Always Through the Changing

by Marguerite1

Post-Traumatic stress from four points of view. Follows "DeadAlive."

ALWAYS THROUGH THE CHANGING

Classification: Post-Ep for "Deadalive"
Summary: Post-Traumatic stress from four points of view.

With profound thanks to Barbara D. and Revely, who know how to make silk purses
out of sow's ears.

***

"What day is it?"

Under ordinary circumstances, the question would not have been enough to startle
her awake, but coming from that voice, the one she thought would exist only on a
pathetic collection of phone messages that Langly had compiled on a CD for her,
it was enough to make her gasp aloud.

Her eyelids flew open and she looked at his face. It was less gray than it had
been when she had fallen into an exhausted slumber on his chest. His eyes were
open and alert, but a worried furrow ran along either side of his nose.

"I'm sorry. I must've dozed off." She swiped at her hair and rested the point of
her chin on his forearm so she could feel his breath on her face.

Mulder's hand moved. It was dry and still cool to the touch, but his fingers
felt like an angel's blessing when they traced a trembling path where her tears
had dried. "So, Scully, what day is it?"

There was no light coming through the window, so she assumed it was still night.
"It's uh, Saturday."

He seemed content with that answer, not asking which Saturday, or which month or
season, for which Scully was profoundly grateful. Mulder's fingers continued his
journey down her face, finally hooking around the gold chain at her throat.
"Wanna fool around?" he rasped, and Scully found that her tears were not even
close to spent. "Hey," Mulder whispered as the drops landed on his arm, "do I
look that bad?"

"God, no. Mulder. No, no." She finally had the opportunity to lean over and kiss
the living flesh of his lips, so unlike the cold, hard ones she had touched
before she drew back to let the morgue attendants prepare his body. But now he
was warm, it wasn't a dream, and she wouldn't wake up screaming or weeping as
she had done for the last few months. He was alive, and for the first time since
his disappearance she felt joy in every cell of her skin.

His cheeks were warmer than his hands and she lingered there for a moment,
kissing each scar. Mulder coughed, then Scully heard the single word: "Water."

God knows when he last had a drink, she thought, rising without considering the
extra weight she bore at the front of her body. Slightly overbalanced, she put a
steadying hand on the IV pole as she picked up the cup.

Mulder's eyes were huge, with an odd shimmer, but he said nothing as he took the
offered sip of water. He kept the cool liquid in his mouth for a moment as if
savoring a fine wine. When he swallowed, it was the only sound in the room.

This was not how Scully had wanted him to find out. She hoped he could see the
love and hope shining in her face, but Mulder's expression was unreadable as he
spoke without taking his gaze from her abdomen.

"Whoa, Scully. You been eating all my jello?"

It was too much, and she began to laugh and cry all at once, guiding his hand to
where the baby joined in the celebration with its own little dance. Mulder
stroked the roundness as if it were a kitten, biting his lip as if biting back
his own emotions.

"So. I must've been gone a long time." His voice was thin and reedy. "You tried
again?"

"No." She sat on the edge of the bed and put her hands on either side of his
face, noting with joy that his color improved with her touch. "When the IVF
didn't take, I decided not to try again. At least, I didn't try THAT again...but
sometimes, Mulder, doctors can be wrong." She felt another tear begin to form in
the corner of one eye. "You told me never to give up on a miracle."

He turned his head and kissed her palm. "I'm glad you got your miracle. And I
hope he's a good guy, or I'm gonna have to kick his ass."

"He, who?" She pursed her lips for an instant, then gasped as she realized what
he was saying. "Oh, Mulder! I'm sorry...I meant..." She felt the prickling of a
full, scarlet blush across her face. "All the science in the world can't replace
the real thing, Mulder." When she saw no inkling of comprehension on his face,
she added: "And we had the real thing, on more than one occasion."

"We...I...we..." His eyes widened and his mouth turned up in a huge grin. "God."

"I'd like to think He had a hand in it, yes."

"When? How?"

Scully sent up a quick prayer of thanks that Mulder was as happy about this as
she was. "Sometime last spring, but it's hard to say when. Maybe when you came
back from England. But that's why I was so sick when we were in Oregon right
before you...were taken."

Mulder stared at her, obviously doing some mental mathematics. "So I've been
gone..."

"About five months. I'm due in two." She fussed with the bedcovers, not meeting
his eyes.

"Scully, there's something else. A lot of things, actually, that I need to
know."

"I know you do, Mulder, I'm just not sure you're ready for all of this at once."
She wrapped her fingers around his hand. "Let's take this one step at a time,
okay?"

"Okay." He tugged at her, bringing her head back down to his chest. Scully
sighed when she felt his fingers playing in her hair. "Hit me with one thing,
just one. Let's see how I do."

She grimaced. "Well, this is tough, and I don't really know how to tell you."

"Something happened to Skinner? The guys?"

"No. No, they're okay. But this is something even you can't imagine." She paused
for effect, digging her nails into her palm to keep her expression level.
"George Bush is the President of the United States.."

He stared at her for an instant, then started to laugh. "Dammit, Scully..." It
turned into a cough, which he played to the hilt as Scully helped him take
another sip of water.

"I'd say you took the news rather well," she said, watching in relief as Mulder
managed to put the cup down without her assistance. "So you've had one piece of
good news and one piece of bad news, and now I think you should really get some
rest."

"You too." His smile melted. "You look so tired, Scully."

She leaned over and kissed his forehead, running her fingers over his temples as
if to reassure herself that a pulse really beat there. "I'm fine, now, Mulder."

He looked as if he wanted to react to the word "now" but already his breathing
was deepening, his body growing relaxed. Scully sat down in the chair and put
her head down on his chest again, letting his heartbeat lull her to sleep.

There was pale sunlight filtering through the blinds when she felt strong hands
on her shoulders, kneading gently. With a moan of exhausted bliss, Scully raised
her head and found herself looking into Skinner's dark, compassionate eyes.

"How long have you been here?" she whispered.

"About ten minutes. I looked in on you a couple of times during the night." He
shook his head, a tender smile softening the hard planes of his handsome face.
"It's not every day that a man gets to look at a miracle."

"I know." Still clinging to Mulder's hand, Scully rearranged herself so that she
was sitting up and facing Skinner. "Oh. I saw Agent Doggett earlier."

"I ran into him. He was...embarrassed. He asked me to apologize for intruding."

She looked around, peeking through the window into the corridor. "Is he still
here? I'd like to thank him."

"I sent him home. And that's where I'm about to send you, by the way."

"Sir, no. I can't leave him."

She remembered the last time she had said that, when he all but had to peel her
off of Mulder's fallen body when the ambulance drove into the field.

"Dana, you have to get some real rest. I promise you that no harm will come to
him."

"You've made that promise before." She was aghast at her harshness, even more so
when she saw the stricken expression on Skinner's face. "I'm sorry, sir. I don't
know where that came from."

"I pulled the plug on him, Scully. I don't blame you for being wary of my offers
of good will."

She bit back the nagging questions. Plug-pulling was not even at the top of the
list of why she might be wary of him. Scully was aware of the fact that
Skinner's world was full of shadows which he kept hidden from her, and right now
she was too tired to demand to be let in. "What you did - it turned out that you
did the right thing, sir, even if it was for the wrong reason. A lot of good
things come out of wrong reasons." She slipped her free hand into his. "Doggett
wouldn't have opened the grave. He'd never have made an intuitive leap like
that." Her throat constricted and she felt burning in her eyes. "You gave him
back to me. I'll never forget what you've done."

He stepped forward as if to wrap his arms around her, then backed away with the
same hesitant smile he had given her all those years ago when she lay in a
hospital bed of her own, freshly granted another miracle. Instead he mouthed
"I'll be right back" and stepped out into the hallway.

Scully drank in the sight of Mulder in peaceful sleep, his mouth slightly
parted, his face beautiful even with the dreadful scars that pocked his flesh.
It was the kind of sleep that some would call "the sleep of the dead" without
giving the term a second thought. Fools, fools.

So rapt was she that she was not fully aware of Skinner and an orderly rolling
an extra hospital bed into the room. She heard Skinner's voice saying, "They
need to be touching" and the squeak of seldom-used wheels. Before she could
process the sounds she was being helped to her feet.

The mattress felt like heaven as she let Skinner hoist her up. Her shoes
clattered to the floor. Groaning, she settled on her side and smiled as the
orderly helped her put a pillow between her knees. "Thanks," she muttered,
feeling delicious sleep swirling around her. Her fingers scrabbled across the
mattress. Skinner took her hand and guided it between the bars, then placed it
in Mulder's relaxed grip.

"There he is, Scully," he whispered into her ear. "Sleep tight."

The orderly headed for the door. "I'll go get her a blanket."

Skinner gave a silent nod of thanks. It was not that he feared waking Scully,
because he could tell that she was deeply asleep, but because he could not trust
his voice.

Three months ago, he had been one of Mulder's pallbearers. Two days ago, he had
given the order to exhume the casket. Today, the sun was rising on the living,
breathing man who had rested inside it.

What was the word Doggett had used? Insanity.

He was on the brink of it, himself. How easy it was to forget about the black
substance in his bloodstream when he had been busy keeping Scully's heart from
collapsing under the unbearable double burden she bore. She had come to him at
odd times during the day, sometimes to show him an old file and spill out the
details of what had really happened on that case. Sometimes she had come to beg
him to send Doggett to Siberia, anywhere, to get him off her ass about needing
more sleep or better vitamins.

She'd also appeared in the dead of night, more than once. After the first time,
when she'd stood trembling on the threshold, her face haggard and white, he'd
known what to do. On those occasions, he'd make her some herbal tea - he hated
the stuff, had never kept any in the house until Scully's nocturnal visits made
him realize that he had nothing to offer her that would be safe for the baby -
and wrap her in whatever was handy to ward off the chill. Sometimes it was an
old blanket or his discarded overcoat.

Sometimes it was his arms.

He hated himself.

He had hated himself ever since that spring night in Oregon, when he'd looked
away just long enough to break Scully's heart. He'd hated himself for being ten
minutes too late for Jeremiah Smith to save Mulder's life. He'd hated himself
for every time he'd leaned closer to Scully so that he could smell her hair as
she wept. He'd hated himself for every nocturnal wandering his hands made along
his body and for how he cried her name every time.

Now he was able to hate himself, truly revile every fiber of his being, because
he had buried this man alive. No matter that Scully had tearfully pronounced him
dead on the scene, no matter that two coroners and a handful of morticians had
worked on him without noticing. Skinner had been in charge, so it was his
responsibility.

He looked down at Scully. She was sleeping peacefully for the first time in
months, after an ordeal that would have flattened a lesser mortal. He'd had to
give a hurried explanation for his removal of Mulder from life support - a
Readers' Digest Condensed version, leaving out Alex Krycek. She had forgiven him
even before the medical team realized that it was Skinner's desperate action
that accidentally saved Mulder's life. But for the rest of his days, Walter
Skinner would have to live with the fact that he had borne a living man to his
grave, resurrected him, and then tried to kill him.

And that he had coveted the woman left behind.

Oh, there would be things to say to Mulder. He couldn't imagine how to say a
single one of them.

The orderly returned with a light blanket, putting it over Scully's slumbering
form. She stirred in her sleep and the motion woke Mulder, who opened his eyes
with a heavy sigh. "Where's Scully...?"

"Ssh, it's okay, Mr. Mulder. We're just covering up your pregnant chad, here."

"My what?" His eyes were dilated in the soft light and his whole face was
screwed up in an attitude of incomprehension. "Pregnant chad?"

The orderly looked at him and grinned. "Pregnant chad? The election?" When
Mulder's only reaction was a puzzled shrug, the orderly shook his head as he
took his leave. "Man. What planet you been on?"

"That's a good question," Mulder muttered. "I wish I knew the answer."

"You have to give yourself some time, Mulder."

The man in the bed turned his head, his gleaming eyes checking for Scully before
he spared Skinner a glance. "I'd say I've given myself about five months, give
or take a few million years."

There was no accusation in the flat tone. Skinner wished there had been
something there, some anger or disappointment, but Mulder was obviously still
working out the details of his ordeal in his own mind. He was simply too busy to
assess blame.

Skinner followed Mulder's gaze, both men watching Scully as she slept
peacefully. Like a baby, Skinner thought, trying not to imagine just how that
baby came to be.

"She's okay?" Mulder asked softly.

"Yeah, she's good, she's fine. There was an episode early on that gave us a
scare, but it's under control." He came closer to the bed, sitting in the chair
and leaning close to Mulder so that their voices would not waken Scully. "You
probably know better than anyone what she went through when you were taken.
She's tough, Mulder, and she tried really hard to hold it together. Still...no
matter how much I looked after her, no matter how much we all tried to do for
her, these last three months were just hell."

Mulder pursed his lips as if he'd tasted salt in a chocolate. Skinner winced as
he saw a fissure on Mulder's lower lip open up, a well of purple blood shining
like oil. "Wait...I thought I was gone for five."

Shit. She hadn't told him yet. Skinner tried to backtrack. "I mean, once she had
exhausted all her avenues...she was..."

"You're lying, Walter," Mulder drawled. His voice was insouciant, as always, but
there was pure panic in his gray-rimmed eyes. "What made these last three months
so much worse?"

He could hear himself swallowing. "Mulder, we found you three months ago, in a
field in Montana where a lot of other abductees turned up."

"I've been in a coma? Is that what you're trying to tell me?"

"I'm not sure what the hell I'm trying to tell you, Mulder. When we found you,
you had been dead for at least two days." Skinner found it hard to look his
subordinate in the eye, but he forced himself. He owed him that much. Owed him
more.

"Dead."

"Yeah."

The men stared at one another. Mulder's veins stood out at his temples and he
clenched his hands so tightly that Scully moaned softly. He released her hand
and folded his together on his chest.

"Maybe that's why this position is so comfortable," he said as if discussing a
new pair of shoes.

"Mulder, it's no joke. She picked out your best suit and made sure your hair was
combed just the way you liked it, then she and I stood there while two
morticians put you in a casket and apologized that they wouldn't be able to make
you look good enough for a viewing."

Mulder put his hands on his face, feeling the circular scars on his cheeks, then
stared at the holes running through both wrists. "Mirror," he said in a voice
tight with fear.

"I don't have one."

"I need...I need to see."

Skinner felt his sanity raveling away like ancient fabric, like a shroud. He
fumbled around in the room for a moment, finally finding a metallic bowl with a
flat bottom. He held it up so that Mulder could see his reflection.

"Jesus. That's enough." Mulder pushed the bowl away, his pale face shadowed with
a sickly green tint.

"The scars will heal," Skinner promised him.

"The ones here?" Mulder pointed to his face, then to his heart. "Or here?" He
looked at Skinner with fear shining like fireworks behind his black pupils.
"When did YOUR scars heal?"

Just thinking about it brought the stench of jungle steam back into his
nostrils. He'd been in a body bag, ready to be tagged and returned to his home.
It was a miracle had he been spared Mulder's fate, locked in a casket with a
heart still beating.

"Your case is different. You've got something anchoring you to this world." He
lifted his chin in Scully's direction. "Part of you is there. You owe it to
yourself to come back to the living. To make yourself whole again."

Mulder's head turned as if it were too heavy a burden for his neck. Skinner
could see a tear welling up, then being blinked back, as Mulder looked at
Scully's pale, thin face.

"Tell me she didn't do the autopsy."

Skinner let out a shaking breath. "She wanted to. I told her not to. In fact, I
told her to leave you in peace."

"Don't corpses," and here Mulder's voice shook, "have to be embalmed?"

"I don't think you need to know..."

"Fuck what you think. Sir." Mulder never took his eyes off Scully. "What the
hell happened to my body?"

"You'd been dead for days. She said your blood was too...well, it wasn't an
option."

"I guess I should be glad she didn't have me cremated." Mulder finally moved,
this time lying on his side facing Skinner. Behind him, Scully frowned in her
sleep, her fingers restlessly stroking the warm place where their conjoined
hands had been.

"Mulder, don't make this worse."

"Worse." He spat out the word. "Yeah, it could be worse. I could remember it."

Skinner felt a sour taste in the back of his mouth. "Take some time, Mulder.
Think. Talk to Scully." He paused, looking down at his shoes. "Talk to me, if
you need to. But for God's sake, don't make a compost heap out of all that's
happened to you."

"Shit rises," Mulder whispered. His hands went slack and his eyes closed like
the lid to his casket.

"That went well," Skinner mumbled to himself, reaching into his pocket for a
handkerchief. It was the one he'd handed Scully at Mulder's funeral; he kept it
with him as a sick sort of souvenir. He wiped his glasses on it. When he
replaced them on his nose, he looked up just far enough to see Doggett's profile
in the window.

Doggett's eyebrows raised as if asking permission to enter, but Skinner shook
his head. He got up from the chair and touched Mulder's cool hand.

Alive. God, alive. Doggett wondered what the living flesh felt like as he
watched Skinner take one last longing look at Scully before joining him outside.

They watched for a while, guardian angels in overcoats, one bruised from the
outside and the other from within. Finally Skinner sat down in the bank of
plastic chairs near Mulder's room. He arched his back and stretched his arms
high, then leaned forward.

"Hell of a day," said Doggett as he walked up to Skinner.

"You could say that." Skinner shifted by way of invitation and Doggett took the
seat next to him. "After you left I got in touch with John Byers and asked him
to tell Scully's mother."

Doggett's eyes widened. "You think that's wise? I mean, he's the least cracked
of the lot, but still."

"You want to make the call yourself? Hello, Mrs. Scully - the man we buried
three months ago, well, he's alive and your daughter's in his room crying her
eyes out because when I tried to kill him it ended up saving his life?"

"Good point." Doggett turned his cool-eyed gaze to the ceiling. "That's not what
you were trying to do, you know. Kill him."

"I was trying to make a choice for him, the one I knew he'd make himself if he
were...compos mentis." Skinner shuddered. "I had them dig him up so that he
could live, and then I had to disconnect his life support to save Scully's
baby."

"Just your average executive decisions, sir."

Skinner barked a laugh. It was dry and hollow, like an empty grave. He shook his
head, looking, yet not looking, at his folded hands. "I'd have paid real money
to have seen the look on Kersh's face when he found out that Mulder was alive."

"I got to see the aftermath. It wasn't pretty." Doggett put his elbow on his
thigh, the Thinker's Stance, his chin on his fist. "In case you're wonderin',
the job offer was rescinded. I'm not sure what's worse - three in a bed or three
in a basement."

"I'm sorry, John. It's not going to be easy for you."

Doggett grimaced. His heart felt full, heavy, and there was a lump in his throat
that had been there from the moment he had seen Scully lying with her head on
Mulder's chest. What had been in his eyes? he wondered. He knew what he'd seen
in hers.

Pity.

What he saw now in Skinner's eyes was something he really, really didn't want to
think about. It had been there a couple of times before, when Skinner was
looking after Scully. It was a white-hot pain kept in check by the iron force of
a good man's will. The worst was the night they'd found Mulder. While Scully had
been doing her courageous best to rein in her howling grief as she gave
instructions to the coroner's assistant, Skinner had just stood there, looking
for all the world as if he would gladly trade places with the dead man if it
would just take away Scully's pain.

The guy's screwed either way, Doggett had thought early on, and his opinion
hadn't changed. Poor Skinner. King David looking at Bathsheba and wishing he
could take back time, undo what had happened. But what happened to Mulder wasn't
Skinner's fault. Anyone would've thought the guy was dead. His skin had been
hard and blue, and he was as cold as the ground he lay on. His rigor was so bad
that Scully couldn't even hold his hand for fear of cracking the bones. That was
dead. Really dead.

The amazing thing about Mulder's death was that Scully survived it. That miracle
baby in there must have been the trick, because without it she'd have withered
away like drought-stricken wheat, denied the water and sunlight that the hope of
finding Mulder had given her. Doggett had tried to hover without seeming as if
he hovered - or at least he hoped he had. As far as he knew, he'd only screwed
up once.

He'd seen the childbirth books on her desk - Mulder's desk, whoever's desk - and
in a moment of madness had offered to be her coach.

"What?" Scully had asked, her eyes wide.

"I mean, I've had some experience. In the force, that is, and I had a lot of
paramedic buddies say I wasn't half bad." He hadn't mentioned Luke, how Cindy
swore to everyone that she'd never have survived the seventeen hours of labor
without John at her side. Scully didn't need another story with an unhappy
ending.

She had looked at him with actual tenderness, and he could have sworn that he
saw her teeth when she smiled. "I can't tell you," she had said, her fingers
playing with the photograph of Samantha Mulder, "how grateful I am for your
offer." The words were carefully measured, like nitroglycerin she didn't want to
spill. "I've made...other arrangements. But thank you."

"Hey, that's okay, really." His skin had turned a mottled red and his ears,
particularly, had burned. "No big deal."

But he'd still felt rejected, although he could think of a million reasons why
sharing that moment with him was not something Scully would ever have had in
mind. And if he'd felt rejected that day, he should've saved it up as being
preferable to the way he felt the moment he realized that he was a third wheel
on the X Files, and a square one at that.

Before he'd ever met Fox Mulder in, as the saying went, the flesh.

He realized that he hadn't said a word to Skinner in over ten minutes. That was
something he actually enjoyed about his erstwhile boss. They didn't need to fill
the empty air with idle words. On several occasions they'd nursed cups of coffee
into the wee hours without exchanging more than a few perfunctory sentences.

Doggett stood up and looked into Mulder's room again. Scully had not moved.
Mulder had turned in his sleep so that he was facing her, curled into a fetal
ball, a mirror image connected to her by their clasped hands. He felt the slow
burn of blood rising to the surface of his skin and made a brusque turn away
from the image.

Not that it helped - he'd carry that picture in his brain forever.

"It's a bond I can't explain," Skinner said, looking up at Doggett with that sad
look on his face. "You'll never see more than that - maybe the way she looks at
him, or how he moves in closer and closer as he talks to her. It's like you've
seen them making love, and it stays with you."

"I oughta be happy for her. I am happy for her. She got her miracle." He left
the doorway and walked back toward Skinner, keeping his hands in his pockets for
warmth and to hide their slight tremor. "I missed out on mine."

There was silence, an eternal heartbeat.

"Your son."

"Yeah. When we were investigating, I figured with me on my feet
twenty-four/seven and my wife on her knees about that much, we had our bases
covered. But Luke..." He shook his head.

Skinner's voice was soothing, almost the same tone he'd used with Scully when
she was at her wits' end. "Sometimes our prayers aren't answered, Agent
Doggett."

"No, sir. God always answers our prayers." He shrugged. "Sometimes, He just says
'no' and we don't know why."

"That's true. I don't know why we got Mulder back. I don't know why your son had
to die. Or my wife, for that matter, or my platoon back in 'Nam. And to tell the
truth, I don't even know why I'm still alive."

"I think we're here for some purpose, sir. Maybe it's because of her." He tilted
his head in the direction of Mulder's room. "It all seems to be revolving around
her, even though she's as much a mystery to me today as she was the first time I
laid eyes on her. But I think maybe we were brought together to protect her."

"She's worth protecting, John. Just don't let her know you're doing it, or
she'll kick your ass into next week." Skinner rose, indicating the lavatory down
the hall, and left Doggett standing in the hallway alone.

Doggett leaned against the wall and closed his eyes. He'd seen the photographs
of a baby-faced young woman and read of her her incredible academic
achievements. He'd read the report of her abduction and the long series of notes
about her various medical conditions. How she'd let death kiss her cheek but
still escaped its clutches. But nothing could prepare him for the magnificent
beauty of her grief. It was so overwhelming that his own anguish, which he had
thought was dormant, had risen to the surface and given him an ineluctable need
to keep her from harm.

He reflected that he'd been keeping her safe for Mulder, only to have Mulder
turn up dead, and that he had spent the last three months keeping her safe for
the memory of an enigma. And it was an enigma that no one would ever explain to
him, locked somewhere in the fabulous mind of Fox Mulder.

And Dana Scully kept the key in her heart.

Doggett couldn't imagine what it would be like to be the object of that kind of
devotion. Sure, Cindy had loved him and they'd adored their son, but...

"Agent Doggett?"

He almost twisted his ankle as he turned in the direction of that soft voice,
the gentle pressure of a hand on his arm. "Hey! I thought you were asleep."

"I'm sorry. I didn't mean to startle you." Scully ran a hand through her
disheveled hair, then gave Doggett's arm a reassuring pat. She was tiny in her
stocking feet.

"I think we're all a little jumpy, given what's gone on in the last day or so."
He peered down at her, careful not to let himself be swallowed up by the vast
ocean of her eyes. "How's he doing?"

"He's sleeping. His color looks better." She grimaced. "I don't know how it
could have been much worse."

Doggett had nothing to say to that. The sight of Mulder in his coffin, what he
had looked like after three months, was going to be haunting his sleep for the
rest of his life. At least Mulder had been cleaned up a little before Scully had
to look at him in the harsh light of the ICU.

"Is A.D. Skinner still here?" Scully asked.

"Yeah, he's just...down the hall." Seeing Scully's lips purse in a little frown,
he offered his own services. "Somethin' I can do to help?"

"I don't know...it just occurred to me. We're going to have to get his social
security number back, reopen his bank account, get him declared undead, or
legally alive, or whatever you do in a case like this." She was silent for a
beat, her body turning toward the door to Mulder's room. "Not that there's ever
been a case like this."

"That's for damn sure." They both leaned against the wall. "Where will you guys
go when he gets out of here? Your apartment's probably half full of baby stuff.
If you need a place to stay, you can use my house and I'll camp with some
friends."

"That's very kind of you, but I guess he'll go back to his own apartment."

"His apartment?" Doggett was confused. "You kept his apartment, even after...?"

"It went condo, and he'd paid a year's upkeep fees on it in advance," Skinner
said as he strode up to them. He took Scully's chin in his hand. "You need to
get back in bed."

"I wanted to talk to you, sir, about getting paperwork started to..."

He cut her off, smiling. "I've got my assistant on it. She's confused, but she's
on it."

"Good. Good." She yawned, then put her fingertips over her mouth as if mortified
at being caught doing something so human. "Sorry."

"Bed. Now." Skinner met her eyes, grinning at her, and she grimaced over her
shoulder at Doggett as she went back into Mulder's room. They watched her climb
back into bed. She turned toward them, making a flapping motion with her hand to
indicate that she wanted to be unobserved, and they backed away.

Doggett raised an eyebrow at Skinner. "Went condo? He paid a year in advance?"

The fact that Skinner could not look him in the eye, but was instead
scrutinizing with untoward interest an unoccupied gurney, spoke volumes.

"You got a problem with that, Agent?"

"I think it was a nice gesture on his part to make sure that she wouldn't have
to go through his things if something happened to him. Wouldn't have to put
herself through that pain."

"Exactly."

"'Cause Mulder was that kind of guy, you know. Thoughtful. Worried about other
people's needs."

"Agent Doggett..."

"Sir, forgive me for saying this, but you can't bullshit me. And I bet you
didn't bullshit her, either."

Skinner's shoulders slumped. "I took her over to his place with some boxes, a
few days after the funeral. She just stood there, looking so lost. I couldn't do
that to her." He blinked rapidly as if wanting to erase the memory. "So I went
to the manager's apartment and wrote a check, and got him to come up and tell
her the story."

"And she was distraught enough to buy it?"

"Maybe. Or too polite to let me know she was on to me. But it gave her some
peace, Agent Doggett, and if a check could keep her from suffering for even one
minute, then it was well worth it."

Doggett swallowed down the impulse to say something, like how honored he was to
work for such a man. Instead he looked at his watch and said, "I gotta get back
before they change the locks on the basement door. Anything you need me to take
care of?"

"No. But thanks for looking in on them. I'm just going to stay for a while. Make
sure they're not disturbed."

"Okay. I'll check back on the way home."

As he walked toward the elevator Doggett saw his reflection in the windows.
Dappled light from within and without spotted the dark fabric of his overcoat
and he realized, with a burst of ironic self-awareness, that he looked exactly
like a tattered gypsy moth. When he got downstairs, he decided to take one last
look at the flame that had kept him hovering for the last two day, counting
floors and windows until he found Mulder's room.

He frowned, shading his eyes from the sunlight. Someone was standing at the
window. Not Scully. It took him a few seconds for his eyes to adjust to the
brightness, then he made out the gaunt face and unruly dark hair of Fox Mulder.

Mulder wondered who the man was, the slim, fair-haired guy who seemed so intent
on the view into his hospital room. A synapse fired in his brain and he realized
that there were probably guards taking turns outside his room, and this was just
one of the men assigned to make sure nothing weird happened.

Nothing weird. I crack myself up, he thought.

Mulder had pulled himself out of bed, clinging to the IV pole, desperate to see
the outside world again. His limbs were heavy, nearly useless, and every step
was something he had to do on the conscious level of his brain. Now he was
leaning against the windowsill, slightly out of breath from the effort, and
watching the world he thought he'd left behind.

Cars did a stately minuet around the parking lot. Pigeons fought for the scraps
of food by a trash can, the grease-stained bag tossed just shy of making a
basket. The sky was a lead gray and fog obscured the horizon. Not much to look
at. Not compared to what lay in the bed next to his, anyway.

His gaze was pure focus, intense enough to wake her from her much-needed rest.
He wondered, as he watched her stir, if she had broken the surface of
consciousness like this every day, smiling from some sweet dream, then fighting
back tears as reality choked off her hope. When she looked up at him, blinking,
he saw thousands of emotions playing across her face.

"Oh, my God. I didn't dream it," she whispered. Hauling herself upright, she
made her way to his side, holding his hand as she guided him down into a chair.
"How do you feel?

There it was, the unsettling, unexpected anger that had been simmering in him
since he woke up. "I guess you could say that I was dead tired."

He had to steel himself against the agony radiating from her every pore. She
breathed quickly through her open mouth and took her hand away from Mulder's as
if it were burning her.

"You remember," she murmured. "Oh." Her hands fluttered ineffectually in the air
for a moment before lighting on her abdomen.

"Skinner was in here earlier and he let it slip. I think he thought you'd have
told me."

"I was going to talk to you today, when you were rested."

"Yeah, well I figure I've rested in peace for long enough. Now I'm looking for
some answers."

Her confusion was palpable as she leaned against the windowsill. He could almost
hear her thinking before she began to speak.

"I don't blame you. I remember when I woke up and couldn't seem to dredge up
anything after the moment Duane Barry knocked me out. It'll come back in
flashes, Mulder, in bits and pieces, and it might be hard to sort out what
really happened and what was your worst nightmare."

He looked away from her, unable to bear her burdens on top of his own. "My own
worst nightmare changed over the years, Scully. Abduction, cancer, near-death
experiences. Every time I told myself: 'Okay, she got through that, it can't get
any worse.' Obviously I was wrong."

Scully looked down at her folded hands. "I used to think that my worst nightmare
was losing you. Last night I thought I'd lived through it."

"But now you're not so sure."

Her eyes filled with tears. Mulder wondered when this had started, the
waterworks bubbling to the surface when just a few years before he'd been so
proud of his stoic Scully. Maybe it was just a slow tearing away of her defenses
that left her like this.

Maybe it was hormones. He stared at her abdomen, not bothering to cover up the
frankness of his gaze, and with the hand that ached to cup Scully's face he
instead put two fingers at the broadest point of the protuberance. "When did you
find out?" he asked softly.

"When you and Skinner were in Oregon, I had another episode of lightheadedness.
The Gunmen got me to the hospital, and during the routine blood work the doctors
found out that I was pregnant. I didn't believe them." She covered his fingers
with hers. "I made them do three different tests, and they were all the same. I
was just getting used to the idea when Skinner came in and told me that you
were...gone..."

He hated the tears, hated the sobs. They made him feel guilty, and when he felt
guilty he became small and petty because that helped him deflect the blame. Then
he realized that he was being small and petty, and from there he just decided
the hell with it and stood up so he could wrap his arms around her, holding her
head to his chest and stroking her pretty hair, the soft hair he'd dreamt about
on those rare occasions when the Greys had let him sleep.

"Scully," he choked, and the second time he spoke her name it was a whimper.
"Scully."

"Skinner took me home. He felt so bad, Mulder, he blamed himself and wouldn't
let anyone forgive him. Finally I made him go home and I tried to call the guys,
but they already knew and were on their way." She smiled into his hospital gown.
"They brought me stargazer lilies and a stuffed rabbit."

Mulder laughed, an unaccustomed sound that made his throat constrict. "That
would've been Byers with the flowers and Frohike with the toy, right? What did
Langley bring?"

"Your voice." She stood back a step and smoothed his hair away from his
forehead. "On a CD, from your voice mail and their machines. He manipulated the
last cut so that it said...it said..."

"Ssh, ssh, it's okay," he crooned into her ear as he leaned over to brush his
lips across her temple. "So the Three Stooges became the Three Wise Men, huh?"

She hiccuped a laugh. "They were good to me, Mulder."

"Do they know I'm back yet?"

"I'm going to call them later today. I didn't want them running over here last
night. I needed you to myself for a while. I'm still...processing."

"I'm processing, too. That I was taken and experimented on and left for dead and
that I'm back." He swallowed and began to cough. Scully brought him some water,
helping him lift the cup to his lips with his shaking hands. "Thanks. Guess it's
like being in the morgue and getting measured."

She stared at him, the cup tilting in her hand until some of the water dripped
on the floor.

He grinned at her. "You know, Scully. A coffin fit."

"Mulder. Jesus." She set the cup down on the window ledge and balled her hands
into fists on her hips.

"There are those who might draw a parallel," Mulder drawled. He felt his
emotions plummeting again and he busied himself with looking out the window at
an orderly who was wheeling a woman toward a car. "What happens after the baby's
born?"

"I'm not sure. I had planned on going back to work, maybe at Quantico. But
now...I don't want to make any plans just yet."

It had been another answer he had sought, but he decided not to correct her. He
actually found himself not caring at all about the baby except as an abstract
concept. What he wanted to know, what every awakened nerve and cell in his body
needed to know, was what his role would be in her life once he was no longer the
center of it.

And he couldn't imagine not being the center.

Too fast, it was all happening too fast. He wobbled on his feet. Scully helped
him back to bed, her own graceless half-waddle not really enough to support him
but more comforting than the cold metal of an IV pole.

She perched on the edge of the bed and held his hand. "I prayed so hard that I'd
find you, Mulder, and when we found you and we had to bury you, I prayed that
we'd be together again someday. I thought I'd see you in Heaven."

"This isn't Heaven - this is Iowa," Mulder murmured. He turned his head on the
pillow, facing away from her, and feigned sleep. After a few moments he felt her
fingers loosen from around his and heard her get up and close the bathroom door.
Once he was sure he was alone, he used the back of his hand to wipe away the
wetness that threatened to spill down his face.

No matter how hard he tried, he couldn't make himself remember anything beyond
that last flash of searing anguish. There was nothing, no memory, no light. It
was a void that he had fallen into, and he would gladly endure the torture of a
million more probes just to keep that from Scully, to keep from telling her that
there would be no reunion in the Great Beyond. No comforting voices from the
past. No starlight. Just oblivion.

The anger welled up in him again. Post-traumatic stress. He hadn't practiced
psychology in a long, long time, but he could still self-diagnose with the best
of them. There would be bitter moments. Brittle ones. Anger and guilt, his old
friends, in a combustible mix with the newer emotion of jealousy. Self-loathing
over being jealous of the unborn child Scully had longed for would make for a
very, very short fuse.

He twisted around in the bed, his lanky, thin body feeling every lump in the
mattress. The monitor on his finger felt tight. Constrictive. His chest ached
with the need to draw in a full breath, but he couldn't breathe. He tried to
move but someone, something, pounded a bolt through his wrists and secured him
to the examination chair. Mulder watched the blood pouring from his flesh, as he
screamed in mortal agony.

"Mulder, ssh, ssh. You're okay, I've got you, you're okay."

"Scully!" he cried as he had a thousand times on the ship, but this time she was
really there, her cool hand on his forehead, her soft lips pressed to his cheek.

"You had a nightmare. It's okay. I'm here."

"Flashback," he gasped, his hand to his chest. He looked at the livid marks on
his wrists. "What the hell did they do to me, Scully? My hands, my face, this
scar on my chest - what happened?"

Scully shook her head. "I can give you a catalogue of your injuries, Mulder. I'm
not sure we'll ever really know why they were inflicted. But I promise you that
I'll have the best specialists check out every inch of your body to make certain
that you're all right."

"That's my body. What about my mind, Scully? What if I'm crazy?"

"You're not crazy, Mulder," she answered, bringing herself to her feet and
leaning over the bed. "At least, no more so than usual."

"I come back from the dead and all I get is abuse," he groused.

"I'll get that put on a t-shirt."

Mulder shivered and Scully pulled the blankets up over him. He tried to still
the movements, to let her think that he'd only been cold, but he still trembled.
He clutched her hand for several long minutes until the spasms subsided, then he
released his grip and folded his hands lightly across his chest.

"Are you okay?" Scully asked, as she checked the monitors for some doctor-signal
that he wouldn't understand.

"Fine. I just don't want to go to school today, Mom."

"I'll send a note to the principal." She smiled down at him. "Speaking of
principal, you should be informed that Kersh is now the Deputy Director who
oversees our department."

"That's not funny."

"That's not a joke."

Kersh. Good God.

"Then I guess he must've been in the basement just now," Mulder said. At
Scully's raised eyebrow he added, "That's why I had the shakes. Someone was
walking over my grave."

She started to hug him but he turned over so that she couldn't see the unbidden,
irrational anger that threatened to spill out of him again. "Tired..." he
muttered into the pillow. He could sense the stiffness of her posture as she
brushed her fingers along his shoulder.

There were no words exchanged as he heard her pick up her shoes, groaning a
little at the effort, and walk out the door. He knew he shouldn't give in to the
angry impulses, that she wasn't the cause of his pain. He imagined her grief as
she chose his casket and his clothes and laid him to what she thought would be
his eternal rest. He imagined her on her knees before her priest, begging for
the repose of his soul so that they could be together again someday. And he knew
that but for the pregnancy, she would gladly have lain beside him. The pain of
realization made him angry, then guilty, then angry again, and finally he began
to sink into an exhausted depression.

He didn't deserve this. But neither did she. He'd make it up to her.

He'd bring her stargazer lilies.

Or just himself.

Her stargazer.

***
End
***

Always through the changing
Of sun and shadow, time and space,
I will walk beside my love
In a green and quiet place.
Proof against the forms of fear,
No distress shall alter me.
I will walk beside my dear,
Clad in love's bright heraldry.

from "The Ballad of Baby Doe"
Douglas Moore, composer
John Latouche, librettist 1956

Feedback gives me goosebumps at marguerite@swbell.net.
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