Title: Misbegotten Sons
Author: Neoxphile
Spoilers: Seasons five, eight, and nine; IWTB
Category: invasion/post-col, challenge fic for the "Green Goo Fetus challenge" at The Nursery Files

Summary: "They contacted us not long after the colonization began. And when they did, I realized that though they were my flesh and blood, they were not my sons. They were no one's sons." - Scully

Author's note: So…the first incarnation of this story arose in 2005, and I didn't get very far before deciding that the story simply didn't work. I tried revising it in 2007, but still didn't like it and I got discouraged by how out-of-canon it'd be considering the new movie was coming out soon (in the earlier versions the "before" section took place in 2004). Hopefully the third time's the charm. I think this particular story is going to require a lot of cheerleading, so let me know if you think it's worth continuing.

Before They Came

December 15th, 2008
Virginia

It was warm and dry inside, but outside the sky was a leaden gray that made Mulder glad that the stray cat Scully had been feeding had recently been adopted by a neighbor. Otherwise he could easily imagine spending part of the night outdoors, calling for the shy beast to come, please come kitty, before it froze to death.

Her devotion to the little beast - leaving food for it every night and painstakingly attempting to tame it - had him contemplating the presence of a fluffy kitten under the tree come Christmas day. In the end he decided again it. There were endless pleas from animal shelters asking people not to surprise people with pets for Christmas. And knowing her, she'd want to pick it out on her own. Besides, if he surprised her with a kitten, he'd miss an entertaining mock-argument with her when he suggested a purebred.

No, he wouldn't be putting a kitten under the tree. Instead he'd trick her into going out on Christmas Eve, and somehow end up at the shelter. He smiled to himself as he imagined her reaction. He realized that by going to the shelter that he was inviting the possibility that they might leave with a pet of another species, even another yappy dog, but it was a risk he was willing to take, if it meant seeing her smile.

The mere fact that they were now in the position to own a pet filled him with an understated happiness. Until the FBI had come to them at the beginning of the year with hats in hand, asking for their help, they'd both felt more than a little tenuous. Though they might have told themselves that there was nothing to fear in their unremarkable little home in Virginia, they both were worried that they'd end up back on the radar again, running for their lives again. To be absolved, even though they shouldn't have needed to be, allowed them to finally feel secure for the first time since Mulder's great escape.

Scully had called him just after lunch to let him know that she'd be staying late at the hospital, but it didn't interfere with his plans too much. Dinner would be a stew that was slowly cooking in the crock pot, and it would be patient if she was even later than she thought she'd be. Late nights spent at Our Lady of Sorrows were becoming more common for her; now that she'd had some success at treating a rare disease like Sandhoff's, the hospital board was more willing to let her bring controversial treatment plans to them, and she was taking advantage of that as she looked for a course of action to treat a seventeen-year-old girl with a condition similar but not identical to Christian Fearon's.

So, alone in the quiet, Mulder was taking advantage of the time alone to order a few last gifts online. The shipping prices to get his orders on time were steep, but the fee the FBI had coughed up for his help meant he had more wiggle room in his personal finances than he'd had in a while.

The answering machine, a relic Mulder had found in a thrift store back when he'd been trying to stretch out the money he'd made on selling his mother's home after her death, clicked on, making him look up. He fully expected it to be Scully's voice he'd hear, sounding a little annoyed because she'd been trying to get him to enter the 21st century and get voice mail, but it wasn't her.

"Pick up, pick up, oh god, please pick up-" a tinny voice cried from the answering machine's ancient speakers.

Startled, Mulder dove for the phone. "Hello? Who is this?"

"Is this mister Mulder?" a high, young male voice asked.

"Yes. Who are you?" His first thought was that it must be one of Scully's nephews, one of Charlie's two sons. He'd apologize for being abrupt later, right then he wanted to know what the kid was panicking about.

"My name's Andy Van De Kamp." The kid paused for breath. "Look, I found your number on an index card with my brother's adoption papers, but I wasn't sure if you'd moved-"

Oh, Mulder thought, giving the phone a dumbfounded look. "You're William's adopted brother?"

"Yes. And we need help. Can you please come?"

"What's going on?" Mulder asked. His thoughts were beginning to whirl, so he decided to try to focus. "Let me speak to your parents."

"You can't." Andy's voice cracked a bit. "I'm…I'm pretty sure they're dead."

"They're dead?" Mulder asked numbly.

"I think so. At least I haven't heard them. I hear Will crying, though, so I'm pretty sure he's okay…" The boy trailed off. "They thought I was dead too because I took a hard knock to the head and passed out. My leg's busted, and I can't get downstairs. I tried to, but I passed out twice. I keep calling Will but he yells 'no' and won't come."

Mulder's sense of urgency redoubled as he gripped the phone harder. "Who are 'they,' Andy? Who hurt you?"

"I don't know, two guys. I don't think they're still here, because I don't hear them either."

"Give me your address and I'll be there as soon as I can, okay?" Mulder tried to maintain his calm, but his thoughts were roaring in his head - someone had found William from the sounds of it. The exact sort of someone Scully had thought giving William up would hide him from.

"Okay." Pain was apparent in the boy's voice. "257 North Street, Deer Crossing Wyoming."

Wyoming. It would take an eternity to get there. "I'm going to be there as soon as I can, but you're a couple thousand miles away, so it's going to take hours," Mulder explained. "Maybe you should call the police."

"No no, I can't do that."

"Why not?"

"My dad said not to. Had to be you, that you worked for the FBI. And you're Willie's bio-dad," Andy rambled.

It didn't seem to Mulder as if the boy was thinking entirely rationally, which made him worry that he was going into shock. "You said your leg is broken, is the bone coming through the skin?"

"What? No."

"Okay good. I still think you should call-"

"No!" Andy yelled. "If I call the police, they'll take me and Will away. You're the only one who can protect us from those people. How could you do that if you didn't even know where we were?"

Mulder's gut twisted. He knew that the kid was right, but leaving him there, hurt, for the length of time it would take to get to him was unconscionable. "Look, I can't leave you lying there with a broken leg for several hours. That's horribly irresponsible. How would I explain that to the police?"

"I'll tell them that I wouldn't let you call because...well, I have hours to think of something. Or, you could just tell them you were coming to see Will and didn't know I was hurt."

That probably would serve, but he still wanted to talk sense into the kid. "Andy, what if those men come back?"

Andy swallowed. "I can reach my dad's shotgun from here. I know how to use it, too. And if they come back, I will call the police."

"Do you promise?" Mulder asked, and sighed, hating that he was giving in. "Keep trying to get William to come to you. I'm leaving for the airport now."

Pausing only long enough to leave Scully a note, pack a change of clothes, and turn off the crock pot, Mulder grabbed his keys and ran out to his car.

In the short time since Mulder got home from shopping, the weather had transitioned into a sleety mess that made people wish that they didn't need to get their Christmas errands done within the next week. Most people's eyes were sleepy, and it didn't take a mind-reader to realize they were all thinking about the same thing: going home and curling up with a good book. Or maybe simply sleeping until spring.

Mulder, though, was not one of the sleepy people. Instead he was wired, anxious, and furious at drivers who seemed determined to hold him up. The drive to the airport had only taken a few minutes, but it felt like hours.

It was Mulder's plan, as much as he had one, to call Scully from the airport to let her know what was going on. This plan was immediately short-circuited when he pulled out his phone inside the airport and discovered that he hadn't remembered to charge it the night before.

Dumbfounded, he looked at the blank screen and hoped that Scully wouldn't kill him when she came home and discovered the brief, probably alarmist, note that he'd scribbled and left on the coffee table before running out the door.

He gave the bank of occupied payphones a longing look, but the first thing he had seen when he got into the airport was the flight time to the area where the boys lived. If he could buy a last-minute ticket, he'd be lucky to have three minutes to stow his overnight bag before the flight left.

Perhaps providence smiled upon him because he was able to purchase the second to last ticket for the flight he wanted. That meant he could stop worrying about Andy lying on the floor for untold hours more while he tried to get there. Maybe it would work out with Scully, too, and she would forgive him for the terror he was sure to have left in his wake.

Five Hours Later

Mulder's heart stuttered when he pulled his rental car into the Van De Kamp's yard and got a good look at the front door of the house. It was pulled off its hinges. It didn't take a lot of thought to conclude who had paid the family a visit earlier in the day. He made sure his gun was accessible, and then stepped through the doorway, skirting around a pile of ash just past the threshold.

"William? Andy?" Mulder called loudly, not allowing himself to think that the boys might not be the only people there who could hear him.

Silence.

"William! Andy!"

A soft sobbing, almost too quiet to be heard, lead Mulder though another hallway. Opening the nearly closed door fully revealed a typical little boy's bedroom, with posters from Pixar movies on the walls, toys and books in a large Ikea bookcase, and plaid sheets on the bed.

Next to the bed a child sat on the floor. His knees were drawn up, and his arms wrapped around them. Mulder instinctively crouched down and touched the boy's shoulder, but he flinched so Mulder immediately removed his hand.

"William?" Mulder asked gently. "Can you hear me? I'm here to help you. Andy called and asked me to come."

The child was rocking slightly, and after flinching he continued to do so. Mulder reached up and flicked the light switch. When he did, he nearly gasped in surprise - the light showed that the boy had dark red hair that bordered on auburn. When William had been a newborn, he and Scully had playfully argued about whose coloring their son would someday have, and it looked like Scully's genes were winning.

"I'm going to check on your parents, okay?" Mulder asked, and the boy ignored him. He left the door open when he exited the room because he was fairly certain that William wasn't going to be going anywhere.

Before he even entered the master bedroom, Mulder knew what he would find. A pale hand dangled over the edge of the queen-sized bed, and no one could comfortably sleep like that. Stepping closer, he saw that the hand's owner lay in the bed, obviously dead from the bullet hole in her forehead. Across the room another body was slumped under a window, this one a man. Andy was right.

Mr. and Mrs. Van de Kamp were both unmistakably dead.

At first Mulder wondered if his son had seen the carnage, but as he turned on the light in this room too, he found evidence that he had: there was a small, red handprint on the woman's cheek, the kind of handprint that would only get there from someone touching the dead woman to see if she could be roused.

Straightening up, Mulder had the urge to cry himself as he imagined a seven-year-old trying desperately to find signs of life. It wasn't something he'd wish on any child, never mind his own son.

When Mulder returned to the other bedroom, William was where he left him. He couldn't leave him there, not when he hadn't found the older boy yet, so he reached down for him. William was heavier than he imagined he'd be, and he didn't want to get up.

"Nooooo!" the little boy protested when Mulder picked him up.

Mulder rubbed his back. "It's okay, you're okay. We need to check on Andy now."

"Andy?" William asked, pulling away to rub his eyes with a fist. "Andy's upstairs."

Relieved that William was showing signs of being with it after all, Mulder spoke to him gently. "Can you show me where he is? Where his room is?" He put his son on his feet and followed him, praying desperately that Andy was in better shape than the people they'd called their parents. And, from the look of the second pile of ash-like metal by the foot of the stairs, better than their attackers too.

"Andy?" William's childish voice called as they walked up the stairs. "Andy, come here!"

"I can't," a voice moaned from inside a room, making Mulder realize that he'd been fearfully holding his breath. The quiet in the house had been doing a decent job of convincing him that William was the only living person left. "I told you, I'm hurt."

"Andy, it's Fox Mulder. I'm here like I promised," Mulder called back, following William down the hall.

"Okay."

Eventually William stopped, and pointed at a door. Just inside a boy in his early teens was on the floor, and Mulder rushed in to check on him. Andy was gray-faced under his olive complexion, but he looked all right other than the unnatural angle of his leg.

"I knew you would come," Andy said, then grimaced and held his leg. "My parents were right about you, you are one of the good guys."

"That looks really painful," Mulder told him as he bent down for a closer look. "I bet you wish you hadn't insisted on waiting for me to come get you."

"Yeah, maybe a little," Andy agreed. "But I'm more glad that I waited for you to get here. My parents, are they…?"

"I'm so sorry, but there's nothing anyone could do for them, not even if they'd been right here when-"

"I knew they were," Andy said heavily. "I was already pretty sure they were when I tried to get Will and me up to the attic," he waved a hand at the door, making Mulder look out. There was another staircase he hadn't noticed before.

Mulder's forehead creased. "Did you drag yourself all the way back to your room?"

"Yeah, when I woke up, I did," Andy replied. "But like I said on the phone, I got knocked out when they pulled me down the stairs."

Andy hadn't told him how his leg had been broken, but Mulder didn't feel like it was the time to quibble over that. "I wish Dana was here. She's the doctor, she'd know how to make you comfortable until we get you to the hospital to have your leg set."

"That's okay. I'm just glad one of you is here."

"Where's the phone you used to call me?" Mulder asked, looking around.

"Near Will's feet."

Mulder looked where his fingers pointed and saw a small silver cell phone. "Thanks." He picked it up and began to dial, even as he watched his son give the older boy a hug and tell him something was wrong with their parents. "Hello? I need the police to come to 257 North Street. There's been a double homicide-" He paused and looked at the boys. "I think you should send someone from child services too."

As soon as Mulder hung up, Andy grabbed the hem of William's shirt. "When the police get here, I want you to let mister Mulder and me do all of the talking. Don't say anything unless it's 'yes' to agree with something I said. Promise."

William nodded, but he looked worried. "I promise, Andy, but why?"

"To keep us safe. That's why mister Mulder is here, and he can't do that if we tell the police anything that'd get him separated from us. Got it?"

"Got it," William agreed solemnly.

Within a matter of minutes, a police cruiser pulled into the driveway next to Mulder's rental car. They were prompt, which he approved of even as he steeled himself for their onslaught of questions.

"We got a call about a possible homicide?" one officer said gruffly in lieu of a greeting.

"I'm not a doctor, but I'm fairly certain we can upgrade possible to certain," Mulder said as he stepped back to let them into the house. "The bodies are in the master bedroom."

"You're the homeowner?" one officer asked, as the other went to look at the dead people.

"God no, I just got here-"

"He came to see my brother," Andy said from where Mulder had put him on the couch. "He's my brother's bio-dad. I don't know how long I would have been lying in my room if he hadn't shown up when he did."

Andy might have imagined that this painted Mulder in a positive light, but it didn't surprise Mulder at all when the remaining officer gave him a hard stare. "Is there a custody dispute?"

"No," Mulder said flatly, knowing that protests would only be seen with suspicion.

"Hey!" Andy complained. "This didn't have anything to do with Will's dad, he's cool. And he sure the hell wasn't with the thugs who killed my parents."

This got the cop's attention, and he walked over to Andy. "You saw the men who..." the officer trailed off, apparently grasping for an age appropriate description of what happened.

"They pushed me down the stairs and broke my leg." Andy pointed at the limb in question. "So yeah, I got a real good look at them."

The officer took out a notepad and sat across from Andy. "Do you mind telling me what happened while we wait for that ambulance?"

Andy nodded and began to give a detailed account that went on for several minutes. At a loss about what to do with themselves, Mulder and William just stood by without speaking.

"We're going to need the coroner," the other cop announced, coming back into the living room seconds after the other recapped his pen.

"Right." The cop who'd taken Andy's statement looked from Mulder and William to Andy. "You're the younger boy's father?"

"Yes," Mulder told him, not looking down to see what William made of that.

"Okay. I'm not going to be able to let you just take him, but we can wait to speak to a social worker at the hospital, if you'd rather not be here when the corner's van gets here. The docs should probably look the little one over, too."

"If you can arrange that, it'd probably be for the best. I don't want them to see-" Mulder cut his eyes in the direction of the master bedroom. "-again."

Another vehicle pulled into the yard, and the officer who'd gone to look at the murder scene announced, "Looks like your ride is here, kid."

"I want Will to come with me in the ambulance," Andy said, sounding nearly as scared as he had over Mulder's answering machine. "Can he?"

"Fine by me," Mulder murmured.

"Can I speak to you privately?" the officer who'd done most of the talking asked, and Mulder nodded before following him into the kitchen. He half expected to be told not to leave town, but that wasn't what was on the cop's mind. "I take it you're only the younger boy's parent?"

"Right. My girlfriend gave him up for adoption when he was a baby."

"How well do you know the family?"

"Almost not at all," Mulder admitted, wondering if ought to say that it was the first time he'd come to "visit" William's adoptive family.

The cop sighed. "Then I don't suppose you have any idea who'd they'd appoint as a guardian for the older boy. Clearly they're both adopted-" Mulder hadn't failed to notice that Andy was hispanic and the dead couple wasn't. "-and it's a damn shame when something like this happens after kids have been placed with a good family."

"Do you have any idea what will happen to him?" Mulder asked. Until then he hadn't been able to think about what might happen to Andy after the hospital.

Shrugging, the cop said, "If there wasn't an arrangement made in a will, and no one volunteers to take him in, I assume he'll go into foster care."

"Oh."

The other cop poked his head back into the room. "We're ready to go."

"Okay kid, here we go."

"Wait, Will's gonna come with me," Andy told the EMT who was trying to get him ready to leave.

"Sorry, he can't."

Andy was quick to make his displeasure known. "I don't understand," he protested, trying to swat away the EMT who was strapping him onto a stretcher. "Why can't my brother come with me? Mister Mulder said he doesn't mind!"

The EMT tried to explain again. "We don't have room for both the boy and his father, and we can't have a kid that young alone back there. They're going to come by car, okay?"

It broke Mulder's heart to see the boy's eyes fill with tears. "Okay, yeah."

"We'll be right behind you," Mulder promised, patting the boy's uninjured leg. "William and I will be driving there right behind the ambulance."

"Thanks."

It only took a few more minutes to load Andy Van de Kamp into the waiting ambulance and take Will's boaster seat out of the Van de Kamp's Silverado. William was very quiet, and let Mulder help buckle him in without protest.

"Andy's going to the hospital?"

"Yup. We're going to go with him. We just don't fit in there." Mulder pointed as the lights on the other vehicle turned on.

"But not Ma or Da," William told him with solemn eyes. "They died."

"Yes, I know. I'm sorry."

"Me too."

"Will, do you know what happen to the men who hurt your Ma and Da?" Even as he asked, Mulder found himself wondering why the Van de Kamps had adopted those forms of address - Van de Kamp sounded Dutch, and Da at least was an Irish term of affection. Maybe the late Mrs. Van de Kamp had been Irish.

"Yes," William said, voice barely above a whisper.

"What? Did they get away?"

To his surprise, this, not the mention of his dead adoptive parents, had William in tears. "They...after Andy made me go upstairs, they came after us. I guess Ma and Da already...When they pulled Andy down the stairs, and he hit his head, I ran after them. I was so mad that I hit one of them. And he, he melted, like a sand castle."

"Wow. That must have been scary."

"Yup." William leaned his head against the window. "Those weren't normal men, were they?"

"No, they weren't."

"I didn't think so...but I worried. Andy likes those X-Men movies, and I was worried that maybe I couldn't touch people any more." The strained look on the child's face made Mulder wish he knew him well enough to give him a hug. "I don't want to be like the girl in those movies."

"Will, I've seen other men like that before. They're not normal, that's why they melted. You won't hurt a normal person, I promise."

"How do you know?" William asked plaintively before pulling a tissue out of his pocket and blowing his nose.

"You've touched me and Andy both since then, haven't you? When I picked you up, and when you gave Andy a hug."

"That's right, I did." William sounded relieved.

"Good. That's one thing you don't have to worry about, okay?"

William nodded before turning to look out the window again. He might not need to worry about touching people, but there was so much else to be concerned about still.