,  and John and the other agents are following other leads."

They lapsed into silence then, Will contemplating what John might be
doing to  help find his mom. How long would they look for her? Why
couldn't they find  her? What if they went on forever like this, his
mom missing and his dad  sulking around the house like it was a maze
and he was a rat who couldn't be  bothered to figure it all out
because he knew the cheese had been removed?

He saw his dad reach for the remote to unpause the movie, and quickly
Will  turned to him with a new question. "But if there are always bad
guys after you,  how come you had to work for the FBI? Why didn't you
and Mom do another job?"

"Lots of people have dangerous jobs, Will," his dad explained. "Police
officers, fire fighters, soldiers in the army... If no one wanted to
do those jobs,  then none of us would be safe."

People with guns, Will thought. Like his mom. He thought of the locked
box  high up on the shelf in the study closet. What his dad had said
made sense, but  it didn't explain why *his* mom and dad needed to do
those jobs. Why they had  to be the ones who were in danger. It just
wasn't fair.

"When I grow up I'm gonna to have a safe job," he announced.

His dad smiled but said nothing for a minute. For some reason, he
seemed to  feel conflicted about what his son had said. Will couldn't
exactly tell what  his dad was thinking, but he knew that he felt sad
and hopeful and frightened  all at once. <Legacy> was the only word
Will could pick out.

Then Will remembered something he had overheard one of the FBI agents
say,  that it was dangerous to be a member of this family. They had
mentioned his Aunt  Melissa's death, but there was also his Aunt
Samantha and his dad's father.  Was that his legacy? he wondered, a
gun and danger and the drive to get them  before they got you?

"Dad?"

"Yes, Will."

"Are the bad guys gonna come after me, too?"

"Of course not," his dad said. "Why would anyone want to hurt you?"

Will just stared at his dad, who sat chewing his bottom lip, his eyes
focused  almost, but not quite, on Will's. Will didn't need to read
anyone's mind to  know that his dad was lying. He waited for him to
say something else, to  explain... But he said nothing.

"You're lying," Will said softly. "Why aren't you telling me the
truth?"

His dad looked as though Will had physically hit him. His face was so
sad,  and immediately Will wished that he hadn't said anything at all.
It was just  that his dad had never lied to him before, not that Will
could tell, at least.  Sure, they had had misunderstandings, but this
was the first time Will could  tell for absolute sure that his dad was
lying.

"The truth," his dad muttered. "Will, I don't know the truth. I don't
know  where Mom is or who took her or why. I just *don't know.*"

"But they said it was dangerous to be in this family. That someone
killed  Aunt Melissa because--"

"They?" His dad's tone was angry. "Who said that? Will?"

Will bent over to fiddle with his shoelaces, stalling. His dad was mad
now.  Not at him, maybe, but still mad. Probably he'd be angry if he
knew that Will  had been eavesdropping on those two agents that day.

"Will?"

He met his dad's gaze and tried not to look too guilty. "Two of the
men here  on Monday, looking for Mom."

"The FBI agents?" his dad asked, and Will nodded.

"I'm sorry, Dad," he said. "I know you're mad and I know it's not nice
to  listen in on other people's conversations, but they were right
outside my bedroom  and--"

"No," his dad said, stopping him with a hand on his arm. "I am angry;
you're  right about that. But not at you, Will. I'm not mad at you."

Will nodded and snuggled up to his dad's side. His dad put an arm
around his  shoulders and they sat together like that for so long that
Will almost forgot  what he had asked his dad about in the first
place, about their whole family  being in danger. He opened his mouth
to ask again, but then looked up to see  that his dad had fallen
asleep.

Will stared up at his dad, almost jumping when he snored once, loudly,
then  settled deeper into the couch cushions. Carefully, so not to
disturb his dad,  Will slipped the remote control from his grip and
turned the television off.  Yawning, he reached around the back of the
couch for the blanket draped there.  Carefully he tucked it around his
dad, then sat back down next to him. He  curled into his dad's warmth
and covered himself with the blanket.

* * * * *

End Part 15. Continued in Part 16.

Title: Song of Experience (16/?) 
Author: Christy (attalanta@aol.com) 

* * * * *

April, 2009


"Where's my sister, you sorry son-of-a-bitch?"

Mulder sighed into the phone as he pushed his chair away from the
computer.  He stood, cradling the phone in his other hand, and
stretched, his back  cracking. "Bill," he sighed. It was not a
question.

"Tell me," Bill Scully demanded, his voice raging over the staticky
phone  line. "What have you done to her this time? Where is she?"

"I don't know where she is," Mulder admitted, unable to keep the
defeat out  of his voice. He sat down on the couch and set the cradle
of the phone down  beside him, then ran his hand over the smooth
leather upholstery.

"Damnit, Mulder, if anything's happened to her--"

On the other end of the phone line, Bill's tirade continued, but
Mulder's  attention was caught by the small figure standing in the
doorway. "Dad? Who's on  the phone?"

"Will, why don't you go let the dog in," Mulder suggested after he
slipped  his hand over the phone receiver. "I think I heard him
barking."

"I didn't," Will called over his shoulder as he ran off in search of
Phoenix.

"You've got my nephew there with you?" Bill demanded.

"Yes," Mulder said tightly. Where else would Will be? *His* nephew,
*his*  sister: they're my wife and my son, you ass, Mulder thought.

"If you so much as touch one hair on that kid's head--"

Nice, Mulder thought, more empty threats from a man who saw his
beloved  sister and nephew at most three times a year. "Jesus Christ,
Bill. He's my son,"  Mulder spat into the phone.

"Listen to me," Bill hissed. "Dana may have wised up and left your
sorry ass,  but you'll never in a million years convince me that she'd
abandon her child.  Never."

"I never said she left," Mulder insisted.

"And Mom told me about the baby. Don't think that's not suspicious,
either,  Mulder. What, a pregnant wife cramps your style, so you get
rid of her? Not  ready for another child, are we? Wouldn't be the
first time you shirked your  responsibilities in that regard."

"Listen, Bill," Mulder began, his voice rising unintentionally. But
then the  sounds of Will climbing the stairs gave him pause.

"I don't wanna hear it," Bill told him. "All I know is, if Dana
doesn't come  back, safe and sound and godamned *soon,* you'll wish
you'd never been born.  And I'll make sure Will knows--"

Mulder hung up the phone. 

But it was not soon enough. Will entered the study and came over to
sit  beside Mulder on the couch. "Phoenix wasn't barking," Will said
softly. He leaned  his head against his father's arm, and Mulder
shifted so that he could put his  arm around his son.

"Dad?"

"Yeah?" Mulder answered, concentrating on keeping the tone of his
voice even  and under control.

"Why does Uncle Bill hate you so much?"

Mulder froze as a dozen possible answers, most of them inappropriate
for a  seven year old, flew through his head as he looked down at his
son's innocent  face.

"I don't know if 'hate' is the right word for it, Will," Mulder said
finally.  "It's true that your Uncle Bill and I have never gotten
along, but I don't  think--"

"Then why is he so mean to you?" Will pressed. "How come he thinks you
hurt  Mommy?"

Mommy. Prior to her disappearance, Mulder had never heard Will call
Scully  'Mommy,' just as he had always been 'Dad,' never 'Daddy.' But
lately a few  'Mommy's had slipped out. Not often but enough to be
worrisome and, though Mulder's  inner psychologist was twitching with
anxiety, he suspected that he wasn't  yet ready to examine the
implications of this.

"You love Mom," Will continued. "I know you do."

Mulder nodded. "Of course I do," he assured Will. "You and Mom and the
baby  are the most important things in the world to me."

"Then how come Uncle Bill--"

"I don't know, Will," Mulder admitted. "But I do think your Uncle Bill
is  very sad about what happened to Mom; he's her brother and he loves
her, too. But  he doesn't like feeling sad, so he decides to feel
angry instead. I think it's  easier for him to just to be mad at me
instead of being sad or scared for  Mom."

"But *why?*"

Mulder shook his head. "Sometimes people -- sometimes *men* -- think
that  admitting they're sad or scared makes them weak."

"But it doesn't?" Will asked.

"No," Mulder told his son. "No, it just makes them human. Everyone can
feel  scared or sad, Will, just like everyone can feel happy or angry.
I don't want  you to think that it's wrong for a man to be sad or
scared, or for a man to  cry. Because it's not."

Will craned his neck so that he could see his father's face. "Are you
scared  now, Dad?"

"Yes," Mulder answered truthfully, never breaking away from his son's
intent  gaze.

"Me, too."

* * * * *

Mulder missed her in the quiet times.

In the mornings he missed her face, warm pinks and reds and golds; the
way  the soft light ignited her freckles. And the purring sounds she
made as she  woke, like the tiny kitten his sister had had when he was
a child, the calico  they'd all overfed, even his father, because they
couldn't resist its gentle,  insistent pleading.

He missed her at night, missed the sounds of her clothes falling to
the floor  as she changed into her pajamas: soft silk slipping onto
the rug; the clack  of heels dropping onto the closet floorboards;
lace being exchanged for cotton  flannel, or sometimes the other way
around. 

And he missed her now, as he stood at the sink, washing his and Will's
dinner  dishes. She would be drying, taking the opportunity for an
occasional snap of  the towel against his ass. Or she would be
reminding him to rinse the dishes  before loading the dishwasher;
without her, he felt a guilty thrill when he  slid an unrinsed plate
into the machine.

Will was sitting beside him, watching with wide eyes the path of each
grimy  dish from the table and into the dishwasher without the
required detour to the  sink. But Will said nothing because he was
sitting on the kitchen counter,  another Scully no-no.

The phone rang, and Mulder scrambled for a towel while Will reached
for the  cordless. He prayed that it wasn't another call from Bill
Scully. "Hello,"  Mulder answered after he and Will switched.

"Fox Mulder?"

"Yes?"

"Mr. Mulder, this is Detective Andrea Wilson with the Eugene, Oregon,
Police  Department..."

Detective Wilson was still talking, but her voice had turned into an 
incomprehensible drone to Mulder's ear. He gripped the countertop,
reaching blindly  for the wall. He needed something to put his back up
against.

"Mr. Mulder?"

"I'm sorry," he told the detective. "I'm sorry. What did you say?"

"I apologize for the late hour, but I want to get this cleared up as
soon as  possible. Mr. Mulder, we have a possible match to the
description of your wife  faxed to us by the local FBI field office. I
tried to get in touch with the  agent in charge of your wife's case --
one John, uh..."

"John Doggett," Mulder supplied.

"Yes," Detective Wilson said. "Anyway, I couldn't reach Agent Doggett
at the  number I have listed here."

"Do you need me to come there?" Mulder asked. To his ears, his voice
sounded  as cold as he felt inside.

A loud cry of dismay off to his right reminded Mulder that he was not
alone.  He glanced over to see that Will had jumped off the counter
and was standing  in front of his father, eyes wide with panic.

"I don't think that will be necessary," the detective answered, and
quickly  Mulder shook his head in reassurance as he held out one arm
for Will, who  burrowed into his father's side.

"How can I help you, then, Detective?"

"I'd like to check with you the physical description we have on your
wife.  Let's see... The FBI Missing Persons report lists her as 45
years old, 5'2",  approximately five months pregnant. Is that
correct?"

"That's right," Mulder said. "Red hair and blue eyes... And her prints
are on  file with the Bureau," he added. A good investigator would
check there first,  Mulder thought irritably, before making this kind
of call.

A pause, and then Detective Wilson's voice was apologetic. "We don't
have any  prints to match against, Mr. Mulder."

"Oh," Mulder breathed, and he could feel Will move his arms to
encircle his  father's waist, though the sensation felt miles away.

The detective cleared her throat. "The report I have here also
mentions a  tattoo. Could you describe it for me, sir?"

"It's low on her back. Just above her waist," Mulder told her. "A
circle,  maybe a few inches in diameter. If you look close, it's a
snake swallowing its  tail."

He held his breath then, waiting an interminable length of time for
the  detective's response, knowing that all hope for his future was
hanging in the  balance. And Will's future, Mulder thought, reaching
down with his free hand to  grip his son's bony shoulder.

"In that case, I'm sorry to have bothered you, Mr. Mulder. This isn't
your  wife we have here."

The intensity of Mulder's exhale almost shook the copper pots hanging
above  the stove. Certainly it shook him and Will, who was staring up
at his father  with a frightened expression on his face. Mulder
managed to mutter goodbye  before setting the phone down on the
counter.

"Who was it, Dad?" Will asked as Mulder fumbled over to the kitchen
table to  sit down.

Was this what they had to look forward to? Calls from the police and
visits  to the morgue to identify bodies? A game of Russian Roulette,
waiting for the  inevitable bullet to fall into the chamber and
destroy him? Mulder heaved a  deep breath and closed his eyes.

"Dad," Will pressed. "What did they want? Why did you describe Mom's
tattoo?"

Mulder opened his eyes and met his son's anxious gaze. Anxious, but
not  confused. Will knew, Mulder realized; he may not have listened to
the conversation  word-for-word, but still he knew what had happened.
And he knew what hadn't.

"It's nothing," he told Will. "A detective was calling with a question
about  Mom's case, and I told her what she needed to know."

Will's gaze was piercing, his changeable eyes almost as bright blue as
his  mother's. Mulder swallowed hard under his son's slow scrutiny.

"It wasn't Mom."

It was not a question, but Mulder answered it anyway. "No. It wasn't
Mom."

Will nodded solemnly, and the two of them sat there for a long minute,
staring at each other, until Mulder stood and went back to the sink.
When he  finished loading the dishwasher, Will was still there,
watching.

"I'm going to bed," the boy announced in a soft voice, and Mulder
nodded  dully. He sat at the kitchen table and listened to the sounds
of his son getting  ready for bed, not understanding why that night's
sounds seemed especially  muted and sad. After several minutes Mulder
followed his son upstairs, detouring  to the back door to let the dog
out one last time for the night.

Will was already in bed when Mulder got there, and he had his stuffed
dog  clutched tight under his arm. Will chose a story, and Mulder read
it with  slightly less than his usual care, but Will did not complain
when Mulder didn't do  the voices, and he didn't seem to notice when
his father inadvertently skipped a  page.

But Will was still awake when the story ended, and Mulder gave him a 
goodnight hug and kiss. Will was quiet, forgoing his ritual begging
for a second  story. So Mulder wished his son a good night, flipped
off the light, and went back  downstairs. He let the dog in and closed
up the house, turning off lights and  locking doors. Phoenix followed
him upstairs, watching with confusion as  Mulder stripped to his
boxers and slipped into bed.

"I'm tired," he told the puppy, whose ears perked up at Mulder's
voice. The  dog stood there, tail wagging hopefully, until Mulder gave
in and patted  Scully's side of the bed. Phoenix clambered up onto the
mattress, curled himself  into a tight circle, and was asleep in
minutes.

Mulder, on the other hand, couldn't seem to settle down. He remembered
when  Phoenix was still very small, when the puppy would whine and cry
when he was  tired, even going so far as to nip at them in
frustration. It was Scully who'd  known that the dog was simply
tired.

'He needs to learn to self-soothe,' she'd said, explaining that
infants had  to learn much the same thing. 'Even me?' Will had asked,
and Scully had  chuckled. 'I think you're still working on that one,'
she had joked.

Now Mulder wondered whether he wasn't the one who'd never learned to 
self-soothe, the one who needed comfort from another in order to feel
safe and  protected. He stared enviously at the dog, snoring away at
the foot of the bed.

But at some point Mulder must have fallen asleep, because hours later
he was  awakened by a soft voice calling for him.

"Yeah?" Mulder sat up in bed, rubbing his eyes.

"Dad?" Will called again from the hallway, and he sounded close to
tears.  "Dad?"

"Yeah, Will," Mulder said. He motioned for Will to come to him, but
the boy  didn't move.

"Look what I did," Will whispered.

Mulder squinted through the darkness, then got out of bed and came to
stand  by his son. It was then that he spied the dark spot on the
front of Will's  pajama bottoms and noticed the acrid smell of urine.

"I'm sorry, Dad," Will cried.

"It's okay. It was an accident." Mulder took his son's shoulder and
guided  him back to his bedroom. They both cringed when Mulder flicked
the light on to  reveal that Will's sheets were also soaked.

"I'm sorry," Will repeated.

"Hey." Mulder squatted down to his son's level and used his thumbs to
wipe  Will's face clean of tears. "It's okay. Everyone has accidents,"
he said. "Let's  go get you cleaned up."

* * * * *


"Air conditioning the house?" Mulder asked the crown of red-brown hair
peeking over the open refrigerator door.

Will stepped back from the door and let it swing closed. "It makes the
room  hotter," he explained, "not colder. It's because the motor--"

"I know," Mulder told him, reaching around his son to pull the
refrigerator  door open again. "I suppose you're hungry." It was past
seven o'clock, but  Mulder had forgotten all about dinner until he'd
started to wonder what Will was  up to and found him in the kitchen.
Mulder had been in the study, scrolling  through the files on Scully's
computer, trying to piece something, anything,  together to explain
his wife's disappearance. 

His wife... Not for the first time, Mulder was glad that they'd gotten
married. Not just because he loved her but for a practical reason: now
he had a way  to refer to her, a name that allowed others to recognize
the significance of  their relationship. After all, not everyone
understood the utter importance of  "Scully."

Together Mulder and Will peered into the nearly empty fridge. "We
don't have  anything to eat," Will announced.

"No, we've got-- What is this, anyway?" Mulder removed a small
Tupperware  container and lifted the corner of the lid.

Will shrugged as Mulder gave the contents of the container a sniff.
Still  puzzled, he offered the container to Will, who leaned over and
peered inside.

"Tabulleh," he told Mulder. "Mom was in one of her cooking moods."

Mulder nodded and returned the container to the fridge. All they had
was  Scully-food, he realized: non-fat yogurt and twelve-grain bread
and wilting  vegetables in the crisper. Mulder opened the freezer and
blinked past the puff of  icy air. He frowned. The freezer was also
poorly stocked: half-filled ice cube  trays, a bag of frozen corn, and
what looked like a popsicle, though it was  difficult to tell from
under an inch of freezer-fur.

Mulder dug in deeper and smiled when his half-numb fingers touched the
hard  plastic of a frozen ziplock baggie. "Aha!"

He pulled two baggies from the freezer, then closed the door. With his
thumb  nail Mulder scratched the frost from one bag, uncovering
Scully's neat  printing: Salmon, 12/08.

"That's okay to eat, right?" Mulder looked down at Will. "It *is*
frozen."

Will made a face. "I don't like salmon."

Mulder sighed. "Well, kiddo, it's either salmon or yogurt or frozen
corn.  Take your pick."

Will squinted up at him. "You're not gonna cook the corn?"

"Nope, I'm having it raw," Mulder said, ruffling his son's hair as he
slung  the frozen salmon-bricks on the counter. He dug around the
bottom drawer for a  pan that would fit the two fillets, then let the
salmon clatter out onto the  tray.

Will watched as Mulder prepared the fish, guided by his memory of the
salmon  Maggie had cooked once when he had stayed with her. After he
slipped the fish  into the oven, he grabbed the corn from the freezer
and set the vegetable  steamer-pot on the stove.

Then Mulder ripped open the bag of frozen corn and picked out a few
kernels.  "Mm, tasty," Mulder said as he crunched on them.

"Eew," Will squealed, backing away when Mulder offered him the bag. He
took a  few more kernels before dumping half the bag into the steamer.
Not too bad,  he thought as his stomach grumbled in hunger.

When Mulder pulled the half-filled rice jar from the cupboard, Will
frowned  with displeasure. "Mom always makes her potatoes when we have
salmon," he told  his father.

Mulder nodded. He knew all about Scully and Will's agreement: Will
would eat  his serving of salmon only if Scully promised to make his
favorite potatoes.  "I don't know how to make them. Do you?"

"She puts spices on them," Will offered helpfully, pointing to the 
well-stocked spice rack.

Mulder chuckled and surveyed the small, neatly labeled glass bottles.
"Yeah,  but which ones?"

"I dunno," Will said. "Something red and some other stuff."

Big help, kid, Mulder thought as he surveyed his choices. The rack
held a  hell of a lot of red, and 'some other stuff' didn't exactly
narrow his choices  either. Mulder's skill in the kitchen had
certainly improved after his stay at  Maggie's, but he was nowhere
near this guess-the-spice game that Will was  playing.

"I'm sorry, Will," he said finally. "I think we're gonna have to
settle for  rice today."

Will huffed and crossed his arms over his chest. "But Mom promised!
She  always makes her potatoes when we have salmon. Always."

"I know," Mulder said. "But Mom isn't here and I don't know how to
make  them."

"But I want potatoes!"

Mulder sighed as he filled the rice pot with water from the tap. He
set the  pot on the stove, then turned to face his son. "Look, Will,
this is all we've  got. We can go grocery shopping tomorrow, but right
now it's salmon and corn  and rice. I don't like it any better than
you do, but that's the way it is."

Will said nothing, just stared him down, a familiar stubborn crease
appearing  over his eyebrows as he watched Mulder prepare their
dinner. Will made no  move to take the plates and silverware Mulder
set near him on the kitchen  counter, so Mulder did his son's usual
job of setting the table, then added two  glasses of ice tea to the
table.

Finally dinner was ready, but Will remained riveted to his spot as
Mulder  loaded each plate with food. He sat down at the table without
another look at his  son and began to eat, not at all surprised when
Will did not join him.  Instead, Mulder heard the refrigerator door
open, and he turned to see Will pulling  out the loaf of bread and
stuffing two slices into the toaster.

Mulder finished his dinner to the sounds of Will munching on plain
toast as  he stood his ground in the kitchen, not giving the plate of
salmon, rice, and  corn another look. For a moment Mulder considered
exerting some of his supposed  parental authority and insisting that
Will eat the dinner he'd prepared.

But Mulder was so very tired of fighting. He was tired of paging
through old  case reports that were in his writing but that he had no
memory of compiling;  tired of slogging through useless computer
files; tired of answering the  trivial questions that Doggett bothered
him with several times each day.

It wouldn't kill Will to eat toast for dinner once, Mulder decided,
and then  he slid Will's fillet of salmon onto his plate and cut into
the cold fish.

* * * * *

End Part 16. Continued in Part 17.